MASSENA — Massena Town Supervisor Joseph D. Gray says he believes economic development could be better handled at the county level, a sentiment that has also been expressed by Mayor Timmy J. Currier.
During a joint meeting of town and village officials, Mr. Gray said he’d like to see a number of local communities pool their resources with one county agency, which would handle economic development for each municipality.
“I believe we would be well served by a number of communities — Massena, Potsdam, Canton, Ogdensburg — entering into a contract with the St. Lawrence County Industrial (Development) Agency,” he said. “I would love to have a number of communities contract with an agency, the IDA or some subset of the IDA makes the most sense, to provide us with an economic development function.”
Mr. Gray said an Office of Local Economic Development could be created, and its staff would be assigned to projects for each municipality.
“Whatever communities participated would have a contract with them,” he said.
He said there were concerns by some about the loss of local control if they were lumped with other communities, but that wouldn’t be the case because each municipality would have a contract.
“They would have a contractual relationship with some other agency,” Mr. Gray said.
He said other states have Councils of Government, in which several municipalities — towns, villages, cities and counties — “pool their resources to provide services that are probably too much of a burden for one community to provide effectively.”
He said even though it would take some work, he would like to see them pursue the initiative with other towns and villages.
“We all scramble to find budget money to cover economic development. I think this is a way to pool our resources. It would perhaps fill the desire we have for economic development services. It may be a more efficient and perhaps more effective way,” Mr. Gray said.
During the meeting, he also touched on community development, an initiative Mr. Currier has suggested should be the focus at the local level to improve the quality of life.
Mr. Gray said that in his opinion, the housing stock needs to be addressed as part of that effort.
“I believe we have way too many rental units in the village,” he said, suggesting that the more individuals were allowed to buy homes at tax auction, only to turn them into more apartments. “The more it degrades the housing stock in our community and the more it degrades our community in general.”
“I would love to see you either change your code or you simply put a moratorium on rental units. I think that would go a long way to improving the quality of our community, in my opinion,” Mr. Gray told village trustees.