In retrospect, our Me and Mario radio show last Friday was a bit tough on the mayor in riding him for “waffling” on his plan to tear down the Pike Plan canopies in Kingston’s Stockade District. A “return to norm” would have been more accurate.

To recap, on April 2 Mayor Steve Noble and Common Council President Andrea Shaut delivered unto the Common Council a $1.1 million proposal to remove the almost 50-year-old canopies on Wall and North Front Streets. Their out-of-the-blue delivery, with little input from the aldermen, was a dead letter upon arrival.

And it wasn’t just lawmakers. Constituents weighed in with their ideas, pro and con. A practical politician at this stage of his nine-year career, Noble, seemingly abandoning his own plan and looking like Michael Jackson doing his moonwalk, declared that “everything was on the table.”

In other words, it was back to square one.

For the mayor, this was uniquely unusual behavior. For better or worse, the Noble administration, now in its third iteration, has been proactive in engaging citizen input on major issues it plans to address. The rezoning of Kingston after more than 60 years, for instance, was preceded by surveys, public hearings and extensive public input before it ever reached the Common Council. The final product was very different from the original plan. But even critics felt that at the least their voices were heard, if not actually listened to.

Perhaps, the mayor, full of himself after easily achieving a third term last November, acted prematurely in attempting to deal peremptorily with an eyesore that was only going to get worse in time.

It would also appear that Hizzoner has something more in mind in the future for the Pike Plan area. In commenting to aldermen that the planters on those streets resemble nothing more than “bathtubs full of dirt,” Noble is clearly bent on ground-level beautification.

In any event, the Pike Plan’s future is in the hands of the aldermen now. Let us hope that unlike the mayor and the Common Council president, they poll their constituents for their views before committing to any plan.

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HISTORICAL NOTES – I came to Kingston just as the last few buildings in old Rondout were being demolished by the Kingston Urban Renewal Agency. It took years before anything substantial was built in what was called Broadway East.

Uptown urban renewal was a very different story. Whereas Downtown was about destruction, Uptown was more about renewal. The only time anybody saw bulldozers Uptown was when they paved streets or parking lots.

The Pike Plan was central to this new approach. Woodstock artist John Pike gets credit for sketching the canopy idea on a napkin, but there was a good deal more to it than that.

Urban renewal not only financed the original canopies with federal funding circa 1976, it also removed the ugly overhead wires crisscrossing the streets, built a parking garage and replaced all the failing infrastructure beneath the streets.

Rejected was a proposal to create an “urban mall” by banning vehicle traffic on Wall Street.  Poughkeepsie tried that idea on its Main Street commercial core in the ‘70s. It has never recovered.

Uptown urban renewal was considered a great success. Downtown, a disaster. Perhaps city fathers (there weren’t many city mothers in those days) learned from their mistakes.

I find interesting some people’s perception of history in this town. Some think any building over 50 years old is “historic” and should be preserved. By that standard, the County Office Building on Fair Street, circa 1964, should be historic. The Pike Plan? Not quite yet.

The Kingston Uptown Business Association, once a political power in the Colonial City, was a driving force behind Uptown urban renewal planning. These days the business association is rarely heard from and, from what I can gather, even more rarely consulted.

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MATTERS OF MONEY – Owing in large measure to the turmoil surrounding the county finance office last year, Ulster finally got around to filing year-end fiscal reports for ’22 with the Securities and Exchange Commission in February of this year, according to the comptroller. I didn’t know municipalities had to report to the SEC, either. It’s because of bonding, says the comptroller.

Among the more interesting revelations in that report was that Ulster is sitting on some $185 million in cash reserves. The county tax levy for this fiscal year is about $75 million. What’s wrong with that picture?

Also noted was a small item on Kingston Wire where the Bank of Greene County donated $25,000 for Ulster’s affordable housing programs.

Well, whoop-de-do! The Bank of Greene County holds almost all of that huge surplus mentioned above. It could well afford much more than the price of say, a used Chevy, to promote county affordable housing, and itself.

The Catskill Mountain Railroad has received a $4.5 million state grant to convert its locomotive to a low-emission engine, a new engine house and for a terminal near the Ashokan Reservoir.

Kudos to the all-volunteer outfit that fought county government for years to keep its shoestring operation going. Tearing up unused railroad tracks for walking/biking trails was also a positive outcome to that ugly controversy, as was the establishment of the popular Explorer Rail (pedal-pusher) operation near Phoenicia.