This morning, The Valley Alliance released this statement about the decision made last night by the Planning Board to approve the Colarusso haul road.
In a pathetic turn of events, the Hudson Planning Board not only approved the proposed Colarusso "haul road" through South Bay . . . it even allowed the company to edit and dictate portions of its ruling.
The Tuesday night hearing featured the spectacle of Board attorney Victoria Polidoro changing her draft ruling live onscreen, as the company's attorney issued instructions.
The slipshod decision approves a major two-lane truck highway through a protected wetland adjoining the Hudson River, choking three major entrances to the City with new traffic. And it allows Colarusso to keep running heavy gravel trucks through downtown as many as 40 times per year--a number Colarusso will in theory track themselves.
Chair Theresa Joyner shut down discussion of an alternate truck route to avoid Columbia and Front Street during those 40 days, twice reminding her colleagues that an alternative route which could have avoided downtown entirely would go past her own residence, further uptown.
"The Board completely ignored the massive public input it has received over the years, and let Colarusso dictate terms to them," said Valley Alliance co-director Peter Jung. "In two decades of attending these meetings and even serving on the Board myself, I have never witnessed such a superficial and empty review of a major project."
 |
| Screenshot: Board attorney Polidoro live-edits their decision at the direction of Colarusso lawyer |
Since 2019, the Board was sent some 250 detailed letters and memoranda from residents, nonprofits and businesses, along with dozens of verbal comments--over 90% of them opposing the project. It also received a petition against it, which exceeded 1,200 signatures. Joyner previously indicated that new Board members would rely on an as-yet undisclosed Polidoro memo summarizing past comments and submissions, rather than reading the actual comments themselves.
"While the Board claims it diligently considered public input, we never got to hear its current members mention any of the specific and substantial concerns raised since 2019," said co-director Sam Pratt.
"There was virtually no debate among the Board members, except to discuss minor mitigations proposed by Colarusso as a distraction from the core issues of Waterfront planning, access and protection," Pratt continued. "The Board seems to have relied entirely on bad data and claims from the company--nullifying all of the hard facts and careful analysis provided by others. They even discarded concerns raised by their own engineers, lawyers, and prior members."
Of the six Board members currently serving, only one has been involved since the start of the Colarusso review in 2016. One other has served for roughly half the review, with the other four new to the issue in the past year. During the process, the Board has had five different chairs, five different lawyers, and lost a dozen members.
"We are exploring all avenues for challenging the project's second required application for the dock," added Pratt. "We agree with the one dissenting vote on the Board, by Valerie Wray, that this vote raises real concerns for the long-term future of developing a healthy, positive Waterfront which benefits the people of Hudson."
The newly-approved truck highway could potentially serve up more than 100,000 truck trips per year to the Waterfront if the full permit capacity is met.
--Peter Jung & Sam Pratt for The Valley Alliance
Not to contradict - not at all - but the Planning Board has in its possession substantial public comments dating to Colarusso's earliest Environmental Assessment Forms in 2016.
ReplyDeleteI'm only now learning that attorney Polidoro was entrusted to interpret years of our comments, many of which criticized her amateurish understanding of the case. Finally it's all making sense.
Un -ffing- believable. After all these years, all these investigations and all these comments. I guess they fell on deaf ears and small minds.
ReplyDeleteWhat a whiny letter....
ReplyDeleteThanks for adding value in your commentary.
DeleteOur Hudson Waterfront is of course disappointed by the Planning Board’s decision December 12 to grant Colarusso a permit to build its high-capacity truckway. While we appreciate the pressures the Board must have faced in making this decision, we remain astonished that in seven years of scrutiny, not one public agency—including our own Planning Board—has seriously studied negative impacts on our open space, city-wide economy, transportation infrastructure and community character.
ReplyDeleteWe understand that the board focused (rightly) on getting Colarusso trucks off the streets. But there were other ways of achieving this end with more imagination and backbone. We believe this approval will prove a bad decision for the City of Hudson. And we concur with comments by Valley Alliance on the level of negligence on display.
Finally, we want to be clear that OHW is not done with this issue. The fight now moves to the dock, and we will be there for it.
David Konigsberg, Donna Streitz
Our Hudson Waterfront
OHW, please clarify:
DeleteThe fight will move to "the dock," or did you mean to the "dock operations" as it written in the Zoning Code.
The distinction makes a world of difference. Thanks.
Past iterations of the Planning Board did flag and even object to impacts of Colarusso’s project on community character, enjoyment of the Waterfront park, protection of the South Bay, compliance with the Comp Plan, etc.
ReplyDeleteThese can be found in legal filings and comments from its multiple prior attorneys (Khosrova, Dow, Howard, Hinman-Straub, et al.)
They can be found in the detailed memoranda of its engineers at Barton & Loguidice, at least before its principle retired and handed it off to the much less diligent current rep.
They can be found in past findings and rulings by the Board when chaired by Gramkow, Steim et al.
The new Board appears to have been unaware of or uninterested in this extensive record, blowing right past it to simply cut-and-paste from Colarusso’s belligerent memos. Its findings never addressed any of the substantive public input, nor even its own legal and agency concerns which are on the record.
This is the Hudson equivalent of old-time Southern jury nullification: Ignore the rules, just do what makes your life easier or suits your personal allegiances.
The win-win option for Hudson has always been: Deny the permits. That would take the gravel trucks off the streets, and protect the Bay and Waterfront.
Oh, and by the way, the permit not only allows trucks downtown some 40 days a year (more, if no one notices). It gives Colarusso two full years to actually build and start using the road. If the Board was truly motivated by an urgency to get the trucks off the streets, why did it offer them first a year, then 18 months, then 24 months to get this accomplished?
The decision also at the last second was changed to allow an unlimited number of Colarusso’s “customers” to use the road for pickups and deliveries. This new use was introduced unilaterally by Colarusso *after* the close of the public hearing, at which point the record was supposed to be complete.
No analysis of that brand new activity and impact was done; the Board just rolled over when Colarusso demanded it be added.
In the resolution, Polidoro claims that the Board “diligently” reviewed the public input. But those who actually watched these meetings would be hard pressed to find any specific comments referencing which raised concerns about the Code compliance, the Comp Plan, sunsetting provisions in the LWRP, South Bay Creek & Marsh designation, impacts to the Basilica and other businesses, impacts to major entrances, etc. etc.
In fact, I bet if you got out a stopwatch and clocked the time spent during the “review” when Colarusso and its reps were talking, vs. the Planning Board, it would be something like 4:1 lobbying by ACS compared to the tepid and incurious comments from Board members.
This is all the essence of arbitrary and capricious decisionmaking. If you look at how other projects are reviewed, it‘s night and day.
I think the stronger argument is that language was adapted after the public hearing, which is usually a fatal flaw. But that may only postpone the inevitable if a court orders the matter remanded to the PB to fix it.
DeleteYou'd think there'd be at least one leader in this county who can bring the parties together to craft a mutually-acceptable outcome. At this point, given the serial failure of a number of iterations of the PB, you'd think our state assemblywoman or senator might see if they have the chops to make everyone behave like adults.
Sam is absolutely right about the previous iteration of the Planning Board. The problem is that the current Board behaved as if they never delivered a positive declaration. All of their work backing that up disappeared down the memory hole.
ReplyDeleteFortunately, eight years of public comments which detail all the things the current Planning Board overlooked are available in the record. If the Board members didn't read them, then that's down their own private memory holes.
DeleteThey probably took a guess at which party was less likely to sue them. With the exception of Ms. Wray, I hope they'll all be made to answer for choosing the wrong party.