June Membership Meeting Minutes

Date:  June 24, 2008

Time:  8:00 am

Place:  The Renwick Clifton House B&B

Attendees: Miriam Adams, Eric Adams, Mark Smith, Bill Kimble, Kevin Brady, Carol Riggens, Barbara Budik, Kevin Brady, Mery Rosado, Bob Cranston

Kevin Brady opened the meeting and introduced key speakers Lance Matteson and Tony Marmo of Ulster Tomorrow.

Lance Matteson is the current VP of the Ulster County Economic Development Committee and the co-creator of Ulster Tomorrow.

Ulster Tomorrow, a creation of the Ulster County Development Corp., was launched in March of 2007 and identifies 15 strategies to increase the county's economic development.

Matteson stressed the importance of the Ulster County Development Corp., the Industrial Development Agency and the County Legislature working together to achieve these goals.

Ulster Tomorrow seeks to serve as a roadmap to creating sustained job growth by seizing on the Hudson Valley's strengths and trying to overcome obstacles.

The Ulster Tomorrow plan calls for the creation of a task force to review local zoning codes, institute a training program for planning board members and other government bodies which play a role in the approval process and develop up to five "shovel ready" sites, Saugerties being one of the sites. To help guide the effort, the county planning office recently released an open space plan which identifies areas suited for growth along with places that should remain undeveloped.

The inclusion of "growth zones" in the county open-space plan is one example of how the Ulster Tomorrow Plan is already being put to use. Another is the support of Ulster Tomorrow Plan's designation of "the creative economy" as one of the four key economic sectors. The others are travel and tourism, agriculture and "green" technology

Discussion regarding “affordable housing” was raised. 

Bob Cranston expressed concern regarding the fact that affordable housing is often purchased by non residents.  In his opinion restrictions needed to apply in order to ensure that local residents were given precedence

Mark Smith suggested a form of public transportation that provided services to and from the train stations due to increased necessity for travel to NYC, in addition to lack of public parking at train stations and increased costs for gas.  Marmo and Matteson agreed that there was a need and reported that this is an area that is being looked at.

Kevin closed the meeting and announced the July 30^th membership meeting to be held at 6:30 pm at the Exchange Hotel.