The Register-Star reported minutes ago that, after more than a week, Kamal Johnson has conceded: "Johnson concedes Hudson mayoral race; Ferris claims victory." Johnson is quoted in the article as saying, "I'm definitely calling it quits."
Johnson is also quoted as saying, "I think the city is in a great space. We've formulated a budget that was fair, we got a lot done, a lot of high-priority controversial issues will be behind us before the end of the year, so I feel good." One wonders what "high-priority controversial issues" Johnson has in mind.
The Kamal Johnson legacy; a big-ass gravel dump and industrial truck route next to our waterfront park on the Hudson. His appointees on the Planning Board have failed the community miserably. ~ PJ
ReplyDeleteTime to turn the page on Kamal. His last stand over the Youth Department and his numerous futile attacks on Margaret on FB went nowhere.
ReplyDeleteI sat next to Joe at tonight's Planning Board meeting and I ask you to picture a world where, come January, the city gets a mayor who takes notes during city meetings and pays attention. That's what Joe did tonight, and at previous city meetings. Early signs are good.
Well, I suppose good on Kamal for finally conceding, but even on the way out there is very little truth.
ReplyDeleteOver the last week he spent his time spreading misinformation, encouraging an online mob to make threats of physical violence against elected officials, and inciting race based and nationality based hatred. His staff quasi doxxed residents.
Who knows what the next BEA meeting will bring. So much for a Sanctuary City or Welcoming City...
Is the public call to swarm City Hall at the next BEA now cancelled, or does he still want non resident Greenport folks to come and raise their voices (pitch forks?) at the Common Council?
Has he corrected his intentional misinformation about the Youth Center? Or owned the mistake of not working with his administration to collect $2m in back taxes and the $250k to $500k in parking tickets over the last decade.
Then comes the line: “We ran a good race”.
Really? You didn't win, and it was not clean.
You did better getting out the vote in the general than in the primary, aided by your GHPN and similar group allies, once you finally updated your website and took the race seriously, but you skipped the general debate, spread falsehoods about your opponent, and behaved like an immature candidate at the first debate. One of our editors went to almost every campaign event of all parties and there was no real effort by WFP to engage with anyone who was not already an ally. No cross aisle engagement. At one event we were told not to have an opinion A) based on the colour of our skin and B) until we had lived here more than a decade, "maybe 15 years".
We have asked you and your staff on numerous occasions to write out what you stand for, what your plans are for a 4th term. And nothing.
Next you declare: “We created housing, we created initiatives that were applauded nationwide.” What housing, exactly?
The City spent years approving public housing in the Mill Street flood zone with a bad deed, and now that will never get built. Galvan pulled out of the largest subsidized housing project the moment their PILOT tax break faced real scrutiny, and by helping pass Rent Control laws you disincentivized private developers.
As for “nationwide” initiatives, perhaps you mean the Spark/Eutopia Foundation UBI program. That was going to happen anyway, and you were merely on the advisory board when you were elected mayor.
The research on UBI is not trending well, but that is a column for another day.
This part is true: “We made a lot of people who never thought about politics a day in their lives care about politics in their community. I didn’t change who I am in order to do it.” The problem is that the folks now paying attention never wanted to and should care about policy, not integrity scandals. They were dragged in because basic governance broke down.
In 2019 you received 235 votes in the 2nd Ward, this year 207.
Finally you end on: “We’ve formulated a budget that was fair, we got a lot done, a lot of the high-priority controversial issues will be behind us before the end of the year, so I feel good."
But the budget is not fair, it is still not balanced, taxes are going up to the legal limit, and the lies you spread about it were the spark for an online race and nativist mob over the last 48 hours.
(2/2) Name a single “high priority controversial” issue that is actually resolved:
ReplyDelete- Charter Reform was kicked down the road and actively obstructed by your office.
- The citywide tax reassessment has been delayed for almost a decade, creating wildly unfair taxes.
- Housing remains a challenge for everyone, with no meaningful employers recruited (paying for it), red tape largely intact (building it), ADUs the only real progress (was that your brain child?), and the big public housing hail mary's all failed.
- Hudson Depot Lofts / Galvan market rate housing is not finding a market clearing price, though it did secure 30 years of tax breaks.
- The impact of the Galvan gift to Bard remains unclear and unmanaged.
- Bliss Tower is still unsafe, and while the project was expanded, the funding picture for public housing flipped completely.
- The Colarusso / Waterfront issue, unresolved.
- The truck route / cement truck issue, unresolved.
- On top of the highest taxes in Hudson Valley, we have to pay for trash removal and other people's sidewalks.
In fact, your conflict of interest involving the Housing Justice Director and Galvan, together with your recent dog-whistling on the Youth Center, (reasonable residents have called it a tacit encouragement of violence) has arguably left your core focus areas worse off and politically toxic...
And then there is still the matter of the two legal proceedings that involve you and Galvan that remain sealed. You promised housing and an affordable city for all and then mostly only your housing and your salary changed.
The Planning Board and your appointment of Theresa Joyner has permanently harmed the City, arguably more than the end of the whaling industry. Just watch the video from tonight's (Nov 12) meeting.
~
Public office is unforgiving when your campaign rhetoric comes into contact with the limits of municipal/mayoral authority and the private promises and deals that pile up.
But the result is a city handed a fiscal and political mess that your successors will now have to clear.
Elections are hard (especially on family), and being pinned between public office scrutiny and (unwise) private commitments is a rough place to stand. We don't envy you.
Why not take a break, and come back with a project or role that does not increase our taxes, and find a way to put your energy, passion and concern for your peers to better use.
Better yet, leave Hudson for a while (if only professionally), so that you can one day return and actually improve it.
Most cultures have some version of the following tale/story/fable:
The hero leaves home, endures the world, and returns changed. It is there in scripture, in the Greek epics, and in the stories children and adults love. Odysseus left Ithaca. The Little Prince left his small planet. The shepherd in The Alchemist had to cross a desert before he understood what mattered. Hollywood version: Moana crossed an ocean and returned, finally fit to lead her people. None of them grew by standing still, and certainly not by using the revolving door between public office and not-for-profit in one 2 square mile town for 30 plus years.
Take this as one traveller’s unsolicited advice to a public servant whom I never wished to engage or remove.
Stepping away, even briefly, may be the only way to return and achieve your stated goals.
Wow, HCS, that’s a Dickensian use of words! All true, of course. But permit me to provide the Cliffs Notes version of your analysis.
ReplyDeleteHaving exerted no energy, resources or time on any of the issues facing the city, having spent 6 years attempting to divide one neighbor from the other rather than uniting them, having engineered and then defended the least transparent administration in recent memory, having unconscionably elevated the salary for a part time job you didn’t bother to attempt to perform, having hired your girlfriend for a position without a job description at a salary even higher than your own bloated paycheck, having put in place incredibly unqualified cronies in important positions so you and they could line the pockets of your patron in order to benefit only yourself and your girlfriend all at the taxpayers’ expense, and having as a result accomplishing precisely nothing to better the lives of the vast majority of Hudsonians while permitting assessment inequalities to fester and grow, you capped this sorry record of engineered and inevitable failure with a sad-ass campaign of lies, innuendo, racial antagonism and nativist horse shit (especially given that you aren’t a native), you are now jobless, probably soon to be homeless or at least relocated. You’ve accomplished nothing positive over your entire tenure. You represent a staggering waste of potential and opportunity for both the city and yourself. Congratulations.
Fair... the Planning Board meeting ran 4 hours....
DeleteHow about this:
"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of deficits, it was the age of foolishness...
The Planning Board meeting ran for FIVE hours. It did not adjourn until 11:37 p.m.
DeleteLooking forward, how can we prevent another disaster in the form of a future useless mayor? It's bound to happen again at some point if we don't learn our lesson and act on it.
DeleteJoe, an unknown, beat a mayor and local boy, but not by much. In the face of the withering commentary from the commenters above, it would be worth some researcher's/journalist's time to find out why the election was so close? Why do people like Kamal so much? And there's Bill's question: are there lessons to learn? Finally, on that question, look to the school district, where a board of education that delivered two loser superintendents in less than five years is picking another one in the same slow and expensive manner as the last two. --peter meyer
ReplyDeleteShould the real question not be why Kamal did not win by a large margin?
DeleteOn paper, this should have been a rout.
Kamal was the incumbent, with City Hall staff who spent generous amounts of time campaigning for him. He had half a dozen local not-for-profits in his corner, the HCSD network, entrenched business interests (see our earlier account of his major donors), and HCHC with its still-missing tax disclosures paying door-to-door canvassers. He had Scalera Inc. in the 5th Ward. He had residents and entrenched interests receiving direct payments from City Hall through UBI-style programmes that he never tired of taking credit for. He had the Register-Star acting as a largely uncritical and sympathetic megaphone. Oh, and don't forget the FB mafia of Zanotellis and former HCSD grads who no longer live in Hudson but were all too willing to be loud supporters for Kamal online.
Against that stood Joe. No City Hall machine. No phalanx of salaried staff.
Instead, a larger pool of small donors and his own chequebook.
Did Joe even have a Hudson campaign manager? No. Did he assemble a grand coalition of local institutions and choreographed endorsements? No.
A handful of locals hosted small gatherings for him in their homes. Most of his public events he organized and financed himself at Park Theater or Bar Bene.
Those who endorsed him did so on their own initiative, not in response to a request, or in expectation of patronage later.
Kamal and his more (C)ross than broad supporters will claim that Gossips of Rivertown, Hudson Common Sense, artists like Mark Allen, Trixie’s List, and even the anonymous crew behind the Hudson Wail were part of a coordinated pro-Joe front.
That story is convenient. It is also not true.
Gossips covered events. That is what a local news blog is meant to do. Trixie wrote about City Hall finances. Common Sense endorsed Joe, but only after giving him a low B grade and judging the others either more corrupt or not serious. Kamal chose not to engage with this fifth estate at all, pinning his hopes instead on the 5th ward.
The Wail crowd created memes. They teased. They raised awareness. They amused themselves and others. That is not a political action committee.
The more interesting question is what proportion of the 917 people who voted for Kamal understood what they were voting for.
- His conflict of interest with Galvan.
- His conflict of interest with his Housing Justice Director, Michelle Tullo.
- His record of higher taxes and poor day-to-day management of the city.
Did his voters back him despite being aware of these facts, as a conscious trade-off, or because they never heard about them at all?
That is the uncomfortable arithmetic beneath Kamal’s narrow win.
Correction:
DeleteThat is the uncomfortable arithmetic beneath Kamal’s narrow LOSS.