Bonhomie may be lacking on the national level of government, but leaders from three downriver counties ”“ Westchester, Putnam and Rockland ”“ found much to agree on recently before 200 persons who gathered for the second annual Pattern for Progress Regional Leadership Conversation at the DoubleTree Hilton in Tarrytown.
The mutual enthusiasms displayed by a pair of county executives from east of the Hudson River and a county legislative leader from west of the river included a modern Tappan Zee bridge and improving efforts to wed a region of economic disparity and geographic provincialism that nonetheless has a shared story going back hundreds of years.
Framing the overarching theme of interconnectedness in a new world, Michael P. Hein, the Ulster County executive who served as co-moderator along with Pattern president and CEO Jonathan Drapkin, said that as a boy in Queens, the Hudson Valley was off the radar ”“ “Canada“ ”“ but not any longer.
“When you create a job in Westchester, we feel it in Ulster,” Hein said.
Referring to the new Tappan Zee Bridge, with early-stage construction barges already floating beneath the old span, he said: “Everyone here while advocating for the bridge for their own communities was also advocating for other counties nearby. It”™s an enormous gateway.”
“We need to get out of the silo,” said Putnam County Executive MaryEllen Odell. “We”™re 50 miles north of New York City and people still say, ”˜Where”™s that?”™”
“We are not an island,” said Harriet Cornell, Rockland County Legislature chairwoman. “We need the bridge and we need improved west-of-the-Hudson rail service in order to keep our youth from leaving.”
Westchester County Executive Robert P. Astorino called the Tappan Zee “a national bridge,” adding, “A new Tappan Zee has to happen. It is absolutely integral to the economic development of the state.” He favors a dedicated bus lane, saying, “We do not want to build the same bridge again.”
The topic of climate change ”“ and the communication needed for the emergencies it appears to be spawning ”“ was spurred by Tropical Storm Irene in August 2011 and Hurricane Sandy last October. Irene battered Ulster County with its worst damage in recorded history. Sandy swamped numerous river communities with its storm surge and left many businesses and residents in the region without power for three to eight days. Westchester County”™s Rye Playland alone sustained approximately $13 million in damage.
Odell”™s team in last year”™s natural disaster took to social media. “We pumped out information alerts on gas stations,” she said. “Our takeaway from the storm is that communication is paramount. Once we went dark, we had to maintain those levels of communication.”
“We”™re now planning for climate change,” said Cornell. “With the Tappan Zee, the planning is based on a rising river. We know the river is going to rise.” To prepare for that, she said, the old service road beneath the bridge on the river level must be built more durably for the new bridge.
“Building the bridge will create 30,000 jobs,” Cornell said. The question is: How do we make the jobs stay after the bridge is finished?”
The state”™s regulatory burden took a drubbing, with every leader decrying Albany”™s penchant for grabbing most of municipalities”™ tax revenue. Medicaid payments alone gobble up more than 80 percent of local property tax revenue, they said.
Cornell said Rockland is working to grease the economic skids and recently won praise from furniture retailer Raymour & Flanigan for the alacrity with which Rockland approved the company”™s new 839,000-square-foot regional distribution center in the village of Montebello.
“We don”™t create jobs; I strongly believe that,” Astorino said of government. “But we can show businesses the tools to make them invest or stay here, as we did with Pepsi and Atlas Air,” two corporations that committed to keeping their headquarters in Westchester since Astorino took office in 2010.
“Obviously guidelines and regulations are important, but you need incentives, too,” he said. “We fought for incentives and killed the sugar tax and Pepsi kept 900 workers here.”
Pattern for Progress hosts two informational breakfasts for its northern and southern members in the Hudson Valley. When its more northerly members met last month, Stewart International Airport in New Windsor supplanted the Tappan Zee as the regional issue of greatest interest.
