Beacon Voices

An Interview With Mayor Gold (Part 2)

By Jeffery Battersby ⋅ January 30, 2008 ⋅  Email this post ⋅  Print this post ⋅ Post a comment

Mayor Gold was kind enough to spend an hour with the Dispatch, talking about his plans for the city, what’s on his plate after his first two weeks in office, and what his hopes are for the future.

This is part two of a two part feature.

Moving on to economic development, let’s start at the waterfront. The Beacon Institute is set to open their first building just about anytime now. This opens up the doors to a new group of people—the scientific community—come to live, work and do business in Beacon. We’re also looking at a conference center on the Hudson. Concerns have been expressed, though, that there’s going to be a separation between what’s going on at the river and what’s going on on Main Street. Does the city have any plans for making this a unified business district?

I have to add to your question by adding another major player that will have a major impact on the point that you’re asking about. The MTA is planning on a transit oriented development (TOD) at the station that will include up to 300 residential units. And therein lies more of my concern. It’s vitally important to me that the residents at the riverfront be woven into the fabric of Beacon.

By the way, these plans by Metro North, are not close to being complete. They are in their conceptual stages right now and the MTA will have to go through our planning board process. In the bids that they’ve put out for developers, they have conformed to the guidelines in our Comprehensive Master Plan and they’re demonstrating a very positive interest in working with the city to have a development that we all agree will be beneficial.

But if it comes to fruition, one of the important factors in this development being successful is to incorporate those residents into mainstream Beacon.

The MTA is in a particularly good position to help us to bring business from the waterfront to Main Street. One of the ideas was to have a trolley go on their spur line that goes around the city and continues up to Connecticut.

The MTA is in a particularly good position to help us do that. They have the financial resources, they have ownership of the rail line. One of the ideas was to have a trolley go on their spur line that goes around the city and continues up to Connecticut. But it intersects with East Main Street. And one of the ideas to have a car that will go along those tracks to a point on East Main Street where it could come off those tracks and then go back down through Main Street.

There are a number of vehicles that the city can move forward with that would include busses, or perhaps bringing back a rail trolley, in fat there is an entire way-finding committee that are working on finding ways to bring people who are visiting the waterfront, going to DIA, and will be going to the Beacon Institute and to Long Dock to help them find their way up to Main Street. So, whatever techniques they come up with I would hope that the MTA would embrace and will help contribute to defray the cost of its operation.

This raises an interesting question. We’re talking MTA. Metropolitan Transportation Authority. We’re talking Transportation Hub. 300 housing units? What’s the idea behind that from the MTA’s perspective?

Well, the MTA wants to do it because they will be owning property and they will be receiving the revenue for the rentals. So, from their point of view, it’s the diversification of the revenue stream. The benefit that it will offer to Beacon is that it will increase our tax base. It will place density in the areas that the comprehensive plan highly recommends, at the center of our transportation hubs and it will add more vibrancy to our Main street.

The West end of Main Street looks beautiful now. The East end of Main Street, with the exception of a couple of the larger buildings on the other side of the tracks, looks great. The middle of Main Street is still eking out an existence. Are there any plans to encourage these property owners fix up their buildings and make some valuable use of these buildings, much like what was done on the West end a couple of years ago instead of just letting them lie dormant?

Well the comprehensive planners named that area at the center of Beacon the “Transition Zone.” It’s the area of the greatest opportunity that Beacon has. We are blessed that we have a Main Street that is almost a mile long because when the center of Main Street becomes every bit as interesting for visitors as the East and West ends are now, then Beacon will become a magnet for the entire Hudson River Valley for shopping and restaurants. To help that process along there are some steps that have been outlined in the Comprehensive MAster Plan. One of the concepts that we’re thinking about is to allow for the increase in the heights of the buildings one story in that area. The benefit of doing that is that builders and developers have more of an incentive to build because they’ll be able to get a greater return on their investment. So, right now the maximum story level is three stories and if the council approves it we would allow these buildings to be built to a fourth story. I am in favor of offering a small but helpful incentive for new construction for those who are willing to build historic style buildings in that area.

So the city would offer some kind of incentive to create buildings similar to those on the East and West ends?

Right. So by offering an incentive, and by permitting an extra story, and because these builders will be building in an empire zone, it is my belief that the center of Main Street will become less transitory and there will be a continuity of buildings from one end of Main Street to the other.

In addition, the Comprehensive Plan includes an economic development person, paid or volunteer, it’s nondescript, to help the city in its economic development. Among other projects that that person or committee will have is to work towards the revitalization of the center of Main Street.

The buildings on the other side of the tracks on East Main Street have been sitting there for a long time with very little in the way of movement. What are your plans to encourage those building owners to “get off the pot?”

It’s a concern to me that there are some large buildings that have been left vacant and that there hasn’t been any activity toward refurbishing them or converting them to a useful purpose. I would like the city to look at local laws that we can pass that will provide for a “stick” to move those redevelopments along faster than they’re moving now.

It’s a concern to me that there are some large buildings that have been left vacant and that there hasn’t been any activity toward refurbishing them or converting them to a useful purpose. I would like the city to look at local laws that we can pass that will provide for a “stick” to move those redevelopments along faster than they’re moving now.

Carrots? Or sticks?

Sticks. I didn’t say carrot because I’m not sure that the city wants to offer a carrot for that redevelopment. It’s possible, but there hasn’t been any thought to giving incentives other than in the transition zone.

I’m talking about local laws that will prevent demolition by neglect. And which will prevent the loss of any more of our historic buildings than have already been lost by neglect.

I believe that this administration will put more pressure on landlords to give back to the community and to be much more civic minded than they’ve been up until now.

The city recently acquired the Hiddenbrooke property, what’s the status of the University Settlement Camp property?

University Settlement was recent acquired by the State and the city has been given oversight management of the property and we are free to utilize it in whatever way that we desire.

Did that property come at any expense to the city?

It came at a revenue gain because the city was in possession of the Beacon reservoir and paying school taxes for that property. When the State acquired the reservoir property from us and in return purchased the University Settlement Camp it relieved the city of Beacon from having to pay school taxes.

Now that is actually a revenue gain for our residents because, even though that much less revenue is going to the Beacon City School District, the District is broader than the city of Beacon and those tax dollars are spread out over a broader base. So the net result will be that Beacon residents will be taxed less.

Some of the concerns that have been raised are 1.) the fear of too much development and 2.) the fear that the city will acquire so much property that it becomes a tax burden on the residents. How do you propose to balance those legitimate concerns out?

The city has in its wisdom acquired two large properties to be utilized for parks. University Settlement Camp and Hiddenbrooke. And I think that balanced our inventory well.

The city has in its wisdom has acquired to large properties to be utilized for parks. University Settlement Camp and Hiddenbrooke. And I think that balanced our inventory well. Any further acquisitions will be looked at very carefully and will be weighed against the potential loss of revenue if those lands were to be developed.

The important thing that a city must do is plan. And planning includes looking at the entire city and its potential for revenue and recreation with the compass aimed at keeping taxes as low as possible, services as high as possible. But the direction that that compass is aiming at is keeping Beacon affordable for our seniors, people on fixed incomes, people with large families, and that cannot be compromised.

There’s a problem in New York State that faces all its citizens and that’s that there is an exceedingly large burden on residents due to school taxes. There’s been talk that the State will change how schools are funded. Is the City of Beacon pursuing that with the State in any fashion?

I’m not aware of any plans that Albany has but if there is one and if they would want the city to sign on to a way of relieving the school tax burden for residents, I would sign on to it. I’m not an expert in this area, but it seems to me that if the school revenue came from income tax rather than property tax that would be a fairer way of bringing money in. Particularly because it would reduce the burden on seniors and it would have people that were earning the most, and who could afford to, pay the most.

In the broader area of the relationship between the city and the school district, there are steps that I would like the city to take. I would like to have much better communication between the city and the school with regard to programs, and particularly youth initiatives.

I’ve segued into a different topic.

That’s one of the things that you mentioned in your inauguration speech, that you see your administration dealing with. What are the concerns you have? What do you want to see put into place?

Youth development is a responsibility that the entire community has to take on and we can’t leave it to the school district alone, because evidence shows that the schools have not been able to provide for enough after-school programs to interest all of our students.

The concerns that I have is that last year there were 28 incidents where the police had to be called in to stop gang fights with kids leaving school and settling their problems on the streets. That’s a pretty big indication to me that there’s something missing either in school programs or in activities that would be of interest to our youth.

Youth development is a responsibility that the entire community has to take on and we can’t leave it to the school district alone, because evidence shows that the schools have not been able to provide for enough after-school programs to interest all of our students. These kids will be the adults of the future and how will treat them now will determine how they’ll treat us in the future. And the kind of community that they’re going to live in.

We all have a moral responsibility to do what we have to do for them and to some extent our community in Beacon has left that solely up to the schools and have not taken that challenge on. The Martin Luther King Center has and the Beacon Community Center has but we’re kind of a unique city in that we don’t have a youth center and we don’t have a senior center. These social amenities are important for a city to have in that we want to make a statement that we care about our youth and that we care about the lives of our mature adults.

A city has to have compassion and recognize when people are in need, that call for help should be answered. Many communities have youth centers and senior centers that are open for different programs for seniors. For exercise for activities.

What I’d like to see Beacon do is take a much broader approach toward youth and mature adults and find ways to make everyone’s life more productive. And that would include a more significant role for our recreation commission to play.

Has the city made the recreation director a full-time position yet?

The recreation commission, from my perspective, is in a state of transition. It’s organized in the way that our older form of government was organized and needs to come up to the 2008 levels.

The problem is that the person who we call the director isn’t really a director, she’s a clerk. The person who’s the director is one of the commissioners.

The commissioners are volunteers right?

Yes. And so it’s sort of hard to describe the position. The city has a recreation clerk, who is paid, and we’ve increased the hours for that person from 18 to 25 hours because it’s been documented that this is the number of hours that this person actually works in a weeks time. And I believe that a person should be paid for the work that they do.

However, the department is going to be going through a transformation and it will be modeled off of most of the other recreation commissions in Dutchess County and other areas and the ultimate goal is to be able to provide more programs for our youth and mature residents.

The area to the South of Beacon on Route 9D. It’s technically in Fishkill, but it’s really a no-man’s land. And there are questions being raised about what fire department is really handling what’s going on in Dutchess Junction. Are the Town of Fishkill police really patrolling that are or are we becoming responsible for that. Does the city of Beacon get paid back for any of the work it’s doing in Dutchess Junction? And do we have any plans to make what is obviously a part of the Beacon City School District a part of Beacon?

We looked into annexing that property and we found that it would take the Town of Fishkill to agree to letting us have it. Or, if a substantial number of residents there were to vote in favor of it.

I’m not certain that it’s really a concern because I’m not aware that we’re expending any monies or providing any services South of the Beacon City line. But if we are, that will stop unless we’re compensated for it. But I’m not aware of that taking place. But there also might be some benefit to combining services with Dutchess Junction and Glenham.
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