On Thursday, February 26, the Common Council held a special meeting to pass a resolution amending the budget to take $5,600 from the general fund to replace a furnace in a residential property in Hudson. This was the conclusion of a sequence of events that seems to have started with a post that appeared on the Facebook group "Unfiltered Hudson" on Sunday night, February 22. That post is reproduced below. (Click on the image to enlarge.)
In 2022 the City of Hudson received a $500,000 grant to perform critical health and safety housing repairs. Repairs included but were not limited to replacing roofs, electrical and plumbing repairs, remediating lead-based paint in low- or moderate-incomes houses in the City of Hudson. This grant was completed in 2024 and is no longer taking applications.
According to the account on Facebook, the furnace, which was installed in 2024, stopped working properly on January 20, 2025. It would run for five minutes and then shut off. A technician called by the family to assess the problem determined that the furnace had not been installed properly and warned that continuing to use it created a safety issue.
On Tuesday, February 24, Jeffrey Yeh reported on "Columbia County Morning News" that the furnace had been a topic of discussion when he met with Mayor Joe Ferris that day.
The resolution states that "the City's Code Enforcement Officer inspected and approved the installation" of the furnace, and hence the City was assuming the responsibility to remedy the issue. At the meeting on Thursday, Councilmember Henry Haddad (First Ward) asked: "Who did the work? Who chose the vendor? And who approved the plans from the vendor?" Before those questions were answered, Council president Margaret Morris said she was recommending that Nick Fox, the City's new code enforcement officer, reinspect the work done by the vendor who installed the furnace "to ensure there aren't any issues that we don't know about." Fox, who was present at the meeting, told the Council that the vendor was KR Construction from Schenectady, which mainly does carpentry. They had "subbed out" the HVAC work, but he did not know to whom. Regarding who chose the vendor, Fox reported that Michelle Tullo told him "she sent these grants out to be bid to multiple, multiple different contractors, and they got very few responses." KR Construction was one of the few companies that responded.
Fox also explained that the new furnace had been installed in exactly the same way as the previous furnace had been, and because it was like for like, a building permit was not required for the installation. According to Fox, the installation of neither the old furnace nor the new furnace conformed to code, but, there wasn't a problem with the old furnace because it didn't have the sensors that caused the new furnace to shut itself off.
There are two similar programs now being offered through the City's Housing Office: NYS Access to Home, for people with disabilities; and HOME Repair Program, for which the City has received a $520,000 grant. At the regular meeting of the Common Council on February 24, two resolutions were passed authorizing contracts for engineering services related to these two programs. At that meeting, Merante asked Tullo who selected the contractors to carry out projects funded by these grants. She explained, "It is a bid process, so it's advertised. So, we usually try to do like info sessions and like postings and get a pretty wide range. And if the contractors meet the requirements, then they are eligible to bid. So far as like insurance, references, eligible like work experience, stuff like that. And then the homeowners select the contractor. If the homeowner wants one that's not the least affordable, then they can get a difference. . . ." The people with the furnace problem have denied that they chose the contractor who installed the furnace.
At the Council meeting on February 24, Hudson resident Matt McGhee called for transparency in how the grants for individual home improvements are administered. At the special meeting on Thursday, Merante said, "We need to put a plan in place of corrective action so that it doesn't happen again. We need a layer of barrier that protects the homeowners and the City to make sure that something like this doesn't happen."
Tullo has defended the apparent lack of transparency around these grants, saying the names and addresses of the people receiving funding cannot be revealed for privacy reasons. That is perfectly understandable, but there is no reason to withhold information about the nature of the projects being funded, the process of selecting the contractors, or how many projects are completed with each grant. Since it seems it becomes the responsibility of the City, i.e., the taxpayers, to remedy the situation when work is done incorrectly and there are problems, it seems appropriate for the process be open to public scrutiny.
COPYRIGHT 2026 CAROLE OSTERINK
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