Woodstock is a community famous for the depths and lengths of its verbal feuds, sometimes passed from one generation to another. Over the years, the exchange of views between Bill McKenna and Howard Harris has become as worthy candidate for inclusion in the hall of fame of Woodstock disputes.
Harris, a longtime critic of Woodstock town supervisor McKenna, says he writes letters and posts on social media to hold McKenna accountable — despite what others may think of his motives.
If you’ve read the letters section over the years, you’ll know the name Howard Harris. The retired New York City police detective served on Woodstock’s zoning board of appeals for 15 years, the last eight as chair, before the town board voted in December 2012 not to renew his term.
Some theorize Harris still holds a grudge against McKenna for urging Harris’ ouster from the ZBA.
Harris gives a different reason. “I like the reputation of being a gadfly,” Harris said one recent afternoon, noting that someone from Phoenicia sent him a pin with a fly on it. “I enjoy the role,” he said.
Harris began writing letters back in 2010 citing what he believed to be governmental misdeeds, but he omitted names. Once he was no longer involved in town government, Harris started using names, and soon went after McKenna.
“The reason I write about McKenna so often is because he’s an easy target. Writing about him is like fishing in a … well, you know,” Harris said.
McKenna will tell you the letters generally don’t bother him, a claim Harris disputes. “That’s not the truth. I know people that are close to him,” he said.
A list of grievances
The latest criticism of McKenna involves a permit that Harris alleges McKenna illegally issued so that Bearsville Center could have outdoor music events. McKenna shortened a form for a mass-gathering permit designed by former supervisor Jeremy Wilber to one page and signed it himself.
“If you’re doing anything legal on private property, you don’t need a mass-gathering permit,” Harris said. “What he did was, he took out the last page of the original mass-gathering application, which was supposed to be signed by the town clerk, put in his own last page, and signed it.”
In another of his criticisms, Harris faults McKenna for not acting quickly enough on illegal dumping in Shady, a long saga that has dragged on for nearly three years. McKenna said he was waiting for propertyowner to come up with a satisfactory plan for removing contaminated soil and debris, much of which landed in the yard of Reynolds Lane neighbors.
McKenna said a backup plan was to obtain court permission to hire a contractor to clean up the contamination and add the cost to the owner’s property taxes. If he defaults, the county will make the town whole and recoup the money through a foreclosure sale.
“McKenna says I did this. I did that. I, I, I, on and on,” Harris said. “It wasn’t McKenna who did the I, I, I. It was the fact that environmental commission member Erin Moran and [then-town board member] Lorin Rose pushed him into doing it.”
Harris likes to write, but said he gets harassed on Facebook. “They come after me tooth and nail, these people that love McKenna,” he said.
The final straw and the motivation for the regular letters, if you ask McKenna, was Harris being passed over for police chief.
“When Harry [Baldwin] decides to retire, he [Harris] calls me up and says, ‘Bill, I want you to make me police chief.’ And I laughed at him. I honestly thought he was joking,” McKenna said. “And when he didn’t laugh back, I realized that I was in trouble, and that was the last civil conversation I had with Howard.”
McKenna said Harris argued he was a cop for 25 years and he could be chief.
“I said, you were a cop 25 years ago in New York City,” McKenna said he replied. “That’s not the same as being a police chief in Woodstock and no, I don’t think you’d be suited for this. That was a personal insult to him.”
Harris tells a different story.
“I wouldn’t put on a gun or a uniform unless my life depended on it. McKenna asked [former supervisor] Jeff Moran to put in a police commission between the civilians and the police department that people could go to,” Harris said. “Moran asked me and Michael Lorenzo, who was my former radio-car partner, and we said yes. McKenna wanted to be the third person on that commission and Moran told him no, it can only be the supervisor, and that’s when the whole thing got squashed,” he said. “Trust me. I wouldn’t want [Woodstock police chief] Clayton’s [Keefe] job.”
A pair of perspectives
“I just assume that his beef is that I’m living and breathing,” McKenna said of Harris. “He writes that everything I do is not good enough for Howard, so I don’t pay attention.”
McKenna said Harris was becoming an embarrassment to the town because of the way he handled people who came before the ZBA, and that is why he was not reappointed. “It got to the painful point that he just did not treat applicants nicely in front of the board,” McKenna said.
What “sealed the deal” was when the town was before the ZBA for the lower Comeau parking lot and lighting requirements. Harris treated the town’s engineering representative “like an infant, like a kindergartener.”
McKenna, who was on the town board at the time, said he went into then-supervisor Wilber’s office the next day and said he could not support reappointing Harris for another term.
Responding to Harris’ latest beef, the permit, McKenna defended his actions.“I didn’t create the form,”
McKenna said. He used the form he believed Wilber created to satisfy a planning-board requirement that the Woodstock Animal Sanctuary get town permission for some shows with music.
This past summer, in approving site plans for outdoor venues at Colony Woodstock and Bearsville Center, the planning board said music was dependent on town permission. McKenna granted them permits.
“I took what Jeremy did in the past,” McKenna explained, “and I issued a gathering permit so that they can have outdoor music, because our noise ordinance says that if it’s permitted by the town, then it’s sanctioned and that the noise ordinance doesn’t apply.”
McKenna, who wrote the 2018 noise ordinance, said it was purposely vague so as not to be punitive. “Outdoor music is permitted. Amplified music is permitted. It just cannot be unreasonable,” McKenna said. “The whole reason we set up this law was not to issue tickets and get people in trouble. It was to give the cops a tool to go up to Colony and say, Hey, guys, it’s a little loud. It’s ten o’clock.”
The real impetus of the noise ordinance was to clamp down on short-term rental party houses since outdoor music venues weren’t as prolific until the pandemic.
The planning board had warned venues amplified music may run afoul of zoning, which, until the noise ordinance was passed, defined maximum decibel levels. While not written into the ordinance itself, the resolution authorizing its passage negated that section.
Another section of the zoning law, still in effect and sometimes cited by the planning board, refers to amplified sound being contained to a structure. But McKenna notes that is regarding special-use permits and the structure requirement is “where the planning board deems appropriate.”
McKenna said the bottom line is that outdoor music is allowed. “The law doesn’t prohibit outdoor music. It’s all legal until eleven o’clock, and then they can’t have any unreasonable or unnecessary noise, period,” he said. “I didn’t allow them to do something they’re not allowed to do. Harris and [council member] Bennet [Ratcliff] are on this kick about me breaking the law. They’re allowed to do it.”
McKenna said he plans to announce plans for a gathering to discuss the noise ordinance and ways to make sure venues can have outdoor music and people can still enjoy peace and quiet.
Truth and honesty
That is precisely what Ratcliff and councilmember Maria-Elena Conte did early this year, but Ratcliff says there’s no sense in continuing if McKenna is going to issue permits that circumvent the process.
“I’m certainly not going to waste the good people of Woodstock’s time who wanted to get together and find a solution if he’s going to continue to illegally issue permits,” Ratcliff said. “So I understand why Howard Harris is completely out of his mind.”
Ratcliff said Harris was the one who discovered the permit and asked him to look into it.
“This is an example of what makes Howard tick. He sees something that is clearly either illegal or unethical or improper, and he calls it out. I really think that’s what it is. I don’t think there’s anything more to it than that,” Ratcliff said. “I think that Howard’s agenda is truth and honesty, and he is maligned for that. But there only seems to be one person who maligns him. I have not noticed anyone else in town maligning Howard Harris. And if the person that’s maligning Howard Harris is also the person that thinks it’s okay to illegally create a permit, then I’m going to side with the person who believes in truth and honesty.”
When he asked about the permit, Ratcliff said, McKenna told him to get out of his office.
Councilmember Laura Ricci, in her eighth year on the town board, has a mutually supportive relationship with McKenna. She said McKenna does what he thinks is best for the town.
“I believe he always puts Woodstock first and he does what he thinks is right, and he’s very familiar with the law,” said Ricci, who has known McKenna for many years. “When I became deputy supervisor, Bill was the one who took me under his wing in terms of helping me know the facts about what’s going on …. We have very open conversations, one on one. So I’m always very open with Bill about my position on things. He’s always very open about his position on things, and if we do have a difference on things, we resolve them respectfully with each other.”
Ricci only recalls voting against McKenna twice. One vote was the establishment of the Zena Woods critical environmental area (CEA). McKenna didn’t believe it was necessary, while Ricci and the rest of the board disagreed. The other vote was on a resolution opposing then-governor Andrew Cuomo’s ban on giving state funds to businesses who boycott Israel. Ricci did not want to be in the position of telling the governor how to do his job, while McKenna and the rest of the board were in favor of the resolution.
“I think those are the only two times I voted against Bill. But each time I’ve been respectful, I’ve let him know beforehand, and I haven’t blindsided him. I think he’s appreciated that. So we have a very open conversation,” she said.
Respect and disrespect
Ratcliff said the solution to the outdoor venues was simple.
“There are people who like peace and quiet, there are people who like outdoors, ” Ratcliff said. “We’ve got to get those people together, and we’ve got to find the times, places and events that that can be outdoors, and the times, places and events that there can be peace and quiet. And we should put that down in what is a clear and understandable, not vague, law.”
“The layers of duplicity and disrespect for the law in that single bogus permit issuing were many,” continued Ratcliff, “and I understand why Howard was rightfully upset about that.” Ratcliff said he was concerned about the legal exposure for the town and venues if an accident were to happen at an event where McKenna issued a permit without the proper scrutiny.
“Unless he will finally admit that what he did was illegal, improper, irresponsible, and reckless and say that he won’t do it again, then there is no need to have listening sessions about the noise law,” Ratcliff said.
Should Hudson Valley One have given Harris a time out from sending letters criticizing McKenna that went over the line?
“I don’t publish the newspaper,” Ratcliff answered. “It’s always difficult in a small town to cover the news and cover it fairly, and to get everybody’s perspective. I think what’s equally difficult is when it’s clear that somebody’s breaking the law, it’s difficult to call them out.”
Ratcliff believes McKenna broke state law against falsification of a public document. “I was willing to stand up and say it was illegal,” he said. “So what more am I supposed to do?”
Ricci said she can’t speak to Harris’ motivation, but respects his right to free speech and expression of opinions.
“All things considered, I try to make the best decision I can for Woodstock, and I believe that Bill tries to do the same thing. But when you have 6000 people or whatever we have, somebody somewhere might not like what your decision was,” Ricci said. “I appreciate Howard Harris. I appreciate he’s thinking things through. He’s putting them in the paper. He’s saying what he thinks. He’s exercising his constitutional right. That’s America.”
Join the family! 
