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Strong opposition to Ockawamick at public hearing

Hudson-Catskill Newspapers

COLUMBIA COUNTY — County supervisors took it on the chin from an incensed group of county residents at a well-attended public hearing on the proposed $1.5 million purchase of the former Ockawamick School Wednesday evening at the Hudson Middle School.

Twenty-eight persons spoke during the two-hour hearing. Nobody spoke in favor of the idea.

Although most of the opposition to the plan thus far has come from Hudson, many persons speaking against it Wednesday were from other parts of the county.

Proponents of the plan, who include supervisors from outside Hudson and Social Services Commissioner Paul Mossman, want to renovate the 77,000 square-foot building on Route 217 in Claverack and move the Department of Social Services, the District Attorney’s Office, and other agencies yet to be named from Hudson to Ockawamick.

Speakers objected to the process by which the decision was made, to a perceived lack of sensitivity to the needs of DSS clients, and to what they saw as poor economic planning or misplaced priorities.

Prior to the public forum, Public Works Commissioner David Robinson delivered a PowerPoint presentation detailing the search for and selection of the proposed site. Margaret Robinson of Ghent said she was disappointed there was “not one thing about the people who use the facilities.”

Nancy Hoag of Craryville, chairwoman of the Community Services Board, objected to “the ethos of the move: Imagine being poor, getting a bus to Claverack, where there’s nothing to do ... next to a country club. How insulting.”

The slides, she said, were “very antiseptic — there was not one person’s face on the slides.”

The search committee assigned weights of from one to five to various qualities in order to compare the sites. Why was proximity to users assigned only a three, instead of a five, Hoag wanted to know.

By making access to services more difficult, “we are creating more barriers,” Hoag said.

“We have a group of people who feel disparaged,” said Supervisor William C. Hughes Jr., D-Hudson4. “They want to live their lives without the tremendous burden we’d put on them by making them travel. We need to look at all aspects of how to save money, but it’s the wrong thing to move services away from people who need services. If we look at intermunicipal services: That’s where to save money.”

“We have a daughter with emotional/mental challenges,” Dan Udell of Taghkanic said. “She lives in New York City. She can walk to services she needs desperately. It’s very, very difficult for someone who needs help to get on a bus.”

Katy Cashen of Claverack wondered about the supervisors’ plan of having a hourly bus service to the future DSS.

“Many times people don’t have child care,” she said. “Will the buses have car seats? Will the clients have to take the car seats to their appointments?”

She suggested looking at the soon-to-be vacant Wal-Mart building in Greenport as an alternative location.

“You’re looking at money, money, money, not people,” said Alderman Abdus Miah, D-2nd Ward. “Are you interested in money or people?”

Lilian Moy, director of the Legal Aid Society of Northeast New York, said it’s much harder to supply legal aid services “when you’re not located where your clients are.” More of the clients for such services live in the county seat, which has the highest rate of poverty in the county, she said.

“Vote as leaders of this county in the same way other counties in this 16-county region have: To locate DSS in the county seat,” she said. “We’re remembered for what we did for the least among us.”

Hudson City Attorney Kevin Colwell, of Kinderhook, questioned the wisdom of moving county legal offices out to Claverack. Separating the court system from the offices of the district attorney, public defender and probation would lead to higher fuel costs and lost time through transportation, Toni Koweek of Hudson said.

“You can’t separate the court system from these other services — they’re interconnected,” Colwell said. “You have a campus — the campus is the city of Hudson. The services are there within walking distance.”

He also noted that most major roads in the county lead to Hudson, and he wondered whether the other roads would hold up if the county activities were shifted to Ockawamick.

Udell warned that Gov. David Paterson’s message on the state’s dire economy Tuesday is a signal that “you’re not going to get state support ... to buy a campus. I don’t think we need a campus setting; we need a city setting where the people are.”

Jim Brady, an officer in the Mellenville Volunteer Fire Company, said, “We’re a small department with an almost-20-year-old truck. More of our services will be needed. I don’t think that was addressed. We have to look at the whole move.”

Linda Mussmann of Hudson strongly objected to the process of decision-making.

“The DSS move has been rumored for two years,” she said. “Now we enter when the purchase is on its way.” An economic crisis, she said, was the wrong time to build a new county campus. “The governor said yesterday, ‘Burn your credit cards.’”

Hudson Mayor Rick Scalera followed that up by asking that this hearing “represent the beginning of the public input process, not the end. There should be at least three public hearings.”

He said he thought the PowerPoint presentation was “quite deceptive.” One of the criteria supervisors were looking for in a site was its capacity to serve as a campus. “Are we looking for a campus or a Department of Social Services [site]?” the mayor asked.

Former Board of Supervisors Chairman Gerald Simons and his fellow supervisors, Scalera said, “worked diligently towards keeping services in the city of Hudson because they realized the majority [of users] were from Hudson. Let’s do true due diligence and put all the people involved in one room.”

“It’s amazing decisions like this are made without consulting the people who will be impacted the most,” said Irene Wiley of Greenport, a Mental Health Association family advocate. “They feel disenfranchised and powerless. At Bliss Towers, everyone I talk to who are walking to their services would take issue with adding six more miles. I ask the committee to take more time and talk to the people this will be impacting.”

Following the completion of the list of speakers who had signed up, Board of Supervisors Chairman Art Baer, R-Hillsdale, attempted to answer some of the questions. The county had tried to find a location in Hudson, he said, digging “more holes than a woodchuck,” but had found nothing; and the costs of staying in the 25 Railroad Ave. site are “incredible,” he said. And meanwhile, contractor costs are going up 15 to 20 percent every year.

Transportation should be no problem, he said; everyday, organizations like COARC transport their residents to schools.

As for input into the decision, Baer said plenty had been obtained from meetings with the people from DSS.

The economic impact on the county will be a “wash,” he said, and that on Hudson will be negligible.

Alderwoman Wanda Hughes Pertilla, D-2nd Ward, told Baer, “You’d have been better off taking your comments home and digesting them. Right now, (with) what you’re saying, I’m burning up.”

Scalera said he doubted that the search committee had done any test borings in Hudson at all. And Mary Udell of Taghkanic called the meeting “undemocratic” because, she said, the decision had been made ahead of time.

To reach reporter John Mason, call 518-828-1616, ext. 2272, or e-mail jmason@registerstar.com.

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