SamPratt.com

Iron Horse estate sale, Saturday and Sunday

The Iron Horse (formerly known as the State Grill before the crew from Nobody’s Fool replaced the sign) is holding an estate sale today, Saturday, from 10-4 pm, and again tomorrow morning.

Free pens with the legend “Stolen from Frank Martino’s Iron Horse” are available.

The bar is rumored to have been sold to the same couple which bought The Warren Inn, who apparently have also bought a house on Willard Place.

Above: My purchase, the scuffed cue ball from the pool table. Below: Frank Martino with Paul Newman and Melanie Griffith during the shooting of Nobody’s Fool; Frank and Sue with the crew of The Cake Eaters; phone numbers written on a kitchen staircase wall for taxi services and other Hudson bars.

Benson rebuffed: Third committee ratifies Airport decision

A third committee of the Board of Supervisors has now signed onto the decision earlier this week to move ahead with the “Porreca Plan” for the airport.

Finance Committee member Mike Benson of New Lebanon launched yet another last-minute campaign to derail the Plan’s momentum. (The Airport and Economic Development committees voted to advance it to the full Board earlier this week.)

Less than 24 hours before the meeting, Benson attempted to argue that the Porreca Plan, which would, slightly shorten the Ghent runway at the north end while lengthening it at the south end, was “go[ing] backward”—and somehow would “devalue a County asset.”

Benson, who missed some 75% of the meetings of the Airport Committee two which he was appointed, fired his salvo as usual via email. But Benson then skipped the actual meeting. Had he attended, he would have heard County comptroller Ron Caponera back up Airport chair Art Bassin in stating that the Porreca Plan would increase the airport’s value, not lessen it, as reported by Patti Matheney of GhentCANN who was present.

With all three key committees now in agreement, the resolution now proceeds to a vote in the next few weeks by the full Board of Supervisors. Will Benson try again to argue against it, and will he again use arguments he would have learned to be erroneous had he attended his meetings?

BREAKING: Airport committee approves ‘Porreca Plan’

By a vote of 4-1 this afternoon, the Columbia County airport committee approved the referral of the draft resolution known as the Porreca Plan to the full Board of Supervisors.

Chair Art Bassin, Ghent Supervisor Mike Benvenuto, Hillsdale’s Art Baer and of course Greenport’s John Porreca voted yes. Only David Crawford of Crawford Engineering voted no. Hudson Supervisor Sarah Sterling asked how it was that others of her colleagues seemed empowered to negotiate independently with Mr. Nero, specifying emails from Benson as an example.

Vehement plan opponent Mike Benson, Supervisor of New Lebanon, was absent—prompting audience questions about his whereabouts.

Crawford was challenged by the audience about his vote. These included questions from attorney Ken Dow as to why he would want the County to shut down a viable, established business (the golf course) and take more property off the tax rolls.

Crawford replied, none too convincingly, that he suspected that committee estimates of future tax revenues from Meadowgreens were too high, and that the funds spent would be primarily Federal and State monies. Bassin blasted this second argument as “silly,” given that such funds are also taxpayer-funded, and that the matter had already been hashed out repeatedly.

In a surprise, Meadowgreens owner Carmen Nero announced at the start of the meeting that he, too, supports the Porreca Plan and hopes to work with the County to preserve his ability to develop the remainder of his property adjoining the airport.

With Mahlon Richards of Richmor Aviation also on board in prior meetings, and members of the public applauding the vote today, that leaves Crawford and Benson as inexplicable holdouts. (Are they members of a competing golf club or something?) At 5 pm, County’s Economic Development committee was scheduled to hear a presentation by Ken Flood about the airport’s potential if the entire property were acquired instead. But Flood too now thinks the “private sectors” is a better vehicle for promoting airport-related businesses.

Doggone

According to two aldermen who had just left tonight’s meeting, the proposal to allow dogs in the Hudson Waterfront Park was shot down tonight by the Common Council meeting. Interestingly, 1st Ward Alderman Nick Haddad and his son Henry (now representing the 3rd Ward) were apparently on opposite sides of the issue, with the father in favor of dogs at the park, and son opposed.

Harney Hudson?

According to one well-placed source, the Harney & Sons tea company may be the next occupant of the huge North Bay factory building recently abandoned by Phoenix Hudson.

Since the departure of the Emsig Button factory in 2001, the building has seen a long series of potential suitors and short-term tenants come and go. Harney & Sons would presumably use the space for production, storage and distribution.

However, the rumor is somewhat tempered by the fact that the company has long been ensconced in Millerton (and founded over the State line in Salisbury). In addition to its flagship retail store and café, Harney & Sons already has over 150 employees and a 90,000-square-foot warehouse in Millerton. So put this in the wait-and-see file.

Blue Stores gutted by fire

Lance Wheeler is reporting that the historic Blue Stores inn at the corner of 31 and 9 in Livingston had a catastrophic fire at around 2 am last night... His video of the aftermath is at this link.

Claverack Creek

Greenport (NY).

Attorney blasts Reg-Star airport coverage

IMAGE: LinkedIn

Ken Dow, the former Columbia County Democratic Elections Commissioner and attorney representing neighbors of the airport in Ghent, has joined the ranks of those publicly criticizing the Register-Star’s incomplete and often slanted coverage of the issue.

Dow sent the following commentary to the Register this morning, regarding Joe Gentile’s latest stenography article, erasing most statements which would challenge the “official” storyline: 

This article gives an extremely misleading picture of what went on at the meeting. The article dutifully recites Mr. Benson's claims and talking points, but barely notes that the bulk of the meeting was one speaker after another—both members of the public and Supervisor members of the Airport Committee—questioning, criticizing, or downright ridiculing Mr. Benson's eleventh hour “proposals.”

The article does not mention that Mr. Benson's plan would require the elimination of the Meadowgreens Golf Course. That omission may be understandable, since Mr. Benson failed to mention that very undesirable aspect of his proposals, and it only came to light when raised by an audience member.

The article does not mention that meeting attendees sharply questioned Mr. Benson's remarkable feat of creating a plan that nearly copied a plan that has long been discussed and estimated by the Airport's long-time engineering firm to cost $3.38 million, except that Mr. Benson's two fantasy plans both called for buying more land than the $3.38 million plan and INCREASING the land acquisition costs by approximately $700,000 and $1,000,000, yet magically DECREASING the total costs to about $600,000 to $1,000,000 below the long-considered $3.38 million plan. What really had everyone rolling their eyes, however, was Mr. Benson's complete inability to explain how he was able to come up with these magical savings.

What really happened yesterday? Mr. Benson made a last-second attempt to derail the Airport Committee's work by offering fantasy "proposals" using made-up numbers that have the side effect of eliminating Meadowgreens, a local resource that is used and valued by hundreds, if not thousands, of local residents. Mr. Benson has had a pathetic attendance record at these Airport Committee meetings, blowing off his duties as a member and skipping all but one or two. It would have been far better if he had extended his record of absence for one more meeting and spared the Committee and public the nonsense he spewed to everyone at yesterday's meeting.

KENNETH J. DOW, ESQ.
Mellenville (NY)

At prior meetings, the Register-Star’s coverage was specifically called out by residents such as Ghent’s Mark Johnson, who pointed out that their coverage of a previous meeting “made it seem like no one in the audience was here.

This site met with the paper’s new publisher and managing editor earlier this year to discuss its institutional habit of promoting and protecting officialdom, while minimizing contrary information—especially when it comes from well-informed but independent-minded members of the public.

Indeed, Gentile’s article omits numerous statements critical of Benson’s proposal from residents such as Peter Coan, Patti Matheney, Michael Singer, and myself, as well as stern questioning from Supervisors such as Mike Benvenuto (Ghent) and John Porreca (Greenport). Even officials previously supportive of other options, such as Hillsdale’s Art Baer, were poking holes in Benson’s presentation. But Gentile omits these in favor of a long description of Benson’s point of view. Some of those omitted statements can be found in Carole Osterink’s more balanced report for The Gossips of Rivertown, for instance:

Many at the meeting--both members of the audience and members of the committee--were not enthusiastic about Benson's eleventh hour proposals. Attorney Ken Dow questioned Benson's motivation. “If this were a serious effort,” said Dow, “it would have been made months ago. This, on its face, is ridiculous.” He went on to characterize Benson's proposals as “just an attempt to muck up the gears.” Supervisor John Porreca (Greenport), who had originally suggested the solution the committee was poised to recommend, dismissed Benson's proposals as “eleventh hour crap.”

Particularly sticky for Benson was a contretemps about the authorship of his proposal, another lengthy exchanged erased by Gentile’s piece. Research by this site indicated that the metadata on a key document circulated by Benson was not authored by him as he claimed, but by Christopher D. Brubach—representative of C&S, the firm which has been consulting to the County on the airport. Benson has stated in emails that his own firm, BCI Construction, has done extensive work with C&S.

Questions were raised about why the County’s own consultants would appear to be collaborating with a lone Supervisor to undermine the Committee’s hard-won compromise solution. Despite the evidence presented below, an uncomfortable-looking Benson continued to insist that he was the author of this document:

Document circulated by New Lebanon Supervisor Michael Benson as his own