SamPratt.com: Counties

139 entries categorized "Counties | Columbia"

March 26, 2011

Population Changes, 2000-2010

As promised, at the end of this post is a chart comparing the results of the 2000 and 2010 Census results by municipality in Columbia, Greene, and Dutchess Counties. Or, you can download the data as a PDF by clicking here. This table includes the raw numbers, the raw change in population, and the percentage change for each town (or city). This doesn’t include separate breakdowns for villages and other subdivisions within each town.

In presenting these simple comparisons, it should be noted that population figures are some of the most commonly-misinterpreted statistics cited by politicians and planners. To really understand shifts in population, one needs to look at larger universe of data and trends.

For example, population declines are almost always interpreted as bad news by civic leaders. But say a town’s population goes down while its residents’ average income or local sales tax revenues go up—isn’t that an improvement overall? What if the percentage of children under 18 goes down, while property values go up, improving the teacher/student ratios in the local schools—wouldn’t that also be an improvement?

One also has to look beyond the bottom-line stats to see if some key statistical method has changed, such as no longer counting prisoners in the local population, as has occurred in Hudson. (Without the 500-odd prisoners from 2000, Hudson’s decline in population is actually quite modest, more like 4%.) Taking a look at the results below, one suspects that there was some major redefinition of the Census’ definitions or borders for the Town of Milan, which surely did not lose half its population in 10 years.

In any case, here’s the three-county chart:

March 7, 2011

Hudson 101: The Cement Plant Battle (Part 5)

[ Click for Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 ]

NOTE: This is the conclusion of a piece which originally appeared in last year’s environment issue of Our Town (the Columbia County quarterly), under the title The Bullet We Dodged: How the Cement War was Won.* I’m offering it here in several installments over the next week, in a somewhat expanded form, and with added visuals and links, both for those who lived through the tumultuous years of 1998-2005, and for others who moved to the area more recently—who may wonder what all the fuss was about...

THE FUN PART • Believe it or not, we did manage to find some fun in this deadly-serious fight; we never would have made it if we hadn’t. Printing up red “swat the plant” fly swatters. Painting signs in people’s backyards and barns with leftover latex and scrap wood, and plenty of beer. Puzzling out Tom Koulos’ sphinx-like letters-to-the-editor.

Poking fun at the more absurd pro-plant arguments—like the claim that more pollution would bring more rain for famrs by seeding clouds with dust particles, or that the giant stack would draw industrial tourists, just like the Paris sewers.

Opening the office for Winter Walk, with cookies and carolers. Rushing around during SLC balloon tests to spot the most devastating views of the dirigibles on 406-foot tethers.

Clamoring up scaffolding to hang giant murals and banners in the gym before the big benefit. There was always lots to do, and a lot of gallows humor. Naturally we would have traded it all away to be rid of the threat, and go back to the quieter lives we led before anyone ever heard of PM 2.5. But getting to know our neighbors and finding creative ways to stave off destruction was a challenge that brought out the personalities and talents of everyone involved.

LAST BUT THE OPPOSITE OF LEAST • I’ve still not mentioned the person whose involvement and contributions I can fairly say stood above all others—Hudson business owner (and bass player) Peter Jung.

For nearly seven years, despite the pressure to keep his own business afloat, Peter never said no when called upon for help, advice, or more of his time. I lost track of how many dozen times we loaded up his van with signs and flyers and posterboards— Jehovah’s Witnesses, he called us—to spend an afternoon in the house of another virtual stranger, soon to be a good friend, talking about the world’s driest subject, cement. We burned up the phone lines at all hours of the night, strategizing the group’s next moves, dealing with some mini-crisis within the ranks, or crafting a sharp response to the company’s latest nonsense.

Weekends and holidays became irrelevant; there could be no letting up until we won. Peter was not merely a terrific sounding board, but also brought along a relentlessly-positive outlook and a special knack for boiling complicated issues down to their essence. One of his favorite spiels, after I’d done an exhaustive presentation of the gory details of proposal, was: “If any of this technical mumbojumbo has you scratching your heads, I got a good one for ’ya—just take a drive across the river down Route 9W, from the Ravena cement plant down to the Catskill facility in Cementon. What convinced me to get involved was the devastation and misery that this industry has brought to those places...” Immersing ourselves in the particulars of Portland cement manufacturing was definitely not how any of us planned to spend the better part of a decade in the Hudson Valley, but Peter stuck with it through the exhilarating times and the exasperating, and for that I’m eternally grateful.

AS FOR YOURS TRULY • I’m not going to pretend that an all-consuming crusade which overwhelmed every waking hour of my life for nearly seven years—79 months, all without pay— was not something of a mitzvah.

Though that calling constantly put my name in the press and planted my feet in front of Senators and celebrities, it was seldom, if ever, glamorous.

This line of work entails walking around with a target on one’s back, a willingness to be a lightning rod and take a lot of flack—in part, so that others didn’t have to. It meant taking out the garbage and cleaning toilets in our first simple third-floor walk-up office, spending Saturday nights distilling deadly-dull applications and legal briefs into manageable summaries, checking and double-checking every organizational and factual and personal detail to make sure the cause wasn’t jeopardized by a slipup.

It meant being constantly on call and on guard, and living as virtuously as a monk—knowing that many eyes were on the lookout for any hint of scandal that could bring down the opposition. It also meant managing people’s anxieties and misguided brainstorms and freak-outs, pacifying those seeking assurance, and sometimes having to be the bad guy who pushed erratic or toxic members to the fringes of the fight. Yes, there were internal wars, even bitter rivalries within the ranks. But another part of the job was to keep uppermost in people’s minds that the real enemy was never our neighbors, even when we disagreed.

It meant constantly adapting to new twists, keeping a seemingly never-ending issue fresh, finding new angles. Life under the threat of SLC was a surreal continuum of writing, speaking, presenting, designing, fundraising, leafletting, convincing, cajoling, arguing, watchdogging, and barely ever leaving the 30-mile circle of towns around Hudson for years on end—because whenever you did, you’d wind up getting called back to handle some emergency.

The upside was not just the hope of securing the region’s safety and future; as a result of SLC’s greed, we all met more of our neighbors (and got more of an education) in seven years than we otherwise could have in seventy.

Even today, nearing the sixth anniversary of our victory, I still get stopped in the grocery store by a stranger who wants to thank me “for all that work you did.” My standard replies are “Well, I had a lot of help,” and “If I hadn’t stepped up to the plate, I trust that someone else would have.” Both of those replies I mean sincerely. I also know that stopping the plant was never a sure thing. On the contrary: There were thousands of ways to fail, and only a handful of ways to prevail. To win against the odds (with $60 million and the political establishment lined up against us like a firing squad) required every ounce of an entire community’s brain- and willpower.

My role was to gather, harness, and focus that immense collective energy.

So I’ve jotted down these sketches of the people who came along for the ride on our bandwagon—naming just a few of the countless spokes of a vast wheel—in the hope that whenever the next disastrously foolish idea comes along, as it surely will, someone may read this and realize it can be done: by extraordinary ordinary people like us, and you.

February 21, 2011

Hudson 101: The Cement Plant Battle (Part 4)

[ Click for Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 5 ]

NOTE: This piece originally appeared in last year’s environment issue of Our Town (the Columbia County quarterly), under the title The Bullet We Dodged: How the Cement War was Won.* I’m offering it here in several installments over the next week, in a somewhat expanded form, and with added visuals and links, both for those who lived through the tumultuous years of 1998-2005, and for others who moved to the area more recently—who may wonder what all the fuss was about...

THE CONVERTS • While much of the media and SLC tried to portray opponents as kneejerk reactionaries, for most, the process of opposing the plant involved a slow, steady loss of faith in the company—paired with increased trust in opponents’ credibility.

Claverack’s Mary Sanchez, who ran a lively and sometimes profane online chat site known as “Red’s Board”, described her change of stance in terms of the patience and decency of opponents’ responses:

People took the time to answer my questions in a civil and thoughtout manner. Their answers made sense—and—they could be verified with facts. I started to look back at my involvement with SLC. After reading all the information I had found (not been given—but found), both good and bad, I asked myself that question that Jesse continuously asks: “Why is SLC good for us?” I could not think of an answer... I got to thinking that big promises don’t always add up to big “keeps.”

It is my hope that some of the “pro-cement” folks will take some time to really really honestly think about this SLC project. Really think about this Santa Claus of a company promising you all you ever wished for. I do not believe that there can be a Santa Claus if there is no heart.

Santa Claus would never use people.

Santa Claus would never hurt people.

St. Lawrence Cement has no heart, and they use people. They prey on their feelings and they are good at bringing out the ugly in everybody.

It was also on Red’s Board that then-State Assemblyman Patrick Manning (R-Hopewell Junction) had his own epiphany about SLC.

Manning had bashed opponents at a Chamber of Commerce breakfast at Meadowgreens, then got an earful back from disappointed constituents.

He agreed to an hour online chat at Red’s, finally admitting that he would not want a project like SLC in his own town. Gathering his own facts, he consulted closely with doctors such as noted Cornell cancer researcher and Hillsdale resident Mitchell Gaynor, to understand the health implications of living near a major coal-burning facility, and then weighed in regularly and forcefully with State agencies against the plant. Another key public official, Hudson Planning Board chair and later President of the Common Council Michael Vertetis, began as a middle-of-the road plant proponent.

But Vertetis (unlike his former ally, Mayor Rick Scalera) was careful to maintain a civil relationship with plant opponents, and showed an interest in having the City conduct a proper review. At first, many of us assumed that Mike was proceeding cautiously only to ensure that a botched process wouldn’t open the door for a successful lawsuit. But over time, the heavy-handed tactics of SLC (in particular their belligerent attorneys, Bob Alessi and Tom West) tended to alienate more moderate supporters like Mike.

By keeping communication open with folks like Mike, our side maintained the possibility of his voting against SLC’s proposed Host Community Agreement, a package intended to buy the City’s support.

That in fact happened on the same day that Secretary of State Randy Daniels found the project violated New York’s Coastal Policies, dealing a crushing double-whammy to the project on April 19th, 2005.

THE BUSINESS COMMUNITY • Opposition needed to be rooted in more than just environmental arguments.

While some business leaders automatically supported the project without doing any due diligence, others took the time to gather facts and assess the situation. Farmers and realtors (including Steve Kingsley, who generously donated free office space when we were just getting our feet under us) were two early groups with a lot at stake, taking a stand against SLC as a threat to their livelihoods.

Germantowners Nancy Gordon and Paul Swedenburg, whose hightech company HAVE, Inc. is located in Hudson’s former Simpsonville neighborhood, were among the first to step out of ranks with those businesses falling in line behind SLC.

Before taking any position, they invited then-project managers Dirk Cox and Phil Lochbrunner to a discussion with me at their offices. They insisted on an open debate, with both sides present. After considering what they’d heard, Nancy and Paul issued a strongly-argued op-ed, setting forth precisely how the project would harm their business, and the commitment they’d made to employing local people. Richard Katzman, then a major employer in Hudson- Greenport, also gathered his own facts, and after losing confidence in the company, came out against it. He proceeded to underwrite the construction of a giant scale model of the plant, quarry and dock facility, and sponsored telephone polls (conducted by the same firm used by President Clinton and Mayor Michael Bloomberg) showing that by 2002, plant opponents had outnumbered supporters.

Toward the end of the fight, many of these same business leaders along with others such as Martina Arfwidson of FACE Stockholm, Don and Marnie MacLean of Thompson- Finch Farm, Deborah Bowen of The Inn at Green River, and David Rubel of Agincourt Press, worked with us to craft a Statement of Values for promoting greener, more sustainable development in the region: To ensure continued growth and stability, we need to protect our high quality of life. This includes a healthy environment and workforce, clean air and water, scenic and historic resources, and public enjoyment of our unique natural surroundings. [We conclude] that the overall scale, design, location and impacts of the St. Lawrence Cement facility proposed for Hudson and Greenport pose too great a risk of harming the health, quality of life, and economic viabililty of our region, and therefore it is not the right fit for our communities.

By the time this letter was presented to the State, more than 200 businesses representing over 1,150 full-time and another 450 part-time jobs in the area, had signed on. Their message was clear: in the mid-Hudson Valley, the fate of the environment and the economy are inextricably linked. We were fighting not only to stop something, but also to preserve the possibility of a brighter future.

THE EXPERTS • Citizens’ groups always are held to a higher standard of accuracy than slippery politicians. We knew we had to be painstakingly accurate in our public statements, and to back them up with full documentation and professional confirmations by independent experts.

One such expert was living right under our noses in Claverack: toxicologist and EPA consultant Travis Kline (son of Pamela Kline, founder of Traditions). Kline was asked to speak at an SLC forum, set up by the company in hopes that they’d control the dialogue and make opponents appear marginal and ill-informed.

But the opposite occurred, as major public attendance forced the events to move to a large Columbia-Greene Community College auditorium. As panelists were peppered with tough questions from the well-prepared audience, they were emboldened to step outside the limited scripts SLC expected they’d stick to. Much to the company’s chagrin, Travis made a devastating presentation about the health risks of volatile organic compounds and products of incomplete combustion resulting from the burning of impurity-laden limestone and coal. Calling for a multi-disciplinary risk assessment and test burns, he warned that the existing regulatory process was inadequate to protect residents from harm. By his second forum appearance, SLC had lost control of the dialogue, causing some of its supporters to lose their cool. Four “young guys feeling their oats,” sporting the company’s free blue tshirts, attempted to menace Travis, who was escorted out of the hall for his own safety by State Police Investigator and forum member Gary Mazzacano. These occasional and pathetic attempts at intimidation only made SLC look worse.

While SLC expected opponents to bring nothing to the table, impressive experts were retained to back up our positions during official reviews.

One day in 1999, Hudson art dealer John Davis had a visit from a loyal client named Gabe Miller. Gabe spotted one of our flyers on John’s desk and said: “You really don’t want something like this in your community. I know, because I build these things.” An NYU chemistry professor and senior engineer at Camp Dresser & McKee, among the largest international industrial consultants based in the Northeast, John arranged for Gabe to meet me for lunch at the St. Charles Hotel, whereupon we became the first environmental group ever represented by CDM. His firm’s work was supplemented by Dr.

Alex Sagady, a pit bull of an engineer from Michigan, who represents citizens groups at discount rates. Alex’s preferred method of working was to file Freedom of Information requests with State agencies, then fly to Albany to camp out in the offices of the Department of Environmental Conservation, where he’d invariably find lots of useful information that bureaucrats, such as Project Manager Michael Higgins, had previously “overlooked”.

As our network expanded, similar finds began emerging on a regular basis. One after another, experts came to Hudson to educate our membership in public presentations: Neil Carman of the Lone Star chapter of the Sierra Club, Florida kiln activist and elected official Penny Wheat, Downwinders at Risk leaders Jim Schermbeck and Katy Hubener, Bonnie Sanders of South Camden Citizens in Action. Sanders, who died the following year, was particularly moving as she talked about her neighborhood’s experience with SLC: “They spread around a lot of promises of jobs and grants for local organizations. They led our church pastors to think that this company would do good for minority residents.

Once they had their permits, we learned that all they cared about was making money. We only gained a very small number of jobs. What we ended up with was pollution that made my grandchild, other kids and our seniors fight for breath, and truck traffic so heavy it shook house foundations. [But] even if SLC stood behind their promises, the hardships wouldn't have been worth it. You can't trust this company, and you don't want them in your area.” The Allies From the start, we knew we couldn’t go it alone. The fight had to be expanded to the whole Valley and into the downwind states of New England. After a lonely couple of years, one by one, more than three dozen groups stood with us—some contributing just their names, others biting off major pieces of the legal fight.

During one difficult winter meeting at City Hall in Hudson, a group of about five young, purposeful people in outdoor gear strode into the Council Chambers: Alex Matthiessen and his Riverkeeper crew had docked their boat and come up Warren Street like the cavalry to save the day.

Meanwhile, at his office in Pittsfield, my all-time favorite conservation activist George Wislocki, founder of the Berkshire Natural Resource Council, used his decades of contacts and stockpile of credibility to convince EPA’s New England Regional Administrator to issue a stern letter against SLC—and her support was echoed by the Massachusetts DEP and Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal. Across the river, Athens officials such as Andrea Smallwood and Chris Pfister opened up a western front against SLC by passing a Local Waterfront Revitalization Plan and submitting strong letters cautioning against Hudson impairing the State’s investment in the Village’s newly-restored park and docks along the Hudson.

THE GO-TO GUYS & GALS • But for all the specialized skills and thoughtful analysis that go into long grassroots battles, possibly the most valuable asset of a citizens’ organization is to have plenty of worker bees ready to swarm out of the hive at a moment’s notice. We weren’t lacking in that department. Whether it was an urgent mailing to get stuffed and stamped, or rounding up auction items for our next benefit party, or needing a small crowd to assemble for an unexpected meeting, or volunteers to help set up for an event, people gave generously and endlessly of their time: Warren Collins, Fran DeGrazia, Bob and Monica Mechling, Diana Jelinek, Dick Donovan, Claire Oravec, Chloe Zerwick, Jennifer Arenskjold, Marty Davidson, Martha Lane, Carole Clark, Hillary Hillman... This list could go on forever, and still be missing important contributions.

We also lost some of our most valued soldiers over the years: the hilariously wise Cassandra Danz (a/k/a Mrs. Greenthumbs); the fearless Bud Mann; artist Hannah Williamson; Phyllis Herbert, who never threw out a single article about the plant; and the ever-ready Vinny DeGrazia, our favorite bartender and raconteur. Their contributions live on each time anyone looks toward Becraft and still sees a hill, rather than a 1,200-acre hole in the landscape.

NEXT UP: The conclusion of this five-part series. Click here to continue...

February 18, 2011

Is demography destiny?

Clearly, Hudson and Columbia County have changed a great deal in the past decade. But how, exactly?

The 2010 Census figures for Columbia County still aren’t available. But one can get some sense of how a place has changed over the past decade by taking a look at shifts in its voter registration... Below are some simple observations based on a comparison of the Hudson voter rolls in 1999 vs. today in 2011:

• The total number of Hudson voters dropped* by 142 registrants between 1999 vs. 2011.

(Note: In the middle of that decade, voter rolls temporarily swelled over 3,800; but that included a large number of voters who proved to be “inactive,” i.e. still on the rolls but not actually still living in Hudson. These are slowly weeded out by the Board of Elections via mail checks and occasional challenges by candidates.)

• Enrollment in the Democratic party went up by 56% and Independence Party** rolls increased by 93%—while the number of Republicans fell -25% and Conservative enrollment dropped a whopping -73%,

• 51% of all voters in Hudson today have only been registered locally for 10 years or less.

• Meanwhile, only 17% have been registered for 20 years or more.

• The balance of voters in the various Hudson wards has shifted somewhat:

• In 1999, 56% of Hudson voters were female. Today, that number has evened out slightly, falling to 54%.

• 14% (approximately 1 in 7) of those registered to vote have never actually done so.

* Drops in population or voter enrollment are often lamented as a sign of a community in decline, but this analysis often proves too simplistic. For example: Imagine a house in terrible condition, owned by a large extended family which hasn't paid its property tax bill for several years, who have a host of “fence disputes” with their neighbors, and who rent out the basement apartment to known crack dealers for cash. The house gets sold, the back taxes get paid, the problem neighbors use the remaining proceeds to move to another town, and a retired couple renovates the house—in the process, pouring many dollars into the pockets of local contractors such as roofers, electricians, plumbers and painters. In that scenario, a formerly-derelict house is back on the tax rolls, back in good condition, and lived in by people who care about their surroundings. So while the population of the block may have decreased, the block and the City would appear to be better off.

** Many who consider themselves "independent" voters mistakenly enroll as a member of the confusingly-named Independence Party, which is actually a political organization. Those with no party affiliation are recorded by the Board of Elections as "NOP" or "NPE" voters (for No Party or No Party Enrollment).

February 11, 2011

Hudson 101: The Cement Plant Battle (Part I)

At the post office not so long ago, I ran into the internationally-respected lighting engineer Howard Brandston. We hadn’t seen each other much since the end of the cement fight, and embraced like soldiers who once had fought side-by-side in the trenches of World War I.

Like thousands of others, Howard and his wife Melanie had given themselves selflessly to the cement plant fight—passing out signs and gathering signatures, holding meetings at their home, speaking at public meetings, writing detailed and forceful letters to the papers and agencies, raising and donating money to a legal defense fund, helping to craft our strategy, getting their friends involved, and much more.

Seeing Howard again made me consider forming an organization called the VLW—for Veterans of Local Wars, to gather the survivors of the pitched battles which consume this part of the Hudson Valley every decade or so:

In the 1970s, citizens on both sides of the river challenged a nuclear plant proposed across the river in Cementon.

In the ’80s, members of SHOW (Save Hudson’s Only Waterfront) questioned the wisdom of letting Octane Petroleum build a vast refinery at the river’s edge. During that same decade, other activists were busy investigating solid waste incinerators slated for Stockport and Stuyvesant.

In the ’90s, concerned residents exposed a plan for a toxic waste processing plant at the site of the old glue factory in Hudson’s South Bay—since redeveloped as the Basilica.

And between 1998 and 2005, first residents from Hudson, then from Columbia County, then from all over the Hudson Valley, and eventually countless downwind neighbors from the Berkshires to Maine, all mobilized to challenge the massive, coal-burning, $300 million St. Lawrence Cement “Greenport project.”

During that nearly seven-year period, it became almost impossible to have a conversation that did not turn eventually to the dryest topic on earth—cement. Two documentary filmmakers who wanted to make a movie about Hudson during this time without mentioning “the plant” gave in, since everyone they interviewed wanted to talk about SLC. Soon enough, they made the cement war the focus of their PBS film, Two Square Miles.

Still, those who moved to the area after April 19th, 2005 may wonder why the plant was so controversial, and considered such a massive threat—not just to Hudson, but to the entire Northeast.

Dubbed “a new industrial city” by Moisha Blechman, the vast, sprawling complex would have featured a skyscraper-sized 40- story tower and a dozen other structures between 10 and 20 stories tall, atop Becraft Mountain, within a mile of the hospital, cemetery and thickly-settled neighborhoods.

From that 406-foot stack would have belched a pollution-laden plume extending as long as six miles, roughly the distance from Greenport to Philmont in a direct line.

This gun to our collective heads would have been loaded with 500 million pounds of coal annually, to pulverize limestone blasted from a 1,200-acre quarry nearly as large as the entire City of Hudson. “Alternative” fuels such as garbage, tires and hazardous waste could have been added to the cauldron— a side of incinerator to go with your cement plant.

The behemoth would have been connected to the Hudson waterfront by two miles of conveyor belts, through wetlands and across three major City entrances. At the waterfront, 700-foot-long Titanic-scaled HudsonMax barges would have constantly offloaded coal, slag, and gypsum, while onloading two million tons of finished cement each year.

Their wakes, fumes and noise would have endangered smaller craft on the river, and chased away residents trying to enjoy the adjacent public park. Meanwhile, back in Greenport, as many as 265 daily truck trips** would have serviced the main facility.

By SLC’s own admission, the plant sought permits to emit up to 20 million pounds of pollutants per year, including greenhouse gases such as nitrogen and sulfur dioxides, heavy metals and volatile organic compounds: arsenic, benzene, cadmium, chromium, lead, mercury and more.

The medical staff of Columbia Memorial Hospital, following the lead of Drs. Jeff Monkash, Ira Marks, Michael Brown, Steve Kaufman and Stu Kaufman, concluded that emissions of fine particulate matter (PM 10 and PM 2.5) would result in more asthma among local kids, more premature heart attacks among older residents, and higher incidences of cancer among the general population. The American Lung Association concurred, stating that:

The pollution belched by this coal-burning plant would not only trigger asthma attacks in children and cause serious respiratory problems in seniors with lung disease, it would put at risk the health of those of us who do not currently suffer from respiratory problems.

Worse still, citizens discovered that SLC and its Swiss-owned parent company Holderbank—now called Holcim—had an appalling track record of fines for pollution and price-fixing violations. Whatever promises the company was making, it had broken similar promises to other communities worldwide. (The company had also used slave labor in Europe during World War II, and actively profited in South Africa during Apartheid.)

Indeed, the plant wasn’t opposed only on environmental grounds. Over time, many business leaders and workers alike realized that the project would be the death of any sustainable local or regional economy. By the end, over 200 businesses representing over 1,000 jobs had signed on to the fight with a Statement of Values [PDF] explaining both their positive vision for a greeneer economy, and how SLC would that economy at risk.

To those who weren’t here, it must seem odd, even bizarre, that this colossally foolish idea wasn’t just dismissed out of hand. Yet when first proposed, the cement plant was considered a “done deal.” And none of the above details would have become known in time to stop the plant, if it hadn’t been for a cluster of fewer than 40 residents, who started to ask the tough questions avoided by the powers that be.

Before it was over, SLC had spent $58 million—over $1,000 per adult in Columbia County—to no avail. In the next installment of this piece on Monday, I’ll take a look at some history of local activism, and begin to explore how this massive industrial proposal was stopped against such long odds.

[ Click here for Part 2 ]

* Readers who want to read the full, original OT article as edited by Enid Futterman and designed by John Isaacs can download it as a PDF right away by clicking here. A full, week-by-week chronology of the fight can be found at Stop the Plant... I’m currently working on another article for the next issue of Our Town, on the topic of the local media.

** This number is not much different than the traffic now proposed through Hudson’s South Bay, which certain local leaders now say would require no permits; the Greenport proposal was subject to weeks of grueling hearings on traffic impacts, despite that Town having no zoning.

February 10, 2011

Jumped, or pushed?

Sources tell this site that in the wake of yesterday’s botched prosecution of a Hudson shooting case, Assistant District Attorney John Hillman is no longer working at the Columbia County D.A.’s office. So was he fired, or was he asked to resign?* (Or, as one local legal observer gibed, “Maybe he was promoted...”) Whatever the case proves to be, word is that anyone who takes the trouble to obtain a transcript of yesterday's proceedings before Judge Jonathan Nichols will be in for some lively reading, to say the least.

* It’s commonly assumed that the day one takes such a job, an undated letter of resignation is filed in the boss's desk drawer.

in Counties | Columbia, Law Enforcement | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

January 13, 2011

Predictable

There’s a curious letter in today’s Register-Star from Pierre Gontier, the former chair of the Columbia County Environmental Management Council (EMC). The letter praises Hilary Hawke for her reporting on the Harvard study of mercury levels among residents downwind of Lafarge.

Gontier coyly avoids saying what exactly he likes about the substance of the article, except that he found it more balanced, somehow, than other reports. But it’s not hard to guess what he’s driving at... Unlike most other articles on the topic, Hawke’s report for the Register repeatedly focuses on the notion that the Harvard report was “inconclusive.”

Other papers, such as the The Albany Times-Union, came away from the Harvard presentation with a very different impression: that the report had indeed found elevated mercury levels among residents of Ravena, which plays host to the Lafarge plant. By contrast with the Register’s insistent focus on doubts (which so delighted Gontier), the T-U’s headline and subhead read:

Town sees mercury spike

Blood, hair samples of people who live near the Lafarge plant raise health, safety concerns

Naturally, credible scientific researchers will always be careful to note that there are uncertainties in any topic of study more controversial than whether the earth orbits the sun. As such, the Harvard researchers clearly suggested that these elevated mercury levels have been pinpointed, more study to identify the source(s) should be done. Whether the culprit is the Lafarge stack—already acknowledged as one of the largest industrial emitters of mercury in all of New York State—is something that folks like Gontier probably would rather not find out.

Now, given his history of cheerleading for the cement industry in our area, Gontier’s praise for the Register’s preferred spin isn’t terribly surprising. During his tenure as EMC chair, the volunteer committee rarely met, and was made up almost entirely of representatives unlikely to question industry.

Gontier got himself in a bit of a tangle during the SLC review, when he sent a letter on Management Council stationery to Administrative Law Judge Helene Goldberger, endorsing the Greenport project in terms lifted pretty much verbatim from the company's own literature. Among his more absurd reasons for supporting the project? Because he was glad that the location would not result in a loss of "greenspace," even though the mining plan would result in turning hundreds of forested acres into vast, open pits.

But more than the absurdity of Gontier's arguments or the lack of originality in his wording, the main problem was that he'd never actually had the EMC research or vote upon taking a position on the project prior to sending his endorsement to the Judge. Indeed, during the course of the nearly seven-year controversy, the three dozen groups challenging the project were never invited by Gontier to present their research (which ultimately was ratified by State officials) to him or the EMC as a group.

When the provenance of this letter was then challenged in 2001, SLC’s attorney's hurriedly relayed a statement from Gontier to the Judge, saying that this endorsement was his own opinion, not that of the EMC—though without ever acknowledging the sleight-of-hand of submitting such puffery on official letterhead. (He was not heard from again in the remainder of the process, which lasted into 2005.)

On a slightly happier note, the EMC has become relatively more active and balanced since Gontier’s departure, for example issuing a 2009 report expressing concern about the increased use of outdoor wood boilers for heating.

December 22, 2010

Core Values

Columbia County’s own Harvest Spirits (makers of Core Vodka, et al.) are featured on the front of today's Times Dining section, in a story about specialty distillers in the Northeast. (Pictured here at Strongtree in Hudson.) Link here.

June 23, 2010

A Tea Party of One?

“Columbia County Tea Party endorses Gibson” read a recent headline in the Register-Star, referring to the candidacy of Republican Chris Gibson of Kinderhook who is challenging Scott Murphy of Glens falls for Congress this fall.

But who (or what) is the Columbia County Tea Party, exactly?

A search of New York State’s Campaign Finance Disclosure site does not turn up anything resembling a Columbia County Tea Party in its records—no authorized or non-authorized committee, no political action committee, nor any constituted party. Here’s what you get when searching for “Columbia” anywhere in the name of groups in their database:

The Reg-Star article indicates that the news of the endorsement came from “Ed Fertik of the Claverack Tea Party,” another purported political group not listed in the State’s registry of groups making election expenditures:

This absence of State filing (along with a little Google searching), suggest that at this point both “parties” exist primarily in the vivid imagination of Mr. Fertik—who lately has been submitting fire-breathing letters-to-the-editor of the Reg-Star. He’s thus far denounced everything from “hippie violence” to "Obamunism" to Our Town, The Claverack Quarterly—claiming he’s going to publish a competing magazine called Our Town Too.

Links from similarly tenuous Tea Party sites reveal that Mr. Fertik began a personal blog back in August 2009, publishing a grand total of 7 posts in the past ten months. Recently he began describing this blog as the “official” site of his Tea Party efforts. Fertik writes that since he started political operations 7 weeks ago, he has been “averaging about four new sympathizers for each week of our existence.”

So by Fertik’s own math, that would suggest that this “endorsement” of Gibson has, optimistically, the backing of 28 “sympathizers” plus Mr. Fertik himself. One can’t help wondering how many of those 28 are even registered to vote, and how much “sympathy” one has to express to be counted among the Tea Party ranks.

Now, citizen engagement in the political process is a good thing. It should be encouraged, and to that extent Mr. Fertik may be commended for wanting to participate—no matter how incoherent or outlandish his political views might be.

He may, however, want to get up to speed on campaign finance disclosure rules if he’s serious about political action. If he wanted to join in a common cause, we probably could agree that the State rules made by the Republicans and Democrats make it far too onerous for new political groups to get off the ground.

At the same time, one also wonders what the press standard should be for calling oneself a full-fledged political party and having such “endorsements” treated like real news. It's tempting to start a Columbia County Tree Party, and see if it receives the same treatment...

May 11, 2010

Axis of Taxes

Want to know what your new property tax assessment is? Looking for “comps” to plead your case before your local tax grievance board? Just nosy?

Well, the Columbia County Real Property Tax Service Agency has put up a search engine which allows anyone to search the current and proposed tax assessments of any property in the County at this link.

The technology is a little wonky, and takes some getting used to... You may need to fiddle a bit with your search terms to zero in on the right property. My suggestion is to choose your town from the pull-down menu of “Municipalities” up top, and then enter just the first word of your street name in the corresponding field. If multiple options are suggested, just ignore the pop-up menus and click “search” on these basic terms. Then check through the search results to find your place.

If you make your search too specific, the engine may miss the mark... For example, it has a low tolerance for variant spellings of stuff like “County Route 27” vs. “Cty. Rte. 27” vs. “Cty Rt 27” vs. “CR 27” (all of which I’ve seen used in various official records).

h/t to Carole Osterink at The Gossips of Rivertown for finding this first!

in Counties | Columbia, Planning & Land Use, Taxes | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

April 7, 2010

Hail, Columbia

This New York Magazine article gets written in some form every 10-15 years (I wrote one myself, in 1998)...

in Counties | Columbia, Media & Publishing | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

March 8, 2010

Kohl’s comfort

Hudson business owner Stefan Friedemann of Ornamentum has submitted the following letter to the local papers about the latest attempt by Kohl’s and Widewaters to secure a PILOT tax abatement plan from the IDA. Below is a preview of his piece for readers of this site. Their next appearance is this Friday (March 12th ) at 8 am at the County office building, 401 State Street.

MY VIEW
Stefan Friedemann, Hudson

I am a local business owner, and have an apartment that I rent out.

Where my business is concerned, I take for granted that if I don’t invest to make it interesting and appealing, I will lose customers.

The same is true with my rental apartment. I take for granted that if I don’t invest to make it attractive, I either won’t be able to find a tenant, or I will have to lower the rent until someone takes it.

But watching the folks running the Widewaters development, I have come to realize that there is another option.

It seems my business could have been a lot more lucrative if had followed Widewaters’ business plan. If I only I hadn’t built out my business in a unique and attractive manner, investing my own hard-earned capital to grow a customer base from far and wide… If only I hadn’t made the investment to create a cozy and energy-efficient apartment in order to attract a renter to help offset the ridiculously high tax burden of small, locally-owned businesses… If only I had created a generic business plan that made my business look like all the other cookie-cutter retail shops across the country, and kept my rental apartment unappealing to prospective tenants…

Had I only followed that path, I then could have gone to the County powers-that-be and demanded that they help make my business profitable. They would have helped me find a tenant by giving me tax subsidies. They would have increased the burden on other businesses and landlords that have similar products and the landlords that were silly enough to do the work without public assistance. This would have really given my business an edge in this economy.

I realize now that instead of working hard and investing my own money, I should have counted on the wisdom of Roy Brown and Art Baer instead. After all, they have come up with other such great ideas such as moving DSS away from the people who need it, or creating a transitional housing shelter in one of the county’s few historic hotels (in the heart of a growing and steadily developing small business district).

I know now that I should have relied on these leaders to pressure the Industrial Development Agency to divert the public’s tax dollars to making my substandard plan viable, even though it has nothing to do with Industrial Development. I only needed to threaten the County with the potential loss of imaginary career-building jobs and housing stock, and they would have fallen right in line (perhaps after a bit of wining and dining).

Widewaters had the chance to create something interesting – to create a shopping environment that was different from all the vacant mall spaces littering our American landscape. They could have gone the extra mile, as so many small business owners across the countrydo in order to stay afloat. They could have attracted business to sell products that are not already in the county – and in the case of Walmart, were already down the block.

Instead they chose a plan that was devoid of any character, just another strip mall development that will make Greenport look exactly like all the other badly planned towns across the country.

And they want us, the taxpayers and business owners of Columbia County to pay a little extra so that their rental properties are more desirable to prospective tenants, even after they repeatedly lied and threatened their way to the IDA meetings. So now Widewaters comes before the IDA again this Friday to ask once again for the tax breaks that they promised not to ask for. They come for a PILOT for Kohl’s, which they say will lead to another PILOT for TJ Maxx, which we can assume will lead to a third and fourth PILOT to help them fill other vacant properties.

That’s why I join the Chamber of Commerce in asking the IDA to once again reject tax breaks from Widewaters. Send them a message that there will be no further consideration of these applications, whether for 20 years, 15 or 5.

And if they aren’t able to find tenants for their rental properties, they should do what any other business owner in the country does: adjust their business plan to make their properties into something more desirable for tenants, without the benefit of unfair tax advantages taken from the pockets of other business owners and private citizens of Columbia County.

SamPratt.com