As expected, in “Solid Blue” New York State, the 2020 presidential election was no contest. Joe Biden beat Donald Trump by just under 2 million votes. But in Orange County in the Hudson Valley, as in many other counties further upstate, the majority went for Trump. A total of 173,305 Read more…
By Josh Simons with kt Tobin The past two posts in this series have described the uptick in the trend of people moving to the Hudson Valley en masse from New York City in the wake of the COVID pandemic as well as predictions about the scale of this phenomenon Read more…
We shouldn’t have to disadvantage taxpayers and our children to build smartly in the 21st century. Robin Jacobowitz with Kt Tobin and Josh Simons It would be pretty hard to be an Ulster County resident and to not by now have heard about the Payment in Lieu of Taxes (PILOT) sought Read more…
Legendary Chicago School architect Louis Sullivan was famed for his aphorism: “Form ever follows function.” This was true, Sullivan said, in the natural environment, “whether it be the sweeping eagle in his flight, or the open apple-blossom, the toiling work-horse, the blithe swan, the branching oak, [or] the winding stream.” Read more…
Earlier this month Ulster County Executive Pat Ryan proposed a $333.8 million budget for 2021 that requires neither a property tax levy increase nor employee layoffs, and with a smaller withdrawal from the county’s savings account (the fund balance) than was made in 2020. At first glance, this seems like Read more…
I know that I promised an article about how the City of Poughkeepsie was going to experience the most transformative change from the current wave of migration from New York City, and that article is coming, but first I wanted to address the notion that this trend is going to Read more…
It is—and isn’t—who you’d think Article 1, Section 2 of the Constitution requires a decennial census. It is the basis for reapportionment, the drawing of legislative district lines for all levels of government from the federal House of Representatives all the way down to local city councils and some towns Read more…
In the introduction post to this series, I noted the recent uptick in the number of people moving to the Hudson Valley from New York City and the rising home prices driven by this trend. This next post is going to look a little more closely at the possible scale Read more…
The Hudson Valley economy has in the past relied on visitors coming, spending their money, and then going home. Now people from NYC are fleeing the pandemic and coming to stay. Gentrification is the other side of the revitalization coin. Unchecked, this will take a toll.
On May 25 in White Plains, U.S. District Court Judge Cathy Seibel ruled that the at-large system used for electing the nine members of the East Ramapo School Board denied the district’s Black and Latino voters effective choice in its elections, violating §2 of the Federal Voting Rights Act (VRA). Under an at-large system every voter votes to fill each board position, allowing a disciplined majority to control all seats. A majority of the East Ramapo district’s voting population is Hasidic Jews. The School Board has long been dominated by members recruited and endorsed by the leaders of this religious community and elected at-large through the use of block voting.