Yesterday, the Columbia County Board of Supervisors Space Utilization Committee met to review and approve the plans for the interior reconfiguration of 11 Warren Street, which were modified from the plans first introduced to the committee on May 22.
In addition to explaining the changes that had been made, Ray Jurkowski, Commissioner of Public Works for the county, talked about parking. He told the committee that 41 spaces would be needed for staff that would be working in the building. He noted there were 27 offstreet parking spaces in front of the building, as well as 14 onstreet spaces on the south side of Warren Street between First Street and the driveway and 4 parking spaces on First Street, for a total of 45 spaces in close proximity to the building. He explained there are 20 union employees who will be working at 11 Warren Street, and their contract requires that they be provided an offstreet parking space.
When it came time to vote on approving the schematic drawings so they could move on to the design development phase, only one member of the committee--Linda Mussmann, the only Hudson supervisor on the committee--voted no. She explained her vote saying that she wanted a parking and traffic study to be done before proceeding.
The departments that will be relocated to 11 Warren Street are the Board of Elections, Probation, and the Public Defenders Office. At the meeting on Thursday, the committee discussed what other county services might be relocated there and decided the conflict defender and the Article 18B assigned counsel should have offices in the building. When the committee voted on a motion to relocate these offices to 11 Warren Street, Mussmann once again voted no. She explained that she was opposed to the county's plan for 11 Warren Street in general and made reference to the opposition in Hudson to the plan--from the Common Council, the business community, and Hudson residents. Ron Knott, supervisor from Stuyvesant, who chairs the Space Utilization Committee, said he had been meeting with Hudson mayor Kamal Johnson and reported that "things are going well."
It's not clear how much of an advocate for Hudson Johnson will be on this issue. Reportedly, at some time before Matt Murell, chair of the Board of Supervisors, announced the County's intention to acquire 11 Warren Street last August, Murell and Robert Lagonia, the supervisor from Austerlitz who serves on the Space Utilization Committee, had a chance encounter with Johnson at 401 State Street, during which they told him the County was planning to acquire 11 Warren Street for office space. According to reports, instead of telling them their plan would negatively impact the City's efforts to reconnect with the waterfront--one of the goals of the DRI Hudson Connects project--and prevent appropriate development of the site from happening for another thirty to fifty years, Johnson said the City had no plans for 11 Warren Street because the City did not own it. It hardly seems likely that successful conversations between Johnson and Knott are going to defuse the opposition to this project or bring about an outcome that opponents will find in any way satisfactory.
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Too bad Galvan didn't own John L, then they would have purchased it instead. It was the obvious best location, tons of office space, parking, they could have even had a gym there for county employees.
ReplyDeleteThe many residents living on lower Warren struggle daily for parking spaces. Good luck with those 45 spots in "close proximity" to the building.
ReplyDeleteThe County is blind to the City's needs, always has been, and Johnson is not a good advocate.
ReplyDeleteOur mayor is no help in far too many ways!
ReplyDeleteActually, Ray Jurkowski holds no title other than the Commissioner of the County Engineering Department; he is not the Chairman of the Public Works Committee - just a member of it. That title goes to Ron Knott, who also is, as you correctly point out, the chair of the Space Utilization Committee (which is associated with Public Works). Jurkowski gives his monthly Engineering report to the DPW Committee and, I'm guessing, the Space Committee as well. The county website's Committees page offers a list of the 4 or 5 departments involved with the Public Works Committee and a separate list with the names of the people on the committee presumably representing those departments. (Why not have one list!) Strangely (or not at all), Engineering is the first department listed, but Ron Jurkowski's name is nowhere to be found in the list of names. I watched and listened as he gave his monthly Engineering report last week at 410 State during the Public Works Committee meeting. I have no idea how long Ray has been the county Engineer.
ReplyDeleteI see it at the city level too: If you want to minimize accountability, confuse people as much as possible so they will stop paying attention or simple not be able to pay attention and ask the right questions of the right people. The fewer questions, the better!
My partial bad. The list of names for each county committee are for committee members, not department heads. Jurkowski's and other department head's names are not supposed to be listed. For that info, you have to go to the departments page.
ReplyDeleteNo comment from the ... '11 Warren St Committee" ??? I contributed to ...
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