Today, Spear talked about the Planning Board and Theresa Joyner's ill-considered comments at the Planning Board's August 12 meeting, in which she cautioned the board about needing to "know who our public is" and made this observation: "You got people that have financial interest in something, and then you have people that really, you know, have a concern."
Spear's latest Instagram reel can be viewed here.
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I am posting this here because Instagram is an absolute cancer in how it sometimes doesn't let you post a comment there - it's seems either anything too wordy or containing an external link gets kiboshed.
ReplyDeleteFirst and foremost: I'm excited to see Peter is continuing the alley chats. I hope the same is true for the Neighbors series.
To business! Theresa is indeed a terrible communicator and that has been a problem at least since 2023. I firmly belief that a lot of redundant public hearings, each one fostering unrealistic expectations on the part of the participants, could have been avoided if only she had laid out basic principles and boundaries.
There has been the errant assumption that the Planning Board should be the executor of public will: Clearly, the vocal majority in Hudson wants the Colarusso dock shut down so why would the Planning Board not simply do this?
In reality, every Planning Board is first and foremost bound by existing laws. The desires of the public cannot override this. If Colarusso's application is within the existing law and zoning, it has to be approved.
Colarusso's conditional use permit is 100% permitted - not as a permitted use (it's not permitted by Hudson's zoning) but it is explicitly allowed as a conditional use. The discretion of the Planning Board therefore is the extent of the conditions they can place on it. If they go overboard, that's a law suite that the city is likely to lose.
I believe that Theresa was alluding to this role of the Planning Board when she read that written statement, but she's doing it in the worst way possible.
I don't think she believes that some voices carry less weight than others. She is saying that some things that are being demanded here are apriori bogus and non-starters and that they would never survive an article 78 petition. The Planning Board cannot entertain the conditions suggested by Our Hudson Waterfront as the inclusion of an arbitrary limit of the daily number of truck trips would equate to unconstitutional taking. That would ultimately be a matter for the courts but surely there are thresholds.
The Hudson Riverfront Coalition submitted a far more reasonable set of conditions that would more likely to hold up to legal scrutiny.
I think this is what Theresa was trying to express, albeit pretty inaptly. I don't believe anything of what we are seeing right now is a conspiracy born out of Joyner or Eugene Shetsky being particularly close with Colarusso.
We will learn more on Wednesday when we get a chance to listen to the inter-PB discussions.
Max, you’re such a smart guy. So why do you read in to Joyner’s thinly veiled racist nativism? And then buy in to it? There is such a thing as being too reasonable.
DeleteThere is no need for additional public comment until the PB either enacts reasonable operational restrictions or fails to. For now, any observer can clearly see there are three camps in this battle — those who would leave things the way they are (with approximately 1 member:ACS), those who expect reasonable operational limits to be imposed, and those who wish to shutter the operation entirely.
The depth of the current administration’s, and its PB’s, responsiveness within actual law to an issue on its docket since the middle of the last decade is about to be illustrated.
So I don't willy-nilly buy into accusations of any form of ism. They have a tendency to come out only when they're convenient and they can also be quite damaging to the person thus accused.
DeleteMy own take is that Theresa never shut anyone down based on where they were born or the color of their skin. That is based on my own observations.
The problem with Theresa is that she seems unable to tell the public what this Colarusso application is even about and, on what specific aspects of their operation conditions can be placed upon.
It was once again on display tonight during the (at this point still on-going) PB workshop: I was there the first 90 or so minutes and am catching up on youtube now.
Early on there was wide-spread confusion between different parties in the room (Colarusso lawyer, Randal and Gabby, the rest of the Planning Board) what type of conditions can reasonably be imposed and on what aspects of the operation.
At some point, this got shut down by Theresa who declared that everyone now was in agreement. Yet, I still don't know the answer. And neither does anyone else.
Worse, we've had a public hearing on this application going on for months without this critical detail being revealed.
Here is what I expect from a chair of the Planning Board: When they open the public hearing they provide a detailed explanation as to the scope of the application and, in case of a conditional-use permit, what can be subject of conditions. We didn't get this because I reckon that Theresa still doesn't know.
We've seen the same failure in 2023 over the haul road application. That one would have actually been a lot easier to explain. Theresa didn't explain anything so 95% of the public feedback was off-topic and was calling for a wholesale shutdown of the dock operations. The application meanwhile was only about the haul road and thus public feedback would have had to be limited to that.
Theresa very often refers to the PB's attorneys during public meetings and that is likewise a mistake. She needs to ask such questions before the meeting and come prepared.
If my optimism regarding the intent of Theresa's read statement was justified we will learn eventually. What remains true is that the protagonists on the PB as well as its audience lacks mental discipline and are often poorly prepared.
Peter Spear may have ended his campaign for mayor of Hudson, but not before reshaping the race, and galvanizing our post-Galvan future.
ReplyDeleteHe stood out as the only candidate consistently visible in the streets and on the internet, listening, talking, and proposing ideas. His candidacy exposed the absence of leadership at City Hall, contrasting his energy with Mayor Kamal Johnson’s absenteeism (and characteristic non-responsiveness, as we pointed out here). Spear may be out of the race (though still regrettably on the ballot), yet his vision for how to make Hudson America’s best small town may still frame the debate. Peter returns to the role he seems best suited for, a civic entrepreneur shaping urban debate with ideas and provocations that command attention.
Read more here: https://www.hudsoncommonsense.com/speardropsout
Bonus content with links to Gossips archives.