Save Dutchess County's EMC

Norene Coller of Clinton, Sheila Buff of Milan, Jack Cleary of Clinton, Susan Ellis of Red Hook, Lalita Malik of Union Vale, and Cliff Schwartz of Beekman all spoke at a forum on the county budget held by the Budget, Finance, and Personnel Committee on June 29th about how important it is that our county's Environmental Management Council be properly funded from our county government.

Many speakers that night pointed out how wrong it is for our County Executive to hold up funds for the EMC already allocated by the County Legislature-- currently there are no monies for staff paychecks, or services for that matter, incredibly.

Norene Coller, who's been involved with the EMC for a very long time, and is also the Town of Clinton Conservation Advisory Council Chair, made the following eight points about the valuable technical analysis the EMC performs for CAC's across the county, in addition to advising many Town Boards, and other volunteer boards-- Planning Boards, Zoning Boards of Appeals, et.al. across our county as well:

* "The EMC has 33 years of experience working with county government as a partner to educate county residents on various important environmental issues."

* "There are over 130 Conservation Advisory Council members from across our county affiliated with the EMC."

* "The EMC has provided many natural resource maps from their GIS lab to the Town of Clinton and other towns (farmland analysis, wetlands, stream buffers, build-out analysis, etc.)-- along with studies of watersheds in the face of development all over our county. Many of our towns, like Clinton, have no professional planner."

* "With only four staff currently (two of which are part-time), the EMC uses county funds wisely to match grants from all over; a full 25\% to 30\% of EMC funding has come from grants."

* "The EMC is going from one pay period to the next not knowing if they can pay their staff."

* "They are working on a reimbursement basis-- while it's illegal to have a rollover of funds from last year."

* "$2300 of county taxpayers' money has been wasted because of inadequate funding for the EMC from inefficiencies-- late fees to vendors, internet access, and other things the EMC has had to pay for."

* "Reimbursement requires some intervention from the County Legislature."

Hopefully you agree.

Please contact our County Executive at 486-2000 and [email protected] on this immediately.

Please also contact the Dutchess County Legislature on this at 486-2100, [email protected], and [email protected]

I am requesting unanimous consent for our County Legislature to pass a resolution as soon as possible (July at latest) asking our County Executive to release these funds as soon as possible.

See DCEMC.org for much more information on all the good work our EMC has done over the years.

Thanks!

Joel Tyner
County Legislator
Clinton/Rhinebeck
324 Browns Pond Road
Staatsburg, N.Y. 12580
[email protected]
876-2488