May 26, 2023 - In this issue: | |
City-wide Organics Program Launches Phase 1 | |
ARPA Arts & Culture Internship Awardees Announced | |
'Yest to ADUs!' Accessory Dwelling Unit Design Contest | |
Mayor Noble's Tuesday Update | |
Kingston Wins NYCOM Award | |
Waterfront Night Markets Start Saturday | |
City of Kingston Job & Board/Commission Opportunities | |
Free Street Trees - Sign up! | |
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Mayor's Message:
Dear Friends -
This week we launched Phase 1 of our Kingston Organics Program. This program demonstrates our commitment to environmental and sustainability efforts, and the overall health and quality of life in our community. Composting programs reduce waste, decrease the impact of transportation for disposal, resulting in a meaningful reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. This forward-thinking plan puts Kingston at the forefront of innovative efforts that save municipalities money while helping our environment. When the financial benefits exceed the implementation and operating costs, it is a total win. Details on how to participate below.
The annual Memorial Day Ceremony and Parade will be held on Monday, May 29, 2023. The ceremony will be held at 1:00pm in Veterans’ Park in front of City Hall. At 1:45pm, the parade will step off from Andrew St. and will proceed along Broadway toward Uptown. I want to thank the Kingston Veterans Association for organizing this annual event, and for all they continue to do for the Kingston community.
City offices will be closed on Monday in observance of the holiday, and trash/recycling pick-up will be delayed one day next week.
-Steve
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City-wide Organics Program Launched | |
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The City of Kingston will launch Phase 1 of the Kingston Organics Program, a food waste diversion program, in July. The program is free and voluntary for Kingston residents.
Kingston Organics Phase 1 will launch with eleven Community Food Scrap Drop-off locations throughout Kingston. Registration will be required and is now open at EngageKingston.com, where residents can choose a drop-off location, and can begin to bring food scraps to the location, using their own container, starting in July. This service will be available year-round.
Food scraps will be transported to a local composting facility for processing, diverting the material from being trucked hundreds of miles away to Seneca Meadows Landfill with the remainder of the municipal solid waste, saving tipping fees and greenhouse gas emissions associated with trucking. Reducing the amount of food waste that goes to the landfills can save hundreds of thousands of dollars in municipal garbage transportation/tipping fees. In 2020 alone, close to eight tons (15,500 pounds) of food waste from City of Kingston was transported daily to the landfill, a 480-mile, 7.5-hour round trip.
A very informative virtual public meeting was held yesterday, which you can watch here.
For more information and to register for a Kingston Organics Food Waste Drop-off location, please visit: www.engagekingston.com/Kingston-organics.
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ARPA Arts & Culture Internships Awardees Announced | |
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Mayor Noble is pleased to announce the awardees of the City of Kingston’s ARPA Arts & Culture Internship Grants are the following organizations:
Andrew Moore Photography
De Chiara Projects/ArtPort Kingston
Midtown Arts District (MAD)
Bailey Pottery Equipment
Center for Creative Education
Place Corps
TMI Project
Wholesale in a Box Company
“The ARPA Arts & Culture Internship Grant Program will provide job training in creative fields for young people in our community,” said Mayor Noble. “Arts & Culture is a crucial sector for local employment, and we’re happy to be able to provide paid internships to support both young creatives and our vital creative industry here in Kingston.”
The ARPA Arts & Culture Internship Grant Program provides $6,000 in funding for organizations/businesses to hire interns for one semester: Summer 2023, Fall 2023, Spring 2024, or Summer 2024. Interns must be a high school, undergraduate, or graduate student or individual who graduated from high school, college, or graduate school in 2023 or 2024.
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'Yes to ADUs' Design Contest | |
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The Yes to ADUs! Accessory Dwelling Unit Design Competition is part of the rollout of the Plus One Home Program, a partnership between the City of Kingston, Ulster County, and RUPCO.
The winning firm or design professional will receive $25,000 for producing permit-ready construction documents that City of Kingston and Ulster County homeowners can use to obtain building permits to construct new, detached ADUs. A $3,000 award will be given to the best non-professional/student entry.
“This design competition will help increase awareness about the many benefits of ADUs, which I believe can be a crucial step toward relieving the Countywide housing shortage while encouraging housing variety and affordability,” said Mayor Noble. “The design competition is a creative way to educate the public with tangible examples of how freestanding ADUs might look in their neighborhoods. The Yes to ADUs! design contest and the Plus One Home Program are part of my administration’s ongoing efforts to use every tool within reach to combat our housing crisis here in Kingston.”
Competition proposals are due on August 15, 2023. More details at www.engagekingston.com/adu-design-competition.
An ADU Public Forum will be held in June 2023 to educate residents about the benefits of ADUs, help residents understand if an ADU is right for their property, and provide information on the Plus One Home Program.
Launching this summer, the Plus One Home Program will provide funding to low and moderate-income residents to create new code-compliant ADUs. To be eligible, homeowners must meet the income threshold (i.e., earning 100% or less of Ulster County Area Media Income) and can receive up to $125,000 dollars for the construction or rehabilitation of an ADU. In exchange, the homeowner also must agree to rent the apartment at an affordable rate for a minimum of 10 years. The Plus One Home Program will provide a one-stop hub for assisting all interested homeowners in the financing, designing, and permitting an ADU.
The Yes to ADUs! Accessory Dwelling Unit Design Competition is funded with the City of Kingston’s American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funding.
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Mayor Noble's Tuesday Update | |
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Mayor Noble's Tuesday radio show is on hiatus during the campaign season, but in its place, he will be doing a weekly update on Facebook Live each Tuesday at 5:00pm to give brief update on the latest City of Kingston news.
Click below to hear this week's update.
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Kingston Wins NYCOM Award for Mobile Mental Health Program | |
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The New York State Conference of Mayors (NYCOM) has selected the City of Kingston as a winner of NYCOM’s Local Government Achievement Awards for 2023. The awards program, in its 33rd year, recognizes Kingston for its Mobile Mental Health Ambulance Pilot Project.
In commenting on the award, NYCOM President Francis Murray, Mayor of the Village of Rockville Centre, stated: “The City of Kingston is to be commended for its desire to provide unique but necessary services to its residents are the award recognizes the efforts of local officials to improve the quality-of-life in their communities and the Mobile Mental Health Pilot Project will certainly benefit the City of Kingston for years to come. Congratulations to Mayor Noble on this important accomplishment.”
The Mobile Mental Health program addresses the growing mental health crisis and provides specialized services for the City’s residents. The MMH response team pairs a mental healthcare specialist with a Kingston Fire Department EMT with a dedicated ambulance to provide person-centric crisis response to mental health emergency calls. The project is funded by the Office of Community Renewal along with the City's ARPA funds.
Mayor Noble said, “This is a terrific honor for the City of Kingston, our Kingston Fire Department and our partners at Access: Supports for Living and Ulster County Mental Health. As one of only a few programs like it in the country, I was happy to share our program with mayors from across the New York State and extremely proud that we can provide this service to our residents.”
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Waterfront Night Market Event Series Starts Saturday | |
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The Kingston Waterfront Business Association will host a Night Market event every fourth Saturday from May until September. Shops and restaurants will be open from 6-8pm for neighborhood-wide festivities, including live music, pop-up vendors, outdoor dining, special menus, store discounts, and more!
The first Night Market event will be Saturday, May 27! More information can be found at TheKingstonWaterfront.com.
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$1.15M Restore New York Grant for Uptown Project | |
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The City of Kingston has been awarded $1.15 million from the Empire State Development’s Restore New York Communities Initiative to support the St. Joseph’s Lofts project in Uptown Kingston.
The St. Joseph’s Lofts project at 59 Pearl Street is an adaptive reuse project that will convert a former schoolhouse into three floors of office space and an event center. The adjacent former convent house will be renovated into three residential apartments.
“I am so proud of the work my Grants Management team does each day to help private entities and nonprofits access State resources, and I’m thrilled we were able to secure this funding for a great mixed-use project in the heart of the Stockade District,” said Mayor Noble. “I want to thank Governor Hochul and Empire State Development for their continued support of Kingston. This funding will help with an exciting redevelopment project that makes improvements to unique existing historical buildings. Projects like the St. Joseph’s Lofts are exactly the kind of smart development we need in our community, that preserve historic architecture, create new neighborhood amenities, and build much-needed housing.”
On Monday at iPark 87 (formerly Tech City), Governor Kathy Hochul announced more than $112.9 million to 70 projects through the Restore New York Communities Initiative, which supports municipal revitalization efforts across the state, helping to remove blight, reinvigorate downtowns and generate economic opportunity. The program, administered by Empire State Development, helps local governments revitalize their communities and encourage commercial investment, improve the local housing stock, put properties back on the tax rolls, and increase the local tax base.
Past City of Kingston Restore NY Grants include, in 2022, an award of $1.5 million for The Center for Photography at Woodstock to adaptively reuse and rehabilitate the 40,000 sf former cigar factory in Midtown, and $840,000 for the Barrel Factory Lofts Project, an adaptive reuse of a 120-year-old warehouse originally used as a barrel factory in Midtown that has been vacant for 15 years. The 18,000 sf building will be redeveloped into a mix of live-work spaces for artists, commercial flex spaces, and amenities spaces. In 2017, a Restore New York grant assisted with the cost of demolition of the former Mid-City Lanes bowling alley at 20 Cedar Street, the now-home of RUPCO’s Energy Square, a mixed-use residential, commercial, and nonprofit space.
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Paving & Roadwork Next Week | |
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Last week, paving was completed on Main Street from Washington Avenue to Grandview Avenue, Valentine Court from Valentine Avenue to the dead end, and Valentine Avenue from Pearl Street to the dead end.
Central Hudson: Service installation will continue the week on Fair Street between Main Street and Pearl Street, on Main Street between Clinton Avenue and Wall Street and on Clinton Avenue between Main Street and Pearl Street with road closures and detours.
Henry Street Safe Routes to School Project: crews are removing the old concrete sidewalks and bluestone and preparing subgrade. Underground utilities are being repaired and/or replaced. Old lead lines are being removed and replaced as they are discovered.
Sterling Street Sewer project: Installation of manholes, catch basins and pipe, ADA-compliant ramps are being installed, manhole at Henry Street and Sterling Street is being rehabilitated. Restoration to begin next week.
Regular roadwork updates can be found here.
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Main Street paving last week | |
City of Kingston Job & Board/Commission Opportunities | |
Free Street Tree Planting! | |
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The City of Kingston is taking applications from home and business owners who would like to request a free street tree on their property.
Plantings will be in the public right of way, with a commitment from property owners to ensure that the new trees are well-maintained, particularly in the early stages of planting. Species will be chosen by the Tree Commission, who will identify types of trees that will have a positive impact on biodiversity and will be the appropriate size for the planting locations.
If you would like a street tree on your property, please fill out this form, and return to the Kingston Planning Department.
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The Kingston 311 app, website and phone system allow residents to quickly and easily report issues and submit service requests. The Kingston 311 app, available for Android & iPhones, is a fast and simple way to connect to City officials in non-emergency situations.
This system is a valuable resource to submit service requests for streetlight replacement, roadwork, City signage, traffic calming measures and other concerns. Issues with snow removal and reporting of vehicles and sidewalks not in accordance with the Snow Emergency restrictions can also be submitted via Kingston 311. Photos can also be attached to illustrate service orders. Dial 311 from any phone within City limits to reach us.
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Sent on behalf of:
Mayor Steven T. Noble
845.334.3902
mayor@kingston-ny.gov
The purpose of this newsletter is to share important information, project updates, pictures and news from the City of Kingston. For more detailed information, visit:
www.kingston-ny.gov
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