By Margaret Menge

Rudy Hahn has served as a village trustee for the last thirty one years, twenty six of them with Ed Moulton as mayor. He says very little at Village Board meetings – usually only speaking when a question in posed directly to him. Meetings are the Village Board now stretch usually to 10 p.m. There are often more than a dozen villagers in attendance, raising issues and voicing opinions. Oftentimes the issues have to do with actions taken by the Village Board before Mayor Gross took office. The issue that has inspired the most controversy over the last year is the License Agreement made with Tony Missere and The River Bank almost exactly a year ago, to give away two village-owned parking spaces in exchange for having Missere build a second municipal lot down River Avenue.

In his interview with the Local on Saturday, March 8, Hahn defended the board’s action, and said he does not regret signing onto the License Agreement. “I don’t think it was a bad idea,” says Hahn, “I think we have several times when there is additional parking required.” He acknowledges that the plan for a second municipal lot on River Avenue “does not sit well with residents” of that street, but says he thinks the parking would have been appropriate for employees of the restaurants, who could have freed up parking spaces for customers. “I think that the Master Plan Committee mentioned parking so I don’t think it was something that was too out of line,” he says.

The fallout from the License Agreement led to a fight between Tony Missere and Ray Yannone, the owner of the Storm King Theatre building next store, with the discovery that The River Bank is not in the CBS zone. “I think it’s very unfortunate that it has deteriorated into that,” says Hahn. “I don’t really know how it happened…I have not really paid attention to the zoning map myself.” Hahn says he thinks that the two parking spaces in front of the ice cream stand (which belongs to the theatre) also be done away with, and turned into grass.

Rudy Hahn sparred with Mayor Joe Gross last year in a closed door session after the public meeting where DPW Superintendent Bob Gilmore announced that he’d gone to businesses in the village and asked for donations amounting to $1 million to reconfigure the municipal lot. The mayor had not been told anything about the plan prior to the meeting, and was advised by Gilmore that the Village Board would need to act quickly or lose the money. The mayor had said, in the closed door meeting which the Local criticized as being in violation of the Open Meetings Law, that he thought Gilmore was acting outside of his authority. But Hahn had disagreed. And says, as it pertains to Gilmore’s apparent misinterpretation of the Zoning Law in the case of The River Bank and the CBS district that he is sure it was accidental. “It was always by the code in any dealings I had with him [Gilmore]...I think because of wearing a lot of hats he would spread himself thin,” says Hahn. (Gilmore was the Superintendent of Public Works, the building inspector, the code enforcement officer, and the fire inspector, earning a combined salary, at the time of his retirement last year, of about $96,000).

“I still feel that I can be a reasonable contributor to the efficiency of the board,” says Hahn, when asked why he wants to run for another two-year term. “The big thing is the impact of school taxes is so heavy on the community that we should do our part to try to keep taxes down.”

Hahn says he is in favor of going forward with consolidation of the town and village police departments, an issue that has been on the table for thirty years. “I feel that now is a really good time to do the consolidation issue for police,” he says. “I’m sure that money could be saved. How much? I don’t have any idea,” he says. Hahn went off the record at this point with some very specific criticisms about the policing of the village, but went back on the record to voice some complaints also heard from some residents over the last two years. “I feel that we should have more coverage, more police presence on the street,” he said, mentioning the Village Square in particular. He says he’d like to see this increased presence in the Village Square, in particular. “I know we don empty house checks and that kind of thing…but I think it’s more important to take care of the roads,” he said, adding that he thinks Chief Charlie Williams should spend more time on the streets. “I feel he should be the main peace officer,” he says.

Rudy Hahn retired in 2000 as a senior researcher with Bristol Myers Squibb. He’s a lifelong resident of the village, and was a teenager here when kids paid 18 cents to see the Saturday afternoon matinee at the Storm King Theatre. He says he’d like to see the theatre restored and hopes that Yannone is able to do it.

Rudy Hahn on the issues...

Debt: The village is right now about $7.5 million in debt, down almost $1 million from a year ago, when it was about $8.4 million. “To be perfectly frank, I don’t think there was a close inspection of the figures,” says Hahn. “I knew it [the debt] was high, but I didn’t know it was that high.”

Black Rock Treatment Plant:  It took more than 13 years to get the plant built and online, while the village sunk deeper into debt. “A lot of people said, 'Why don’t you sue the architect and stuff.?' I just feel it would be drawn out and cost the village a lot of money.”

Wells on Taylor Road: The wells, which formerly belonged to Star Expansion, were part of a bankruptcy proceeding and were available for more than two years until they were finally purchased in 2003 and then sold to Kiryas Joel in 2005. “I think it was just a situation where we probably could have bought the property…hindsight is probably better than vision at that time.” [The village trustees are also water commissioners, overseeing a water system that serves the village and town.] Kiryas Joel, he says, needs a “change in attitude.”

Riverfront: “I’m for doing as little as possible…I think it’s great we’re doing 400 years, but I love the park the way it is. And I think we should do everything we can to keep it as pastoral as possible.”

Moffia wall: “We’re going to have storm surges, etcetera… I think this [the wall] would be for a catastrophic thing…You have the funding, I think you do it for long-term protection. It’s like an insurance policy.”