With 20 years as the Dutchess County”™s executive, William Steinhaus knows how to warm up a room.
“We have a new snow removal policy,” he told more than 200 who had come to the Poughkeepsie Grand Hotel Feb. 16. All were quiet; big news in a tough winter. “It”™s called June.”
Steinhaus spoke at the Dutchess County Regional Chamber of Commerce”™s 605th “contact breakfast” along with Kealy Salomon, the county”™s commissioner of planning and development, and Valerie J. Sommerville. In tag-team deliveries, they portrayed a thriving county with an AA bond rating ”“ “Only two counties in the state have a better rating,” Steinhaus said ”“ and a laudable list of accomplishments across the spectrum of the environment, recreation and economic activity.
Steinhaus also said the county is fighting the good fight against budget constraints and mandates. “It”™s something we”™ve been doing for 20 years,” he said, coming out in favor of agency and police department consolidations.
Sommerville said the county”™s tax levy last year was $101 million, yet mandates alone required $131 million.
“We tax 25 percent less per capita than the average county and we spend 25 percent less per capita than the average county,” Steinhaus said. “We have fewer county employees than we had in 1985, yet we provide more services.”
If alarm bells are going off in budget negotiations across the landscape these days, Steinhaus aligned his philosophy across two decades with former General Electric CEO Jack Welch: “Change before you have to,” Steinhaus said. “Our consolidation and efforts to shrink government go back 20 years.”
Salomon cited a number of big-ticket projects that are, or will be providing both construction jobs by the hundreds and full-time jobs when the hammers stop, including:
Ӣ Silo Ridge in Amenia, a resort, equestrian center and houses, slated to rise in 2012;
Ӣ new housing for 350 students at the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park and hoped-for progress on a Hyatt hotel on the property;
Ӣ the long-awaited completion of the environmental review for the redevelopment of the former Harlem Valley Psychiatric center, envisioned as something of a full-blown village around the Wingdale train depot; and
Ӣ an underpass in front of Marist College on Route 9.
Steinhaus later added more development projects in which the county had a hand, including at Bard College, St. Francis Hospital, in LaGrange, in Beacon and in the town of Wappinger a planned 70,000-square-foot addition to the Adams Fairacre Farms family.
Salomon also said the county since 1992 has added 1,600 affordable housing units.
Regarding planning, Salomon said the county has developed web-based maps that show county, town and village development and environmental requirements, all in an effort to streamline what is often maligned as a cumbersome process.
In his introduction, chamber President Charlie North said Steinhaus spends his leisure time on the county”™s rail trails and Steinhaus waxed eloquent about what they and other recreations mean to the county: “Tourism employs 9,000 people in Dutchess County. Tourism contributed $438 million in economic activity in 2009 and contributed $28 million to county sales tax revenues.”
