On Tuesday, Jan. 6, more than 50 town officials, county officials and members of the Colonie and Albany-Colonie chambers of commerce gathered at the Century House in Latham for breakfast and the talk of the town.
In her second State of the Town address, sponsored by both chambers and CB Richard Ellis, a Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, Colonie Supervisor Paula Mahan shared her insight into the hardships and accomplishments the Town of Colonie saw in 2008, and offered a taste of what is to come in 2009.
The program opened up with Mark Eagan, chairman of the board of directors for the Albany-Colonie Chamber of Commerce, giving a few brief remarks and thanking Albany County Executive Michael Breslin and several other elected officials for being present at the event.
Eagan spoke of the strong developmental progress the business community has seen in 2008, despite the economic hardships of the entire country.
The dip that we’ve experienced in recent days is certainly minor, he said.
Eagan thanked Mahan for the hard work she has done in promoting growth in the business community throughout her first year in office.
When the supervisor took the podium, she spoke more of the progress the town has made as a whole as opposed to just in the business community.
`[Last year] was a challenging year for all of us,` she said, explaining that through her administration, she was able to shed light on `the seriousness of many of the town’s problems.`
Those problems included the controversy at the West Albany Rod and Gun Club and potential mismanagement of funds at County Waste under investigation, as well as the town’s now-$19.4 million deficit.
Mahan said that at the same the time town officials continued to learn of the town’s mishaps, her plan remained the same: full disclosure to the public, while at the same time stabilizing the town.
The supervisor said she achieved that goal by holding six financial workshops throughout the town in the summer months, bringing the information to residents’ back yards, as well as showcasing the town’s financial troubles and what officials were doing to remedy the situation.
The supervisor also talked about the Thursday, Dec. 11, ice storm that left much of the Capital District paralyzed with power outages and required massive cleanup efforts.
`I was so impressed by the level of response,` the supervisor said of all of the town departments working together to help residents who suffered from days-long outages.
`It takes a collaborative effort to make this work,` she said.
Mahan spoke of `bureaucratic obstacles,` in particular the notoriously slow planning and development process in the town.
Since taking office, Mahan said she had installed a position for the first town-designated engineers, in the hope that they would speed up the process. So far, Mahan said, that effort is working, and the town-designated engineers will begin their first project to build a high-end grocery store called Fresh Market on the corner of routes 9 and 155, or Watervliet-Shaker Road.
Mahan said her hope is that the addition of the engineers can `significantly reduce the timeframe of the process from start to finish from what once took between one and two years to less than one.
[I hope] Colonie will continue to be regarded as a business-friendly community.`
As for the future, Mahan said, she is working on installing a small business advisory council, made up of business owners and chamber members throughout the town, to help strengthen the town’s economy and work to achieve optimal success in the town.
Mahan concluded her speech with a quote from Walter E. Cole:
`We must look for the opportunity in every difficulty instead of being paralyzed at the thought of the difficulty in every opportunity.`
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