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Publication Date: July 13, 2026
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“A contract with an on or before closing date is an approximate date for closing unless the contract expressly states ‘said time being of the essence”. With a contract that has an on or before closing date, once that date arrives, if the closing has not taken place, either party who is ready, willing, and able to close, can put the other party on notice with a demand that the closing occur on a specific date and time, declaring “said time being of the essence”. If the notified party fails to close, the party who issued the notice can terminate the contract and/or otherwise hold the other side in breach of contract. The party declaring time is of the essence must be ready, willing and able to close, meaning they have the legal ability to close the transaction. Because the City is not able to close due to the pending litigation challenging the nature of its ownership, it did not and does not have the ability to declare time is of the essence.”
Shared and published on July 15th, 2026
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Correction, July 15, 2026:
We had the $10,000 liquidated damages cap backward. It limits Kearney's exposure, not the city's, which remains uncapped. Our error, our fix.
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We await a response to our questions, by Friday July 24th, 2026:
We ask you to do four things: release the City Attorney's memo you cited; state the authority under which you signed; confirm the date you signed; and, if the Common Council authorized the amendment, show the resolution. We offer you space here for a written reply, which we will print in full.
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Image taken by HCS on Mill Street in Hudson, NY
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The facts here demand it. As a candidate, Joe Ferris called Mill Street Lofts a floodplain project Hudson should reject, and he backed the residents who sued to stop it. As mayor, on May 20, 2026, he signed the amendment that keeps it alive, in private, with no Council vote. The petitioners’ own account is Exhibit A. Our letter to the mayor follows in full.
Dear Mayor Ferris,
Hudson Common Sense advocates for the taxpayers of Hudson. We write to ask and understand. In the 2025 campaign you told Hudson, “There is no such thing as a good project in a floodplain,” and you urged voters to “reject the Mill Street Lofts as it stands.” You did more than talk. You gave the residents a written statement of support as they prepared to sue, and you stood with them as they organized. Then, on May 20, 2026, 17 days after the contract's stated closing date had passed, you signed the amendment that keeps that same floodplain project alive, in private, without a vote of the Common Council. We only found out when an informed resident of Mill Street asked the Common Council a question that we all should have asked.
You say you had reasons. City Attorney Andrew Howard, you have said, warned that killing the deal could expose Hudson to a costly breach claim from Kearney, so you signed to hold the line until the court rules. We take that seriously. It rings hollow. Kearney signed this contract, and its liquidated damages clause cuts the other way. If Kearney had walked away, the city's sole remedy was keeping the $10,000 deposit. If the city defaulted, Kearney's remedies were uncapped, including specific performance, so the breach risk you cited was real. The residents beside the field had already sued Hudson under Article 78, and their case coasted through the first set of hurdles in court. The lawsuit you say you meant to avoid was already here, and Hudson had already lost the first round. If saving taxpayers money was the goal, the faster path ran the other way: let the contract lapse, settle the Article 78, and move the subsidized housing to a site that is buildable, out of the floodplain, and with clear title. Instead you revived a dead deal on the worst ground in Hudson. Will this fight cost taxpayers more than six figures a year?
Three problems follow.
1. The Reversal. The project you called dangerous in the campaign is the project you rescued in May. Nothing about the flood-prone field changed. What changed was your position. You told the public the closing date “was not extended”. The amendment replaced a fixed May 3 date with one tied to the end of the lawsuit. Call it what you like; the deal that should have lapsed did not.
2. The Secrecy. This is the heart of it. You signed a sale of public land in private, and told no one. Hudson would not know today but for Council President Margaret Morris, who asked for the document, put it on the record, and posed the questions you have not answered. And she acted on Mill Street resident questions. She confirmed what the request revealed: the Common Council never authorized you. Common Council attorney, Ken Dow, will not say you had the power to act alone; he calls it an open question. One signature moved public land. Under what authority?
3. The Broken Promise. You ran as the transparency candidate, promising a modern charter and a City Hall that tells residents what it is doing. Signing a public land deal in private is the opposite of both.
This is not a small matter, and we will not treat it as one. It sits on the three core issues this publication exists to defend: the charter you promised to modernize, the property rights of a city that is alienating public land, and the honest handling of public funds. On its face it is one of the plainest examples of Hudson Hypocrisy we can name, the language of the public good wrapped around a decision the public never got to make.
And it does not add up. It does not square with the Joe Ferris we met on the campaign trail, the one who promised a town hall in every ward and open office hours and delivered. The candidate sold Hudson transparency. This is not corruption; it is a choice you will not explain, and an unexplained choice is its own kind of harm.
Consider who was in the room. A private developer, based outside Hudson and at home in Albany’s housing-finance world, knew the closing had slipped and an amendment was on the table. The residents beside the contested field did not; they learned it weeks later, from Margaret Morris. We do not allege that a dollar changed hands between the developer and City Hall, and campaign filings are public; we will read them. We ask only this: when the party with a lawyer and state money at stake knows more about the fate of public land than the people who live on it, and the mayor will not say why he acted alone, what is Hudson to conclude? Prove us wrong, and we will report that too.
*Your statement is on the record. So is the Mill Street resident response.*
Both Mill Street and HHA's Bliss 2.0 redevelopment draw on the same Albany funder, New York State Homes and Community Renewal (HCR). We note the overlap. We do not allege a link.
There is no authorizing resolution; the Council president has confirmed it. By Friday, July 24, we ask you to do four things: release the City Attorney's memo you cited; state the authority under which you signed; confirm the date you signed; and, if the Common Council authorized the amendment, show the resolution. We offer you space here for a written reply, which we will print in full.
Take this letter as what it is. Our Method, published on our About page, moves in three steps: Commentary, Critique, and the Courts. This is Commentary, the first and the friendliest. We are calling you in, not calling you out. Answer the questions and publish the record, and we will report that you did.
Hudson is not owed your silence. Hudson is owed an answer.
Respectfully,
/ The Editors
For Hudsonians with reason.