Planning Board Plaint

The February meeting of the Planning Board got off to a bad start. The Zoom link provided on the City of Hudson website did not work, and the meeting went on for more than half an hour before Randall Martin, the board's "tech person," sent the link to a livestream on YouTube to just three people: Council president Tom DePietro, Planning Board clerk Linda Fenoff, and me. That link was then circulated to others, but the first half hour of the meeting is lost to posterity. 

The Planning Board's response to these technical difficulties was to decide their meetings would no longer be hybrid but rather in person only. So everyone who wants to participate in the Planning Board's March meeting, which takes place on Tuesday, March 11, needs to show up in person at City Hall.

The decision to discontinue hybrid meetings, as well as the determination that a public hearing on Colarusso's conditional use permit for their dock operations because there was a public hearing on the subject more than five years ago, inspired Our Hudson Waterfront (OHW) to encourage people to write letters of concern to the Planning Board before Tuesday, March 11. The following is quoted from a communication from OHW:

Your comments to the Planning Board don’t need to be long to be impactful. For ideas on talking points, see our 2/24/25 letter to the Board, which addresses three of the biggest immediate concerns:

1) The Board’s decision to NOT hold a public hearing for the Colarusso Dock C.U.P. application. 

2) The Board’s decision to eliminate hybrid meetings in the future, thus requiring attendance in person and reducing transparency of Board meetings. (All other City meetings are hybrid, except for Zoning Board)

3) The Planning Board’s understanding of the scope of its review of the application in view of court decisions, which based on an independent legal review is NOT correct.

A few of our key findings:

• The last public hearing held for the Dock C.U.P. application was 5-6 years ago; it lasted one year (from July 2019 to July 2020).
• Only ONE member (Chair Theresa Joyner) was on the Board during that public hearing. She joined the Board midway through the hearing.
• NONE of the Board’s current legal counsel participated in the Dock C.U.P. public hearing.
• Based on an independent legal review, we believe the Planning Board’s understanding of their scope of review of the C.U.P. application under the City Zoning Codes is NOT consistent with the Court’s latest ruling and requires correction.
• Based on the recent Court’s ruling, the focus of the Dock C.U.P. review has changed since the past public hearing. The public has not had an opportunity to comment on the new focus.
• The Applicant did not provide information on truck volume to/from the dock, which the Board had been requesting for three years, until the day the public hearing ended; thus the public did not have an opportunity to comment on this either.

It should be noted that the main reasons this permit application has been such a long, drawn out and convoluted process are caused by the Applicant (Colarusso)–delays in providing essential information, lawsuits (Applicant sued the Planning Board twice), etc., NOT by the public.

As we say in the closing of our letter to the Board, the decisions made by the Planning Board will have long-ranging impact to our beloved City of Hudson and its waterfront, and future generations, for decades to come. The future of our city and our waterfront are at stake. The Planning Board should not take this review lightly or in haste, and should accept input from Hudson’s citizens, business leaders, and other interested parties--not just in writing, but in open and transparent dialogue.