Key Issues
Downtown Hudson and its Vitality. With the Phase I development in the early 2000s, our downtown area expanded with a beautiful setting, new stores, a new library and a new grocery store. I live close to downtown (Ward 1) and I love to see how active this area is, regardless of the day of the week, with families and couples enjoying the space and restaurants. At the time, many residents voiced concerns over this new development and its impact on the Main Street shops. Does it work? Yes it seems to. It appears we have increased foot traffic to our downtown shops and merchants. Could it be better? Yes I believe so. I would like to listen and learn from our area merchants and community and work together to ensure we continue to see economic success.
Phase II development. The Phase II area consists of the former school bus lot and area south, across Owen Brown Street. The most recent proposal was declined by vote and we’re somewhat back to the beginning of what to do with this property. As your council representative, I will work for you to complete this initiative in a manner that a majority can agree on. We need to think carefully about what we can do with this property to compliment our existing downtown shops and merchants.
Velocity Broadband. Hudson has always relied heavily on its residents to generate most of our operating income. We do not have a lot of commercial or industrial companies that help supplement our operating income. Years ago, we were fortunate to have the Terex corporation located where JoAnn’s is now. Unfortunately, we had all of our eggs in one basket; the Terex corporation was acquired and closed in 1988 and we lost our large corporate sponsor. I believe our city council members since then have worked hard to draw more large commercial businesses into Hudson – one initiative is the very large investment in Velocity Broadband. The intentions were good – if current suppliers won’t provide high speed internet to the area of Hudson we’re trying to develop commercially (West 303, Hudson Crossing Parkway, across from The Hudson Community Chapel), let’s do it ourselves and it will reap benefits when the corporations all relocate. That hasn’t quite happened the way we thought it would; other companies are now providing this service within Hudson and we are left with a large unpaid bill. I believe in stepping back when we need to, admitting and accepting when things don’t work out, and changing course as appropriate. How do we change course for Velocity Broadband? I don’t believe we should continue to hold this debt, there are other, better options.
Hudson's Comprehensive Plan. Many of the current initiatives such as the Phase II development AND the former middle school require our city representatives (board of zoning and building appeals (BZBA), city council) to review proposed requests AND approve modifications to our land development code. If this code is what we envision for our city, yet we continue to allow requests such as these to vary from our land development code, what does this tell us? Either our land development code is out of touch with what the majority of our residents want, OR we do not have appropriate representation on our city council and BZBA. These elected positions truly dictate the future of our town. Elect me, Karen Heater, to truly represent you and the future of our town.
