“The next 10 or 15 years in this country are going to be a halcyon era for state and local political corruption. It is going to be one of the great times to be a corrupt politician.” – David Simon, former Baltimore Sun reporter and creator of The Wire, speaking before a Senate subcommittee in 2009.

Dec. 31, 2021

Kingston, NY – Earlier this month, Kingston’s Common Council voted 6-3 in favor of the partial closure of Fair Street Extension, a move that effectively gives the street to the developer of the Kingstonian luxury housing development but sidesteps the legal process of transferring ownership.

A public hearing on the closure held Dec. 2 was marred by technical mishaps that resulted in badly distorted and even muted sound, and a new hearing and vote are to be held on Jan. 12.

Even though the Dec. 7 vote was rescinded, it’s worth revisiting that meeting, because several aldermen reiterated the developer’s claims about public benefits to justify their vote.

The Hudson Valley Vindicator finds them baseless.

The developer’s team will likely double down on these claims in advance of the next vote, scheduled for January 12, because, hey, they fooled a lot of people the first time around. A closer look is merited so the new alderpersons and the people of Kingston understand they are being scammed.

For a deeper analysis, please see Fake Data, Fake Studies Taint Kingstonian for a look at the Big Lies underpinning the tax giveaway — $6.8 million in cash from New York State coffers, the removal of about $28 million that should flow to local schools and government, and untold millions that will never be paid into the federal system.

The result will be either higher costs for the rest of us or a generalized deterioration in quality of life.

If you don’t like the tax, fiscal and environmental policies of the past decades; if you are familiar with the Pandora Papers and don’t like that the richest men in the world pay virtually no taxes, then please consider that the Kingstonian is a microcosm within that macrocosm. Bernie Sanders calls it socialism for the rich, rugged individualism for the poor. The Kingstonian’s investors will reap close to $100 million if they sell as soon as the law allows after ten years, and possibly upwards of $200 million if they hold until 2047, the last year allowable under Opportunity Zone regulations. Those tens if not hundreds of millions are headed into investor pockets, and not one cent will be shared with the governments whose officials such as these aldermen have rushed headlong to give away the people’s money.

SPOT YOUR REPRESENTATIVES REPEATING BASELESS CLAIMS

Consider outgoing alderman Patrick O’Reilly’s speech. From the laughable to the lies, here is a selection of the alderman’s best bloviations rationalizing the conveyance of FSE. Make sure his successor, who takes office in January, doesn’t repeat the balderdash.

O’Reilly: “The hill there is a steep hill. There’s no reason to be on that hill unless you’re walking up it or you’re walking down it or you’re riding your bike up it or you’re riding your bike down it.”

[Ed. Note: There’s no reason to be on the street unless you’re walking up it or down it, biking up it or down it, or in my case, driving up it or down it. Who knew these were reasons to be on a street…]

O’Reilly: “With this project, you’re going to be able to walk out, look out over the mountains and this public area that has beautiful, state of the art bathrooms. Beautiful! I mean, I guess they’re the newest and best public bathrooms that you can buy.”

[Ed. Note: Lift thine eyes to the mountains, but first, behold the public bathrooms. You know, The Best Public Bathrooms Near Mountain Views. There’s nothing wrong with public bathrooms, but with so many restaurants and cafés in the area they’re not hard to find, and most important, they don’t justify the subsidy.]

O’Reilly: “What the city needs is to create housing so that there will be more housing so the demand will be less and the prices will go down so people can live in this town again.”

[Ed. Note: I KNOW! Nobody’s living in this town now that the vacancy rate is about 2.7%.]

O’Reilly: “Jobs. Taxes being paid. Sales taxes being paid in Uptown Kingston. This is everything we need for Kingston. Housing. A destination. Tourism.”

[Ed. Note: The developers have promised 40 jobs, most of which are low-wage. With a local loss of $28 million in local tax, that means you’re paying the developer $700,000 for each low wage job he creates. Low wage jobs stress workers by worsening outcomes in health, education and more. Meanwhile, the developer is asking society to pay twice: first, to create those jobs, and then to fix the poor outcomes.]

[Ed. Note: A destination? Kingston itself may be a destination, but neither a garage, a hotel, an apartment complex, nor a public bathroom is a destination, and they’re not going to increase tourism, nor are they worth subsidizing.]

O’Reilly: “These people are … building housing stock in our town. And that’s going to alleviate the pressures that we’re feeling right now. We need to build more housing, and that will alleviate more pressure on our housing market. That’s how you do it. That’s how you house people.”

[Ed. Note: Actually, no. Real economists know high end housing won’t increase supply or cut prices at the moderate or low end. Despite a half-decade of frenzied luxury real estate construction, housing insecurity is worse than ever.]

O’Reilly: “Yeah, we’re giving up a street. But look what we’re getting. WE are being paid for this street.”

[Ed. Note: Um, nope. We’re NOT being paid for the street. This conveyance is illegal precisely because we’re NOT being paid for the street.]

O’Reilly: “We’re being paid in the taxes that these people pay.”

[Ed. Note: Nope. If by “these people” he means the developers, they are NOT paying taxes. They’re skipping out on roughly $28 million in local taxes, they’re getting $6.8 million in cash grants out of state tax dollars, and they’re stiffing the rest of America via the Opportunity Zone tax break. If by “these people” he means the new tenants, see Bruce McLean’s calculations that the project would need to spend $67 million locally in order to make up for lost City tax revenue, and that doesn’t account for the County or School Board revenue.]

O’Reilly: “We’re being paid in the fact that they’re creating housing in our city and lowering everybody else’s rates because the more housing, less demand, and the lower our rates go. WE all know that.”

[Ed. Note: Actually, the only people who “know” that are people who don’t know the first thing about economics. Real economists know you can flood the market with with Wagu filet mignon, but it won’t change the price of hot dogs. If you don’t like that analogy, all you have to do is look at the real estate market, because there’s been a boom in high end real estate construction, yet housing insecurity is out of control.]

O’Reilly: “They’re doing all that for us. They are paying us for this land. They may not be giving us a check for this land. They’re paying us in other ways. You’ve got to think like that, okay. This is not a giveaway. We’re getting a lot for what we’re giving here, and we’re getting exactly what we’ve been all begging for.”

[Ed Note: No, we don’t all “got to think like that,” nor should we, because it’s a load of codswallop. Not only did O’Reilly prove it’s good to slap time limits on speakers, but to boot, not one thing he said was true. Well, one thing, maybe, when he said, “Yeah, we’re giving up a street,” inadvertently acknowledging that the “partial abandonment” is nothing but a conveyance, which we knew all along anyway, and as such is illegal.

Alderman Rennie Scott-Childress jumped in to cover for O’Reilly’s admission.

“We’re not, quote unquote, giving away the street. We’re not deeding the street over to a private company. The basic idea here is that there’s going to be the construction of a public plaza over the area that is now the street. So the abandonment of the street is simply a reuse, if you will, to move it from its current use to being public plaza place where people can gather, a place where people can wander, can look out to the north to see the mountains in the distance…. Just as long as people understand it’s a transition of that area, not a giveaway or a loss of property per se to the City of Kingston.”

Bless Alderwoman Michele Hirsch, who knows that a rose by any other name, or a public bathroom, smells like what it is. “Whether we call this an easement, a discontinuance, abandonment, partial abandonment, vacated, decommissioned, demolished, closed, disposed, otherwise non-existent street, the street is no longer going to be a public thoroughfare. And our community… what I’m hearing is that they do not want this to move forward.”

Kudos to Hirsch for also recognizing what the boondoggle’s supporters refuse to acknowledge: most locals don’t support the project, which has been made abundantly clear anytime there has been an election as proxy for a vote on the Kingstonian. No one wants to be had by Brad.

It’s not the first time Scott-Childress tried to put one over. About three years ago, when the developers were fighting the inclusion of affordable housing, Rennie sat me down at local café and watering hole Rough Draft. He tried every tack. First, he assured me there was a surfeit of housing for poor people in Uptown Kingston. We need more, I countered. Rennie doesn’t exactly argue, or rather, it’s hard to say he argues when the tone is as calm and the voice as dulcet as Rennie’s. “We know adding in affordable housing is ONE way to do it, but we don’t know if it’s the BEST way to do it,” came the reply. It sounds reasonable until you realize that his very reasonableness is artifice, deceit, and proof he thinks that you, the interlocutor, fell off a turnip truck yesterday and can be persuaded by his superior logic if not his patrician pedigree. Then came the coup de grâce: he assured me that separate entrances for affordable housing tenants actually increased segregation, discrimination and inequality. Rennie was talking about the Poor Doors, which had been outlawed by then, after the story broke about high end developers who put in a Poor Door and other substandard amenties in an otherwise lavish building on Manhattan’s Upper West Side overlooking the Hudson River. Rennie, the only person who fell off a turnip truck is you, if you think this sort of sophistry will change anyone’s mind.

The next pro-developer sortie from the Scott-Childress family came not from Rennie but from his wife, possibly at his urging, during an online parents’ meeting leading up to the school board election. (As a reminder, two pro-developer County officials fielded their family members in hopes of unseating School Board incumbents who voted against the tax break.) Rennie and his wife zoomed in, and his wife opined that anyone who suspected the challengers wanted to overturn the School Board’s vote against the tax breaks were “paranoid.” Tax break opponents objected, and the meeting’s moderators promptly shut down the brouhaha.

But was it paranoia? No. At the time, conflict-of-interest poster child Dan Savona, owner of the eponymous pizzeria and a tenant of Brad Jordan’s and a member of the IDA who voted for the tax break, complained that his side could only find two people to run for the school board election. The Scott-Childress family is either gullible or gunning for an apartment in the Kingstonian.

School Board trustee Jim Shaughnessy himself recalled a conversation with Scott-Childress. But what about community character, asked Shaughnessy. I don’t care about community character, replied Scott-Childress, who added that he cared about benefits, which, of course, is the Big Lie.

Whatever Rennie’s teaching his students, we know it’s not critical thinking.

Outgoing Alderman Don Tallerman, magnanimous in victory, allowed that the project wasn’t perfect.

“And I really appreciate all the people that wrote and spoke for and against the project.”

[Ed. Note: No, you don’t, Don. You complained that KingstonCitizens.org was holding a gun to your family’s head. That’s because your friends and relatives have let slip that you’re invested in the Kingstonian.]

Tallerman: “And there are there’s some things I don’t love about it. But in the end we need to pay for our tax base, to create jobs we need economic activity here and this project will be bringing economic economic activity. And with that come more people using our stores and our restaurants, spending money in Ulster County, creating more tax revenue.”

Please see Fake Data, Fake Studies Taint Kingstonian if you’re tempted to believe these baseless claims.

One last argument concerns “desperately needed” parking. What new parking? Revised architectural plans show there will be a loss – yes, a loss – of 17 spots available to the public. See $28 Million Tax Break For Valet Parking at Boutique Hotel.

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