County exec touts Westchester’s ‘intelligence’
A promotional team of business leaders, educators and government and workforce officials captained by the Westchester County executive last week impressed a visiting think-tank chief with their coordinated effort to strengthen the county”™s economy and diversely woven social fabric through broadband networking.
Robert Bell, executive director of Intelligent Community Forum (ICF), a New York City-based nonprofit think tank focusing on job creation and economic development in the broadband economy, was the guest of County Executive Andy Spano, who led the county to partner with Cablevision”™s Optimum Lightpath in building what has grown to be an 800-mile fiber optic network serving more than 3,500 companies and more than half of the county”™s municipalities.
For Bell, the hustling host orchestrated a multi-pronged pitch, in video productions, oral presentations and helicopter and ground tours of the county and its 21st- century facilities, for why ICF should name Westchester the Intelligent Community of the Year at the group”™s annual conference in May. The county in January was named one of seven international finalists for the 2008 award.
Over lunch at the Hudson Valley Transportation Management Center in Hawthorne, Bell was shown a sneak preview of “Westchester”™s Intelligent Network at Work,” an original video production created by Optimum Lightpath and the county that features commentary from business executives such as developer Louis Cappelli, head of Cappelli Enterprises Inc. The think-tank head also viewed a segment of “The Electronic Highway,” an early and largely failed effort by Spano as county clerk in the early ”˜90s to introduce Westchester to emerging digital technology. His effort then met with “skepticism” and earned him the nickname “George Jetson,” Spano recalled.
Representing one of the county”™s two largest business groups at the meeting, Westchester County Association President William M. Mooney Jr. spoke of the “unusual dynamic” of cooperation between the business community and government for the last several years in the county. “We agree to disagree, which I think is a big deal,” he said.
“Westchester does not sit in a vacuum,” said Marsha Gordon, president and CEO of The Business Council of Westchester. “We know that we are part of a larger region. We work on a regional basis.”
As he heard again at the meeting, Bell said, a “sense of coordination” came through in the county”™s application to ICF for ranking as the world”™s smartest.