Code Detritus

One of the three laws the Common Council voted on at a special meeting on Halloween was an amendment to Chapter 148, Article IV, of the city code making the Superintendent of Public Works the administrator of the city's Flood Damage Prevention ordinance instead of the Executive Director of Hudson Community Development and Planning Agency. Chapter 148 of the city code was adopted in 1987, but it seems nobody paid much attention to it until 2017, when Colarusso needed a flood plain permit for its private road through South Bay. It was then that it became clear that tasking the executive director of HCDPA was this responsibility didn't make sense. It makes even less sense now when there is no executive director of HCDPA. So, eight years later, the code is being amended.

In 2016, Ken Dow, who was then the city attorney, brought attention to a problem with Chapter 188, Paragraph 5, of the code, which makes reference to "a disorderly house or a house of ill fame." The meaning of this archaic language is "brothel or house of prostitution," but the Hudson Police Department was applying the law to situations that involved people hanging out at a house or apartment making noise and engaging in objectionable activity that disrupted the neighborhood, an application that would not hold up in court. Strangely, that paragraph in the code has not been altered, but presumably the HPD has stopped misapplying it.

In 2006, the Historic Preservation ordinance, Chapter 169 of the city code, was amended to add this seventh requirement for the Historic Preservation Commission:

The Chairperson of the Planning and Land Use Committee of the Common Council shall be the liaison between the Historic Preservation Commission and the Common Council and shall report to the Common Council regularly on the actions and proposed actions of the Historic Preservation Commission.

In 2008, when Rob Perry became president of the Common Council, he eliminated the Planning and Land Use Committee, but no one bothered to go back and amend the code to eliminate this reference to the role its chairman in relation to the HPC.

In 2025, Victoria Polidoro, legal counsel to the Planning Board, is using this definition from Chapter 325, Article XIII, of the code as the basis of her opinion that the city's Local Waterfront Revitalization Plan (LWRP) does not have the force of law:

LOCAL WATERFRONT REVITALIZATION AREA (LWRA) or COASTAL AREA

That portion of New York State coastal waters and adjacent shorelands located within the boundaries of the City of Hudson, as shown on the coastal area map on file in the office of the Secretary of State and as delineated in the City of Hudson Local Waterfront Revitalization Program.

Because the city's coastal area map is not "on file in the office of the Secretary of State," Polidoro maintains that Hudson's local waterfront revitalization area does not exist, "So even though we have provisions, there's no area that triggers those provisions." 

At the Planning Board meeting on October 28, Gabrielle Hoffmann said, "I have spoken with the Department of State, I have case law here, the Municipal Home Rule Law states that we can use our LWRP as a legally binding part of our zoning code." Polidoro reiterated her position that, because no map was filed with the Department of State, there is no Local Waterfront Revitalization Area and told Hoffmann, "I can't change my opinion on this."

Is it possible that Polidoro's opinion is based on another example of detritus in our zoning code? The definition in question was added to the zoning code in 2011 by Local Law No. 5 of 2011, when the LWRP was adopted by the Common Council. In 2016, when it was confirmed that, for whatever reason, the LWRP had never been submitted to the Department of State for review, no one had the presence of mind to comb through the code to see how that situation might impact the LWRP zoning adopted by the Common Council, and certainly no one had the foresight to predict that this one definition would be used to negate the legality of the LWRP zoning. Had anyone done so, it seems the Common Council could have amended the definition to delete the words "as shown on the coastal map on file in the office of the Secretary of State," and we wouldn't be in the situation we are in now.

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