What Brought About the Happy Ending

Yesterday, Gossips published a post about a resolution passed by the Columbia County Board of Supervisors on September 10 regarding the EV chargers to be installed in the courthouse parking lot. Today, we reveal how the happy solution of drawing power from the courthouse rather than running new powerlines on the 300 block of Allen Street or on Partition Street and West Court Street, taking a devastating toll on the trees, came about.

Vintage photograph of Courthouse Square courtesy Historic Hudson

Back in July, Linda Mussmann, county supervisor for the Fourth Ward, set up a meeting with Ray Jurkowski, Commissioner of Public Works for Columbia County. Present at the meeting were Margaret Morris, councilmember for the First Ward, and neighborhood residents Steven Wilson, Jim Denney and Amy Ilias, and Josef and Olan Quattro. At the time the meeting took place, the County had announced its Plan B: running the new powerlines for the EV chargers from Third Street to West Court Street along Partition Street and then along east side of West Court Street to the parking lot. This plan involved the extensive pruning of one of the trees in Courthouse Square and the removal of another.

At the meeting, alternative methods for getting power to the EV chargers were discussed. The possibility of simply bringing power from the courthouse to the EV chargers was suggested by Wilson. Jurkowski said it was an option they were looking it. Why it wasn't the first option to be considered is not known, but fortunately, for everyone who cares about the aesthetics of our city and the preservation of this historic neighborhood, it turned out to be the one settled on. Two months after the meeting, the happy outcome is the solution set forth and agreed to in Resolution No. 286-2025: "the electrical supply to serve the proposed chargers can be obtained from the existing power panel within the Courthouse building and run underground to the charging units."

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