PHOTOILLUSTRATION CONTRIBUTED BY A DOWNTOWN READER
To fully unravel Linda Mussmann’s recent rants about trucks and the Waterfront unfortunately requires some frank talk and hard truths. Here’s some of the backstory:
The real reason that Linda’s posturing so aggressively lately about the issue? The TSL director (and newfound downtown real estate speculator) is hoping people in her neighborhood will forget her central role in allowing the trucks to get there in the first place.
This traffic began in earnest on Linda's watch, when she was Waterfront chair. Instead of moving to stop it, she met privately and unpreparedly with lawyers from Holcim (then still called SLC). Though having denounced the company as reckless and untrustworthy for years, she seemed flattered that they’d talk with her.
Shortly thereafter, Hudson was stunned by Linda’s announcement of a sweetheart Waterfront plan for the company—which at the time was actively debating whether to sell their Columbia County properties.
Instead, they were emboldened to stay, and even to push the envelope in the wake of their 2005 Greenport defeat.
In late 2006 before this all went south, I met with Linda, then-Council President Rob O’Brien, and city attorney Cheryl Roberts (now also Linda's real estate lawyer of record) in her office at TSL, where she preferred to do much of her politicking. I had advised Linda that previous summer not to meet with SLC/Holcim without understanding the terrain thoroughly, reasonable advice that she ignored. And as predicted, they ate her alive.
At the time of that meeting at her office, Linda and Cheryl fully recognized that the City had tools to deal with the growing truck issue on Columbia Street. A lawsuit might be threatened by Holcim, but that was probably a bluff, and such a case was winnable. Yet as was so typical of my extensive interactions with Linda whenever an obstacle was encountered, an attitude of defeatism and even victimhood kicked in: It's too hard; Claudia and I are tired; we're too old for this; Quintin [Cross] and Charlie [Butterworth] have the Mayor's ear; I’ll be asked to resign any day now; everyone's against us; and so on.
In another meeting several weeks later at Peter Jung’s house (again with O’Brien present, though not Roberts) Linda yelled and cried and stamped her feet. But by the end she promised to include in the Waterfront Plan two options—one with Holcim, another showing the possibilities without them. Then I had a quiet and amicable dinner with Linda and Claudia across the street at Baba Louie’s.
It was our last real conversion, because “Mussmann” (as Linda often refers to herself, theactrically, in the third person) broke that simple promise, to restore balance and good faith to the process. Rather than embracing a forward-looking vision that would "sunset" the decades of conflict at the Waterfront, she acted to ensure further strife—and to keep herself at center stage.
Her actions since then have been wholly protective of Holcim, the Swiss-owned company which is the sole the cause of this environmental justice problem. She is trying to use the people of downtown Hudson as human shields to cover up her own complicity. The cynicism of such grandstanding is stark indeed.
Get the trucks off Columbia and the Waterfront has been the unified message of thousands of commenters from Allen to State Street for five years now. The Mussmann Plan has stood in the way of that happening. To those who have followed this issue carefully, it looks an awful lot like “Mussmann” doesn't want such a resolution—one which would satisfy 98% of Hudson residents and businesspeople—unless Holcim first gets its pound of flesh.
One last small suggestion for Linda: The next time the Bread & Puppet folks are invited to perform at TSL, please be sure to inform them of your newly-adopted belief that the natural world must be sacrificed to human greed, with no other options either within or outside that constricted, pro-corporate box. The Vermonters will surely be interested in the false choices you have been presenting to the public locally, while keeping up the pretense of red-diaper radicalism at the old Columbia Street bakery.
