Kingston mayoral candidates Steve Noble and Scott Denny were invited over to the Best Western last week to opine for the edification of the businesspersons who had gathered at the regional chamber of commerce breakfast. Chamber president and master of ceremonies Ward Todd addressed the candidates with questions received from the audience.
Acknowledging the housing crisis in the city and county, Todd asked the candidates what they would do to solve it.
“Historically,” said Noble, “the biggest impediment to building anything is zoning …. We should be able to make sure that our community can build taller, can build denser, but also make sure [developers] are building workforce housing for people in our community.”
Noble directed the crowd to look into the city’s development guide and new form-based zoning. As an example of bigger projects, Noble pointed toward his involvement with the Stony Run Apartment complex on Hurley Avenue. “Two hundred sixty-six units of what was market-rate housing,” said Noble, “was going up, up, up and away in pricing. And we actually created workforce housing there. And so that has now left us with 266 units that are protected, and are now going to be there for our workforce in the future.”
Denny took umbrage at the mayor’s positive assessment. “I don’t think there’s enough affordable housing in the City of Kingston and certainly very little development,” Denny said. He contended that what was needed was the involvement at Stony Run of the “different kinds of contractors” who specialized in the creation of affordable housing. There were developers throughout the East Coast who specialized in that, Denny said.
He trashed what had happened at Stony Run. “I visited there, I spent hours out there,” said Denny. “I was at the meetings where the people were crying because of what was going on. So, you know, the conditions out there are not favorable, either. If anybody wants to take a tour out there, I’ll be happy to go with you.”
During the time allotted for rebuttal, Noble explained his philosophy for the creation of affordable housing. Noble pointed to the project at Golden Hill, expected to bring 166 more units online, and the much-delayed 143-unit Kingstonian mixed-use development.
“In order to build affordable housing, you need to be able to have the programs, the incentives, the tax breaks to be able to help support that,” Noble said. “It’s not going to be built without that assistance.” All but 48 if the apartments at Golden Hill will be available through a statewide lottery. Should The Kingstonian be built, its affordable-housing mandate covers 14 apartments.
Noble also touted the creation of the city land bank which acquires troubled single-family homes and rehabilitates them for sale to members of the community for below market value. “We just sold two of them for under $200,000,” said Noble.
How many homeless?
Given a chance at his own rebuttal, Denny launched headfirst instead into the issue of homelessness. “The other issue I think that really needs to be addressed,” Denny began, “is that right now there’s upward of 700 homeless people walking around the City of Kingston with no place to be.”
In the September 21 mayoral debate held by the Daily Freeman, editor Ivan Lajara told Denny that the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development had put the number of homeless people in Ulster County at between 300 and 400.
“Call it 700, 350, 450 — it doesn’t matter, they’re homeless,” Denny had responded.
Two days before the chamber of commerce event, a count had found 508 homeless individuals the county.
Staying on the topic, Denny claimed that he had had an epiphany when he noticed a homeless person sleeping outside city hall. “We need to do something,” Denny recalled feeling, “we need to do it now!”
If that meant opening the former Kingston Hospital facility on Broadway as a place for people to stay, he suggested, then so be it.
“And as everybody knows, we are a sanctuary city,” continued Denny. “And I would imagine that any time, any day, we can expect buses coming in here. That’s what I’m expecting, and I think we should be prepared for it.”
Both candidates were asked their opinions of the controversial and long-delayed development of The Kingstonian.
“I wasn’t against The Kingstonian,” said Denny. “ I’m still not against it. I was against the process.” He implied that Noble’s relationship with project principal Brad Jordan was unseemly and his behavior in celebrating the defeat of an obstructionist public unbecoming.
“My real problem is when it came to the public hearings,” recalled Denny, “and he emerged from one of those meetings after the ruling came down from the judge. He put his hand up and said, ‘We won! We won means that they got their way to move forward with The Kingstonian.’ And that’s fine. But you don’t take a victory lap against the entire community that decided they were against The Kingstonian.”
Noble made his own position clear. “I am completely supportive of The Kingstonian project. I do believe it’s exactly the type of thing we need,” said Noble. “But to be honest, we needed to do that in 2017, in 2018, 2019 and in 2021, 2022 and 2023. This project would have been built a long time ago if we weren’t sued 17-plus times by one property owner in the neighborhood. We’ve won every single important case related to that. And so I do have faith that it’s going to be built. It is what uptown needs.”
The strong mayor
Asked about term limits, Noble took the opportunity to explain the form of government which operates in Kingston.
“We have what’s called a strong-mayor form of government,” said Noble. “We join cities like Middletown, Albany, New York City, Ithaca, Syracuse, and a whole bunch of other cities where the mayor is the CEO of the organization. They are qualified professionals who run for office who lead the city’s day-to-day activities, where all the department heads report directly to them. And they’re ultimately responsible for everything that happens in the community. And for me, that has been a really wonderful and amazing and fulfilling journey. But it’s a journey that really needs someone who knows what they’re doing.”
Noble was first elected at the end of 2015 when he was 33 years old.
Denny favored term limits, recommending the two terms allowed a U.S. president as the gold standard to emulate. He bemoaned the number of executive orders issued by Noble.
“He’s kind of self serving in the sense that he’s representing his agenda, where he expects the council to stay in line,” said Denny. “I think that we just saw an exercise of that, with Local Law 160, that the council did an eight-to-one vote, and it passed. And the mayor vetoed that. Now I expect on Monday on the sixth of November that they’re going to come back and override that. So that needs to be the balance of power. I just don’t believe in the iron hand of the mayor. I think there needs to be a lot more input from the council because ultimately the council represents the wards and their individual constituents.”
Noble’s rebuttal described his administration as having been “completely open and transparent when it comes to engaging residents.”
“If anyone here in this room knows me,” said he, “[they know] it’s that I do not rule with a heavy hand or an iron fist or any of those metaphors.”
Denny shifted the subject to crime to illustrate the desirability of a change in the mayor’s office, apologizing first to Kingston police chief Egidio Tinti, who looked on from a nearby table. “Gidio, please, I’m not directing this at you,” said Denny. “They say the FBI statistics are saying that the chances of becoming a victim of a violent crime right now in Kingston is one in 44. So this is the FBI statistics. I don’t know how accurate it is, but I believe we’re down six officers, which I think, that should have been handled before.”
During a radio interview Denny gave on WAMC a few hours later, the odds he cited of a Kingston resident being the victim of a violent crime had dropped down to one in 256.
The FBI’s DCJS Crime Reporting System reported 62 violent crimes, ten involving forearms, in Kingston in 2022. The odds of a resident being victimized in a violent manner was one in 386.
Managing Kingston’s problems
Underlying Denny’s exaggerations are problems he contends should be addressed. “If we needed to put out a $5000 signup bonus or whatever it is,” said Denny, “and offer a competitive salary, we need to do it. We can’t be short police officers. Our crime rate is high. I think we need to do a better job.”
Asked what he would do to solve the opioid crisis, Denny pivoted again to allege ongoing problems at the WMC HealthAlliance hospital in Kingston.
“I’m hoping that Steve is going to speak to this because I don’t think this is public knowledge,” said Denny. “I have not seen this in the media anywhere, but as of Sunday morning at 11 a.m. people were notified that the Health Alliance hospital on Mary’s Avenue was in full diversion.” Denny described overcrowded emergency rooms at Northern Dutchess and text messages to EMTs told to take emergency patience across the river.
“They needed to know that and they should have known,” Denny said, “and I just don’t understand, as the chief executive, as you say, it was your responsibility to alert the public.”
Noble noted people from HealthAlliance in the crowd, and told the room that he thought they were having “some sort of IT issue”.
“I cannot speak for HealthAlliance,” said Noble. “What I do know is that when they reached out to me yesterday to talk about this issue is that they have alerted everyone that needs to know from the state to the county, to local governments, but there’s been no one else or county that has been harmed by this situation.”
Noble identified access to the workforce as the biggest issue that business leaders should be concerned about this year. “A highly trained workforce is critical to being able to attract some of the large businesses that may end up at iPark 87, or even the small businesses that are operating right here in the City of Kingston that are looking to be able to retain and attract really great people.”
Denny identified the hospitality industry as being crucial. He warned that because service workers were unable to afford to live in the city they were being run out of town.
Both men felt that the housing unavailability to workers presented a significant impediment to the health of local businesses.
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