Also present at the meeting were two other county supervisors, John Musall, D-Hudson1 and Bart Delaney, R-Hudson5, Hudson Mayor Rick Scalera, Aldermen Ellen Thurston, D-3rd Ward, Robert Donahue, D-5th Ward, and Carole Osterink, D-1st Ward, and local NAACP Chapter President Alan Skerritt [sic].
In 2008, the county purchased the 77,000-square-foot, $1.5-million school building on Route 217 in Claverack. At first it was intended to be the home of the Department of Social Services, but in the face of strong opposition to that, supervisors are now holding meetings aimed at deciding which departments will move there.
Under Plan B, which seemed to be favored by most of the attendees, a three-story, 38,000-square-foot building would be erected to house DSS on the northwestern corner of Fourth and Columbia streets. Across Fourth Street from that would be built a three-story parking garage with a 200-car capacity.
Behind the site of this new DSS building, across Long Alley, a new parking lot that would hold 60 vehicles is already being built.
Scalera said the building would cost about $7.5 million and the garage would be $3.6 million, making a total of about $11 million, which he said is a $4 million savings compared to the $15 million Ockawamick is predicted to cost after renovation.
In an e-mail, Supervisor William C. Hughes, D-Hudson4, suggested that, if Plan B were adopted, Ockawamick could be retrofited for non-service-based agencies like the county historian, the coroner and the Youth Bureau.
The reason attendees liked Plan B was their dissatisfaction with Plan A, and particularly with the fact that service-based agencies, such as DSS, Department of Health and Department of Mental Health would be strong candidates to move to the new site, six miles from the city of Hudson.
The mayor said the $100,000 a year the county is budgeting to transport people from Hudson to Ockawamick would add up to $3 million or $4 million over three or four decades.
Delaney said the transportation plan would cause more congestion from people sitting and waiting for their appointments, and Musall said the plan of seven trips a day could cause someone with a 15-minute appointment to be waiting for three or four hours.
“You get in the middle of something, and the light goes on, the bus is leaving, come back again tomorrow at 9 a.m.,” Cross said.
“To me, they have turned their back on Hudson and are trying, unconsciously or consciously, to decentralize the county seat,” Thurston said.
“We have individual pieces and we’re trying to make them fit,” Cross said. “It’s a tight squeeze. This fits here, this fits here — but not, how this will accommodate our consumers.”
Delaney stressed that it was not a Republican/Democrat divide, but a divide between Hudson supervisors and all the other supervisors.
“I think it’s a lack of understanding of what the county seat means and is,” he said.
Mussmann said the supervisors have been ignoring the issue of where transitional housing fits into the picture. For the past several years, the county has been housing homeless persons in motels in the area at a significant cost. It’s generally agreed that a transitional housing facility needs to be built, but no one is saying where.
Musall suggested transitional housing could be a playing card for the city in getting the county to keep the service providing agencies in Hudson.
“It’s not fair not to have [transitional housing] in the discussion,” Mussmann said.
There was also discussion of the economic impact of the move on Hudson.
“If you take 200 employees that’s going to have an economic impact,” said former Supervisor Gail Grandinetti. “They walk the streets, buy all the time. It will hurt people’s lunch [business].”
Delaney said he had done an informal survey and learned that many shops get the business of the county employees, and don’t want to see them go: “It might be the margin of profit these people need,” he said.
Sara Sterling said Hudson is already a “campus,” and wondered where employees would eat if they moved to Claverack.
Delaney recalled how, as he was marching down toward Front Street in the 2008 Flag Day Parade, an elderly woman with a cane came out and yelled at him, “How am I supposed to get to Ockawamick?”
“She doesn’t want to go out there,” he said.
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