NOTE: The following was published on February 4th in The Register-Star as a My View column, in response to Jamie Larson’s front-page article about the City of Hudson’s draft Local Waterfront Revitalization Plan. —S.
MY VIEW
Scalera is missing the boat—again
by Sam Pratt
Back in 1998, Rick Scalera thundered that Hudson’s main street wasn’t ready for change. Today in 2010, he’s saying basically the same thing about Hudson’s waterfront.
He missed the boat then, and he’s missing the boat again now. It’s just a shame to see that after all this time, Rick’s vision for Hudson hasn’t evolved one bit.
In twelve years, I’ve rarely seen Hudson’s mayor support local businesses. (In fact, I’ve only seen him step inside a Hudson restaurant once, even though there’s a great place to have lunch right across from his office.)
Rick has, however, been loudly supportive of a very privileged class of businesses. He’s consistently thrown his weight behind a foreign-owned cement company, a Connecticut-based trucking outfit, and those special corporations which require regular injections of hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars to stay afloat. (Even after decades of free funding, the folks at places like L&B have folded and left Hudson flat.)
It makes you wonder what Rick dislikes so much about small, independent business people: local residents who are risking their own money and using their own energy to build a sustainable local economy, one that can survive national ups and downs. What is it that he loves so much about distant corporations, which only want to take advantage of our community, trash our landscapes, and in some cases even threaten the health of local families?
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Not so long ago I co-wrote and circulated a Statement of Values that was endorsed by a diverse group of over 200 Hudson Valley businesses.
Those businesses represented 1,150 full-time and 450 part-time jobs. Not imaginary jobs or dead-end jobs (the kind Rick seems to prefer), but real, direct employment... not some time in the future, in a far away place, but right here, today. The owners of those businesses together stated that:
“We believe that a sound mix of industry, agriculture, trades, services, tourism, retail and arts is necessary to provide the job creation, opportunity, career paths, and tax base which sustain a healthy community.
“We credit the success of our community and companies in recent years to our employees, customers, fellow businesses, neighbors and communities -- all of which are heavily influenced by our environment.
“To ensure continued growth and stability, we need to protect our 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.
“As we promote economic development, we therefore need to consider the impact new industries or businesses will have, and [to] retain what is best in the current community mix.”
These are the same positive, forward-looking values that many of us so-called “malcontents” (the slanted word improperly used in your article) have in mind when we think about a long-term vision for the Hudson Waterfront.
We want to see Hudson’s riverfront acres become a major economic and recreational engine for everyone in Hudson, both old and new. We want to see unnecessary heavy truck traffic diverted from both the Downtown and the Waterfront, and from the rest of Hudson neighborhoods. And like the Secretary of State stated back in 2005, it’s just not realistic to think that anyone will either have a family picnic or hire people at a small business by the river if diesel barges are belching fumes in everyone’s faces.
We know that Hudson has a long way to go and a lot of work to do to ensure that prosperity extends to all corners of the community. So we don’t want to be presented with more false choices and empty compromises that just maintain the status quo and protect political insiders.
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But for Rick Scalera, such common-sense and forward-looking values are dismissed as “Disneyland.” His cartoon version of the community remains fixated on supporting a handful of out-of-state and even foreign companies, some of which have donated to his past political campaigns. For some reason, it appears that Rick would prefer to keep parts of Hudson down-and-out than to see progress take place which he can’t completely control.
It didn’t have to be this way.
After the November 2001 election, I wrote in the Register-Star that Rick had a chance to start fresh. He could either try to bridge Hudson’s divides, bringing together the traditional concerns of longtime residents and the dynamic energy of its more recent entrepreneurs. He could “either make peace, or stir up controversy. If Scalera chooses peace, he will find more allies than he knew; if controversy, he will encounter more watchdogs than ever before.”
Sadly, in 2001 Rick chose to embrace more division and more controversy, setting Hudson back another decade. Just last Fall, he was given yet another chance to embrace unity and harmony by the demoralized local Democratic Committee. But from his most recent actions so far in early 2010, it appears that he’s as stuck in his ways as Captain Ahab chasing Moby Dick.
It’s a shame to think that any local mayor would prefer for his City’s ship to sink, with him alone at the wheel, than to see it rise with the tide, with many hands on deck.
SAM PRATT is a Taghkanic resident and Hudson businessperson who led the nearly seven-year (successful) fight to stop the massive, coal-fired St. Lawrence Cement Greenport Project.
If you want to read more on the topic of the LWRP, South Bay and the Hudson Waterfront, there are more articles at this link (be sure to scroll down after clicking).
