http://www.timesunion.com/news/article/Saratoga-Montgomery-counties-on-opposite-12507936.php
Saratoga, Montgomery counties on opposite economic ends, report says
Updated 9:13 pm, Friday, January 19, 2018
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The chart shows the health disparities between Saratoga County and Montgomery County.
The chart shows the health disparities between Saratoga County and Montgomery County.
The chart shows the economic disparities between Saratoga County and Montgomery County.
The chart shows the economic disparities between Saratoga County and Montgomery County.
Saratoga County has been a bright spot in upstate New York’s slow recovery since the Great Recession.
But right next door is Montgomery County, which embodies the struggles of Upstate New York.
The small county of 50,000 people is the most economically distressed county in the state, according to a 2017 report from the Economic Innovation Group, a Washington D.C.-based think-tank.
New York’s most prosperous county — one of the fastest growing places in the state and a suburban 21st high-tech manufacturing hub — is Saratoga County.
The story of how of one county declined from being a late 1800's and early 1900's manufacturing powerhouse and another rose to become one in the 21st century is complex. It also lays bare the direct impact economic development decisions can have on people’s health. Meanwhile, Montgomery County officials say the report doesn’t tell the county’s whole story, failing to take note of real economic development around Amsterdam and change in the past few years.
The two counties’ statistics could almost be taken straight from the report’s examples of prosperous and distressed communities. Their county seats are a mere 30 miles apart but their populations face totally different realities according to the report’s metrics.
“Perhaps most troubling, the prime years of the national economic recovery bypassed many of America’s most vulnerable places altogether,” the report states. “Far from achieving even anemic growth from 2011 to 2015, distressed communities instead experienced what amounts to a deep ongoing recession, with a 6.0 percent average decline in employment and a 6.3 percent average drop in business establishments.”
The group’s report tracked how communities fared on seven components between 2011 and 2015: high school graduation rates, housing vacancy rates, employment for adults ages 25 to 64, poverty rate, median income compared to state’s median income, the change in the number of jobs and the change in the number of businesses. Each community was scored, with 1 being the best and 100 being the worst.
Saratoga scored a 1.6. Montgomery scored an 85.9, last among the state’s 62 counties. It is the only county in the state to finish the 80s.
The report’s data indicate that on average, Montgomery County residents are poorer, less educated, more likely to live in poverty and have less access to new jobs or business opportunities than those in Saratoga County.
Additionally, state Department of Health data on causes of premature death indicates that Montgomery County residents die sooner and have higher rates of death from cancer, heart disease, unintentional injuries and respiratory disease than their neighbors in Saratoga County.
“There’s a direct link between poverty and poor health outcomes,” said Janine Jurkowski, an associate professor at the School of Public Health at the University at Albany. “We know that housing, transportation, and work opportunities have an impact on health.”
There’s no one answer for the two counties' divergent paths. But a look at their pasts helps explain their current states.
Montgomery County is mostly rural with a few older industrial towns along the Erie Canal. The canal, and the railroads that ran alongside it, powered the county’s industry for decades.
Today those towns are like so many others across the Rust Belt, dotted with closed factories and with fewer people left to drive local economies.
Saratoga County was even more rural a century ago, with a reputation as a spa retreat and playground for wealthy downstate residents.
In 1930 the two counties had similar populations, around 60,000. Since then, Montgomery County has lost over 10,000 residents, while Saratoga County’s population has nearly quadrupled to more than 227,000.
A single statistic illustrates the start of that massive change. In the 10 years after the Northway was built, Saratoga County’s population grew over 35 percent.
Its southern suburbs became bedroom communities for workers in the Capital Region’s cities, especially after the Northway was finished in the 1960s, right as white families began to flee American cities for new suburbs.
The heart of the reason that Saratoga County thrived while Montgomery County struggled boils down to an old real estate adage, said Dennis Brobston of Saratoga Economic Development Corporation.
“It’s all about location,” he said. “It was access and low cost.”
But according to Brobston, it was not the only reason. The county made a series of decisions, from the creation of the SEDC to investing in new infrastructure that allowed it to grow in the 20th century.
It also received an immense dose of private and public investment in the last decade that permitted the nanotechnology industry to take off.
“It’s the ability to adapt quickly,” Brobston said. “I’d say Saratoga County has been able to adapt.”
Montgomery County elected and business officials don’t deny the challenges the county faces, but say the EIG report doesn’t show the progress the county has made in recent years and argue that many factors are behind the county’s difficult economic and health outlooks. They also say they’re facing many of the county’s challenge head on with the resources they have.
During a recent tour of the county, Ken Rose, the CEO and director of the Montgomery County Business Development Center, highlighted new housing developments, the expansion of a thriving business park just off the state Thruway, a marketing initiative aimed at styling the eastern part of the county as a potential Capital Region bedroom community and more.
“For a community of our size, the private sector investment we’ve seen over the past 10 years is well over half a billion dollars. I’d put that up against any rural community in upstate New York with a population of 50,000,” he said. “You can see sometimes the numbers don’t tell the full story. I really don’t feel we’re the most distressed county in upstate New York.”
A major boon to the county has been the development of the Florida Business Park and a more recent extension of the park. Three distribution centers, including a Dollar General facility set to open this year, along with several other smaller businesses will employ a total of around 2,000 workers.
In fact, employers are telling county officials they’re having trouble finding enough workers to fill open spots, Rose and Montgomery County Executive Matthew Ossenfort said.
“We’re a small county, if you look at our unemployment, it’s under 1,000 people,” Rose said. “That’s not a lot of people for those companies to go after.”
The county’s unemployment rate was less than 5 percent, according to the latest data from the state Department of Labor.
Dominic Wade, president of Mohawk Fabrics, sees the good and the bad in the county’s economic climate.
In 2006 he took over the near century-old Amsterdam company from his father-in-law, eventually purchasing it with his wife in 2010. He overhauled the plant, replaced machines from the 1940s and expanded its footprint.
The investment paid off. The company tripled its workforce to 18 employees and last year was its best year ever, Wade said.
“We’re making investments to bring a product line in to the 21st century,” he said. “We forgot how to be a competitive organization. So, I had to spend 10 years rebuilding.”
Wade says doing business in the state is difficult and every bit of economic development assistance can help. Other barriers, like the lack of a hotel in the city for potential investors or developers to stay at when they visit, or an economic base with expendable income, such as a four-year college, makes it difficult for the area to attract new investment, he said.
Rose and Ossenfort said the county’s economic development push has been two-fold: increasing business at the Florida Business Park and the joint park it's developing with Fulton County and encouraging sociable, walkable growth in downtown Amsterdam.
On a smaller scale, the city is embracing the type of downtown revitalization other urban areas have seen. Near the Amsterdam Riverfront Center mall there are newer loft apartments that are already full and officials are pursuing a mixed commercial and residential development. A new 511-foot pedestrian bridge spanning the Mohawk River has helped bring new life to the city's waterfront and investment interest to long vacant properties.
The Wades have started several other businesses in Amsterdam, trying to capitalize on what they see as an opportunity in an area that lacks small businesses investment.
“We see a lot of promise in the area because it’s so downtrodden,” Wade said.
Two issues have cramped both ends of the county’s development strategy, the Riverfront Center, which lies in the heart of downtown, and the lack of important infrastructure in some areas of the county, such as municipal sewer and natural gas lines.
“They’re not easy issues, it always comes down to resources,” Ossenfort said. “But it’s a matter of just trying to do the best you can.”
There is also the matter of state support, which has provided for that very same infrastructure in Saratoga County.
Under Gov. Andrew Cuomo the state has pushed an ambitious annual contest for hundreds of millions in state subsidies under the Regional Economic Development Councils.
Saratoga County has been one of the largest beneficiaries of the program, especially with the establishment and state support of Global Foundries.
A ProPublica analysis of the state’s subsidies programs found that between 2011 and 2014 businesses in the county received at least $84.4 million in state and local subsidies. That doesn’t count over a billion dollars in other tax breaks and funding Global Foundries has received in the last decade.
Montgomery County businesses received at least $23.2 million during that same time, according to ProPublica.
Both Ossenfort and Rose are on the Mohawk Valley Regional Economic Development Council, which includes Montgomery County.
They view the county’s role as supportive of the council’s overall goals and have focused their efforts on tourism and developing a regional relationship with neighboring Fulton County.
“We are a smaller fish in the region but at the same time when we put up good projects, we get funded,” Ossenfort said. “And that’s all we can ask. If you look at the funding we’ve gotten relative to our population, we over-perform.”
While Saratoga County may have outdone Montgomery County in past REDC awards, the latest round of state funding had a different result.
Saratoga County received $4.3 million for seven projects. Sewer projects accounted for $2 million of that award. Montgomery County received funding for 13 projects, totaling $4.8 million. Just one, with an award of $50,000, contributes to sewer improvements.
For Wade, the county’s only path forward to keep encouraging investment and capitalize on recent successes in the area.
“There are some hard-working people here and there are challenges,” he said. “I think it’s an exciting time in Montgomery County. It’s not going to happen overnight.”
