Tom DePietro

APril 19,2019

Born in: Yonkers, NY

Years in Hudson: 15 

Current Job: President of The Common Council, running for re-election

Mad passions: Crossfit and hosting radio shows on WGXC

What he’s reading now: final volume of the collected works of Joseph Conrad; Capital City: Gentrification and the Real Estate State by Samuel Stein; and an Edwardian novel called The Sowers, by Henry Seton Merriman. 

Tom DePietro loves the Latin phrase festina lente: “make haste slowly.” This paradoxical motto served as a guidepost for DePietro long before he moved to Hudson. Towards the end of his 25-year career at Kirkus magazine during which he wrote and edited about 4000 book reviews, he found himself overweight and suffered from high blood pressure and sleep apnea. A number of his male relatives had died young and Tom didn’t want to be another one. He knew he needed to make a big change—and fast. He started working out at a Crossfit gym. Slowly but steadily the extra weight dropped, the sleep apnea corrected itself, as did his blood pressure. Tom carried the mental and physical benefits of Crossfit from his previous life in Westchester, NY to his new life in Hudson where he works out with an impressive community of devotees. 

Moving to Hudson

Tom and his wife started visiting Hudson after a close friend moved his bookstore to Hudson in 2001. After a few sublets they were ready to buy here. His wife still commutes to a fulltime job as a lawyer but Tom was ready for complete relocation. “I moved up here full time as soon as I could. I wanted exactly what Hudson is: an urban experience in the middle of country rural life. You can’t ask for anything better than that.”

As soon as he settled in, Tom wanted to be involved in his new community. “I was always interested in politics but I never got engaged until we moved here. I started attending a lot of meetings. I wanted to understand Hudson before entering into the discourse. That means not just understanding what goes on in all the meetings, but the wards. And at the time there were wards and groups I felt were being neglected. I saw too many people operating behind the scenes and towards their own self-interest.”

WGXC 

With community engagement in mind Tom started hosting local radio shows at WGXC covering current affairs and music. “Doing the radio shows really helped me understand Hudson and gave me the feeling that I could get more involved.”

Hudson Planning Board

Tom joined the Hudson Planning Board under Mayor Hallenbeck and took on the Chair role at the Planning Board under Mayor Hamilton. “I did that for two years and that was great. I loved it because it challenged me to balance all the groups [in Hudson] and to make it clear that it’s about being open and fair, because that’s all you really should be doing in that position. The HPB purview seemed to be limited at the time. We weren’t exercising the full dimensions of what we really could be doing.” 

Common Council

During his time as President of Hudson Common Council his main effort has been to make City government more accessible. “I’m all about localization.” Tom says, emphasizing the importance of a bottom-up approach to engaging the community. “The doors are open.” 

Tom hopes more people will attend meetings on particular aspects of the budget that will affect them and that the document itself will be re-envisioned so that the language is accessible to everyone. He points out that there are misconceptions about the budget. For example, while there have been motions to cut funds for the Youth Center, this organization not only supports our youth, it employs youth as well.

Housing in Hudson

“We desperately need housing. If we push out the middle, we’re in big trouble. Hudson has a proportionally large population of lower income people, but many of those are protected in their housing. The upper classes of course aren’t affected by changes in prices. But the middle: service industry workers, teachers, families, artists, and young people—they are struggling.”

When I asked Tom about the issue of property hoarding in Hudson, specifically by Galvan, he said, “There was a time when Mr. Galloway did a lot of good for Hudson, investing here when no one else would touch it. But there comes a time when having a single major investor isn’t healthy for a city. And we are long past that time. Mr. Galloway has stayed out of view but I wish that he and his representatives would make an effort to get more involved in the Hudson community.”

Downtown Revitalization Initiative

Tom is pleased so far with the Downtown Revitalization Initiative (DRI) process. He notes that the DRI citizen committee didn’t approve a lot of the projects the state wanted. “As a community we fought back and we won.” He is excited about the projects that were approved and hopes that the benefits of a “Complete Streets” redesign near the waterfront and Amtrak station will ripple out to the rest of the city over time. Tom says we should start seeing the groundbreaking on The Dunn Warehouse and Promenade Park within 2020. “If everything comes together the way I hope it will, the result will be fantastic.” 

Everything is Local

Tom sees ways for local politics to set an example for the rest of the country. He points out that a Medicare for All plan would relieve a small city like Hudson of the burden of paying healthcare costs for city employees, allowing our tight budget to be used for more local revitalization efforts. Establishing Hudson as a Sanctuary City and supporting efforts to address climate change are other examples where a small city can be a model for the country. “Now that we are an overwhelmingly Democratic city we have an opportunity to show the positive things we can do with our majority and show how Hudson can influence Columbia County and turn it blue.”

For Tom, everything about the evolution of Hudson is local and needs to start with reaching out to the people who live here. “The biggest challenge in Hudson is how to continue to develop but to do it with foresight and care.” In other words: Festina Lente.