As background for the following statement from Mayor Joseph Ferris, this Gossips post from February 2026 is recommended: "Money for Sidewalks." There is also this one, from August 2025: "Governmental Dysfunction."
No one disagrees that Hudson sidewalks need improvement. This is why the City instituted a Sidewalk Improvement District.
In recent days and weeks, my decision in January to withdraw a sidewalk grant application has become news. I believe it is important to set the record straight in regard to the purported zero-match Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) application for ADA sidewalk improvements that I withdrew after taking office.
It was never free money from the State. The proposed $2 million dollar project would have required $1 million in matching funds from Hudson – a fact that the previous administration knew.
Documentation that demonstrated the City could and would allocate these funds was never submitted because those funds did not exist.
The City’s pre-application read that “The total preliminary project cost is estimated to be $2,005,500 with $1,005,500 from the City's Sidewalk Improvement District (SID) revenue fund and municipal capital reserves.”
The City of Hudson does not have a municipal capital reserve.
The State flagged that the proposed CDBG budget included parking lot repaving that did not appear to relate to ADA compliance. They further made clear that “maintenance items such as general re-paving would not be included in the CDBG share of the project.” The grant consultants guiding the City at the time warned that the lack of formal documentation meant the State would likely eliminate Hudson from consideration.
I was only made aware of this proposed grant application after taking office by the State and the grant consultants. With the City on the hook for more than a million dollars if awarded the grant and a plan the State had serious concerns about, I made the decision to withdraw this ‘plan of a plan’ application.
I remain committed to the work of improving our sidewalks. I’m just as committed to not saddling our city and taxpayers with a hefty bill and no way to pay for it.
Sure would have been easier and more cost effective to do a little enforcement and have people fix their own sidewalks.
ReplyDeleteAmen to that!
DeleteUnfortunately the city waited to long and the Dept of Justice had to step in and force the city to take action. So now we’re stuck with this Sidewalk Improvement District bureaucracy where everything will happen at a snails pace and individual property owners have even less incentive to fix their own. Not knocking the committee (they inherited this mess), but it took like 3 years just to start billing for this, that’s how complicated this has become.. Then you have the situation of government selecting winners and losers by being forced to choose where to allot the little money raised to make repairs.
And the current money raised will never be enough. Just do the math. At around $300K per year, even if all of the sidewalks are currently in new condition (which they are far from), the current levy would not keep up with the rate of sidewalk decay. Not to mention adding sidewalks to the properties that are missing them completely (there’s random lots, even in the downtown grid that just have dirt paths). These people are paying the fee now. Do they get new sidewalks after being derelict for decades? And what about liability? If someone falls on my sidewalk, can they sue the city since they’ve taken responsibility for repairs? It’s legally a gray area and an aggressive personal injury lawyer will go after the bigger pockets.
But Joe is right. If we don’t have the matching funds, we’re not gonna get the money. Why waste more money on grant consultants? This is what happens when the city dwindles the reserve fund down to fumes. It becomes a death spiral as we can’t even afford to compete for grants to offset the money we need in reserve in the first place. And even non matching grants still cost the city. Because, again, we have barely any reserve funds, so we have to issue bonds to pay for the work and wait forever for reimbursement. Those bonds cost us in the debt service needed to pay the interest. And if our fund gets too low, the banks will lower our bond rating, which means… even higher interest rates. Again, death spiral!
Decades of poor enforcement and budgeting got us to the place we are now. All the current elected officials can do is point at each other like the Spider-Man Meme 👈👉👈👉
In response to "The City’s pre-application read that “The total preliminary project cost is estimated to be $2,005,500 with $1,005,500 from the City's Sidewalk Improvement District (SID) revenue fund and municipal capital reserves.”....The grant application was written to include $2 million worth of work to make the application more attractive, per the City’s grant writing team at Laberge. If awarded the money, the City could have scaled the project back to the $1 million award, as stated many times and many different ways. This was always a NO MATCH GRANT. Anyone can and should feel free to contact Laberge Group in Albany and get this information first-hand or look up the CDBG Sidewalk grant the City pursued. It can certainly be FOILed.
ReplyDeleteState CDBG grants don’t have matching fund criteria. Also, the sidewalk tax would count to fulfill it.
ReplyDeleteSeems like another case of City Hall's left hand not knowing what its right hand is doing. And vice versa.
ReplyDeleteMe thinks that whoever “Gossips Favorite Kamal Johnson” is, that person needs to grow up and drop the label thing. If you are Kamal the former mayor just say your name. No one wants to see this every time you post. BTW, are you bored and running out of ways to e press yourself? If it is not the ex mayor just drop the gossips thing. There are too many important issues that mature people are trying to deal with. Post your name n comment. That’s all please.
ReplyDeleteSounds real important considering you are discussing them with Prison Alley, Hudson Common Sense, and Union Jack.
ReplyDeleteThe fact that a question as binary as "is there a matching requirement?" does not produce a clear answer made me go dig in the archives to see if one can understand this.
ReplyDeleteOn August 14, 2025 the Common Council voted on whether then-mayor Kamal should pursue an application for CDBG funding. That vote failed since three council members were absent and Rich Volo abstained.
I recall that at the time, the question of matching requirements was asked and the answer seemed to imply there wasn't but it wasn't ultimately all that clear.
Going back to that meeting and reading what the mayor posted today and what Justin and Kamal stated here, I believe I have figured this out: There is no matching requirement but, in order for the city to be competitive in their application process it needed to expand the scope to something that would cost $2M while the grant (with no required matching) would only yield $1M.
It is this $1M discrepancy that the mayor is referring to. If I understand Justin correctly, he is proposing that the city be a little cavalier, rake in the money but then don't actually do the whole $2M project as described in the application but only half of it.
I think that's a pretty crafty way to solve this problem. At the same time, I think this type of craftiness might not be to Joe's liking.
Happy HCSD Tax Day to all who celebrate.
ReplyDeleteWhile the insiders track the Joe or Kamal or XYZ camps (we'll get to next year's mayor's race soon, Primary 12 months away)... over 2,000 school tax bills just hit Hudson mailboxes.
More homes turn over, the electorate keeps a-changing, and every "niche" crowd, Mill Street, the truck route, sidewalks, Warren St closings, HCSD failure, and on and on, is going to want more.
As mayoral grades go... if Kamal was a D and Joe will land somewhere in the B range...
who's the A grade mayor Hudson actually wants and needs?
Maybe the one who runs to be the last Mayor?
Day 1: hire a City Manager, paid out of the mayor, the aide, and the housing justice money.
A platform of one promise: make her own job disappear... and then like a hero without a cape, go away with no Albany ambitions except to let Home Rule be home rule.
There’s no camps for me. He called others out on these last two press releases.
ReplyDeleteIf this is indeed former Mayor Kamal -
DeleteMaybe you are right, or maybe your camp is in Greenport and yo should follow UJ's advise and run for Supervisor there?
So who do you think will try to inherit your Hudson voters/mantle in the next mayoral run?
Separately, you always implied HCS and others were targeting you personally or because of some immutable trait.
But now you see after Mayor Ferris signed contracts in secret Mill Street) and is delayed on campaign promises (like the municipal newsletter), we also challenge him on transparency and competence.
It was never personal. We just want Hudson to work.
P.s. If you ever want to write an after action / post-mortem on your campaign, how close it was, what happened in the primary last year... we'd be happy to publish it as a Guest Op-Ed.
The next mayoral race will be wide open, likely with more than 3 candidates. They will all benefit from your perspective.
Period.
Reading the extremely entertaining comments of the various belligerents here, I think the core of the story has been missed. Only UJ alluded to it.
ReplyDeleteWhat Joe is saying here is that discretionary funds of Hudson are such that the city is increasingly unable to even apply for grants if there are matching requirements (formal or, as in this case, in a round-about way). That to me sounds quite alarming.
As an outsider looking in, I cannot currently name a single thing that is being undertaken to address this. The Common Council's prime project right now appears to be a change to the zoning that, in the best conceivable scenario, will end in litigation that it wins. But it will have paid for it in the process. Could also lose it, by the way.
Meanwhile, the city could already be gearing up towards closing the sale of Dunn Warehouse (close to half a mill). But it's not since the CC president delayed that vote in the council.
To sum this up, Hudson 2026 is concerned with: Mill St, Bliss replacement, Colarusso dock and the waterfront in the most nebulous sense. Same stuff as Hudson 2025 was. Nothing appears to be moving towards where the most urgent issues lie.
The Sidewalk Improvement District thing, the topic of this post, meanwhile seems severely underfunded and it doesn't appear to have access to grants anymore for reasons stated above.
Would a city manager actually fix this? Or would the city still be at the stranglehold of a council focusing on the wrong things and doing nothing to alleviate the immediate situation?