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Publication Date: February 16th, 2025
Image remixed from the Economist (read: growth!) and using Hudson’s Official City Seal.
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For a long time, the City of Hudson has been distracted. We have spent years fighting over national political symbols while our own foundation cracks. We have treated the local municipal government like a high-school debating club instead of what it is: a service provider that needs to pick up the trash, pave the roads, and tax people fairly. We have chased "side quests" which are political projects that feel heroic but are actually just distractions from the important work; making Hudson more fair and affordable.**
Our new Mayor, Joe Ferris, won by a razor-thin margin that almost lead to a recount (**read our detailed Election Scorecard here)**. He is a pragmatic progressive who cares about equality not as a buzzword, but as a reality. Across from him is Common Council President Margaret Morris. She didn't just win; she won in an epic landslide (Read more here). She is Irish-American, no-nonsense, and famously prepared. She does not care about the drama. She cares about the budget and the law. In fact, many argue it was her wake pulled the then relatively unknown and new-to-Hudson Mayor Ferris through the Democratic Party victory, when the then-sitting Mayor Johnson failed to take the challenge seriously and listened mainly to his curated Facebook bubble.
These two leaders have a chance to do something rare. And they both have the integrity and long-term vision to see the compounding benefit. They can ignore the noise and turn the two highest-leverage keys in city government. Both will take two years to initiate and implement.
Last year, a team of dedicated residents and former Council leaders, organized as the Citizens Initiative for Charter Change, gathered more signatures for a Charter Reform petition than almost any other issue in recent history. As chronicled in the Times Union and Gossips of Rivertown, they missed a filing deadline, but the message was clear. The people are tired of a 19th-century "Constitution" that no longer fits.
Our Charter was written for a 19th-century industrial hub. It is a mess of patchworks and contradictions. We have "Commissioners" for the Police and DPW who are political appointees, yet they have more power than the professionals we hire to do the actual work. (Even the former lame duck Common Council President have tried to influence the Charter Change process…)
There has undoubtedly been a buildup of unnecessary regulations, fees, and rules that limit businesses and builders. This is an opportunity to simplify the Charter and make clear who runs the city, rather than relying on centuries-old fine print that is out of touch with reality.
Does it make sense for the City of Hudson (population ~5,900 and falling) to have almost as many if not more elected and appointed positions than the entire County government (population 60,000)? It is a bloated, inefficient relic.
Almost every candidate in the last election ran on this issue. It is now time to act on those campaign promises and work with the Common Council President to enact the change. Here are just some of the glaring issues:
Editor’s Update on Timeline:
Due to the August ballot deadline rendering a 2026 vote impractical, the revised charter could appear on the November 2027 ballot for lawful enactment in January 2030, and beyond. Still, the current Common Council, under the leaders of CC President Morris, can can do the listening, learning, drafting, and heavy lifting required to get the Charter Reform ready in this two year term.
Here is the thing about property taxes in Hudson. They are a lie.
We have not had a citywide reassessment in nearly a decade. That means the tax roll is a work of fiction. If you bought a house ten years ago, you are paying taxes on a value that no longer exists. If you bought a house last month, you can pay 2 or 3x as much as your neighbor for the privilege of being a newcomer. This is the "Welcome Stranger" tax, and it is the opposite of equality. What if your family has held on to a home for several decades?
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Property Tax Malpractice
Mayor Ferris should launch a full citywide reassessment immediately. Not in year two. Now.
Most politicians are terrified of this process, convinced that a revaluation is a political third rail that will inevitably anger voters. However, the economic reality tells a different story. The New York State Department of Taxation and Finance frequently relies on the 'Rule of Thirds' as a foundational teaching tool to demystify the process (read more about Reassessment in the Department’s own words here). This heuristic suggests that when a city updates its rolls after a long delay, the results generally balance out: one-third of taxes go up (correcting those who were underpaying), one-third stay the same, and one-third go down.
While this is a theoretical framework rather than a universal statistical law for every village and town, it underscores a critical truth about equity. As it stands, no one knows for certain whether the City of Hudson's tax records are currently fair or deeply skewed; conflicting opinions abound, but the data is opaque. That ambiguity is the core issue. Property tax should not be a political 'black box,' nor should it function as a de facto 'Welcome Stranger' tax. Municipal assessment is intended to be a transparent measurement of value, not a hidden instrument of social redistribution.
Think about that. For two-thirds of the city, this is either neutral or good news. All Citizens who believe in fairness will be better served.
Isn’t it unfair that a philanthropist’s not-for-profit headquarters that is roughly 9000 sqft pay less in property taxes than a 2500 sqft house owned by a single working mom who lives two blocks away? (This is not the wealthy philanthropists' fault, but one of hundreds of unfair assessments that would be fixed with an every-other-year automated re-assessment.)
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Fairness or Favoritism: Ad Hoc, Political, Tax Assessments?
Moving away from an ad hoc Assessor system, towards a pre-scheduled cadence of rule-based assessments is vital because it eliminates political influence across two specific paradigms:
First, it neutralizes the politics of timing by preventing incumbents from treating the schedule of re-assessments as a strategic choice akin to calling a parliamentary election. To wit, a fixed scheduled would have lead to former Mayor Kamal overseeing a city-wide tax reassessment, rather than kicking the activity into Mayor Ferris’ term.
Second, it replaces the subjective human selection of specific properties with rule-based software that assesses all homes simultaneously, thereby erasing the appearance of targeted tax hikes. This systemic change effectively safeguards against the risks of human bias and conflicts of interest, such as a tax review board headed by the spouse of a former Common Council President, which otherwise creates an inevitable recipe for public distrust and perceived corruption.
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When you refuse to reassess, you are protecting the people whose property values have skyrocketed the most but have not been re-assessed, at the expense of everyone else. As the researchers at Strong Towns explain, outdated assessments are regressive. In most towns they hurt the poor to subsidize the rich. Some would argue in Hudson new residents, rich or poor, are subsidizing long-time residents. A lone individual Assessor can also appear to be political and is often blamed, and that is one of the reasons why the City of Hudson has, apparently, had a hard time holding on to good assessors.
Every mayoral term should have a citywide tax reassessment in the first year of the mayor's term. At first, this should be a cultural rule or tradition. Then, once the Charter Reform is complete, it should become a pre-funded matter of law. This way every mayor and administration will manage a tax reassessment, and the Board of Estimates & Apportionment (BEA) budget will be the main driver of higher or lower taxes.
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But frequent tax reassessments are expensive?!
Not necessarily. An every other year software driven re-assessment, coupled with a once a decade human assessor rebalancing, is not only more fair, but also less expensive. Besides, isn’t the $2.5m in uncollected property taxes more expensive?
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The Rick Rector Lesson
We have seen this movie before. Mayor Rick Rector had the courage and common sense to push for a tax reassessment during his own term. He was then punished at the ballot box by voters who blamed him for the sticker shock, rather than blaming the previous mayors who had kicked the can down the road. The result? Voters traded Rector for arguably the least effective and least professional mayor in recent memory, Kamal Johnson. It is wise to decouple tax reassessment from mayoral races so we don't repeat this mistake.
If Mayor Ferris fixes this in his first year, he solves the "Welcome Stranger" problem, which arguably was one of the key drivers of his election. He ends the legal fees and lawsuit payouts. And if he is smart, he will use software-aided tools, and a cadence dictated by the Charter, to make it an every-other-year event, as recommended by the Harvard Ash Center.
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The Data: How Other Cities Do It Automatically
Why does Hudson act like reassessment is a once-in-a-generation crisis? For most well-run cities, it is a boring, automatic software update.
These two keys are not sexy. Bumper stickers with “Every Other Year Tax Reassessment," or “5 Council members better than 11 Aldermen” do not excite. But they are the difference between a city that works and a city that talks.
If you want a more equal city where everyone is treated the same on the tax roll regardless of their skin color, who they marry, or how long they have lived here, then you want these reforms. If you want a city that doesn't stumble from crisis to crisis, but handles its business with professional competence, then you want these reforms.
Hudson Common Sense supports these two reforms because both would make Hudson more efficient, more equal, and less political.
(You can read more about our Mission of efficiency, equality, and being apolitcal here.)
We have been an unserious city for too long. It is time to get serious. So the next time you see Mayor Ferris (ditto CC President Morris) at a town hall meeting, or a professional (and not personal) context don't ask them about national politics. Whether you are a citizen, a green card holder, a visa holder, an illegal alien, or an out-of-status immigrant living in the City of Hudson, you pay rent or taxes, and you have a stake in this.
Ask him: "When are you kicking off the tax reassessment so that everyone pays their fare share?"
And do not stop there. Ask Common Council President Margaret Morris, or your local ward council member: “Where you I submit a letter or attend a meeting to give input on the Charter Reform?”
Is 2026 the year Hudson finally gets serious? That depends on whether Mayor Joe and CC President Morris are brave enough, and supported by the rest of City Hall, to turn the keys of progress.
We considered other "keys" or other high-leverage and necessary “rate limiting” factors.
We looked at the Truck Route, the outdated Zoning Code, the Waterfront/LWRP Question, the Combined Sewer Overflow (CSO) Long Term Control Plan, and the failing Hudson City School District, though the latter is outside the City of Hudson’s control. These are all worthy projects. But we realized that the two "Master Keys" of Charter Reform and Fair Taxes are the foundation. If you fix the money going into the machine, and you fix the operating system of the machine, everything else becomes clearer and easier to fix.
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