In related news, the mayor is declaring some sort of victory over the charter change initiative via a bizarre series of Instagram stories of some AI written fever dream declaring the petition was submitted past the deadline to file.
Since not everyone who reads Gossips has an Instagram account, I figured I would satisfy readers' curiosity by reproducing the mayor's post here. It's not known who the author is (I would describe it more as snark than fever dream), but I'm pretty sure it was not the mayor himself.
The strategy is different from that being used by Matt Murell and his allies on the county level. Instead of invalidating signatures, Johnson is alleging missed deadlines. But the goals are the same: keep a citizen-initiated referendum with the potential to reform government and alter the status quo off the ballot--as though the voters of Hudson (and the voters of Columbia County) aren't smart enough to decide for themselves.
He literally took screenshots from the ChatGPT app. Anyone who’s familiar with the user interface should easily recognize it. And anyone familiar with the mayor’s contemporaneous communication style knows that this lacks his usual punctuation errors and nervously thrown in “lols.”
ReplyDeleteThis is your mayor, Hudson. Not even an official statement of his position and what he feels is best for our future. Just some computer generated slop that he couldn’t be bothered to copy, paste and edit in his own voice. The only thing familiar with this “statement” is his half-assed level of effort that he brings to any task.
My advice to him is to spend less time in the ChatGPT app and more time on Indeed, and eventually Zillow.
I am actually at this point genuinely intrigued. What do you think he put into the user prompt to get this narrative? One that refers to him in a third person and that makes him appear like a deus ex machina apparation towards the end?
DeleteLike most storms in a Hudson teacup, the characters mainly reveal their character.
ReplyDeleteSitting mayor Kamal meme-mocking tax paying residents seeking justified reform via the ballot box.
Sitting Common Council President, already defeated at the ballot box, perhaps acting legally, but not exactly morally praiseworthy?
A secure City Hall invested in democratic rule would have met with the Charter Reform team early on, actively taken up the issue with the first batch of signatures, and even notified the Charter Reform folks that there might be a deadline misunderstanding.
They would not have spent City of Hudson dollars on attorneys to figure out tricky ways to avoid the ballot box.
Call it civic fair play…
Peter Spear's initial reaction was… pointed, and subsequent, passionate.
In the end this whole year-long Charter Change petition revealed a lot about many people… and also showed how personal animus and family ties in a small town can complicate things.
And now we will never know if the Charter Change Petition, which already received more signatures than Tom DePietro received votes in the Democratic Primary, would have gotten more than 50% or 5% of the vote this cycle.
It is now up to Margaret Morris and whoever the citizen residents elect as Mayor, to jointly form a Citizen Assembly, Charter Commission, or some other process, to update the City Charter.
Regardless of what the Charter Change folks decide as their next move… Bob, Kristal, John, Nick and their team already won. Their early and dedicated action arguably spurred more candidates to run for office, built consensus that the Charter needs some type of revision (method and outcome tbd), and finally built common ground between the progressive City of Hudson and more moderate County of Columbia; distrust of insider-incumbents who use sneaky ways to avoid direct democracy.