An Attempt To Set The Record Straight With Facts (As Well As Offering My Opinion Of A Council Member)

Readers may be aware of the disturbance I caused at the Informal Common Council meeting 2 months ago.  (Though my contention is that I was not the only person in the room to create the disturbance, I'm not here to get into any of that aspect of the meeting or try to persuade anyone's opinion of who, if anyone, was at fault.)  You may have also read a front-page article in the Register-Star two days later about my "outburst" which briefly disrupted the meeting.  It's always interesting to read about oneself and one's actions in the newspaper, not only to see how the author might get things wrong, but also to read what people interviewed for the article have to say about you and how they recall interacting with you.  The article, written by Jammel Cutler, was interesting to me in those regards, mostly because it was full of blatantly false statements and accusations. 

The final few paragraphs of the article were the most intriguing and outlandish to me.  Jammel Cutler must have asked 2nd ward council member Dewan Sarowar if he had any feelings about me.  Here is what Cutler wrote, and, if we are to believe the author, how Sarowar responded:  2nd ward supervisor Dewan Sarowar recounted an alleged incident that happened about 18 months ago.  "He knocked on my door and was very loud with my wife and daughter," Sarowar said.  "When he was talking to my daughter, she got scared and upset, then he started yelling at my wife.  He comes to the council office every single meeting, he always verbally attacks council members, the DPW Superintendent, the police chief.  It's very scary to sit in a council meeting with this person.  Our colleagues don't feel safe with Bill around."  

I do not know from whom Sarowar received his information about my interaction with his wife and child, but he made just one accurate claim in the telling of an interaction he was not present for.  It's true, I once knocked on his "door."  The rest is complete and utter bullshit, also known as lies or fabrications, that he couldn't prove even if there had been a working video camera above his front door where I stood.  But what is more interesting to me than the lies Mr. Sarowar had no problem spreading about me is what he failed to mention in his recounting of the "alleged incident."  It's also obscene to me that Jammel Cutler gave me no opportunity to respond to Sarowar's specific claims about an "alleged incident" that I was supposedly the cause of.  That's just plain lame!

If Jammel Cutler had had the decency and journalistic integrity to ask me for a response to Dewan Sarowar's claims about the "alleged incident" which he wrote for his newspaper, here is what I would have told him: 

Several years ago, probably in 2018 when Dewan Sarowar was in his first term as 2nd ward representative, I heard grumblings at a few council meetings that he didn't even live in Hudson.  Naturally, I was intrigued.  

Even though Dewan Sarowar has never represented the ward I presently live in, nor have lived in, he certainly is making decisions that affect me and everyone else in the city, regardless of what ward anyone lives in.  He is on committees that make decisions that affect all of Hudson.  He votes on resolutions, like the rest of the council.  He is representing the 2nd ward and the entire city of Hudson, as are all members of the council.  But, in my mind, as a council member Dewan also doesn't seem to do much of anything worthwhile or constructive for the city as a whole.  Questions to department heads from him have been rare to nonexistent for 6 years, and soon it will be 8 years.  His contributions, at least at informal meetings, mostly seem to amount to silence (other than the occasional YAE or NAY during votes, and other one-word responses).  Based on my observations over the years, it has been my opinion that Dewan Sarowar is not helping this city at all.  I honestly don't know what he is there for beside possibly the $5,000 he receives every two years, as all members do.  For all I know, though, he may be considered by others to be the most effective council member the city has ever had.

A few years ago, I went to the Columbia County Real Property website where all property records are available to the public.  I typed "Dewan Sarowar" to see if he owned a house in Hudson, or even in the county.  It turns out that Dewan Sarowar and someone by the name of Azmerin Sanya have co-owned a single-story ranch at 46 Green Acres Road in Greenport, NY since May of 2016.  This is an indisputable fact.  It is also an indisputable fact that the Dewan Sarowar who co-owns a house in the Town of Greenport, located more than a mile north of the border with Hudson, is the same Dewan Sarowar who is a 2nd ward Common Council member -- In Hudson City Hall, mind you, not Greenport Town Hall. 

(Why the tax and property records for a house located in the Town of Greenport show a mailing address in Hudson is puzzling to me.  It certainly doesn't mean one lives in Hudson.)

As I said previously, I did knock on Dewan Sarowar's door -- that door being the front door of 46 Green Acres Road in the Town of Greenport.  I wanted to see if the Dewan Sarowar doing nothing for the Hudson Common Council was the same person who owned the house in Greenport, and if he lived there.  I was thinking at the time that maybe he rents his house in Greenport to others and rents an apartment in Hudson from someone else for himself.   Maybe, I thought, I'll get this puzzle quickly solved and move on.

So, Dewan did get the first part of his take on the "alleged incident" correct -- I did knock on his "door," though it was not a door located in the City of Hudson, which he failed to mention to Jammel Cutler.  Notice that Dewan Sarowar did not say about me, "He knocked on the front door of my house in Greenport," because, well, that wouldn't look good or sound right, would it?  But that would have been accurate and true (as well as a detail that he was well aware of), implying that Dewan Sarowar, Hudson's 2nd ward Council member, lives in a house that he owns that is not located in the City of Hudson.  Hmmm... say what?

I believe it was on a warm Saturday more than two years ago (it may have been less than two years) when I rang the bell at the front door of 46 Green Acres Road in the Town of Greenport (past the Hudson High School, past the Hudson city line, up Joslen, past the Greenport Park, then on your left is Green Acres Road, a long cul-de-sac).  After a few additional rings, a woman answered the door, barely opening the door.  I could hear at least one child in the background.  I asked the woman if Dewan was available, and she responded that he was not.  I asked her if Dewan lived in the house, to which she responded that Dewan "spends most of his time in Hudson."  While I may have caught a glimpse of a small child peeking through the open door, I said nothing to the child or any children, nor did any child say anything to me.  What one earth would I have to "talk" to Dewan's 3 or 4-year old child about, anyway?  No children ran screaming away from me and no doors were slammed.  I did not raise my voice at either the woman or her child, because I had no reason to.  No one got upset (including me), no one appeared to be "scared" (including the child), and the Greenport police never subsequently approached me about whether I had been "yelling" at, or if I had "scared" or "upset," the residents of 46 Green Acres Road. (Who wouldn't call the police if a stranger showed up at your door and began yelling at you and your family, including scaring your children?)  Neither the Hudson police nor the Greenport police ever got involved because everything that Dewan Sarowar claimed to have taken place after I knocked on the front door of his house at 46 Green Acres Road in Greenport a few years ago was, and still is, COMPLETELY FABRICATED NONSENSE.  But there it was in black and white for all to read.

I vaguely recall asking the woman at the door (who was probably, and likely still is, Dewan's wife) where Dewan lived.  I believe she told me that he lived in Hudson on Columbia Street, without offering any specific address.  I thanked her and said goodbye.  The woman said goodbye to me and closed the door.  As I recall, she seemed like a nice, warm person.  She did not tell me to leave the premises, and she did not slam the door.  Quite the contrary!   I left there with the understanding that Dewan Sarowar does not rent out the house he owns in the Town of Greenport, and that he spends most of his time in Hudson (and at work) away from his wife and child.

So, if Dewan Sarowar doesn't live in the house he owns in Greenport, where does our 2nd ward council member live and spend most of his time away from his wife and child?  It has to be about a mile and a half south of the house he purchased over 7 years ago and where his family lives, doesn't it?  It has to be in the City of Hudson, doesn't it?

It turns out, as I have come to learn, that both the City of Hudson and the County Board of Elections are under the impression that Dewan Sarowar lives at (or, more likely, spends most of his time at) 9 Columbia Street.  That house is not owned by Dewan Sarowar.  

I have no idea what all the eligibility and residency requirements are for city council members.  But Dewan Sarowar's apparent living situation sounds rather improbable, doesn't it?  A Hudson Common Council member who owns a house in Greenport where his family can be found, but he doesn't live there, at least not most of the time.  Instead of going back to his family after work, or on the weekends, he spends his time at a house in Hudson he does not own.  Of course, it's all possibly legit, and Dewan Sarowar is not breaking any rules as a council member who owns a house in Greenport where his family lives.  Maybe there is nothing there to be suspicious about.  But if there were suspicions, who at the city or county level would look into it, if anyone?  

Can you imagine the case where the mayor of Hudson owned a house in Greenport (or Albany, or in Connecticut, for that matter), where his or her family lived, while they rented a house in Hudson or had some other living arrangement that allowed them to spend "most of their time" away from their family and the house they own?  Allowing such an arrangement would set a really bad precedent, let alone be pretty difficult to accept and believe, wouldn't it? 

Can you imagine the explaining Dewan Sarowar would have had to make if Jammel Cutler had asked Dewan where his house involved in the "alleged incident" is located?  You know, the front door I knocked on to the house where his wife and child live that supposedly became such an ugly scene.  "Is that house of yours located in the City of Hudson, Dewan?  Did Mr. Huston knock on the door of a house in Hudson?"

Then, at the end of the Register-Star article, Dewan had more to say about me...

"He always verbally attacks council members..."  The reality is that I have never once spoken to, let alone "verbally attacked" (whatever that means), Dewan Sarowar at a council meeting or at his house.  Not once!  Margaret Morris?  Nope!  Vicky Daskaloudi?  Nope!  Amber Harris?  Nope!  Malachi Walker, Theo Anthony, Dominic Merante, John Rosenthal, verbally attacked?  No, no, no and no!  Have I "always" spoken loudly and adamantly as a member of the public at meetings to Tom Depietro, Robert Perry, Liz York, Heather Campbell and our former Police Chief Ed Moore?  Always?  No!  At times?  Sure, I have.  But to claim out loud that I "verbally attack" any of these people is preposterous, at least in my mind.  "Verbally attack" -- it's a vague, easily twisted and amplified term that makes someone sound like a crazed criminal.  "Run and hide, everybody, it's the VERBAL ATTACKER!  And he's armed with several verbals!"  Anytime someone speaks too loudly they are labelled a "harasser" or someone who "verbally attacks" others.  "He's got to go!" said our mayor, of me.  Lock 'em up!  Welcome to the Trump era. 

"Our colleagues don't feel safe with Bill around."  Is that so?  Was Dewan speaking for the entire council?  Sometime in October when I was preparing for the upcoming election, I ran into 5th ward council member Vicky Daskaloudi in my neighborhood.  We had a pleasant conversation, and she encouraged me to call as many constituents as possible in the 3rd ward so that I could get elected to the council in November.  She then said this, without fear or irony:  "We could really use someone like you on the council."

The pattern that I see from what Dewan Sarowar was quoted in the local paper as saying simply illustrates to me that he is a liar, maybe even a habitual liar.  But that's just my take on him.  On the other hand, he may be the greatest Hudson council member ever to grace Hudson City Hall, and quite possibly the only member in Hudson's history to own a house outside of Hudson where his family resides but he does not. 

And if you believe that, I've got a bridge to sell you....

Hey Dewan Sarowar, owner of 46 Green Acres Road in Greenport -- How about at the next Hudson Common Council meeting you explain to everyone in clear terms that you live in Hudson, that Hudson is your home, that the City of Hudson is primarily where you hang your hat, that the daily and nightly issues Hudson residents face are the same issues you also face night and day.  Would that be too difficult or uncomfortable for you?  It shouldn't be.  It shouldn't be for any council member.