"I Literally Built Three Parks!"

From his opening statement, in which he predicted the audience would hear "a lotta fluff" from his challenger, to his closing statement, in which he claimed, in a manner that seemed a tad juvenile, victory in the debate for himself, "a Hudson High School graduate," Kamal Johnson repeatedly needled his challenger, Joe Ferris, for not having lived in Hudson for very long. Ironically, one would have to be a newcomer to Hudson (or not been paying very close attention for the past six years) to believe some of the claims Johnson made during last night's debate.

It was notable that Johnson's costume for the debate last night closely resembled what he wore for the debate in 2019. 

He even sat on the edge of the stage last night to deliver his closing address, as he did in 2019.

In last night's debate, Johnson took credit for things that probably would have happened whether he was the mayor or not, for example, the universal basic income (UBI) program, funded by The Spark of Hudson and the Humanity Forward Foundation, and the Wellness Hub, which was the initiative of Francis Greenburger and the Greenburger Center for Social and Criminal Justice and is being created in Greenport, on a parcel of land donated by Paul Colarusso.

The title of this post is a direct quote from Johnson, which he stated twice during the debate: "I literally built three parks." The three parks he claimed to have built are:

• Promenade Hill: The reimagining of the entrance to Promenade Hill was completed during Johnson's term in office, and he did manage to get contributions of $650,000 from the H. Van Ameringen Foundation (the late Henry Van Ameringen being the Van of Galvan) and $100,000 from the Colarusso family when it was determined that the project as it was designed could not be realized with the funds available, but the project started years earlier. Promenade Hill was one of the City's DRI (Downtown Revitalization Initiative) projects. Hudson won the $10 million in DRI funds in 2017, when Tiffany Martin was the mayor.
• Seventh Street Park: The restoration of Seventh Street Park is the initiative of Friends of the Public Square (FOPS). It was recently announced that the park is one of fifteen projects for which Congressman Josh Riley has requested more than $55 million in Community Project Funding (CPF) for fiscal year 2026. Johnson told FOPS of this funding opportunity.  
• Charles Williams Park: In 2021, Malachi Walker, then a councilmember representing the Fourth Ward, and Maija Reed, Hudson youth commissioner, approached The Spark of Hudson about supporting improvements to Charles Williams Park. That initiative resulted in a plan for the revitalization of Charles Williams Park designed by Starr Whitehouse and presumably paid for by The Spark of Hudson. When the plan was presented in December 2023, it was noted that all the improvements proposed for the park could not be realized with the current budget for the park, which at that time was $280,000--money provided by The Spark of Hudson. Nothing has been heard about the park since April 2024, when The Spark of Hudson launched a survey to get feedback on the proposed redesign.

Johnson's claim that he "literally built three parks" wasn't the only thing that rang a bit false in last night's debate. On the topic of affordable housing, Johnson claimed to have delivered 140 new units of housing. He must have been talking about the 64 units at 76 North Seventh Street and the 70 units in the proposed Mill Street Lofts, which doesn't actually add up to 140, but his claim overlooks the fact the rents at 76 North Seventh Street don't seem all that affordable and the construction of the controversial Mill Street Lofts project has yet to begin.

When the subject of 11 Warren Street came up, Johnson exonerated himself by saying he knew nothing about the county's plan to buy the building until it was too late. That was not true. Before the sale of 11 Warren happened, Johnson had a chance encounter with Matt Murell, chair of the Board of Supervisors, and Robert Lagonia, the supervisor from Austerlitz who serves on the Space Utilization Committee, during which they told him of the county's plan to buy the building. Instead of telling them their plan would negatively impact the City's efforts to reconnect with the waterfront and would prevent appropriate development of the site from happening for another thirty to fifty years, Johnson said the City had no plans for 11 Warren Street because the City did not own it.

When Ferris spoke of the $1.5 million in revenue the City almost lost because of failure to request, in a timely fashion, the legislation allowing the City to continue collecting lodging tax, Johnson intimated, as Council president Tom DePietro had, that the oversight was the city treasurer's fault not his, which by all accounts is not true.

Ferris has said on several occasions that he would hire an urban planner if he were elected. During the debate, Johnson claimed the City already had an urban planner: Michelle Tullo. Tullo, who serves in the capacity of Housing Justice Director, has AICP (American Institute of Certified Planners) certification, but it's hard to accept that a competent city planner could support the construction of an out-of-character 70-unit apartment complex on a dead-end street lined with single-family homes in a flood plain or would have nothing to say about the county's inappropriate plans for 11 Warren Street. To most people, that doesn't seem like very good urban planning.

In his closing statement, Johnson acknowledged that he lived in an "apartment" owned by Galvan, where he had moved during his first year in office, because he was being "stalked and harassed" in his previous apartment a block and a half up the street. The "apartment" Johnson now occupies is not an apartment at all but rather a house with four bedrooms and three bathrooms. Zillow estimates the value of the house at $768,900 and the monthly rent at $5,631. Johnson has never divulged how much he pays in rent. Interestingly, the house is currently assessed at $360,000. It was one of twenty-one properties owned by Galvan whose assessments were reduced in 2020, after the citywide revaluation. In 2020, the year Johnson moved in, the assessment was reduced from $475,000 to $360,000, its current assessment.

More zealous fact checkers may point out more instances in which Johnson touched up the truth a bit to make his record seem more impressive than it is.

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