Let There Be Trees!

In the past, the Galvan Foundation, or one of its principals, has been responsible for the destruction and mutilation of many mature trees in Hudson--most recently the pruning, beyond recognition, of the two pin oaks in front 364 and 366 Warren Street.

25 Union Street--July 2011

9 Union Street--September 2011

364-366 Warren--September 2015

At the same time, Galvan seems to want to cast itself as the giver of trees--trees the length of Second Street planted in 2006, only some of which survive; trees along State Street near the Armory planted last year; trees along Third Street in front of the Salvation Army building (now owned by Galvan) planted earlier this week.

Yesterday, the Galvan Foundation issued a press release announcing an expansion of their "tree planting initiative":

Galvan Foundation is pleased to announce its continued partnership with the City of Hudson and Pondside Nursery on another round of tree planting in Hudson, NY. Galvan Foundation planted 44 trees this fall and is establishing a permanent initiative to plant a sidewalk tree for any property owner in Hudson who requests one, beginning Spring 2016.

The tree planting initiative is a continued partnership between Galvan Foundation, The City of Hudson, and Pondside Nursery. The City of Hudson cuts openings in the sidewalks, and Galvan Foundation pays for the trees to be planted by Pondside Nursery, a local business. Pondside Nursery selects appropriate types of trees to ensure they thrive in an urban environment.

In prior years, Galvan Foundation, independently, and in collaboration with the City of Hudson, Operation Unite, and Pondside Nursery planted more than 100 trees. The Galvan Foundation Tree Planting Initiative is a permanent component of Galvan Foundation’s Environment Initiative.

Galvan Foundation invites every property owner to take part in making Hudson greener and healthier. Sidewalk tree requests should be sent to needatree@galvanfdn.org.

COPYRIGHT 2015 CAROLE OSTERINK

First News from This Morning's HPC Meeting

The beloved Earth Foods served lunch for the last time on October 19. A week and a day later, I got a request, by way of Historic Hudson, for a historic photograph of 523 Warren Street, the building that had been the location of Earth Foods for twenty years. I found one among the photos Byrne Fone had assembled for his book Historic Hudson: An Architectural Portrait--a pretty remarkable one, showing the building head on, sometime in the early 1930s.

  
Comparing the historic picture with the picture below, taken in 2002, left no doubt that it was the same building. There's the same gap between it and the next building to the west, and you can even see the details of the unusual brickwork on 521 Warren Street. 

So, this morning, the plans to renovate the ground floor facade of 523 Warren Street came before the Historic Preservation Commission. The plans involve eliminating the entrance at the right and having a recessed entryway at the left that would provide access both to the ground floor space, which is meant to be another restaurant or cafe, and the stairway to the floors above.

When asked about a historic photograph (the application for a certificate of appropriateness requires a historic photograph, if one exists), the applicant asserted that there was no historic picture of the building. What?! From the audience, I explained that there was indeed a historic photograph. Someone had requested it, and I had provided it. The applicant then admitted that he had gotten a historic picture, but he had determined that it wasn't the same building. HPC member Peggy Polenberg was eager to opine that, if the applicant "who is an architect" didn't think it was the same building, it must not be the same building.

Craig Haigh, code enforcement officer, who had seen the historic photograph in question, attested that it was the same building and, addressing the applicant, said, "I told you to bring that picture with you." The applicant then, rather begrudgingly, produced from his briefcase a crumpled printout of the photograph and proffered it to the HPC.

The first to examine it was Phil Forman, who pronounced it "shockingly similar." HPC chair Rick Rector and HPC historian David Voorhees declared it the same building, and even Polenberg, who was previously eager to accept the applicant's determination, admitted that she thought it was the same building. To be absolutely sure, the HPC trooped out of 520 Warren Street to look at the building across the street and returned with the verdict the image was an "official historic photograph" of 523 Warren Street.

After much discussion, during which Forman suggested that the HPC should accommodate what the applicant was trying to do because "the damage had been done," and Polenberg called the building in its current state an "eyesore" and the proposal "a good solution," the HPC voted on whether or not to grant a certificate of appropriateness. Polenberg and Forman voted aye; the other four members of the HPC--Gini Casasco, Voorhees, Rector, and Miranda Barry--voted no.

When asked to explain why they would not approve the proposed alterations, Barry said that the renovation was "an opportunity to try to restore a building that has not been altered except for the storefront," Voorhees stressed the "tripartite division that was essential to the original design," Casasco spoke of the need to "embrace the original symmetry," and Rector urged the applicant to "bring it back to a semblance of what it was." 

Instead of issuing a formal denial of a certificate of appropriateness, the HPC agreed to allow the applicant to, in the words of HPC counsel Carl Whitbeck, "rethink what you're going to do" and present a revised design at the HPC's next meeting, which will take place on Friday, November 2o.
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A Book of Oral Histories

Billy Shannon, former Register-Star reporter, has in the past year been interviewing long-time residents of Hudson, Germantown, Red Hook, and other nearby towns and recording their oral histories. He has published some of these interviews on his blog Hudson River Zeitgeist, but all seventeen interviews will soon be available in a limited edition book, Hudson River Zeitgeist: Interviews from the Year Two Thousand Fifteen. 

The book will be available in late December, and the only way to get a copy is to purchase it in advance through an Indiegogo campaign. Your contribution will not only get you a copy of the book but will also fund the continuation of Shannon's oral history project. When you visit the Indiegogo page, be sure to watch the very nicely done video, edited by Travis Bleen.
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Save Our Ashes

For two years, Gossips has been talking about the imminent danger posed by the emerald ash borer to city trees. Now the Register-Star is catching up: "Ash borer threatens city trees." 

The City should be mounting an aggressive campaign to defend the ash trees in Hudson, most of which are planted along North Front Street, but it doesn't appear that any money for that purpose has been written into the 2016 budget.
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Public Comment Period Ends Today

On October 21, A. Colarusso & Son, the new owners of the land in South Bay and along the Hudson River that was formerly the property of Holcim, a.k.a. St. Lawrence Cement, submitted an application to the Department of Environmental Conservation "to stabilize approximately 170 feet of eroded Hudson River shoreline with large rock rip-rap" and "to replace approximately 75 feet of deteriorated concrete bulkhead within a lateral side berth with new steel bulkhead that will placed in the same location as the existing structure." 

The proposal seems like reasonable maintenance and repair, but the ever-vigilant South Bay Task Force took a closer look at the proposal and concluded that it is actually for two projects, both of which are problematic. The following is from a published statement by the South Bay Task Force.

The first proposal at the Hudson waterfront would "stabilize" a shore of the river, which sounds reasonable where erosion is a threat to business. But it turns out that the erosion at the dock isn't much of a threat, while the remedy for the specious threat is a gigantic stone revetment to stretch 170 feet down the shore. Such structures can be used for additional moorings, where barges can be stacked and at the ready for an intensification of aggregate shipping.

As for the erosion, our research shows very little erosion since the State mapped that stretch in 1934. Years of GoogleEarth images provide enough recent evidence to make the rest of that argument.

Frankly, we don't know what the company is doing in this instance, nor why it thinks it needs this giant structure. However, we do know that we have a right to know.

Our right to know makes a quantum leap at the next discovery (which is actually a century-old discovery), that 100 percent of the revetment project would take place on State-owned lands!

That's not why the State is sponsoring the comment period, though, because the DEC only knows what the company has claimed, that the land is privately owned.

Well, it is State land, which is easy enough to prove if we can just get the State to look into the matter. . . .

Courtesy South Bay Task Force

The second project also seems reasonable--at least on the face of it. 

At the north corner of the wharf, a steel bulkhead which mostly faces the river takes a turn down a little inlet, or slip. After about 40 feet, a failing concrete-and-wood wall continues for another 77 feet. Admittedly, that wall is in a sorry state. But where the sponsor's site plan is very specific about all the site features in and around the broken wall, the plan reports that the 77-foot span is 220 feet! How did an engineer make a mistake like that?

It's worth noting that 220 feet is the exact length of the entire slip from the end of the steel bulkhead, where the work would begin, to the high tide mark on the small beach at the furthest eastern end of the slip.

You have to wonder if this corporation is trying to fool the government by seeking permission for the measurement alone, anticipating that it can then dismiss the other details of the plan which contradict it.

We'd be fools not to be very skeptical, because a steel bulkhead all the way down the slip would be a very big deal. Plus, what would it portend? What is the corporation's long-term plan for all these changes?

Courtesy South Bay Task Force

The natural shore that's formed at the back end of the slip is directly opposite our waterfront park. If some future generation wishes to develop that area of parkland, they'll be looking at a massive steel wall instead of what it is now, a rustic shoreline.

And we still don't know the reason for any of it, nor the scale of operations the company is planning.

It's astounding to consider, but we're looking at the same confusing plans as the Army Corps of Engineers and the DEC, which means that the permitters themselves don't know the nature and the extent of this project. . . . 

There are so many things which only locals can know, which is why public comment periods are so necessary. They are also inherently just, considering the inordinate power of giant special interests which can afford teams of lawyers and engineers.

At the informal Common Council meeting on Monday, November 9, the question was asked if the Council intended to make a comment during the public comment period on behalf of the residents of Hudson. Council president Don Moore noted that the review of the proposed project was now taking place at the state level, with the DEC, and explained that, since an LWRP (Local Waterfront Revitalization Program) Consistency Review Board has never been established (our LWRP being in limbo for the past four years), the Planning Board would be the agency of city government that would have jurisdiction in the matter. When it was suggested that the City's Conservation Advisory Council investigate the project, Moore protested that the CAC is "very new, and time is very limited."

Alderman John Friedman (Third Ward) contended that the ownership issue should be looked into. "Why not ask the CAC to help us?" he asked Moore. Friedman argued that the land use issue was secondary to the ownership issue and suggested that the city attorney and the CAC be asked to explore the issue, and the Common Council could compare their answers. City attorney Carl Whitbeck agreed to do this but cautioned that ownership would have to be settled by a court not by an opinion.

To make the situation and the City's role in the process so far even more puzzling, a letter from the Army Corps of Engineers, making reference to a permit application from A. Colarusso & Son filed with the ACE on August 4, 2015, was presented as a communication to the aldermen and the press on Monday. (A stamp on the letter indicated that the letter had been received by the city clerk on September 14, 2015.) The letter, which can be read in its entirety here, requests more information about the project, including "an assessment of the project's effects on the federal endangered Shortnose sturgeon and Atlantic sturgeon, and Essential Fish Habitat protected under the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act." It also notes:

A review of the GIS resources map on the N.Y.S. Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation (SHPO) website shows that the project site is located within areas identified by the SHPO as "Archeo Sensitive Areas." Please indicate whether any sites eligible for listing the in the National Register of Historic Places exist in the vicinity of the proposed project site, and provide evidence of any coordination with the SHPO on the potential presence of historic sites.

The letter requests that the requested information be provided within thirty days, but it is not known if it was or not. The DEC application for the project, however, asserts: "Cultural resource lists and maps have been checked. The proposed activity is not in an area of identified archaeological sensitivity and no known registered, eligible, or inventoried archaeological sites or historic structures were identified or documented for the project location. No further review in accordance of SHPA (State Historic Preservation Act) is required."

The DEC public comment on this project ends today. Direct your comments to Patricia Gabriel at the Department of Environmental Conservation R4DEP@dec.ny.gov.  

COPYRIGHT 2015 CAROLE OSTERINK

Significant Innovations

The J. M. Kaplan Fund announced today the first winners of the J.M.K. Innovation Prize. Ruth J. Abram, the creative force behind Behold! New Lebanon, was one of the winners. Click here to learn who the other nine were.
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CAC Gets Grant for Mapping Project

On October 14, the Hudson River Valley Greenway announced the recipients of its Greenway Communities Grants. The City of Hudson Conservation Advisory Council received $3,700 to purchase software and a computer to be used to create a GIS mapping database. 

The CAC is also applying for a grant from the Department of Environmental Conservation's Hudson River Estuary Program. The grant, if awarded, would fund hiring a consultant to manage the natural resources and open space inventory being undertaken by the CAC, to draft a conservation plan for the city which would be an amendment to the 2002 Comprehensive Plan, and to plan and implement a public participation process to inform the conservation plan.
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A House for Law & Order in Hudson

On Tuesday night, in between the special meeting at which the mayor presented the proposed 2016 budget and the informal Common Council meeting, there was another special meeting the subject of which was the police and court building. 

With the value engineering now completed, the "soft costs" analyzed and estimated, and the Hudson Police Department and the NYS Office of Court Administration giving their blessing to the modified design, the project is ready to go out for bid for a second time. The "all-in" cost of the project, which includes the purchase price and what has already been spent, has now been capped at $4.3 million.

At the special meeting on Monday, the Council voted unanimously to have Rapp Construction Management seek bids for four prime contracts: construction contractor, electrical contractor, HVAC contractor, and plumbing contractor. The bids are due on January 4, 2016, and will be opened at 10 a.m. the next day in the Council Chamber at City Hall.  

The future of the project is still not clear. When the bids come back at the beginning of the new year, there may be a new mayor, and there will certainly be a different Common Council president and three new aldermen. Nick Haddad, who was the point man for the project, and Bart Delaney, who served on the project subcommittee, will no longer be on the Council. William Kappel, the alderman candidate who made it clear in his campaign that he opposed the plans for the new police and court building just down the street from his house, was not elected. The opinions of the other new members of the Council about the project are not known (in fact, until the absentee ballots are counted, it's not absolutely clear who some of the new members will be), but it's possible that Lauren Scalera may join the chorus of one (Doc Donahue) in regularly asserting (with no clear basis in fact) that the City could build a beautiful new police and court building--a veritable palace of law and order--at the corner of Fourth and Columbia streets for less than what the adaptive reuse of 701 Union Street is costing.
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Still Time to Get There

Tonight, at 6 p.m., gallery owner Peter Jung is presenting a slide show of works by Hudson River School painters and talking about their lives and work. 

The event is sponsored by the Hudson River Exchange as part of a series of workshops for local makers and creative entrepreneurs, and it takes place at 612 Warren Street. Tickets were to be purchased in advance at the HRE website, but maybe if you just show up with a $20 bill in your hand, you can still get in.

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An Opportunity Not to Be Missed

Some people revel in the chance simply to visit the Dr. Oliver Bronson House and view the architectural treasure on the grounds of the Hudson Correctional Facility. Others wonder how many times they will be called upon to celebrate the fact the beloved ruin now has windows and the roof doesn't leak. For the former and the latter, this coming Saturday will be an experience to remember.

On Saturday, November 14, the house will be available for visitation from 11 a.m. until 2 p.m. The event, which is free and open to all, is an opportunity to see the stabilization and restoration work that has been going on this summer and to learn what the archaeological investigation has revealed about the original configuration of the grounds immediately around the house.

The restoration has progressed to the point where it is time to think about paint colors. An extensive paint analysis was just completed, which reveals the colors the house was painted at different periods in its history. Peter Watson, author of the Dr. Oliver Bronson House Daybook blog and an authority on the work of A. J. Davis, will be on hand on Saturday to discuss the findings. Copies of the extensive and intriguing paint analysis report, Selective Exterior Finish Color Investigation, will be at the house for review.

The archaeological investigation has in the past week uncovered vital clues to the original design of the grounds around the entrance to the cellar kitchen on the south facade. Matt Kirk from the archaeological firm Hartgen Associates will be at the Bronson House on Saturday to talk about what the archaeological investigations have so far discovered. On Saturday, for the first time in most people's experience, it will be possible to walk all the way around the house.

The current project at the Bronson House, which will be completed in June 2016, is funded by a $400,000 grant from the Environmental Protection Fund. Historic Hudson's match for this grant is $100,000. A month ago, $75,000 still had to be raised for the match. Today, only $33,000 remains to be raised. You can help support this exciting project to restore Hudson's only National Historic Landmark. Click here to make a donation.

Support for the restoration of the Dr. Oliver Bronson House has come from New York State's Environmental Protection Fund, the Hudson River Bank & Trust Foundation, the John E. Streb Fund for New York of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the Gerry Charitable Trust, the Richard Hampton Jenrette Foundation, the Ellsworth Kelly Foundation, and the Ettinger Foundation.

The Dr. Oliver Bronson House is located on the grounds of the Hudson Correctional Facility. Enter the grounds through the entrance on Worth Avenue and follow the signs to the house.
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The City Budget for 2016

Sounding as if he were still campaigning and speaking in a voice that seemed unnecessarily loud, Mayor William Hallenbeck presented the proposed budget for 2016--the work of the BEA (Board of Estimate and Apportionment, made up of the mayor, the city treasurer, and the Common Council president)--to the Common Council this evening, in a session that was supposed to take ten minutes but lasted twice as long. Here are the highlights. There will be a 1 percent increase in City property taxes (the state imposes a 2 percent cap on property tax increases). Two capital reserve funds will be established with money allocated from the fund balance: $600,000 for replacing the Ferry Street bridge, and $150,000 for a new tower truck for the fire department to be purchased in 2020, leaving $2.2 million in the fund balance.

The proposed 2016 budget can be viewed here. There will be a public hearing on the budget on Tuesday, November 17, at 6:30 p.m., immediately preceding the regular monthly meeting of the Common Council.
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Excuses, Excuses . . .

Please bear with me. I'm at the Board of Elections, helping with the hand count of the ballots from last Tuesday's election. There should be a new Gossips post, however, by late afternoon or early evening.

Election Gamesmanship

It's a time-honored Hudson tradition to try to get your name on the ballot as many times as possible. This year, as has regularly happened in the past, some of the Democratic candidates reappeared on the Working Families line, and most of the Republican candidates appeared again on the Conservative and Independence lines.

The most memorable example of party line acquisitiveness happened back in 2003, when one of Rick Scalera's minions commandeered Linda Mussmann's independent Bottom Line Party line, forcing her to create another independent party, the Fair Deal Party, to run against him that year.

Back in the day of lever voting machines, having the same person appear several times in the same column didn't matter much. The machine didn't let the voter flip more than one lever in a column, forcing voters to decide, before opening the curtain, on which party line they wanted to vote for a given candidate. With our current system of voting, voters can, and often do, fill in the circle beside the name of the candidate of their choice every time that name appears on the ballot. It's only when the ballot is fed into the machine that an error message warns that multiple votes have been cast for the same candidate. The voter then has the choice of casting the ballot as is and having the vote go to the candidate on the first line on which his or her name appears, or having the machine spit the ballot back out, returning it to the election inspectors to have them mark it "SPOILED," and getting a new ballot to mark correctly.

There are presumed advantages to cross endorsements, as they are called. If a candidate loses a major party primary, having a second party endorsement ensures the candidate's name will still appear on the ballot in the general election. That advantage is iffy though. It's impossible to recall any candidate in the past twenty-two years in Hudson ever winning on a second party line after losing a major party primary.

Once in a while, having your name appear multiple times on the ballot does pay off, as it did this year in the Fourth Ward. Running for Fourth Ward alderman, Lauren Scalera, daughter of Rick Scalera, past master of getting his name on the ballot as many times as possible (his name appeared three times on the Fifth Ward ballot this year, even though he was running unopposed for Fifth Ward supervisor), managed to get her name on the ballot three times: on the Democratic, Republican, and Independence party lines. (She'd tried for four times, but her Conservative Party petition was thrown out because it gave as her address her father's address in the Fifth Ward instead of an address in the Fourth Ward, the ward she wanted to represent.)

Scalera, in her very first run for political office, got 108 votes on Election Day, besting incumbent Fourth Ward alderman Alexis Keith by 13 votes. Quite an achievement for a newcomer to politics, but one has to wonder if the format of the ballot, which is dictated by a host of apolitical considerations, influenced the outcome. In Column 9, the names of three candidates appeared: Alexis B. Keith (Democratic), Derrick Smart (Republican), and Rich "Trixie" Volo (Working Families). In Column 10, only one name appeared, three times: Lauren Scalera. Although there is a single heading over the two columns with the direction "Vote for Two," one wonders how many voters, accustomed to voting for one candidate in each column, thought they had to choose one in Column 9 and one in Column 10 and voted for Scalera because she was the only candidate in Column 10. We'll never know.
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Dereliction of Environmental Duty in New York

The following is an editorial by Gidon Eshel, environmental consultant and Research Professor of Environmental Physics at Bard College. 

As the Skelos-Silver spectacles unfold in Manhattan, Albany culture of pervasive, mostly legal corruption will be on prominent display. Given the rarity with which sanitizing light shines on this culture, an exhaustive examination seems appropriate. And few aspects of this culture deserve a closer examination than the crucial yet rarely discussed handling of the money-energy-environment confluence by the Cuomo administration.

Because of its aging, decrepit infrastructure, New York is by far the most prominent state currently in immediate need of rethinking its power delivery system. The century old model—relatively few power plants supplying virtually all customers via a highly centralized network we call “the grid”—is outdated. Modern alternatives that seamlessly integrate recent advances in hardware, network analysis, engineering, material science, and cyber security with novel business models that best accompany the new infrastructure are well overdue. States dominating the race to shape the necessary once-a-century conceptual leap will lead the future industry, and enjoy its windfalls. States opting instead to expand existing realities, in space or time, deprive their citizens of rare economic, environmental and power democratization opportunities.

The New York Public Service Commission (PSC), the Governor appointed body overseeing utilities, has indeed proposed several transmission projects. Key among those is an addition of about one gigawatt to existing north-south transmission along the Hudson Valley. Unfortunately, the proposal is deeply flawed. With no element that wasn’t commonplace in 1950, it systematically ignores any recent addition to the modern utility toolbox, thus expanding outdated realities in both space and time. While adding under 5 percent of typical downstate peak loads, the project also raises serious regional security and environmental concerns.

Most puzzling, the project is neither needed nor stands to deliver societal benefits. The PSC has offered two rationales for the project, neither even remotely persuasive.

First, the PSC invoked enhancing downstate reliance on upstate wind energy. Yet while upstate wind resources are pedestrian at best, they are superb off Long Island. If you are serious about wind, you go offshore (as Massachusetts is doing), and simultaneously minimize transmission losses because eastern populations are overwhelmingly coastal.

Second, the PSC cited congestion mitigation, the need to subsidize increased power costs during peak demand. This is illogical. Most times the grid capacity is only 50 to 60 percent tapped, with enormous capital idling nearly all the time only to accommodate a few hours a year of peak load. Congestion costs are therefore a simple market control limiting the inefficient use of a scarce resource, power during peak demand. They require no “mitigation.”

In pursuing nearly pure fossil based, decidedly 20th century unneeded project, New York is sadly turning its back on past accomplishments and foregoing leadership in the New Grid race, futilely clinging instead to the old model's last gasp. Absent course correction, New York’s energy efficiency will continue to slip, its choicest agricultural lands will be critically compromised, and state ratepayers will be saddled with upfront costs in the billions, and with hundreds of millions of additional annual operational costs. With energy research shunning the state, and meager energy modernization budgets shrinking (under 1.5 percent of the state budget and falling), New York's industry and budget crunched research universities will be reduced to idly watching their counterparts in states with more enlightened environmental leadership.

Whether standard Albany cronyism or simple incompetence, this is terrible for New York’s future. Yet notwithstanding fictional websites or languishing campaign promises, and despite New York’s national prominence—second to California alone in number of scientific papers, National Science Foundation grants, or patents granted, and the third highest GDP contributor—New York is already environmentally limping.

Wind plus solar account for 3.6 percent of total generation in New York to California’s 15 percent, and the percentage of New York households with Smart Meters, which allow customers to sell renewable power they generate to their utility, improving return on clean energy investment, is less than a third of California’s. Bleaker still is the share of “green” jobs in private sector employment. With neighboring Vermont and Pennsylvania leading nationally with 3 to 4 percent, New York‘s 1.7 percent is 39th, comfortably below Texas’ 2.1 percent. While in green jobs share in total employment New York fares better, its 3 percent is handily bested by Vermont’s 4.4 percent or even Idaho’s 3.7 percent.

These failings are not an accident, but a collaborative executive-legislative environmental surrender. The employment benefits of energy efficiency and environmental legislation add economic dimensions to this refusal to lead.

Given these failures, and with Albany subject to rare scrutiny, key questions beg for answers.

Why is New York so firmly behind a project that lacks any cogent rationale, that is devoid of any technical merit or novelty, that is environmentally ruinous, and that offers nothing more than an ephemeral life support for a dying model? If a two billion dollar deal is about to be sealed on our behalf, a deal that harms ratepayers in New York but handsomely benefits a few utilities that would rather extort than renew, why are the considerations that led to the deal shrouded in such secrecy? What mechanisms, if any, are there to ensure that designs and bids are selected based on merit alone? And more broadly, with its almost unparalleled human and fiscal capital, and with the enormous industrial business opportunities national environmental leadership confers, why is New York under Cuomo insisting on steadily degrading environmental performance while actively avoiding the national environmental leadership with which the state human capital is so eminently consistent?

With Albany culture firmly on the defense, the coming months may offer some answers.

Click here to make your comment to the Public Service Commission.

Election Watch

The hand count of the ballots--all the ballots in Columbia County--begins today, and Gossips will be there . . . counting.

The Incredible Beauty We Enjoy in Hudson

According to the old idiom, the early bird catches the worm, but on the southern edge of Hudson, the early riser may be treated to this.

John Cody captured this extraordinary landscape painted by the light from the rising sun.
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In Memoriam: Albright Harrell

Washington Square Park, in front of the courthouse, was where I first met Albright and encountered him most often through the years. He was enormously fond of my dog William, and I suspect he thought of me mostly as the woman who walked William. 

Lynn Davis and Rudy Wurlitzer knew Albright far better than I. Lynn provided this photograph of Albright, and Rudy the remembrance that follows.

On November 2nd, Hudson lost a beloved figure when Albright Harrell passed away. Having lived in Hudson for over thirty years, Albright was known throughout the eccentric fabric of Hudson street life for his sartorial splendor from top to bottom, in polished shoes and immaculate, well tended wardrobe, as well as for his love of jazz, soul music, gardening, along with a nourishing meal with old friends. He will be deeply missed by all that knew and loved him.

How Did This Happen?

Yesterday, 286 people voted for Victor Mendolia in the race for Common Council president, in spite of the fact that Mendolia had withdrawn from the race more than two months ago. There have been demands to know why his name still appeared on the ballot and whose fault it was. The explanation is that New York State Election Law establishes a deadline for candidates to withdraw in order to have their names removed from the ballot, and that deadline had already passed when Mendolia announced, on August 21, that he was dropping out of the race.

There are rumors that phone calls were made on the eve of the election urging people to vote for Mendolia. If that actually happened, it's very disturbing. It suggests that a deliberate attempt was made to sabotage Tom DePietro's chances by encouraging people who might have been inclined to vote for him to throw away their votes by voting for someone who was out of the race and who had given his support to DePietro.

There are many troubling things about this outcome, not the least of which is, as Seth Rogovoy has pointed out, that significantly more voters did not vote for Claudia DeStefano than did. The combined votes of Mendolia and DePietro total 771 to DeStefano's 574 votes. More disturbing than the possibility of having a Common Council president that about 60 percent of the voters did not opt for is the fact that 286 voters were so uninformed as to vote for someone who wasn't actually running.

But this may be nothing new in Hudson. Someone told me a story yesterday that I have yet to confirm, but, with that caveat, it's worth sharing anyway. Back a half-century or so, a mayoral candidate died before an election. There wasn't time to recruit a new candidate or to remove his name from the ballot, and remarkably, he won. In that case, there was probably a special election to select a new mayor. In this case, unless there are enough votes for DePietro among the 220 absentee ballots to close the 89-vote gap (and there very well may be), Hudson will have to live with the consequences: a Council president that 60 percent of the voters didn't vote for and who is of a different party from both the majority of the Council and the mayor.
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About Tonight's Outcomes

Seth Rogovoy reports on today's election: "Hamilton Likely Winner as Hudson Mayor Hallenbeck Sharply Rebuked at Polls."

Photo Seth Rogovoy

Election Results

The preliminary election results--before the hand count verification and counting absentee and affidavit ballots--is reported on the Hudson City Democrats website. Go there for the details, but here are the highlights:

Hamilton           740

Hallenbeck       704

Remember to Vote Today

Courtesy Hudson FORWARD

See you at the polls!

Waterfront Watch

Last month, A. Colarusso & Son submitted an application to the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation to stabilize the shoreline and replace the bulkhead at what is sometimes known as the "deep water dock." Timothy O'Connor, of the South Bay Task Force, predicts that what is proposed would "permanently and profoundly alter a shore of the Hudson River in the City's South Bay." Today, on imby.com, he provides evidence that the land beneath the bulkhead Colarusso proposes to replace does not belong to them but instead belongs to the State of New York. He also makes an appeal to everyone to request an extension to the public comment period for the project, which is now scheduled to end on Friday, November 5: "Submit a public comment: The Colarusso bulkhead is State-owned."    

COPYRIGHT 2015 CAROLE OSTERINK

Navigating Tomorrow's Election

Tomorrow is Election Day. The polls are open from 6 a.m. until 9 p.m. The polling sites in Hudson are as follows:

First, Second, & Third Wards 

St. Mary's Academy, Allen and Third Streets

Fourth Ward

County Office Building, 401 State Street

Fifth Ward

Central Fire Station, 77 North Seventh Street

If you are uncertain in which ward you are registered and where you should vote, click here to find out.

In the past, finding the polling site where you are supposed to vote has often been the biggest challenge. This year, finding the candidates you want to vote for may be a greater challenge. In the race for Common Council President, a candidate who has withdrawn from the race appears twice on the ballot. To find the Democrat-endorsed candidate Tom DePietro, you have to go past the two appearances of Victor Mendolia's name (he withdrew from the race back in August) all the way down to Row I. 

The ballot for Fourth Ward voters presents another challenge. There are four candidates for the two alderman positions, and those candidates appear in two columns on the ballot. The problem is that people accustomed to voting for one candidate in each column might think that the same rule applies here as well. It does not. 

  

You can vote for two candidates in the first column. You can vote for one candidate in the first column and one candidate in the second column. The only thing you cannot do is vote for two candidates in the second column because there is only one candidate in that column.

An election can be won or lost by a single vote. See you at the polls!

COPYRIGHT 2015 CAROLE OSTERINK

Eleventh Hour Prep for the Mayoral Election

Two days from now, if you haven't already voted, you'd better rush to the polls. You'll only have a few hours left.

Meanwhile, in the eve of the day before Election Day, if you missed last Wednesday's debate, or if you just want to remind yourself of what the candidates had to say about particular issues, the video of the debate can now be viewed online at tiffanyformayor.com.

There was a camera malfunction at the end of the debate, so the closing statements of both candidates have been omitted. As a consequence, you will not be able to hear incumbent Mayor William Hallenbeck declaring, before the 2016 budget has been presented to the Common Council or approved by the legislative body, that he kept the tax increase for 2016 at 1 percent (the state imposed cap is 2 percent), or challenger Tiffany Martin Hamilton promising, "What you will not get from me is intellectual or ethical bankruptcy."
COPYRIGHT 2015 CAROLE OSTERINK

Election Day 1915

A hundred years ago, Election Day was on Tuesday, November 2. On the ballot that year was a referendum to amend the New York State Constitution to allow women to vote. On the eve of the election in 1915, this item appeared in the Hudson Evening Register.

WOMAN'S SUFFRAGE.

Why They Will Vote for Suffrage.

Prominent New York men have issued the following statement:

"On Tuesday, November 2nd, the legally qualified voters of New York will decide whether or not the constitution of the State is to be so changed as to allow women to vote on the same terms as men.

"The questions are essentially those which have arisen whenever suffrage has been granted to any group of people. The world has tried various forms of exclusive government for a long time, and is trying some of them still, but the march is rapid toward universal freedom, and toward the participation in government of all intelligent adults. In the United States that belief in liberty has always been strong, and it is stronger to-day than ever before.

"The emancipation of women is feared by some because they think it threatens the home and those virtues which center around it. When woman asks the vote, she merely asks to keep up with her own work after it has left the house and gone into the community. She gladly admits that her place is in the home, and adds that the home is everywhere.

"In twelve American states women have been voting for periods ranging from one [Montana and Nevada] to forty-six years [Wyoming]. Everywhere the gain has been appreciable. The opinion of enlightened businessmen, statesmen, editors and careful women is overwhelming. And in foreign countries, in many of which the experiment has been fully tried, there is the same preponderance of opinion. No homes are broken up, no reckless legislation is passed, no women desert cradles in order to become politicians. But on the other hand there is a general toning up and liberalizing of life, an improvement in women themselves, and a distinct gain in legislation along such lines as especially affect children, women in industry, morals and municipal efficiency.

"We, the signers of this statement, declaring our intention to vote for the amendment, belong to various political parties, but we are united in our desire to have our state true to the fundamental principle of democracy. We believe that a people is greater when it follows gladly and bravely its underlying convictions than when its political life is inertia and causeless timidity. We believe it is bad for democracy to put a check on the aspirations of a large portion of its citizens. We believe that women should vote, and that the community will derive an appreciable advantage when they do vote."

The statement was signed by Jacob Gould Schurman, the president of Cornell University; Adolph Lewisohn, an investment banker, mining magnate, and philanthropist; Herbert Parsons, a former Republican congressman from New York; Charles L. Guy, a lawyer and justice of the New York Supreme Court; William A. Prendergast, comptroller of the City of New York; John Mitchell; Egburt E. Woodbury, New York attorney general; John K. Sague, delegate to the Democratic National Convention in 1916; Robert Adamson, New York City fire commissioner; Samuel Untermyer, lawyer, civic leader, and millionaire who established Untermyer Park in Yonkers; Frederick M. Davenport, Progressive candidate for governor in 1914; Dudley Field Malone, collector of the Port of New York; Norman Hapgood, writer, journalist, editor, and critic; William G. Willcox, president of the New York City Board of Education; Samuel McCune Lindsay, president of the Academy of Political Science at Columbia University; James Lees Laidlaw, president of the Men's League; Ogden M. Reid, owner of the New York Herald Tribune; Frederic C. Howe, commissioner of immigration for the Port of New York; George A. McAneny, newspaperman and president of the New York City Board of Aldermen; Charles A. Beard, historian and chair of politics and government at Columbia University.

The amendment failed in 1915, but it succeeded two years later, in 1917, making New York one of the fifteen states that already had full suffrage when the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was passed in 1920.
COPYRIGHT 2015 CAROLE OSTERINK

On the First Day of the Return of Standard Time

Stash your zombie gear and grab your tweeds (and your bicycles). The fourth annual Tweed Ride, organized by Lisa Durfee, proprietress of Five & Diamond, is happening today.

The ride begins at 3 p.m. at the western end of Warren Street, beside the Chamber of Commerce building at 1 North Front Street, and proceeds for three miles through the streets of Hudson. A rain date has been set for November 8, but it's not likely it will be needed. The weather forecast on WAMC just predicted that any chance of rain would end at 2 p.m., at which time the sun would come out and the temperature would rise to 60 degrees.
COPYRIGHT 2015 CAROLE OSTERINK