Richard Moody is reporting for Columbia-Greene Media the Columbia County Board of Supervisors agreed at its monthly meeting the county will sell three empty lots it owns in the city of Hudson. The parcels on Strawberry Alley were thought to have been part of a property swap in 2004, but in fact are still owned by the county. The vacant land will be offered through a sealed bid process for a minimum of $3,000 each. The size of the three parcels combined is more than one-third of an acre. The land was intended to be part of a 2004 exchange between the city and the county of a parking lot and the former Charles Williams school building at 69-71 N. Third St., for land in the 300 block of Columbia Street, for the construction of what is now the county human services building. At the time, Gerald Simons was the chairman of the county board of supervisors and Hudson 5th Ward Supervisor Rick Scalera was mayor of Hudson. Somehow the transaction got lost in the shuffle in 2004, and the land was not deeded over to the city. Mayor Rick Rector is investigating what happened 14 years ago. “I have solicited our city attorney to look into it,” Rector said. “No one alerted me that the property was not deeded to us.” The city had no plans for the three parcels at the time of the exchange, Scalera said. Read the full story at HudsonValley360 [dot] com.