In this week of religious observances, for both Jews and Christians, here are the meetings that are happening
- On Monday, April 14, the Common Council Finance Committee meets at 5:30 p.m. The agenda for the meeting has been covered elsewhere. Suffice it to say, the city treasurer will be present to discuss the current status of the city budget and the prospects for the future. The meeting is a hybrid, taking place in person at City Hall and on Microsoft Teams. Click here for the link to join the meeting remotely.
- On Tuesday, April 15, at 6:00 p.m., the Common Council holds its regular monthly meeting. The meeting is a hybrid, taking place in person at City Hall and on Microsoft Teams. Click here for the link to join the meeting remotely.
- On Wednesday, April 16, at 6:00 p.m., the Zoning Board of Appeals holds its monthly meeting. The agenda includes the controversial proposal to construct a three-story building, involving total lot coverage and requiring nine area variances, at 9 Partition Street. The meeting takes place in person only at City Hall.
COPYRIGHT 2025 CAROLE OSTERINK
I still don't know why this is considered "contrversial". If anything, it is a a lot better than the existing mash-up there now.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I have no problem with it
DeleteWhat’s happening at 9 Partition? The property owner bought the property a few years ago knowing full well what the zoning laws were. Those laws haven’t changed. It’s a tiny lot with zoning code restrictions that limit what can be built on it. The cost of the lot was reflective of those limited usages when he purchased it. Now he wants to tear it down and build a huge non conforming SFR that requires 9 area variances. He proposes zero setbacks,100% lot coverage and more height and stories than allowable per the code. This is a self created hardship and his arguments for why he deserves these extreme variances doesn’t hold water. He isn’t creating housing for anyone except for himself. Almost every neighbor from Front to 1st St. and beyond is against it as well as his immediate neighbor to the east. It’s not good for the neighborhood, community or historic district and sets a terrible precedent.
DeleteWhy is the applicant requesting 7 distinct zoning laws be ignored for this project to proceed and theres your problem, scale.
ReplyDeleteThe zoning code is outdated and follows a suburban style, similar to most of the fifth ward. Side property line setbacks are 15’ on each side. Many lots are 30’ wide and under, so that would mean you almost always need some type of variance for a new build. But one of the justifications you must provide to the ZBA is that it fits in the character of the neighborhood. So if your block is dense with many 0’ setbacks, then you should be able to do the same. But that doesn’t mean you can build extra floors above the rest of your neighbors.
ReplyDeleteHow Spark was able to build that ugly two story mobile home on top of their building and get by ZBA/HPC is beyond me. I guess so they can have roof top trailer park garden parties. Everyone loves a little hi/low these days. I’ll have to search the Gossips archives for a refresher.
📡 Live from the Hudson Common Council meeting of a 5,000-person town that struggles to pave sidewalks:
ReplyDelete1️⃣ Brahvan Ranga from Poughkeepsie... why are you here?
He’s employed by the SuperPAC-linked For The Many / Tides group, doesn’t pay taxes here, doesn’t live here, and yet spoke more than any actual Hudson resident.
Why are non-residents driving our local policies? Brahvan, you will not sit with the baked artisanal potatoes of your bad policies.
Should we send a Hudson resident (or Max) to Poughkeepsie to mess with your parking permit policies and lodging tax?
@Brahvan — go to DC, or go work for Saikat in SF or someone on the Squad. Stop burning our time and tax dollars in small towns.
🤑 Also Brahvan... instead of funding Claire’s failed campaign against Didi with six figures, maybe just rehab some apartments in Hudson next time?
As predicted: https://www.instagram.com/p/DIctdytRVuh/
2️⃣ Masked lady at the 54:00 mark...
📺 https://youtu.be/_JR2NIJwn5E?si=B1AJ3zp9uJzF4nFx&t=3223
She seems earnest... but said “if you walk up Union Street in the First Ward, there is barely a resident left.”
😂 Uh... almost every house is full. School buses clog Union Street each morning. Ask DPW — Union didn’t have frozen pipes this winter (i.e., it wasn’t sitting empty).
📦 Also, check police reports — Union St leads in package theft, often targeting senior citizens. Not exactly abandoned.
🎉 Union’ Street is so lively, you have to book house party weekends months out. Maybe masked lady just wasn’t invited?
~
‼️ Yet another "bias-based belief" or meme that’s ripe for a Liberal Arts anthropology student to come and study.
🤔 Why bring this up?
Because every ward, street, or friend group in Hudson thinks they have real “community” — and others don’t.
Examples:
- Masked lady: Union Street has “no community,” but the 5th Ward? Oh girl... community with a K!
- 2nd Ward folks saying Mill Street must be Trumpers with no community for opposing a five-story flood zone monstrosity. In reality, Mil St is one of the most diverse, long-settled, homeowner-rich streets in Hudson.
- Kamal last year: “Hudson is dying,” “black people are dying” — complete with an exact headcount of African-Americans, but no data, and total indifference to every other group.
[As an aside, I did not realize we have a mayor for every racial/passport group, I thought that was outlawed and we fought a civil war over it...
Can someone please point us to the mayors for the immigrants, Asians, Hispanics, and European Americans... we have some complaints. Personally I prefer a single mayor or City Manager... but in this new system... do Africans fall under the African American mayor or the immigrant mayor, or does it depend on their industriousness? Ditto for east vs. south asians? 😜 ]
~
If I were a new council president, hypothetically speaking, when making the rule of order for the year I would establish strict rules for public comment that centers actual Hudsonians:
Delete1) Residents, business owners and people that work in Hudson have priority to speak first.
2) Other private citizens who live outside of Hudson can speak next
3) Lobbyists and those representing outside special interest groups can send a letter because we’re out of time
ReplyDeleteBut in all seriousness, this is classic “othering” — or the “outgroup homogeneity effect”. And yes, we’re a stone’s throw from the Hannah Arendt Center. At its worst, this mindset leads to de-individualization and eventually organized persecution (see The Origins of Totalitarianism).
Irony? Many of these folks (sorry, folx?) worship Said’s Orientalism, Butler’s “grievability”, and Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks — yet turn around and stereotype thousands of Hudson residents as one evil bloc.
One of my friends who now lives in Hudson Valley and arrived on a refugee visa and with almost no money met a Hudson resident who gave them shit for gentrifying Hudson based on the color of their skin. You cannot make this up.
📉 Yes, Hudson’s population is shrinking slightly faster than the NY average — but all of NY and the Northeast is losing people to low-tax, sunnier states.
🛑 If you want Hudson's population to grow, don’t copy rent control disasters from Mussolini, Chávez, Stalin, Castro, or Mobutu.
✅ Instead:
- Lower property taxes and reassess every 2 years.
- Stop overspending.
- Fix the schools.
- Create a competent Planning Board that can actually greenlight Missing Middle / multi-family housing.
🌍 Meanwhile, a 20-something in China, Russia, or Africa—no passport—looks at us, watches these videos, is a huge fan of Hudson Wail, and sees:
- A 4.2% unemployment rate
- A coffee shop / café for every 350 people
- Better school facilities than their best private academies
- Clean rivers you can actually swim in
- Free speech without jail time
- "Affordable housing" recipients driving cars worth $25k.
- A $30 (so 2 hours of labor) train ticket to NYC and surrounding urban area— the global capital of finance and culture with $2 Trillion in GDP.
And here we are... passing rent control laws, chasing handouts, and coercing grandma with rent control laws when she is trying to rent out her cottage to a young family in need to pay for her rising property taxes.
But sure... masked neighbor lady’s gonna lecture us about who has “real community.” 🙃
Reference:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgQ-LDCUsUY
You make a great point about this “othering” tactic that’s used by both nativist and community activists-types. It’s insulting and only further divides our entire community by dismissing and prejudging people they’ve never met.
DeleteJust because some of us aren’t seen at your nonprofit's drum circle or protest sign making workshop doesn’t mean we don’t participate or share community with our neighbors. Some of us are helping our elderly neighbors with their yard work, or enjoying a meal at home with friends, or supporting and working at many of the locally owned small businesses and gathering places in our “Friendly City.” Your community is no more valid than mine, and vice versa.
And lastly, if you define community as seeing kids playing in the neighborhood, here’s some advice: fix the damn schools. The reason why the population of Hudson is aging is because when parents or soon-to-be parents are looking to move in the area, once they lookup the school ratings they stop looking here.
Summary: The current system of government in our shrinking city may have worked at some time in the past, but it is not leading us successfully into the future. Come November, the voters will have the opportunity to make significant changes.
Delete