HHA and HCDPA

In a special meeting on Monday, Hudson Community Development and Planning Agency (HCDPA) granted the Hudson Housing Authority (HHA) its request to postpone the $25,000 payment for a third year on its option to buy three parcels of land owned by HCDPA. The extension of the agreement was passed with three affirmative votes (Mayor Kamal Johnson, Planning Board chair Theresa Joyner, and Common Council minority leader Dominic Merante). Common Council majority leader Margaret Morris abstained, as did, appropriately, HHA Board of Commissioners chair Revonda Smith. The outcome was predictable. The discussion preceding and following the vote was revealing.

Merante, who chairs the HCDPA Board, opened the discussion by asking Jeffrey Dodson, HHA executive director, why they needed an extension. Dodson explained that they are very close to making a decision about purchasing the properties, but they wanted to make sure the sites were feasible for construction. He maintained the request for an extension was not a monetary issue. The terms of the original agreement, however, which were reviewed by HCDPA legal counsel Christine Chale, suggest there would be a monetary advantage in extending the second year of the agreement.

According to the terms of the agreement, if HHA made the decision to purchase the properties in the first year, 90 percent of the $25,000 payment would be applied to the purchase price. If the decision to purchase the properties were made in the second year of the agreement, 75 percent of the $25,000 payment for that year would be applied to the purchase price. If the decision to purchase were made in the third year, only 50 percent of the $25,000 for that year would be applied to the purchase price. If HHA does not make a decision in the second year of the agreement, not only do they have to pay another $25,000 to keep the agreement in place, but a smaller percentage of the third-year payment would be applied to the purchase price.

The agreement also contains this stipulation:

If the Option is exercised as to only a portion of the Properties and not terminated as to the remainder so that any of the Properties remain subject to this Option, none of the Option Price is applied to the Purchase Price. 

The purchase price for the three parcels is established in the agreement as 50 percent of their fair market value. The three parcels in question are 202-206 Columbia Street, what remains of the community garden at the corner of Columbia and Second; 2-4 Warren Street, now an Urban Renewal Era park, fondly dubbed "Promenade Prospect Park"; and 2-14 State Street, the land on the north side of State Street from Front Street east, halfway to what HHA is now calling "Site B."

In talking about the parcels, Dodson asserted that the parcels in question "are not the best properties in the city," suggesting that people are not knocking down the door to buy them. That may be true for the parcel located on State Street, which drops down precipitously into what was, in the 19th century, the location of some of Hudson's brickyards. The steepness of the drop was undoubtedly created by digging out the clay pits to make bricks.    

Image from Margaret Schram, Columbia County's Sleeping Dragon

Dodson's disparaging assessment though hardly applies to the lot at the end of Warren Street. Until not that long ago, this lot, which HHA now has an option to buy for half its fair market value, was four separate parcels: two belonged to HCDPA, and two belonged to the City of Hudson. In 2018, the City swapped its two parcels for the lot in the 200 block of Warren Street that is Thurston Park, which then belonged to HCDPA. The intention at the time, in addition to making Thurston Park an official city park, was to create a single lot on which something could be constructed that would replace the buildings that once stood there, visible in the photograph below, to complete the streetwall. 

In 2020, Betsy Gramkow, who was then chair of the Planning Board and hence a member of the HCDPA Board, suggested that low-income housing at this location would not be "the highest and best use" for the lot and that a mixed-use building on the site, with market rate rental units, would increase the City's tax base. 

During the discussion at Monday's meeting, Smith reprimanded her colleagues on the HCDPA Board. "HCDPA is a sister agency to HHA," Smith asserted. "Do you understand this? This should be easy." After the vote had been taken, and HHA had gotten its extension, Claire Cousin, supervisor for the First Ward who also serves on the HHA Board of Commissioners, chided the HCDPA Board for considering its own fiduciary responsibilities and not immediately agreeing to HHA's request.

Cousin went on to ask what HCDPA's policy was regarding individual board members attending the meetings of other bodies and speaking on behalf of HCDPA. She was referring, of course, to Morris's questions about why HHA wanted an extension, asked at the HHA meeting on October 21. Cousin addressed her question to Merante, who chairs the HCDPA Board, and repeatedly demanded an answer. Merante did not provide one, but instead countered by asking Cousin if HHA had a policy "about decorum and calling names," alluding to Smith's telling Morris at that meeting, "You are making a mess of yourself. It's disgusting."

Common Council president Tom DePietro, who was attending the HCDPA meeting, asked Chale, "Isn't there a term in legal thought called ultra vires ["beyond the powers"], where someone who is not to speak on behalf, when they have no authority to speak on behalf of an entity that they are speaking on behalf of?" Chale responded, "I don't that I want to comment on a theoretical matter." DePietro interjected, "Have you ever heard of it?" To which Chale responded, "I don't mean that."  

Returning to her veiled complaints about Morris, Cousin said of HCDPA and HHA, "These don't look like partner agencies. One is protecting an interest that doesn't actually exist or benefit a group of people that it's supposed to. We [HHA] are advancing the mission of this agency [HCDPA], and we should get way more support." She went on to speak of "members of the HCDPA Board who do not support the mission of HCDPA." 

Cousin's statements bring up an interesting predicament for HCDPA. It is an agency created during Urban Renewal, at a time when, "In order to protect and promote the safety, health, morals and welfare of the people of the state and to promote the sound growth and development of our municipalities, it is necessary to correct such substandard, insanitary, blighted, deteriorated or deteriorating conditions, factors and characteristics by the clearance, replanning, reconstruction, redevelopment, rehabilitation, restoration or conservation of such areas, the undertaking of public and private improvement programs related thereto and the encouragement of participation in these programs by private enterprise." The preceding was quoted from New York State General Municipal Law, Chapter 24, Article 15-A Municipal Urban Renewal Agencies, Organization and Powers.

The board of HCDPA is made up of five members, all of whom serve ex officio: the mayor, the Common Council majority leader and minority leader, the Planning Board chair, and the HHA Board of Commissioners chair. The mission of HCDPA, as stated on the City of Hudson website, is this: "Foster and promote services to low-to-moderate income persons who reside in Hudson; and to administer other resources to promote community development." Given the makeup of the HCDPA Board, there is no guarantee that the five people who serve by virtue of their elected or appointed positions in City government are going to interpret that mission in exactly the same way. Nor is there any guarantee that any member other than the chair of the HHA Board of Commissioners will accept without question that whatever HHA wants to do is appropriately advancing the agency's mission.

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