What Oft Was Thought . . .
In a post on Instagram today, Peter Spear, who is running for mayor on his own Future Hudson line, offers his review of last night's Planning Board meeting and calls for the resignation of Planning Board chair Theresa Joyner.
Spear's Instagram post can be found here. Last night's Planning Board meeting, all close to three hours of it, can be viewed here.
I've mentioned it before on Gossips: I tried to get engaged with the PB on the Galvan's 7th Street apartment building proposal 2 or 3 years ago. Joyner seemed like she didn't know what she was doing and meetings were very poorly run.
ReplyDeleteThis all might be part of Kamal's plan, taken from the Trump playbook. Surround yourself with unqualified people who don't know what they are doing so that no one will want to engage with them. Do whatever you want, say whatever you want. Or do nothing at all. Tom Depietro would be another example. Physically assault a council member and suffer zero consequences.
It's good to learn Peter's thoughts on this topic. He's correct -- a lot of us have been sounding off on this issue for a long time.
ReplyDeleteThe overtly political appointments of this administration have put us collectively in a poor position. To make Hudson a good place to invest in a regulatory climate hostile to investment (exemplified by the short-sighted and frankly stupid treatment of the housing plan that has been caught in PB purgatory for 2+ years) you have to find deeply discounted properties which are in short supply here. An exception are the 2nd and lower 5th wards -- the neighborhoods where "gentrification" (rehabbing of properties) is observably taking place (given that the balance of the city has already been rehabbed). This isn't complex or arcane economics. It's basic observation.
The mayor’s handling of the Planning Board and the results, for him and his allies, are a feature not a bug:
ReplyDelete- Slow down private development and investment to the point where many give up and others don’t bother to start.
- Fast track publicly subsidized development that benefits pet projects and developer buddies at the expense of homeowners and renters.
- Giving little deference to waterfront industrialization that will also deter private investment and provides little to no additional jobs or tax revenue to Hudson, but throws red meat to the grievance politics of the nativist base.
This is just the mayor’s version of demolition by neglect. But instead of a historic home it’s Hudson’s economy that’s being destroyed so that opportunistic organizations like Galvan and “nonprofit” grifters can pick up the pieces.
That's what's known as the poverty industry.
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