1999 State of the County Address

Ralph J. Eannace Jr., County Executive

September 21, 1999

Ladies and Gentleman:

Thank you very much to the Mohawk Valley Chamber of Commerce, to your Board, your Members and to everyone here today for your continued support of our mission to rebuild the economy of Oneida County and to set our community on a new course for progress. I have been very gratified for your support over this last three years, and I am proud to be able to report to you on the great progress that we have made. Let us start off with the best news: I am very pleased to announce this morning that as we prepare our year 2000 budget, which I will be proposing to the County Legislature on October 1^st, despite some daunting challenges, I will be able to keep my promise of a freeze on the property tax levy. When I took office three years ago we already had some of the lowest county property taxes of any county in the State of New York. We were able to lower our property tax levy by 2% my first year in office. My second year in office, we had to increase the levy by 2 ½%, due to a large unforeseen increase in our Medicaid contributions. This year’s freeze has been achieved despite the challenges of one of the fastest growing County Medicaid budgets in the State. Unfortunately, we have returned to close to double digit growth in Medicaid spending and we are projecting a 9% increase for the year 2000. We have also taken an estimated 2 ½ million dollar hit in this year’s State budget of costs that were shifted to the county for mandated programs. After absorbing those cost increases and absorbing two weeks of sales tax exemptions for clothing, we have been able to maintain a property tax that is level because of two things: The improvements in our economy, especially shown in the sales tax receipts, and cost cutting in County operations at every opportunity. I am very pleased that from the business point of view the bottom line of county government’s fiscal affairs is very positive. I will be reporting much more on this to all of you in two weeks, on October 1^st, when I deliver the Budget Message to the Legislature for the year 2000.

Today, I wanted to talk especially about the missions of county government, the vision that we have developed together for nothing short of a new community, and the principals by which we have operated to guide us toward that direction.

As I have said from the beginning of my term as County Executive, our number one mission has been to rebuild our economy. Working together, what a job we have been able to do. We have now put into place an aggressive outreach program to the businesses of the Mohawk Valley, Oneida County and Herkimer County in particular. We have enlisted and engaged many leaders from businesses large and small across this community in an upbeat, positive, can-do approach to rebuilding our economy. The proof is in the job production that has made us one of the fastest job growing communities in the State of New York according to the New York State Department of Labor for 1997 and 1998, and the trend continues. According to the New York State Department of Labor, our August 1999 unemployment rate was at 3.4%, as low as it has ever been in the history of their records for this county, and tied only in June of 1988 for any given month. For those who say, "but everybody left", the nonagricultural and the private sector employment are now at their highest levels ever for August monthly figures. We can be proud.

This morning the New York State Department of Labor Job Bank listing shows five hundred jobs available in Oneida County. Eighty-five of those five hundred jobs have a starting salary of $30,000 or more. But remember, all jobs are good jobs when you are looking for work. That again does not mean that we have solved our economic recovery. What we have done is set ourselves on the road to recovery.   We have jumped out ahead of most other counties in upstate New York. We have made ourselves noteworthy as a place where economic development can happen, and that is important. However, these new successes have revealed new challenges. We are now hearing that we have joined the list of communities across the nation that have workforce shortages in many critical areas, making it difficult for companies to grow. We have now also heard that we have joined those communities across the country for which site availability is a crucial issue. Now we must tackle the new problems to continue our expansion in the year 2000.

At Griffiss this past week, the Board of the Griffiss Local Development Corporation, which I chair, has contracted to put a road into a mini high tech park in one portion of the campus, near the sight of the new Rome Free Academy. Also a shell building will be built because so much of the building space at the Griffiss Business and Technology Park is now occupied. Griffiss Park, by the way, abandoned five years ago, is now the home of more civilian employment than there was when the Air Force left. We also announced that we would be entering into a contract for high technology, fiber optic telecommunications capability throughout the park. This will allow us to put our Business and Technology Park in Rome in a competitive position, from high technology perspective, with any community in the country, and ahead of most.

This is just one of our many site improvement efforts. It was this year that we announced that our work with Ethan Allen allowed for an expansion of their manufacturing facilities in Boonville. Our work with the State of New York and Herkimer County, on a two-county basis, has allowed for the first Economic Development Zone ever in New Hartford and Whitestown. Our work with the State of New York has allowed for us to develop a Chip Fab proposal that has made a site on the corner of the SUNY Campus in Marcy one of the most attractive sites for the Governor’s program to attract a Computer Chip Manufacturing facility to the State.

I must digress for a moment to say that this particular piece of real estate happens to be at the intersection of a tremendous availability of public water system, public sewer system, public roads, and a SUNY Campus of high technology, which together uniquely qualify that particular corner in the eyes of the national consultants who are promoting New York State for chip manufacturing. The national consultants have told us this, the Governor’s Office has told us this, and we are working to do everything we can to make sure that it is a reasonable development plan for the neighbors, and that it is a site for growth for our economy.

Site development is not only a matter of large industrial parks. Mayor Hanna has restored a primary commercial center of Oneida County, in downtown Utica. We have also worked with Mayor Hanna to redevelop some of Utica’s industrial sites, such as the new Mobile Climate Control building and the new Hannelore areas near Culver Avenue. With State assistance and local ingenuity, we must bring back Utica’s industrial sites for reuse.

Mayor Griffo in Rome has done the same thing in a different way. The Mayor has put the life back in to West Dominick Street by putting the street back in. He has undertaken the very difficult work of brownfield re-development at the old industrial site on West Dominick Street. This is crucial to redeveloping a business base for the City of Rome, for which I applaud him.

These projects do not end in the cities. We are trying very hard to work with the Village of New York Mills to find a way to cooperate on clearing the site of the Old Mill #2 building. We all would like to find a new use for that site. It is not only an eyesore and a potential hazard, but a site for new possibilities. That kind of site development for reinvestment in our communities must happen if we expect to grow. That is why we are working with Town Leaders, Village Leaders, City Leaders, throughout the County to identify and develop sites that have promise. Our "shovel ready program" allows us to identify and do the pre-engineering on sites so that when a company comes to us, or when we reach a company through a more aggressive marketing program, we can show them sites that are available for them to develop immediately. That is a key to being competitive in the marketplace of economic development.

Last year, Tom Clark, Steve DiMeo, and I went to Boston to talk to a corporate executive about employing more people in Oneida County. This National Corporate Executive we talked with said "you have a full employment economy, how do you expect us to grow in your community and find the workers we need?". We are all aware that we have, as a result of our success, shifted from an economy of too many people and too few jobs to too many jobs and too few people. We need to continue the Welfare-to-Work and the Worker Retraining Programs, but we need to do more. Both Utica College and the SUNY Institute of Technology have developed visionary new plans, for training of the workforce of tomorrow. Thanks to funding secured by Senator Meier, Mohawk Valley Community College has reinitiated a contract training program which allows us to go to employers and develop for them specific workforce development programs. These new programs are designed to train new workers for jobs, and to train workers who want to upgrade their jobs and pursue higher level careers. We are going to expand and continue this program in the year 2000.

We have also started a new program which I have dubbed, "Call Mohawk Valley Home". As a part of our "Home" program this year, over one hundred college and trade school students who are residents of Oneida County interned with employers in the area. The county paid 2/3 of their salary, the employer paid 1/3 of their salary, but also the employer had to provide a job that showed career potential, and a mentor to help the student involved explore career opportunities back here at home. Another facet of this program is the "Business to Campus Program". We are organizing groups of employers in three career areas; high technology, education, and health care. Those employers are identifying campuses which they feel are their best prospects for recruiting students. We are organizing community visits to the Job Fairs, and other recruiting opportunities made available on these campuses. Our purpose is to talk to, students, whether at the University of Southern California or at Utica College and say to students as a group: "Here is why you might like to live in the foothills of the Adirondacks, here is why you might like to begin your career in one of the most affordable places to live in the United States and here is a list of employers, who have real career opportunities for you." We think this is an exciting new program and I am very proud to put it forward. We will be extending this program this fall and in the year 2000.

We must market the beauties of this community if we want to grow. We must reach out to young people and show them why our beautiful, natural environment, our friendly communities, and the cultural opportunities, the historical opportunities, and the other benefits of this region make this a jewel and a place to start a career and a family. I believe that we have to particularly market that, not only to students who come right out of college, but to young people who are beginning their families, and who would like to raise their children in the friendly atmosphere of Oneida County. Human Resource Directors of companies in our communities have told me time and again that they have their strongest opportunity to retain or attract workers with families and young children. We need to capitalize on that potential. Your Chamber has been organizing meetings on workforce development, and I was very pleased to meet with your committee recently. We will be talking more about how we can coordinate our efforts because, we need to be coordinated in our effort if we want to succeed.

Economic Development and Workforce Development are only one aspect of what I have come to call a vision of the new community, it also involves the revitalization of our residential neighborhoods. We are very fortunate to have absolutely beautiful neighborhood environments in communities across this county and yet increasingly they are at risk. As we were able to create the environment for growth for economic development, so county government can help to create the environment for rehabilitation and revitalization and a new vision of our neighborhoods. We have started by tackling some of the crime problems that were justifiably scaring people in our neighborhoods. We started with our Arson Program, our County-wide Drug Task Force, and our Safe Communities Campaign which have invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in locally based initiatives in Fire Safety, Police Neighborhood Patrols, and coordination of special investigations in areas ranging from drug abuse to child sexual abuse. We will continue our emphasis on safe communities. We will also continue our work to revitalize some of our poorest neighborhoods, which has included our county cooperation with localities in demolition in places ranging from Camden to Whitestown to our biggest cities.

When I approached the Legislature with the issues of safe communities, I was quickly able to gain their support. However, the question they asked the most was "How can we make sure that we don’t need to keep facing the problems of abandoned buildings?". One way that we can do that also ties in with my Program for Shared Services. Last year I talked to you about a Shared Services effort that we have been promoting among county government and our localities. As I met with groups around the county and as people on our staff held individual interviews with town leaders, what came forth loud and clear as one of the strongest recommendations the need to work together in Codes Enforcement. The recommendation of several of our County Legislators, working with our Health Department is for a countywide Housing Code. I am strongly embracing this approach. This effort begins with the current program our Department of Social Services and the Department of Health working with local codes offices to survey homes, look for violations that could be corrected and help or require local property owners to correct them. It will expand from that into adoption of housing code language that can be utilized in the Health Department for enforcement so that we can have a faster, more expeditious and more severe enforcement against owners who ignore or abandon buildings in our neighborhoods. It will culminate in something that I believe, if the State of New York will work with us on this, will truly make a difference: county-wide code enforcement through a county-wide housing court. We are going to take this very seriously and we believe it is both an essential element of neighborhood revitalization and an important step forward in sharing services among local governments. Our proposal is consistent with the philosophy and principles I have put forward in our Sharing Services proposals to date in Purchasing, 911 Services, Tax Collection, and others. These will be voluntary agreements which local communities can opt into or not at their choice. As we develop and initiate this in the year 2000, we believe many communities will want to sign on and have us work with them and with their neighborhoods to help stop code violations and create the climate for revitalization. But, it takes more than that. Rather than just working against violations we want to work with the people that want to rebuild their own neighborhoods.

Wonderful examples of such people who have taken it on themselves to rebuild their neighborhoods include the GroWest and the Mayfield Projects in Utica, Dave Guggi and the people on Dominick Street in Rome, and other people in neighborhoods around this county, who believed in their neighborhoods and have formed neighborhood associations to get about the business of cleaning up their areas and reinvesting in them and making them more attractive for reinvestment by others.

We want to further this effort and so I am going to be proposing a program for the year 2000 which I call "Neighborhood Empowerment Works" or "NEW Neighborhoods". We can work together through programs of grants to local community neighborhood associations, encouraging them to organize and to allow them to hire planners to work with our regional planners. This could also allow a neighborhood association to work with us on looking for community investment dollars from other governments or private sources. We can help to find the sources of funds to rebuild our own neighborhoods, and with that to reach out for new State and Federal investment as well. We believe this is a "win-win-win".

As we revitalize Oneida County’s communities, strive to improve our workforce and bring increased economic development to Oneida County, it is critically important to maintain our countywide infrastructure. We have been able to cooperate with other government and private organizations in new ways to secure funding for many important projects. For example, College Hill Road, in the Town of Kirkland was completed this year. This project, on a county road, cost about one million dollars to complete, but Oneida County paid less than half of that, with Hamilton College and New York State combining for over $500,000 in contributions. Special thanks to Senator Raymond A. Meier and Assemblyman Bill Magee for their assistance in that project. In the Town of Trenton, we were able to construct a new timber bridge over the West Canada Creek. We secured $750,000 in matching funds through a special federal program, and shared the remaining cost with New York State and Herkimer County. As a result, we have completed a picturesque timber arch bridge, spanning about 120 feet over the West Canada Creek between Oneida County and Herkimer County. We also will complete work on the River Road Bridge, over Nine Mile Creek in the Town of Marcy, with $240,000 from New York State. We have secured two and one half million federal dollars through the Transportation Equity Act for the 21^st Century, which will allow us to replace or rehabilitate six additional bridges in Oneida County over the next two years, with many thanks to our Congressman Sherwood Boehlert.

As we continue to work with communities toward revitalization, we also continue to provide the essential services of county government and to find new ways to make them more responsive to the people of our community. I am very proud of our Office of Continuing Care which has combined programs of the Department of Health, the Office for the Aging, and the Department of Social Services; programs that have reached out to provide in-home care for people who are home bound. We have just added the Office of Veterans Services to the group that will coordinate with our Office of Continuing Care and reach out to home bound veterans. We want to make sure that the people of our community who cannot access services outside their home are receiving the benefits that they need. It is called putting a "human face on human services". We deal with it in a way that is fiscally responsible but is also morally responsible. From the fiscal point of view we have adopted programs for maximizing recoveries of Medicaid dollars from people who receive resources but they didn’t report. We are also maximizing Medicare contributions for services that would otherwise be borne on the local property tax. We always do that in the context of making sure that the services needs are being met and they are met in the most affordable way for local taxpayers.

Sometimes that also involves "thinking outside the box" as they say. Our Probation Office, for example, is not only working with individuals who have gotten into trouble with the law, but they have found a way to help their families; in particular helping the children of some of their probation clients who needed school materials. We have found ways to make sure that we are being more humane in administration of our programs, as shown in a recent outreach to a family of a patient who is terminally ill. The regulations made it difficult for that person, without our intervention, to return to his familiar environment and to his loving family. We were able to turn that around, and we will not shrink from being involved in individual case reviews to be responsive to individual needs. As a matter of fact, we are gearing our whole administration more toward this, to making sure that family needs are met and the needs of our residents are met in a holistic fashion. This means in a manner that considers the family as a unit, that helps people not just to "make do" but to become self-supportive and recover their dignity. There are ways to accomplish these and other social goals that involve more of our time than our money. For example, in response to the issues of school violence, we organized a group called "Let’s Talk Now " working with many community volunteers. What they are looking at is for us to help avoid the tragedy of Columbine High School by encouraging young people in our high schools to talk to each other now (peer-to-peer intervention). We will use the resources that are already there such as the county-sponsored social workers who do early intervention in the schools; to help to work with adults in the community by encouraging more adults throughout our community to volunteer their time to work with young people, whether as tutors or mentors or coaches or directors or as religious instruction leaders or as scout leaders. We will continue in our Youth Bureau to expand the programs which we have dramatically expanded in the last three years for positive youth recreation, tutoring and mentoring opportunities. We are also on the verge of a new combination of efforts with our school districts. One example is the Griffiss Local Development Corporation working with the Rome School District on a new site for Rome Free Academy. Another is the County and Mohawk Valley Community College working with the Utica Public Schools on a proposal for sharing facilities of the campuses of Proctor High School and MVCC. The governments that serve the people need to work together to truly serve the people. Looking back to neighborhood revitalization, isn’t it incredibly important to the effort to revitalize our neighborhoods to support the schools of our communities?

One of the most important issues that needs to be resolved as we approach the millennium is the Oneida Indian Land Claim. The Counties of Madison and Oneida are the only parties recognized by the Northern District of the United States Federal Court as being responsible for and having the authority to litigate, or, better, negotiate a settlement.

We recognize that we can only reach a settlement if it is one all parties can live with into the future. That is why Oneida and Madison Counties are opening up the process as much as possible for public education and public input in the settlement talks. Since March when the Judge appointed the Settlement Master he placed the responsible parties under a court order which restricts public discussion of the issues. Yet we have found ways, and believe we can find more, to reach a settlement that has a community consensus. There is no question that the settlement process affords the best way for us to lift the cloud of threats to people’s title to their lands and replace it with new opportunity for all of us to grow together, with everyone secure in their place in our region’s future. Our efforts toward a reasonable settlement will be one of our top priorities.

I hope that you have been hearing in my presentation today, an optimistic vision of the future, a willingness to roll up our sleeves and pursue that vision, an openness and a recognition of the need to get ideas and participation from a broad spectrum of our community in order to make this work because our revitalization efforts only work if they are supported, and in fact created, by the people of the community as a whole. In order to grow as a community we must reach out to each other. We will not be able to grow and rebuild as a community, as neighborhoods, or as businesses if we are unwilling to take risks. We must be willing and are willing to do that. Working together we will continue to build a positive attitude in this community, and we are building based on the accomplishments of these last few years a sense of pride and positive thinking that motivates us to building that future together.

I thank you for your help.