One of the reasons Council president Tom DePietro gave for not putting the resolution opposing the Mill Street Lofts project on the agenda for tonight's informal Common Council meeting was that "it is a matter before the Planning Board and the Common Council should not opine on such matters." Mayor Kamal Johnson clearly has no such compunctions. Earlier tonight, Johnson posted the following on Facebook.
This post is reminiscent of how Johnson used Facebook to rally the troops to show up and try to influence a decision before the Common Council about awarding the contract for building the Ferry Street Bridge.
Johnson's reference to the Depot District in this post conveniently overlooks the fact that the Deport District was his "huge plan for housing" touted in 2019 before he took office as mayor.
As a close observer of the Common Council and the machinations of city government for more than twenty years, I am at a loss to know what Johnson is talking about when he mentions a proposal for affordable housing that was rejected by the "City" Council years ago. My guess is he may be alluding to something that happened in 2006, when the Common Council did not support a PILOT for Crosswinds. The development was built without a PILOT, and, thanks to the efforts of many involved at the time, in particular Linda Mussmann, who brokered a meeting between the developer and members of the Common Council, it was redesigned to be architecturally compatible with its environment. Since 2010, Crosswinds has provided seventy units of affordable housing in Hudson. Recently, Galvan Housing Resources took ownership of the complex, so the future of those seventy units is uncertain.
Needless to say, tomorrow's Planning Board meeting may be a bit of a circus.
COPYRIGHT 2025 CAROLE OSTERINK
Just another play right out of Trump's playbook: rewrite history so you look as good as possible. In this case, unfortunately
ReplyDeletefor the mayor, it's hard to do. After 6 years on the job, with a single-plank platform based on affordable housing, he's managed to build precisely no affordable units. And where's our housing policy czarina?! Is her silence tacit approval for the idea of building housing in a flood zone without any corresponding engineering? I think, if this project gets built, it should be named after the mayor and the housing czarina -- so every time the water rises we'll all remember who's responsible for the suffering.
The call to action is falling on deaf ears. He gets way more Facebook engagement from posting boomer level nostalgia memes and talking about the NBA Playoffs. That’s because most of his facebook audience doesn’t currently live in Hudson proper or are engaged with actual policy. He usually needs an anti transplant angle to juice up his high school acquaintances. Like the “unfiltered” Community group, nativist hysteria and pandering to nostalgia doesn’t translate into grassroots action. That’s why they coordinate with outside astroturfing groups to fake community support (see it in action at the May 20 formal council meeting).
ReplyDeleteAlso, besides being in an entirely bad location, neighborhood and flood plain considered, many of us are also against this because the city cannot afford to subsidize these mega developments. As the current Depot Debacle (that the mayor is trying to hide from) shows us, the taxpayers just get fleeced. We need smart growth, in the right places, that add to the tax base, not take away. There are several good housing projects that are currently in Planning Board Purgatory while Mill St gets the fast track.
I'll have a look myself to see who will show up. The first-hand experience that I've been making over the past few years is that the locals aren't good at playing the local politics game the way it's supposed to be played. Kamal is now experiencing the same thing I did in 2023 over the haul road.
DeleteIn the long run, this asymmetry of who actively participates and who doesn't can only be bad for Hudson.
That aside, I wonder if Mill St is maybe not as foregone a conclusion as we assume it is. If it were it's odd that he is making a public plea for help.
All good points and informative.
DeleteBut wouldn't it be nice if the wheels of local government were (aspirationally) apolitical and efficient.
It shouldn't matter if you are "good at playing the local politics game the way it's supposed to be played."
There comes a point where a decision has to be made in which direction you are going. A typical unresolved question in Hudson for example is if the city should pursue more or less hospitality as its economic backbone.
DeleteThat can never be apolitical as its ramifications are far-reaching and affect people. Politics is the process by which decisions amongst a group of people are made.
To play the game right is to know how to exert influence and how to push your preferred agenda. Not everybody is equally good at this.
I believe the idea of an apolitical administration is ultimately unrealistic. Someone needs to have the authority in matters of general policy. Kamal and Tom do that part quite well.
Their problem is that the policies they are pushing for don't work, and our mayor is too lazy to run a tight administrative ship that keeps the city budgetarily viable and healthy.
Agree that Hudson needs to decide what it wants to be when it grows up, and if it wants to treat residents as equals.
Deletere: apolitical/agendas.
The American government design is to have an intentionally "political", as you describe it, legislative (congress, or our council), and an intentionally neutral executive branch.
Of course, the lines have become blurred nationally and locally. And that is a regrettable trend.
Hudson will work better when the elected council members from each ward debate in public; practice the art of politics (collective decision making) or as one of the greeks said something like deliberate towards the "common good".
And then the executive (a City Manager or Mayor) put the common council decisions into practice.
This is not happening today. The political body pre-decides in private, often against the will of their respective wards, and the executive (with the exception of select departments) are AWOL. (See Tom's Restore NY Grant fiasco and just email Kamal about anything operational in the City.)
Just look at this week's activity.
Half the common council agenda was virtue signaling outside affairs pushed by SuperPAC funded professional politicians who do not live here... and the "executive" is spending more time trying to build an out of place, and out of scope building in a flood zone than running the city.
Politics can be a higher calling. But it can also be toxic.
The difference, I believe, is whether you seek common ground.
To prove the point… I am going to do the unthinkable and quote, gasp, RONALD REAGAN… throwback to his famous joke with his political foe Tip O'Neal: “Tip and I have a great relationship. We’re friends after 6 p.m.” Adversaries in public, colleagues (or even friends) in private. This is not how Hudson works, for the most part.
If there is one thing I have experienced and observed in Hudson politics… is that the average politician sees the world in a binary way, and if you disagree with them on one issue, or criticize them on another, even if you agree on 90% of other issues, collaboration ends. If you are kind and positive towards them interpersonally, but still criticize their _actions_ or _policies_, even with advance warning and "calling in" first, then you are still "manipulative".
Or my personal favorite, the Hudson Hammer… the weaponization of "community" to delegitimize dissent…. because afer all everything I do is "for the community", everything you do is anti "community".
If you disagree with me (forget about rampant self enrichment and the undeniable decades long evidence of a failed city and school district) then you are attacking the holiest of all things, yet not defined or agreed upon, "community".
When maybe you just want value for your tax dollars. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Max - when are you getting a pied-a-terre in the city so that you can run for office or the next mayor can appoint you to some board. When you are on the inside you can't criticize as easily. I hear the Hudson Depot Lofts are now pet friendly and so close to Isaan Thai ;-)
Well, FNI, I gotta tell you that yesterday's chaotic Planning Board meeting did not exactly whet my appetite to run for Hudson office. Nor Monday's council meeting which I decided to skip due to its moronic and irrelevant agenda.
DeleteMy hope rests on folks like Margaret and Peter Spear - people that do not think in these strict binary terms and instead invite wider discourse - to win their respective elections.
Can we do any worse than this mayor?
ReplyDeleteKamal's inclusion of the term Depot District is disgusting. He's nothing but Galvan's pawn.
ReplyDeleteWhere exactly is this district you so casually mention, Kamal? And whose district is it? Since your landlord named it so, is it theirs or the city's?