The following, quoted from Gilson's report, is of interest to those who pay property taxes in the Hudson City School District:
The school board also asked about overriding the tax cap. That would require 60% approval from voters, as opposed to the simple majority that suffices when the budget does not go above the tax cap.
According to a state law, if the budget does not pass after two votes, New York state would step in and prepare a contingency budget under which many new costs are prohibited, including equipment purchases, salary increases for non-union employees and new capital projects. A contingency budget would have deeper cuts than the district's proposal, Bailey said.
"A contingency budget would be a disaster, that's safe to say," school board President Mark DePace said.
Where are Ben Wyatt and Chris Traeger when you need them?
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This comment was submitted by email by Susan Troy:
ReplyDeleteThere's zero doubt in my mind, based on experience, that there isn't crossover readership between TGOR, and both the Hudson, NY Community Board and the Unfiltered Hudson NY Community Board.
Interestingly, there's been next to no community conversation about the current $4 million crisis the HCSD finds itself in. The $4 million mismanagement the HCSD taxpayers find themselves in. Crickets.
And I find it impossible to believe that the HCSD's pricey Public Relations firm that taxpayers neither got the opportunity to interview nor hire, isn't reading TGOR along with the unions; elected School Board members; and every single HCSD staffer from receptionist up to Interim Superintendent.
Yet, nada. No response. Their individual and collective non-response(s) is somewhere between mockery and outright disrespect. After all, except for the School Board members, all of whom stood up, put their hands up, and said, "Pick me!! I want to volunteer. I know the answers!", everyone else gets paid by the taxpayers, supposedly their actual bosses.
Maybe silence is the strategy. Maybe they are all being counseled by attorneys and that pricey Public Relations firm to "just let it ride". "Just get past the vote". "Don't talk about it".
So then we are left with deciding which is worse: mockery, outright disrespect, or strategic silence.
So by not commenting on social media, they are not doing their job and being disrespectful? If there is just silence all together , I get it, but no one is required to respond to you or anyone else's comments on Facebook.
Delete"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it."
Delete~Upton Sinclair
How many families in Columbia County and the City of Hudson, Greenport, NY... have one or more family members, in-laws, or neighbours, drawing full or partial salary or retirement benefits from HCSD / City of Hudson Youth Center?
That might explain the silence?
Of course that’s their strategy. The local taxation systems and governance are purposely complicated and obscure. It’s the systemic reason how we got to the place we’re in.
DeleteFirst of all, barely anyone I know, even people I consider smart and informed, have any real understanding about property taxes. Assessments vs market value, equalization rates, mil rates—and the zero sum game where faux nonprofit exemptions, PILOTs for developers like Galvan, and the unequal “welcome stranger” assessments—all of which punish middle and working class taxpayers and renters.
Then you have a school board and budget that purposefully hold their elections and budget vote on a nondescript day in May, not with the normal primaries or general elections most people are aware of. They barely advertise the vote so that only people in the know, and those few who benefit from the high budget, show up. And if for some reason the budget actually gets voted down by the people, they can actually try it over on another day and hope people won’t bother to come back. Banana republic type democracy.
And, yes, unfortunately the Facebook groups are “low information” citizens/voters. Their lack of civic education is taken advantage of. (Do they teach local government at HCSD?). For example, many Greenport residents don’t understand that they don’t live in the municipality of Hudson and cannot vote for mayor. But they can vote for this budget since they are part of the school district. The confusion is understandable. But if they want to finally push back against the major cause of housing unaffordability (homeowners and renters alike), now’s the time to come out and vote.
Looks like we have work to do. Talk to your neighbors and fellow voters. This will never stop until the voters push back.
That system cannot that easily be understood. I have a firm grasp on the basic concepts of millage and equalization rate. Yet, what happened to our school tax after Greenport reassessed last year (alongside Claverack) spits in the face of that knowledge.
DeleteWhat went up quite signficantly was our school tax. It was the one thing I was sure would not be affected all that much by the reassessment because that is what the equalization rate is supposed to account for.
In practice, not so. I mentioned this to Margaret last year at the time when she still thought it was a good idea to banish Greenport residents from speaking in front of the Hudson council as a counterargument. She seemed highly incredulous that we in Greenport and Claverack would have experienced any change in our school tax piece of the pie.
Likewise, earlier this year I quizzed the chair of the Greenport Dems earlier this year. He had experienced the same as I, my neighbors in Greenport as well as acquaintances in Claverack: We are paying a disproportionally higher school tax all of a sudden.
His explanation was that the system and its equalization rate will not fully equalize things. That was news to me and contradicted what I thought the equalization rate was designed to prevent.
As it looks right now, Hudson is currently not paying its share of the school tax. I bet that you folks aren't even aware of that.
It seems to me the routine is to keep things quiet and the voter turnout low. Very few people actually vote to approve these budgets. It would be interesting to see what the ratio is, school taxpayers to non taxpaying renters, on these budget votes.
ReplyDeleteEveryone wants a better school, but the budget is pretty huge and keeps going up and up, with limited results. Constantly throwing more money into a sinking ship isn't helping, someone needs to go in there, throw some stuff overboard and patch up the holes before the whole thing goes down.
Why people who rent and pay no school taxes get to vote to increase the taxes of those who pay, seems strange. We have a lodging tax for lodgers, perhaps there should be a school tax fee on rentals?
Renters are affected by property taxes, which school taxes are part of. The crushing property taxes are a huge part of why their rents keep going up. Now do renters understand how that works? That’s a whole other story…
DeleteTrue, but there really should be better way to finance the schools. Perhaps a statewide school tax on income, instead of properties, that would be distributed equitably among all the schools, or something of that sort.
DeleteI suppose you can't regulate the greed of landlords, jacking their rent to maintain profits every time expenses increase. Profiting off housing is a despicable way to make money in my opinion, like serfdom and slavery, but that's another issue entirely.
The way I see it is that someone ultimately has to foot the bill for educating our kids. In this country, this is done through municipal taxes. My country of origin does it differently, but not in practice necessarily better.
DeleteThe one thing I truly cannot understand is how given the overall high property taxes and amounts spent per student in the HCSD, the academic outcomes can be so abysmal. If municipalities in Alabama can do it for less than a third per student while achieving significantly better results, questions need to be asked.
Last year at the school budget election I voted yes. I am very unconvinced I will vote yes this year.
As a graduate of an Alabama public school myself, I’d be curious where the data for that comparison is coming from. Alabama isn’t a monolith, there’s a huge range of districts with very different outcomes!
DeleteI happened to go to one of the highest-ranked districts in the state, coming from a very well-resourced community that could fund major projects through capital campaigns and private donations. It also had very low poverty. Districts like that simply aren’t dealing with the same challenges, so they don’t have to spend in the same way. But that’s very much an outlier in the state.
There are plenty of districts in Alabama with poverty levels similar to (or higher than) Hudson, and they face many of the same challenges and outcomes. More broadly, Alabama tends to rank near the bottom nationally in education, which is also part of the picture- so not sure where your “significantly better results” data fit in.
Cost of living is another big factor — salaries for teachers, aides, and support staff, housing and gas prices in general, are just lower there, so overall spending looks lower too!
I’m not saying we shouldn’t ask questions, we absolutely should- I want our district to be the best- but comparing Hudson, New York to Alabama in general isn’t really a fair comparison with out considering all the differences between the two states.
I left the South to go to a great college in the northeast and ultimately decided to settle in the area that I feel better represents my values, but for what it’s worth, Alabama is a beautiful place with lovely people, and lower taxes than New York. You can also get a lot more bang for your buck in terms of housing- so don’t be afraid to consider it if that’s where your priorities are!
Hannah Black: Regarding Alabama, see this post: https://gossipsofrivertown.blogspot.com/2026/02/of-interest_9.html. It references an article that appeared recently in the New York Times.
DeleteOh yes I read that piece, and the "Mississippi Miracle" reporting by the Times- it is interesting, and I agree that a focus on early literacy, attendance, and raising expectations for all students in general, is important!
DeleteBut this is talking about state-wide changes, and I think it’s a bit of a stretch to use it as a direct comparison to a small town like Hudson, which is in New York. Mississippi and Alabama have made gains, but they’re still overall among the lowest-performing states. Improving from a lower starting point isn’t the same as achieving higher outcomes overall. Also theres a lot of criticism I read on the Mississippi program that focuses intensely on testing and holding children back that don't score high enough by the third grade- which gives a false sense of "improvement", and I imagine is pretty traumatic for that child!
Also in some of these statistics they are "adjusting for demographics such as poverty and race" putting these southern states closer to the top. I would love to see the same adjustments made comparing Hudson's district to other neighboring districts.
The spending comparison is also just more complicated than your presenting.
The cost of running a school- as well as living in general- in New York is higher across the board. Salaries, benefits, healthcare, transportation, other state requirements. Alabama also doesn’t have the same kind of teachers unions or collective bargaining, so pay and benefits are significantly lower. That alone shifts the per-student number quite a bit.
So it doesn’t really follow that a district like Hudson could spend dramatically less and get the same results given how different the systems are.
One thing I agree on is that this article really emphasizes the importance of the team of human counselors, teachers, aids, and tutors who are rigorously working with these kids- to help with extra tutoring, solving attendance issues, and addressing some basic needs that might not be met at home. Paying the salaries of these people is a bulk of the budget- and if we have to slash the it any more- my fear is that they will be forced to cut more of these positions and rely on tech, computers, and A.I. to tutor our kids- and we all know, there are so many studies that show this is not the way!
It would be nice to see as much attention paid to the kids' development in reading and math skills as we're seeing to the budget. It's sad that less than 1/3 of the kids are proficient in math and English, and Peter Meyer seems to be the one person ringing the alarm bell.
ReplyDeleteThanks Kristal. That's a sad compliment! (Or is it a sad complement?) But I love the wonderful -- and very sad -- comment by Board President DePace: "A contingency budget would be a disaster, that's safe to say," school board President Mark DePace said. This is unfortunate -- thank you Susan Troy -- blissful ignorance from our board president, who doesn't understand that HCSD has been a rolling disaster for the last five years.
ReplyDeleteKristal and Tassilo are absolutely right. The district's academic outcomes are abysmal--truly horrific. It is not educating the children. At the same time, the distict is awash in money: $42,000 per student is a stunning figure. To demand still more money is indefensible. The district needs to use the money it has responsibily and educate the students in its charge.
ReplyDeleteThese comments are a wonderful discussion that beg the biggest question of all: where is the HCSD school board? Does it not have to answer the many questions raised here about the education that its dwindling number of students are NOT getting? Union Jack in his April 17, 2026 at 4:04 PM comment above has the best summary of the answer to that question. Politics and a jerry-rigged system giving an outlandish power to special interests -- compounded by terrible coverage of HCSD by the local press -- give no incentive to the BOE to actually educate the children.
ReplyDelete"Put bluntly, failure attracts more money than success. Politically, failure becomes a reason to demand more money. The more the schools fail to teach, the more the educational establishment demands for 'reform', which always turns out to mean more money."
ReplyDeleteFrom TS, in Black Rednecks and White Liberals, 2005
Unfortunately, this is mostly true, especially these last 5 years. But it's not the teachers' fault. And just because they get paid does not mean -- what I and others have said or implied -- that HCSD is little more than an employment agency. It's leadership that is responsible. It is the superintendent that the board of education hires that is responsible.
DeleteThis research and graph is from CA, but surely it is the same or worse in NY, and likely the City of Hudson, NY;
Deletehttps://edunomicslab.org/california-roi-over-time/
When and where will the budget be presented to the voters before the vote?
ReplyDeleteThey haven't finalized the budget yet. There is another "Community Budget Workshop" tomorrow night--Tuesday, April 21. The budget hearing is scheduled for May 6. All this information can be found here: https://www.hudsoncsd.org/district/budget/2026-27-budget/
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