Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand and the Hudson Valley Regional Council (HVRC) are hosting a seminar this month to help local governments, businesses and nonprofit organizations obtain federal grants to spur growth in recently identified economically distressed communities.
“We hope this seminar will encourage planning experts, business owners, and elected officials from distressed communities to seek HVRC”™s help in securing federal seed money that could improve the economic outlook for our region,” said HVRC Chairman Robert Rolison, Chairman of the Dutchess County Legislature.
The seminar will be held on Sept. 18 from 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. in Kaplan Hall on the SUNY Orange Newburgh campus and will feature the US EDA Economic Development Specialist for New York, Andrew D. Reid, MBA.
He will discuss federal grant programs that aim to foster job creation, improve infrastructure and attract private investment to economically distressed communities. Many communities in the Hudson Valley are eligible for these grants.
The seminar follows a recently released an economic distress report by the HVRC that identified 18 communities throughout the region that are exhibiting economic distress as a result of high unemployment, low wages, or both.
The report identified Sullivan as the only county in the region that exhibited countywide economic distress, because its 24-month unemployment rate was 1.13 percent higher than the national average.
Communities that showed economic distress from both high unemployment and low wages included:
- Dutchess County ”“ City of Poughkeepsie, and an area that included the Village of Tivoli
- Orange County ”“ the cities of Newburgh, Middletown and Port Jervis
- Rockland County ”“ Spring Valley and Haverstraw
- Sullivan County ”“ Monticello, along with portions of Bethel, Fallsburg and Liberty
- Ulster County ”“ the City of Kingston and its surrounding area, Ellenville and the Plattekill-Modena area
- Westchester County ”“ Mount Vernon, Peekskill, Yonkers and Ossining
