Threats to call the police at one meeting and thinly veiled race baiting by one trustee at another point to the need for a more democratic process in making these decisions.
I have not deleted any comments yet, but please remember the Comments policy which is no personal attacks. Please keep to the subject being debated and avoid personal remarks about other commenters. Consider this a warning. Thank you.
You say “we” recognize racism is indeed a plausible motivation for some opposition. So you are speaking for all of the people that signed? You are not speaking for me. Congestion and higher taxes is more like it.
You need to re-read what I said. I did not say that racism applies to all the people who signed, far from it. Your own quote of what I said makes that clear. I said that it plausibly could account for some of the opposition.
I would suggest that with a petition containing over Eleven Hundred signatures opposing these projects---the community is not really divided at all. The board, however, will do what it wants. If it is allowed to.
Oppositional/reactive organizing is "always" "easier" - faster, more emphatic, etc - than affirmative/initiative organizing. That's closely related to how election campaign advertising and rhetoric have a strong propensity to go negative or even "trashy"/gossipy, and how midterm elections in the US generally weaken an incumbent party and etc. The petition shows that there are a lot of people who are opposed (I haven't seen the language - is it unequivocal or does it allow for people to sign on because they want more info before projects are approved?) but it isn't a validly-sampled survey, it doesn't show unanimity among any group larger than the signees.
I’d say a thousand signatures in opposition is a pretty good sample size relative to a village with 8k people (and obviously even less people when discounting children). Of those adults, how many even know the petition exists? I’m actually impressed with the number of signatures thus far because of that.
Agreed that it is impressive; I said above "there are a lot of people who are opposed".
It wasn't "sampled" though - they didn't record the number of people who they talked to that declined to sign, right? So it's not the same thing as unanimity on a population-wide survey, which is the implication/viewpoint of the OP here.
The petition states the following which is very unequivocal: Croton Deserves Responsible Zoning is forced to petition our local village to pause on all new large scale urban developments in Croton effective immediately. We see that there is no consideration of the tax payers concerns of overdevelopment and urbanization of Croton and the government sees fit to rush all the projects it can as soon as it can. We ask that you sign this petition, with your name and village address, to bring awareness to the Board of how many are against these zone breaking projects which are remaking the nature of our village. Act now!
Thanks for posting that; I realize now @Michael linked it in the article, but I didn't track that first time through.
Per reporting here et al, the Planning Board's recommendations about Lot A were drafted before the petitions were presented. So it's hard to credit that "there is no consideration of the tax payers[sic] concerns".
Trying to clarify - at the planning board meeting on 8/20(?), member(s) of the board(?) mentioned that their recommendations about the AUD policy had been ignored by the BoT?
I would alert you to the article and the video below about the planning board meeting before the recommendations were written held on Aug 6th. The Planning Board just acknowledged at Tuesday's meeting that our/the petitioners concerns helped them draft their report to the board. BTW the petitions wording doesn't change as it goes on so it stays intact from the start of the effort:
Concerns helped them draft their report seems like the opposite of "no consideration", right?
You're saying there hadn't been any evidence of consideration at the time you began the petition initiative, and that accounts for the language? I/y that's a fair point to an extent. (I think the part of the village process where they'd take consideration hadn't really come up yet, so some of it's truth comes from being a vacuous claim; also/relatedly, this was kind of predictable and the wording of the petition could have been more robust. Separately, Nora(?) voted no earlier on, that seems like it did constitute consideration, so probably hyberbolic language even at the time of original composition?)
Regardless, let's assume the wording was straightforwardly true at the time. Even with that, at this point someone who signs that petition is just endorsing a false claim, aren't they?
Sorry but there is nothing "easy" about getting over eleven hundred signatures in less than a few weeks (if it is, I suggest that those who are "for" this kind of development, do it as well)---nor is it reactive to attend every meeting and work session---as well as thoroughly research the shortcomings of these projects from environmental, legal, economic and safety perspectives, etc. This is hard work, and I am grateful to those who have consistently made the time to defend the village from yes, urbanization and other questionable agendas.
I'm trying to have a convo; hopefully we can do that? I tried to offer that by, eg, acknowledging that the petition is "a lot" of people, and asking a question that you could potentially answer about the language of the petition. I'll be more direct about that - can you share the petition to me?
Your reply isn't really engaging with me; when you present "let the 'yes' side do it" as an off-hand alternative, you ignore the evidence I already offered for how 'no' and 'yes' campaigns are actually not the same difficulty setting.
I agree with most of what you just said, especially the gratitude. I just don't think the petition is evidence of the community being united against the projects; it's evidence of one segment of the community being energized against them. And I don't think the absence of a 'yes' petition is/can be evidence of that either, even aside from the inherent assymetry between 'yes' and 'no' campaigns. [Meant to put the following in initial comment:] I'm skeptical that I'd sign the 'no' petition; but I definitely wouldn't sign a 'yes' petition right now because I'm very insulted by the study materials the HMB developers submitted, I want them under a microscope, and I suspect that development is a bad idea unless (as Ian Murtaugh floated in his Gazette letter) their fallback industrial uses permitted under current zoning would be worse. (In which case, does anybody know, can we potentially rezone to residential without giving them variances for the various things, so they have to lump it?)
Ben, Thanks for yet another unasked for lecture. Fact of the matter is that there is a tremendous amount of opposition and you grasping at all these ways to discount it is beyond comical. Almost as funny as your (false) assertions that you haven’t seen the petition, didn’t watch video of meeting, etc. Pure and
I may well be a pedant but I'm not a liar. "A tremendous amount of opposition" is obviously true, I agree with that; at least with respect to HMB I'm on-balance among the opposition; all of that still isn't the same thing as unanimity or consensus.
And if I were wrong about the relative difficulty of organizing advocacy vs opposition you'd have a substantive response instead of ad hominem.
Ben, Are we really to believe that you posted the most on this chain but didn’t spend the time to watch the clip itself? Are we really to believe that you didn’t see (or couldn’t find) the petition signed by 1100 people? I say not.
And let’s not talk about Ad hominem attacks. You engage in such all the time. You post on here as if you are the wisest person ever and are so full of yourself it’s actually disturbing.
Stop discounting the fact that 1100 people took the time to sign a petition against all of this development. Stop looking for ways to minimize the opposition. Recognize it, appreciate it and respect it.
Please see my comment in the last 20 minutes. On this site, calling someone a “troll” violates the policy against personal attacks. Please keep to the issues without making personal remarks or references. Thank you. PS—You can call anyone you want a troll on the Uncensored page. I do it myself.
I suggested a village wide referendum weeks ago. With the money the village raised from the properties sold recently we can easily afford to do it. The referendum should contain options for canceling all large scale plans and an option for a moritorium on large buildings for at least 5 years.
The attitude shone by certain trustees and our mayor show clearly that they have an agenda driven strictly by Albany and are not serving the wishes of villagers.
I read your reproduction of politi's comment very differently. Local politics and meetings like this are dominated by older people, and I believe in this instance that the older people in our community have greatly differing points of view on this issue than the younger people here (yes, im generalizing, individual cases won't hold to this). I would love to attend meetings like this, but I have a demanding job where I'm relatively new and when I leave work at 7pm it's to rush home to spend a little time with my kids before baths and bedtime. As time goes on, I'll get more autonomy and my kids won't need as much of me, and I'll be able to participate more fully. Same story for many people my age. I am however registered to vote and it's easier to make time to fill out a ballot!
I believe that you are wrong about this. A wide variety of ages have showed up to oppose overdevelopment, including young parents, middle aged, seniors, etc. If that’s what Politi had meant she would be specified it instead of using innuendo.
Without assessing the honesty/authenticity of this claim, I'll point out that Cara is approximately endorsing Andrew's interpretation of her comment. A commenter asked about that in her summary post to the Croton Community FB group; her reply explained that she's talking about who is able to show up to these sorts of meetings. I do read it as implying that ability to attend the meeting would correlate with housing security (or at least that inability to attend the meeting would anti-correlate with housing security, which may somewhat mitigate your critique Michael). https://www.facebook.com/groups/364426883724529/user/1375500113/ , for anyone who can view into the group.
Thanks for your comment. In fact, it’s not actually true. A wide variety of age groups have showed up at the meetings, including a lot of parents with children. What Cara seems to be saying now is that she wasn’t race baiting, She was age baiting.
I'm 33 years old (not young young, but let's be honest, I do help bring down the average), and I'm just about as white as they come, I basically glow in the dark. Multiple times I referred to "us" as the people in the room / people able to be at the meetings. No baiting of any form, simply statement of fact and acknowledgement of the many Crotonites not present. I won't continue to comment on this, as I did address it later in the meeting (surprisingly not included in this piece), and I have addressed the community directly on Facebook.
Cara, If you are so confident in what the views of Crotonites is, then you should advocate for a referendum. I know the town (or should I say the Mayor’s) attorney has said such is not possible, but I am sure there is a way. The truth of the matter Cara is that you don’t give a crap about what the majority of Crotonite’s views are. If 90% of all Crotonites were not in favor of these developments, you still would push ahead because YOU feel that you know better.
I'm bothered by the tone of this. @Andrew's age-demographic-split hypothesis may well be false without being evidence of Cara baiting anyone, and Cara isn't speaking narrowly about age. If your interpretation of her utterance hinges narrowly on her having said "look around" instead of "look at the date and time", you're probably overanalyzing.
1, "Parents of children" isn't by itself the counter-evidence you seem to think it is. Cara's own narration of needing housing help describes how BoT meetings conflicted with being a "single parent". So, of the parents who showed up, how many had a non-resident adult watching the kids? [Answer - obviously we don't know, but fewer than all of them.]
2, Cara is encompassing a variety of reasons that people might not be at the meeting. She isn't baiting on any trait, she is observing that being at this meeting correlates to economic security. It's patently obvious that people who work white-collar day shift jobs, have multiple income earners in the household, or are retired are more likely to have availability for this meeting. It's a reasonable expectation that the set-complement to that group (ie, households with 1 income, not retired, not white collar day shift) would be sensitive to housing costs and the condition of the village, but they're not present or disproportionally not present. It's one thing for folks to want their say, which is totally valid, and another to claim that their say is the voice of everyone. I'd be annoyed about people claiming that, too.
My annoyance with your handling of this is pushing me into stronger investment with Cara's exculpatory explanation than I should adopt when I wasn't there, haven't watched the vid, and don't know anyone involved. Regardless, I am confident in invoking general principles of reasoning and cognitive anti-bias here: if you had an original hypothesis, and you're now finding that hypothesis untenable, your brain will try to treat the fact that you had the original hypothesis as evidence in interpreting the situation, but it will be wrong to do so. This shows up in how you rejected the specificity of your hypothesis but kept it's general class, switching from one type of baiting to another. The reasonable action is to go back to square 1 and consider whether a "baiting" hypothesis is the best type of explanation before you try to decide what type of baiting is happening.
Wait you didnt attend the meeting or see the video? How can you reasonably come to any conclusions with out evidence.
I did watch the video. My blue collar job did keep me at work then putting my kid down while trying to keep tuned in. It was bad. I for one (and i know others in my situation) was relieved the villagers did attend and asked questions and they did more to represent than the BOT that night. So when a wild claim is made like it was, it was not a fact in my case. I commend those that attended and asked them to pause. To brush those like myself with a broad stroke of saying “look around you do not represent the village” may be true but they did in-fact represent this villager. A lot of the times we may reach out (to be involved and informed) to our neighbors who can attend and ask them to ask certain questions on our behalf. Yeah we may not all be there but it does NOT mean by default the Mayor and BOT represents our bests interests.
I am bothered by the fact that you didn’t view the video yet you have posted on this chain and countless others more than anyone else? You profess to have never seen the petition and ask for the language to be sent to you so you can make sure there wasn’t some bias? You are being a bit arrogant and somehow thinks they are somehow helping the board ram though this agenda that has next to no public support. Keep trying to suppress the opposition. Not this time. Won’t work.
Again, calling someone a troll is a personal attack that is not allowed by this site’s Comments Policy. I am not deleting it but issuing a warning. Please stick to the issues and do not make personal remarks about anyone.
I have not deleted any comments yet, but please remember the Comments policy which is no personal attacks. Please keep to the subject being debated and avoid personal remarks about other commenters. Consider this a warning. Thank you.
You say “we” recognize racism is indeed a plausible motivation for some opposition. So you are speaking for all of the people that signed? You are not speaking for me. Congestion and higher taxes is more like it.
You need to re-read what I said. I did not say that racism applies to all the people who signed, far from it. Your own quote of what I said makes that clear. I said that it plausibly could account for some of the opposition.
I would suggest that with a petition containing over Eleven Hundred signatures opposing these projects---the community is not really divided at all. The board, however, will do what it wants. If it is allowed to.
Oppositional/reactive organizing is "always" "easier" - faster, more emphatic, etc - than affirmative/initiative organizing. That's closely related to how election campaign advertising and rhetoric have a strong propensity to go negative or even "trashy"/gossipy, and how midterm elections in the US generally weaken an incumbent party and etc. The petition shows that there are a lot of people who are opposed (I haven't seen the language - is it unequivocal or does it allow for people to sign on because they want more info before projects are approved?) but it isn't a validly-sampled survey, it doesn't show unanimity among any group larger than the signees.
I’d say a thousand signatures in opposition is a pretty good sample size relative to a village with 8k people (and obviously even less people when discounting children). Of those adults, how many even know the petition exists? I’m actually impressed with the number of signatures thus far because of that.
I agree. Just as it’s a big deal when between 1000 and 2000 people read articles in the Chronicle.
Agreed that it is impressive; I said above "there are a lot of people who are opposed".
It wasn't "sampled" though - they didn't record the number of people who they talked to that declined to sign, right? So it's not the same thing as unanimity on a population-wide survey, which is the implication/viewpoint of the OP here.
The petition states the following which is very unequivocal: Croton Deserves Responsible Zoning is forced to petition our local village to pause on all new large scale urban developments in Croton effective immediately. We see that there is no consideration of the tax payers concerns of overdevelopment and urbanization of Croton and the government sees fit to rush all the projects it can as soon as it can. We ask that you sign this petition, with your name and village address, to bring awareness to the Board of how many are against these zone breaking projects which are remaking the nature of our village. Act now!
Thanks for posting that; I realize now @Michael linked it in the article, but I didn't track that first time through.
Per reporting here et al, the Planning Board's recommendations about Lot A were drafted before the petitions were presented. So it's hard to credit that "there is no consideration of the tax payers[sic] concerns".
The board of trustees has a long history of overruling planning board recommendations
This is interesting, please elaborate at your convenience.
that's right! they even mention that in Tuesday meeting about the AUDs
Trying to clarify - at the planning board meeting on 8/20(?), member(s) of the board(?) mentioned that their recommendations about the AUD policy had been ignored by the BoT?
I would alert you to the article and the video below about the planning board meeting before the recommendations were written held on Aug 6th. The Planning Board just acknowledged at Tuesday's meeting that our/the petitioners concerns helped them draft their report to the board. BTW the petitions wording doesn't change as it goes on so it stays intact from the start of the effort:
https://thecrotonchronicle.substack.com/p/commentary-are-village-residents
https://play.champds.com/crotononhudsonny/event/971
Concerns helped them draft their report seems like the opposite of "no consideration", right?
You're saying there hadn't been any evidence of consideration at the time you began the petition initiative, and that accounts for the language? I/y that's a fair point to an extent. (I think the part of the village process where they'd take consideration hadn't really come up yet, so some of it's truth comes from being a vacuous claim; also/relatedly, this was kind of predictable and the wording of the petition could have been more robust. Separately, Nora(?) voted no earlier on, that seems like it did constitute consideration, so probably hyberbolic language even at the time of original composition?)
Regardless, let's assume the wording was straightforwardly true at the time. Even with that, at this point someone who signs that petition is just endorsing a false claim, aren't they?
Sorry but there is nothing "easy" about getting over eleven hundred signatures in less than a few weeks (if it is, I suggest that those who are "for" this kind of development, do it as well)---nor is it reactive to attend every meeting and work session---as well as thoroughly research the shortcomings of these projects from environmental, legal, economic and safety perspectives, etc. This is hard work, and I am grateful to those who have consistently made the time to defend the village from yes, urbanization and other questionable agendas.
I'm trying to have a convo; hopefully we can do that? I tried to offer that by, eg, acknowledging that the petition is "a lot" of people, and asking a question that you could potentially answer about the language of the petition. I'll be more direct about that - can you share the petition to me?
Your reply isn't really engaging with me; when you present "let the 'yes' side do it" as an off-hand alternative, you ignore the evidence I already offered for how 'no' and 'yes' campaigns are actually not the same difficulty setting.
I agree with most of what you just said, especially the gratitude. I just don't think the petition is evidence of the community being united against the projects; it's evidence of one segment of the community being energized against them. And I don't think the absence of a 'yes' petition is/can be evidence of that either, even aside from the inherent assymetry between 'yes' and 'no' campaigns. [Meant to put the following in initial comment:] I'm skeptical that I'd sign the 'no' petition; but I definitely wouldn't sign a 'yes' petition right now because I'm very insulted by the study materials the HMB developers submitted, I want them under a microscope, and I suspect that development is a bad idea unless (as Ian Murtaugh floated in his Gazette letter) their fallback industrial uses permitted under current zoning would be worse. (In which case, does anybody know, can we potentially rezone to residential without giving them variances for the various things, so they have to lump it?)
Ben, Thanks for yet another unasked for lecture. Fact of the matter is that there is a tremendous amount of opposition and you grasping at all these ways to discount it is beyond comical. Almost as funny as your (false) assertions that you haven’t seen the petition, didn’t watch video of meeting, etc. Pure and
simple you are a troll.
I may well be a pedant but I'm not a liar. "A tremendous amount of opposition" is obviously true, I agree with that; at least with respect to HMB I'm on-balance among the opposition; all of that still isn't the same thing as unanimity or consensus.
And if I were wrong about the relative difficulty of organizing advocacy vs opposition you'd have a substantive response instead of ad hominem.
Ben, Are we really to believe that you posted the most on this chain but didn’t spend the time to watch the clip itself? Are we really to believe that you didn’t see (or couldn’t find) the petition signed by 1100 people? I say not.
And let’s not talk about Ad hominem attacks. You engage in such all the time. You post on here as if you are the wisest person ever and are so full of yourself it’s actually disturbing.
Stop discounting the fact that 1100 people took the time to sign a petition against all of this development. Stop looking for ways to minimize the opposition. Recognize it, appreciate it and respect it.
Please see my comment in the last 20 minutes. On this site, calling someone a “troll” violates the policy against personal attacks. Please keep to the issues without making personal remarks or references. Thank you. PS—You can call anyone you want a troll on the Uncensored page. I do it myself.
I suggested a village wide referendum weeks ago. With the money the village raised from the properties sold recently we can easily afford to do it. The referendum should contain options for canceling all large scale plans and an option for a moritorium on large buildings for at least 5 years.
The attitude shone by certain trustees and our mayor show clearly that they have an agenda driven strictly by Albany and are not serving the wishes of villagers.
I read your reproduction of politi's comment very differently. Local politics and meetings like this are dominated by older people, and I believe in this instance that the older people in our community have greatly differing points of view on this issue than the younger people here (yes, im generalizing, individual cases won't hold to this). I would love to attend meetings like this, but I have a demanding job where I'm relatively new and when I leave work at 7pm it's to rush home to spend a little time with my kids before baths and bedtime. As time goes on, I'll get more autonomy and my kids won't need as much of me, and I'll be able to participate more fully. Same story for many people my age. I am however registered to vote and it's easier to make time to fill out a ballot!
I believe that you are wrong about this. A wide variety of ages have showed up to oppose overdevelopment, including young parents, middle aged, seniors, etc. If that’s what Politi had meant she would be specified it instead of using innuendo.
Without assessing the honesty/authenticity of this claim, I'll point out that Cara is approximately endorsing Andrew's interpretation of her comment. A commenter asked about that in her summary post to the Croton Community FB group; her reply explained that she's talking about who is able to show up to these sorts of meetings. I do read it as implying that ability to attend the meeting would correlate with housing security (or at least that inability to attend the meeting would anti-correlate with housing security, which may somewhat mitigate your critique Michael). https://www.facebook.com/groups/364426883724529/user/1375500113/ , for anyone who can view into the group.
Thanks for your comment. In fact, it’s not actually true. A wide variety of age groups have showed up at the meetings, including a lot of parents with children. What Cara seems to be saying now is that she wasn’t race baiting, She was age baiting.
But I have now posted her comments as an update to the story
I'm 33 years old (not young young, but let's be honest, I do help bring down the average), and I'm just about as white as they come, I basically glow in the dark. Multiple times I referred to "us" as the people in the room / people able to be at the meetings. No baiting of any form, simply statement of fact and acknowledgement of the many Crotonites not present. I won't continue to comment on this, as I did address it later in the meeting (surprisingly not included in this piece), and I have addressed the community directly on Facebook.
All the best,
Cara
Cara, If you are so confident in what the views of Crotonites is, then you should advocate for a referendum. I know the town (or should I say the Mayor’s) attorney has said such is not possible, but I am sure there is a way. The truth of the matter Cara is that you don’t give a crap about what the majority of Crotonite’s views are. If 90% of all Crotonites were not in favor of these developments, you still would push ahead because YOU feel that you know better.
[Edited - posted a draft, sorry]
I'm bothered by the tone of this. @Andrew's age-demographic-split hypothesis may well be false without being evidence of Cara baiting anyone, and Cara isn't speaking narrowly about age. If your interpretation of her utterance hinges narrowly on her having said "look around" instead of "look at the date and time", you're probably overanalyzing.
1, "Parents of children" isn't by itself the counter-evidence you seem to think it is. Cara's own narration of needing housing help describes how BoT meetings conflicted with being a "single parent". So, of the parents who showed up, how many had a non-resident adult watching the kids? [Answer - obviously we don't know, but fewer than all of them.]
2, Cara is encompassing a variety of reasons that people might not be at the meeting. She isn't baiting on any trait, she is observing that being at this meeting correlates to economic security. It's patently obvious that people who work white-collar day shift jobs, have multiple income earners in the household, or are retired are more likely to have availability for this meeting. It's a reasonable expectation that the set-complement to that group (ie, households with 1 income, not retired, not white collar day shift) would be sensitive to housing costs and the condition of the village, but they're not present or disproportionally not present. It's one thing for folks to want their say, which is totally valid, and another to claim that their say is the voice of everyone. I'd be annoyed about people claiming that, too.
My annoyance with your handling of this is pushing me into stronger investment with Cara's exculpatory explanation than I should adopt when I wasn't there, haven't watched the vid, and don't know anyone involved. Regardless, I am confident in invoking general principles of reasoning and cognitive anti-bias here: if you had an original hypothesis, and you're now finding that hypothesis untenable, your brain will try to treat the fact that you had the original hypothesis as evidence in interpreting the situation, but it will be wrong to do so. This shows up in how you rejected the specificity of your hypothesis but kept it's general class, switching from one type of baiting to another. The reasonable action is to go back to square 1 and consider whether a "baiting" hypothesis is the best type of explanation before you try to decide what type of baiting is happening.
Wait you didnt attend the meeting or see the video? How can you reasonably come to any conclusions with out evidence.
I did watch the video. My blue collar job did keep me at work then putting my kid down while trying to keep tuned in. It was bad. I for one (and i know others in my situation) was relieved the villagers did attend and asked questions and they did more to represent than the BOT that night. So when a wild claim is made like it was, it was not a fact in my case. I commend those that attended and asked them to pause. To brush those like myself with a broad stroke of saying “look around you do not represent the village” may be true but they did in-fact represent this villager. A lot of the times we may reach out (to be involved and informed) to our neighbors who can attend and ask them to ask certain questions on our behalf. Yeah we may not all be there but it does NOT mean by default the Mayor and BOT represents our bests interests.
I am bothered by the fact that you didn’t view the video yet you have posted on this chain and countless others more than anyone else? You profess to have never seen the petition and ask for the language to be sent to you so you can make sure there wasn’t some bias? You are being a bit arrogant and somehow thinks they are somehow helping the board ram though this agenda that has next to no public support. Keep trying to suppress the opposition. Not this time. Won’t work.
Again, calling someone a troll is a personal attack that is not allowed by this site’s Comments Policy. I am not deleting it but issuing a warning. Please stick to the issues and do not make personal remarks about anyone.