The Mill Street resolution sent to my desk earlier this week by the Common Council aligns a fellow lawsuit defendant with the party suing us.
The Common Council had been briefed by Planning Board and Corporation Counsel prior to Tuesday's vote on this matter. The vote goes against the guidance provided by our taxpayer-funded attorneys.
I believe the best course of action in regard to this lawsuit is to let the legal process play out in the courts. The resolution before me--regardless of the Council's semantic gymnastics--attempts to weigh in on a matter that is central to the lawsuit.
By the power vested in me by § C6-2 Approval of legislation; veto power of the Hudson City Charter, on this day, October 2, 2026, I veto Common Council Resolution No. 6 of September 29, 2026.
From the beginning, our neighborhood has taken every opportunity to avoid the incredibly expensive and wasteful situation we find ourselves in. We spent a year in front of the Planning Board and Council trying to steer the project to a legal, reasonable plan. Our hardworking neighborhood, Jack Hornickel, contributed hundreds of hours to assemble and present legal records to help every branch of city government understand how and why this project broke the law. We've arranged settlement offers that no one in City government has responded to, and drafted resolutions to exit the project that no one has acted on.
At this point, the City has run down its own legal defense budget and exhausted our neighborhood resources as well. We know, from so many conversations with people out in town and passing through our street, just how unpopular this project is. We would be extremely grateful is you'd consider joining our fight and sharing in the costs. You can find the Friends of Mill Street fundraising page here. Thank you so much for your support.
In a few short weeks, CLC will be in your neighborhood, working with Tahawus Trails LP, a professional trail design and construction company, to create a new trail system in Hudson. These trails will connect North Third Street to Mill Street and beyond to the Empire State Trail.
Building this trail is the beginning of a three-phase project that also includes revitalizing Charles Williams Park and creating a trail connecting downtown Hudson to CLC's Greenport property and the thousands of acres nearby.
The contract extension signed by Mayor Ferris on May 20, 2026, is unenforceable, because it altered a material term to the contract for sale of municipal real estate without authorization by Common Council. Therefore the original contract closing date of May 3, 2026, is still in effect, and only the Common Council may act to determine its outcome.
Common Council should declare Kearney in default under this contract and terminate its relationship with the developer. Kearney failed to close on Mill Street in the allotted time; more importantly, Kearney abandoned its projects for State Street and Rossman Avenue, without explanation. These failures represent a material, willful, and substantial breach of the contract, one that defeats the original intent of the parties. Abandonment of these sites by Kearney also fails to satisfy a legislative condition of sale placed by Common Council and undermines the “scattered-site” development program envisioned by the Mayor.
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| Photo: Hudson Common Sense |
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| Photo: Hudson Common Sense |
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| Photo: Hudson Common Sense |
WHEREAS, Section 41.1 of the City of Hudson Code states that no sale or lease of City real estate or of any franchise belonging to or under the control of the City shall be made or authorized except by a vote of 3/4 of the weighted vote of members of the Common Council, and
WHEREAS, the Common Council requires that contracts of sale be submitted for review as part of the authorization process, and
WHEREAS, any subsequent substantive change to a contract authorized by the Common Council is subject to review and further authorization by the Common Council . . .
NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, that the Common Council of the City of Hudson does hereby assert its right to review contracts and subsequent substantive changes to previously authorized contracts in compliance with Section 41.1 of the City of Hudson Code.
[W]e have received estimated billings for June through December 2026 of $15,000 from Hinman Straub (labor attorney); $70,000 from Tabner Ryan & Keniry LLP (Planning Board and tax certiorari attorneys); $7,500 from Rodenhausen Chale & Polidoro LLP (Zoning Board of Appeals Counsel), and $11,000 from Rodenhausen Chale & Polidoro LLP (Historic Preservation Commission Counsel).
"In no way did the closing date for the sale lapse," Ferris said. "(May 3, 2026) was an 'on or about' closing date (in the contract between Kearney and the city), and we, as in city were, and continue to, await the court's decision. . . ."
Late last week, Mayor Ferris gave a statement explaining his decision to extend the City’s contract with the Kearney Group. Our neighborhood would like to respond to falsehoods in his statement and set a few facts straight about our litigation.
As a reminder, the Mill Street Lofts is a proposed apartment complex six times the size of our entire neighborhood. It would be built on public parkland, in violation of state law, on a parcel that regularly and severely floods. Those are only the headlines in a long list of design failures that our neighbors pointed out to the Planning Board and the Common Council for over a year. Both boards chose to ignore the red flags in order to push the project through at then-Mayor Kamal’s urging. The process was so clearly stacked that three of our own city representatives encouraged us to file a lawsuit. Mr. Ferris gave a written statement of support as we prepared to file the suit, joined us for a neighborhood organizing meeting, and publicly stated his opposition to the project on his campaign trail.
But in his public statement last week, Mr. Ferris shows that not only has he reversed his opposition to the project, he is willing to collaborate with the developer behind closed doors and lie about it.
Mr. Ferris’s statement includes the following falsehoods:
“[I am] doing everything in my power to avoid unnecessary and expensive legal actions whose cost will be borne by the taxpayers.”
“The contract closing date was not extended.”
“The City of Hudson cannot unilaterally cancel the contract.”
“Much of this was discussed at a March 6 meeting attended by myself, Council President Morris, Mill Street petitioners, and the respective legal representatives.”
Let’s start with the Mayor’s statement about March 6th. On that date, our neighborhood enthusiastically offered to cooperate with the newly elected administration on settling the case, explicitly to stop wasting city funds. We asked that the new mayor recognize the 40 pages of municipal documents acknowledging the parcel as parkland, so as not to waste taxpayer dollars waiting for a judge to recognize what the city record already plainly shows. In that same meeting, we had our attorney explain that the City can choose to exit their contract with the Kearney group at any time, without penalty, and that city governments are very rarely held liable for doing so.
The Mayor said all of two sentences in that meeting, namely, “I’m Joe Ferris the Mayor and I’m just here to listen,” and “Thank you everyone for your time.” It is a complete fabrication that anyone--our neighborhood, or Council President Morris--were clued in on the Mayor’s actual intention to singlehandedly extend the developer’s contract once it expired. No other strategies to resolve the case were offered. No one from City government responded to our settlement offer in any way.
That alone should clarify that the Mayor is not “avoiding unnecessary and expensive legal actions.” In fact, the City’s next move after our meeting was to pursue an unnecessary additional legal step, a Motion to Dismiss, that delayed the judge’s ruling by months. This wasteful attempt to throw out our case was rejected by the judge on every point. (You can read the judge’s opinion here).
When Mayor Ferris says, “the contract closing date was not extended,” is Mayor Ferris playing word games, or does he not understand the impact of the document he signed? The contract had a clear closing date (May 3rd, 2026), after which the City administration could exit or declare a default. Instead, he collaborated with the developer on an amendment that has no predictable end date at all.
But the amendment does more damage than keeping the Mill Street Lofts project on lifeline. Mayor Ferris bargained away the City’s leverage over its real estate in exchange for nothing. The extension ignores that the Kearney Group completely abandoned work on the State Street apartments and Rossman Avenue townhouses that are bound up in the same contract and promised in their original proposal. He signed the amendment without any public process and kept it out of the public record until Council President Morris formally requested it 6 weeks later. When Carla Sadoff, candidate for 4th Ward supervisor, asked if he had amended the contract at his town hall on May 18th, he dodged the question and feigned ignorance. All this from the Mayor that ran on government transparency and accountability!
There is one sentence in the Mayor’s statement that does ring true, and that is, “it was necessary to execute the amendment to maintain the status quo.” For over a year, the City has been indefinitely bound to an underperforming developer with a terrible plan for our neighborhood, with the City and the neighborhood footing legal bills while we wait for a judge to explain the obvious. Mayor Ferris is 100% correct that he took the action that would be most likely to maintain that status quo.
Mayor Ferris: This is not what you were elected for. Your obligations are to your constituents and to legal process, not to protect the interests of an outside developer. We demand that you honor your campaign promises to our neighborhood to extract the City from this deeply flawed project, and terminate or relocate the Mill Street Lofts deal.
The contract closing date was not extended. The amendment simply clarified the current state of the contract and provided the closing will occur pending the Court's Article 78 determination.
The City of Hudson cannot unilaterally cancel the contract. If we were to do so, Kearney Group would have a breach of contract claim against the City and could seek damages for the City's termination.
Corporation Counsel [City Attorney] advised me that since the City was already in contract with Kearney Group, is a named party in the Article 78 proceeding, and has a legal obligation to perform under the contract until such time as a Court rules otherwise, it was necessary to execute the amendment to maintain the status quo.
Much of this was discussed at a March 6 meeting attended by myself, Council President Morris, Mill Street petitioners, and the respective legal representatives.
The Council can debate prior resolutions of support but as this city's mayor, my responsibility is to protect the city and at this point in the Article 78 process, that means doing everything in my power to avoid unnecessary and expensive legal actions whose cost will be borne by the taxpayers.
HPD wants to advise residents that a bear has recently been sighted in the area of the rear of JLE/Mill Street. While bear encounters are uncommon, residents are encouraged to remain alert and take precautions.
IF YOU SEE A BEAR:
DO NOT
Most bears will avoid people if given space. If a bear appears aggressive or poses an immediate threat to public safety, contact 911 immediately. You may also contact the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) Region 4 Wildlife Office at 518 367-2355 during business hours or 1 844 DEC-ECOS (1 844 332-3267) after hours.
The extension of the terms of the contract to sell two City-owned parcels to Kearney Realty & Development was a topic of discussion at tonight's Common Council meeting. Council president Margaret Morris read the amendment to the contract, which alters the deadline for closing on the sale from a fixed date to an open-ended one: thirty days after pending litigation is settled in a manner that would allow the sale to go forward.
In response to discussion about Kearney Group's contract with the City of Hudson at this evening's formal Common Council meeting, Mayor Ferris released the following statement:
The contract closing date was not extended. The amendment simply clarified the current state of the contract and provided the closing will occur pending the Court's Article 78 determination.
The City of Hudson cannot unilaterally cancel the contract. If we were to do so, Kearney Group would have a breach of contract claim against the City and could seek damages for the City's termination.
Corporation Counsel [City Attorney] advised me that since the City was already in contract with Kearney Group, is a named party in the Article 78 proceeding, and has a legal obligation to perform under the contract until such time as a Court rules otherwise, it was necessary to execute the amendment to maintain the status quo.
Much of this was discussed at a March 6 meeting attended by myself, Council President Morris, Mill Street petitioners, and the respective legal representatives.
The Council can debate prior resolutions of support but as this city's mayor, my responsibility is to protect the city and at this point in the Article 78 process, that means doing everything in my power to avoid unnecessary and expensive legal actions whose cost will be borne by the taxpayers.
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| Photo by Gibson |
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| Photo courtesy Bob Tomaso |
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| Photo by Gibson |
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