Coming to a Close with Colarusso

The Planning Board holds a special meeting on Tuesday, November 18, at 6:30 p.m. The meeting will take place at the Central Fire Station because there is a Common Council meeting happening at City Hall. It's likely the Planning Board's review of Colarusso's application for a conditional use permit for its dock operations will come to a close at this meeting, and the Planning Board will vote on granting the permit. Before that happens, let's review what happened at last Wednesday's Planning Board meeting.

Earlier in the day on Wednesday, November 12, members of the Planning Board received a letter from T. J. Ruane, attorney for Colarusso. The letter, which can be found here, included a resolution from Colarusso outlining the conditions Colarusso would except and threatened a lawsuit if the board did not vote on the resolution at their meeting later that day. The following is quoted from the letter:

By this letter, we respectfully request that the Planning Board vote to adopt the Proposed Resolution at the November 12th meeting of the Planning Board.

As the board is aware . . . the Application has been pending before the City Planning Board for over 8 years. Since that time, and as a direct result of the City's illegal actions and unreasonable delay, Colarusso has expended well over a $1,000,000 in escrow and attorney's fees in seeking approval of the Application.

In the event the Planning Board does not act on the Proposed Resolution or attempts to impose further conditions outside the scope of its well-defined authority, Colarusso intends to commence litigation to compel the Planning Board to vote on Colarusso's Application, to hold the Planning Board in contempt of Supreme Court, Columbia County's July 12, 2024 Decision and Order . . . and/or to seek attorney's fees under the Judiciary Law and any and all damages with respect to the same.

Despite the ultimatum and threat delivered in Ruane's letter, Theresa Joyner, who chairs the Planning Board, told him at the meeting, "We have a resolution we want to go through," and proceeded to continue the review of the draft resolution which began at the October 28 meeting. At the end of that meeting, Joyner had asked the members of the Planning Board to submit their suggestions for additions and emendations to the proposed resolution. Of the six members of the Planning Board, other than Joyner herself, only Gaby Hoffmann and Randall Martin submitted suggestions for change. 

Although Hoffmann spoke of "the vision for the City of Hudson that has been in the works for a decade" (actually it's been longer than that), reminded her colleagues, "We are here to protect the City of Hudson," and called the waterfront "the only area left in the city for real economic development," the other members of the board were unsympathetic to her and Martin's desire to limit the hours of operation and the number of trucks going to the dock and to monitor air quality and noise. At one point, Joyner told Hoffmann, "Because it annoys you, it doesn't mean it annoys the rest of us." 

When Hoffmann presented evidence that the limit of 284 truck trips a day, which works out to a truck arriving at the dock every 2½ minutes, was far greater than the number of truck trips discussed when the Greenport Planning Board did its State Environmental Quality Review on the haul road back in 2017 and when the Columbia County Planning Board made its recommendation in 2020, Joyner told her, "No. Uh-uh. Truck trips have already been decided." She went on to say, "We understand. You just don't understand." 

Despite Joyner's put-down, Hoffmann persisted, "I'm asking everybody to understand the numbers from the Creighton Manning and the Barton & Loguidice documents that the haul road application and the Greenport SEQR review were all based on . . . it says that the truck volume is the average 24 loads per day. And again and again, it says with no expectation of intensification or increase. So now we are about to issue a permit that increases it by 18 times." This time, Veronica Conca responded to Hoffmann, echoing Joyner's rebuke, "Just because we don't have the same opinion doesn't mean we don't understand."

The meeting, which began at 6:30 p.m., ended at 11:37 p.m. The video of the meeting can be found here. Before adjourning, Joyner said the revised resolution would be sent to everyone, and Ruane would respond to it at the meeting scheduled for Tuesday. The agenda for that meeting, which will likely include the current version of the resolution, has not yet been published.    

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