On Dallas, Albany, and America

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Mark Mark My Words Podcasts where we mark the words of such as kind executive Mark Molnaro, now available in iTunes. I'm everywhere. All over the place, you know, maybe kind of sort of soon to be statewide, but that's a couple years away. Right now, we'll just see who listens. Exactly. We'll stick within the borders of such as county and maybe the Hudson Valley as a whole. Okay, it's a deal. I, I, I, of course, am brought again and I'm joined as am each and every week by such as the County Mark Molnaro. Welcome. Well, I'm happy to be back. Thanks a lot. So I usually start off by asking you, you know, you know, how such as county treat me lately, but looking at some of the past world events, we should probably start there. Yeah. I, your thoughts in general. That's, that's really I can ask. And no, I appreciate that. And I, I think like every other American, the last week has really been a very troubling in a lot of ways, a very sad several days. I certainly extend my prayers and thoughts and have consistently to the families of all of those lost over the last several days. Certainly extend my thoughts and prayers to the families of those Dallas police officers who were murdered simply because they had the courage to put on a uniform and go off to work. And I do extend my thoughts and prayers to the families of those lives lost in those cities across America. And, and I'm hopeful that out of what has been, you know, this, this heightened degree of violence and anger and sadly carnage will come in some ways or reawakening in our, in our country and, and acknowledgement that we have serious conflicts and problems to address. And that ultimately the best way to address those is by toning down the noise, deescalating the situation and engaging in the honest and iridist dialogue necessary to break down barriers. And I've, you know, I've seen this certainly in my own community. And we've seen it on display in other parts of the country just where protesters and police officers left and right are sort of putting down the anger, embracing one another and trying to find ways to come together to confront to what we know are real, real challenges. You know, there, there is racism in America. There is intolerance in America. There is injustice in America. And there are people every day, men and women who sat off to protect the life and property that, that we hold dear and really place their lives on the line to protect us. And there, and there needs to be an understanding that we don't live in a zero-sum world that by working together and confronting problems, you know, hopefully we can learn a little bit more about each other and, and solve some of those problems that faces. I mean, how would you recommend, recommend, or what do you think is the best way to start having those conversations, especially since, and this is the weird thing for your social media advocate to be saying, but for every one person who's willing to sit down and have that conversation, you turn on social media, you turn on Facebook, you turn on Twitter, and there's about 11,000 who just want to like just tweet anger and hatred and basically, just get last word, I just like 140 characters at a time. You know, it's fine. I'm like all those other people who sometimes, you know, talk about the ills of social media, and of course, I'm one who uses it and you know, you help me use it. And, you know, and we've seen the benefit of social media, not only being able to communicate, you know, instantly around the world, but, you know, we have been able to now see in full color what, what fear looks like, what anger looks like, what violence looks like. And in some ways, I trust it has shocked people into perhaps coming, you know, to the realization that there is too much of that in this country and we ought to address it. I would also say that I don't know that I should blame, or any of us should only blame social media as one of the problems. It is an outlet that people who are angry and frustrated use, and in this scenario, right, angry and frustrated use, to communicate that anger and frustration. And what I think leaders need to do, and by the way, leaders are not those with offices, some are. I mean, there are certainly people in elected office who are leaders, and there are some in elected office who aren't, but leaders throughout our country, and now to localize it throughout our community, leaders need to bring people together to first acknowledge what the problem is, and try to understand the perspective of the other. I don't know what it's like to be black in America, and I don't know what it's like to put on a uniform, but I do know that there are too many African American and minority residents who are fearful, and there are also too many police officers who are fearful. So that's a place to start, isn't it? So it would seem to me that leaders should convene people, should bring people together in a non-confrontational way to understand what are those real, deep-seated problems that need to be confronted, and try to peel layer by layer that away to first build understanding, and then hopefully develop solutions. And I do think it starts by understanding that the institutions of government, the institutions of America, the institutions of our economy are no longer trusted like they once were, and in this state, is our education system equitable? Do you get the same quality education in the inner city as you would in a city suburb? Is our economy the same in an inner city as it is in a suburb, as it is in upstate? And ensure that we really strike at the heart of what's holding people back to regain trust. So it is, I think, the lack of faith and trust in the institutions that is causing a great deal of fear and anguish. It is inherently the concerns and reality of racism and intolerance, and the fact that we overburden law enforcement with sort of the responsibility for doing much more than maybe law enforcement should be responsible for doing, and really engage, I think, in the heavy lifting of addressing the anger and frustration and try to convert that into action in a productive and nonviolent way. And I do think leaders have to really spend more time listening and bring people together to have that serious dialogue and identify serious steps and serious solutions. I'd like to think we're trying to do some of that in my county. I acknowledge that we don't have the same tensions that perhaps others do, and that's just a demographic reality in this community. But we're educating and training law enforcement with crisis intervention training. I think every police officer in America should have CIT training. It helps to empower law enforcement officials to understand the value of community policing, understand the importance of de-escalating situations. I think that there needs to be greater interaction between the community and law enforcement so that there is a healthy respect for one another. I think that we need to speak about the inequity within the education system and the lack of job opportunities for people. Are we training young people to be competitive today, or are we educating young people without concern for whether or not they'll get a job? Are we certain that we're providing opportunity to individuals so that they can succeed in their own lives? It's important that we be about the business of empowering individuals to ensure that they're not dependent on government but rather empowered to achieve success. That takes a great amount of effort. I think there are too many elected officials who don't want to engage in that. I don't want to define myself as one of them. I apologize. I rambled on a bit. It's one of those that I sit down. We had a forum last evening organized by the NAACP. When you listen to this, it'll be a few days ago. It was an interesting dialogue of people who just want to figure ways out to improve the quality and condition of life. For everyone, it was law enforcement and African-American residents and Hispanic residents and white residents who just spent some time talking to one another. Hopefully, those are the kinds of steps that will take to really reestablish trust and to ensure that there's tolerance to tone down the violence and hopefully create opportunity for people. There's no appropriate or proper way to now segue to all of any dysfunction I guess other to say, let me segue you there. That is just to say that the institutions of government need to be trusted and we're not worthy of that trust just yet. The institutions of government in this state and around America and the institutions that people rely on have not yet earned or re-earned the trust and respect of the people. That's a good place to start because whether you're black or white, whether you're older young, Republican or Democrat, you expect that the institutions that are established are trustworthy, are accountable, are responsive. When that's eroded, it does create an environment where people just don't feel that their government is working for them. New York is a prime example of that. We've been let down by far too many institutions of government and there is too much hardship, too much difficulty in obtaining jobs. That's why I think people want to ensure that the economic development efforts of this state and locally are working and that are functioning and that they can have confidence that New York will rebound and there will be opportunity for people. Speaking of that and thank you for the safe. When it comes to confidence in those institutions and that the confidence in the government, how much confidence do you think it gives people when they finally release the 90-day late startup New York report? That's a plus to tell us how great the program is doing at 4 p.m. on Friday, the day before independency weekend. No matter how you define it or try to explain it, it is a let down and that's not to say it can't work. It's to say that if it is working, you're certainly not showing it. What I mean by that is that it wasn't any economic development effort. Anytime you take taxpayer money and spend it to benefit a private interest, there needs to be accountability. There needs to be an expectation of an outcome and the ability to measure whether or not you achieve that outcome. I am for making use of the tools necessary to help grow the economy so long as it's sustainable and so long that it's accountable and if you don't miss your mark, if you don't hit your targets, the people should have their money back. Those are things we've done in Dutch's County. We've created steps to claw back public incentive, taxpayer incentive. I would say to you in the state of New York, the biggest problem when it comes to economic development is not whether or not we have the right specific tool to give a short-term benefit to a business. It's whether or not we have an environment where businesses can succeed, prosper and grow and we do not. Whether it's the inner city, suburbs or rural parts of our state, we do not have a climate that is affordable and that would allow businesses to succeed. One of the things that I think the let down with Startup New York is just that where it's heralded as having the potential for great success and after spending the dollars to promote it as a tool, it is not. Now add to that the state comptroller's analysis of the Excelsior job program and you see failure there and that is that businesses weren't meeting the mark when it came to the expected job creation and by the way, there was even after certain announcements and agreements reached, there was an alteration of what that mark is. Again, in this state, I understand the need to create tools and I want to use tools to benefit the people who live here but if it is not transparent, if it is not accountable, if you cannot show the metric that you use to measure success, people won't trust it and frankly they have every right not to. At the end of the day, if you're going to expend taxpayer money to benefit someone, business or individual organization, there needs to be that transparency or accountability and if there isn't, then the program should not exist. Okay, so I guess the big question is, let's say purely hypothetically speaking, you were in charge of a statewide initiative to help create jobs. How would you do startup New York differently? Well, I wouldn't even start with startup New York. What I would say, what I would rather as focus on is how does business succeed in New York State and right now, by the way, if you're a business succeeding in New York State, you're probably a pretty good business person because it's a big burden to overcome to succeed in the state. We need to work with local municipalities. Land use decisions and the ability to move businesses in and out of a community are made at the local level and we need to ensure that communities are making and sending a clear message that this is the economy and economic growth that they want. This is the land use and zoning and local laws that we need to move those projects forward and then we can't tie businesses up to make it more complicated to get from application to approval when they're doing what the local municipality, whether it's the city of New York, the city of Buffalo or someplace in the Hudson Valley or any place in between, if a municipality is clearly articulated its economic development vision, we cannot create obstacles when a developer applicant presents to us what we've asked for. There needs to be an acknowledgement that the cost of doing business in New York is too high and I'd rather see us create a sustainable effort to drive down the total cost of doing business and living. That is making energy more affordable. That's making health insurance and general liability and workers compensation more affordable. That's driving down the property tax and you can't create a Senate scenario where you're giving total income tax exemption but not acknowledging that 70% in Duchess County of the County property tax is driven by state spending. You really have to confront those things in a sustainable way and I believe there's a path there and there's a path there by the way by working across the board with local leaders to ensure and legislative leadership to ensure that we create a more equitable environment and a more affordable environment for businesses to grow. I'd offer to you that with 70% of new jobs being created by existing businesses, we ought to also look very aggressively internally to ensure that those businesses, those small and medium size businesses across the state that we don't lose them and we help them to grow and to expand because that's where job growth will occur and it's not occurring aggressively enough. I mean if it were not for the city of New York, the state of New York would not be even remotely doing even as well as some would claim it's doing today that the economic activity has been principally in the city of New York. Job growth has been principally in the city of New York and that upstate continues to lag behind and it's because we're not investing in driving down the cost. We're not creating a sustainable effort to grow business. We're not driving down the cost of doing business and making it easier for businesses to move through a regulatory system that is overly burdensome. I hope that hopefully we're actually going to wrap up on a high note. To start with think differently, talk a little about Julie's jungle. This is an amazing playground that fits right in with our think differently initiative. This is a project in the town of East Fischkyl and Duchess County where they with some assistance from the county and local fundraising and support from the town itself created a fully accessible playground. Really developed for kids of all abilities. They launched and opened it up just a weekend ago and I encourage folks if you have family members living with special needs or have unique abilities. This is the place for you to come and it's a beautiful experience because it's not built only for those with special needs. It's built to bring kids of all abilities together and it really exemplifies Duchess County's effort to think differently. I hope that every municipality, every city town village and county in the state of New York will embrace our think differently initiative to really help people living with special needs to achieve independence and to show them that we support and respect them. It's very personal to me and Julie's jungle was just in the opening. It was just a wonderful experience. I really encourage people to take a look at it and visit. And if people are looking to think Duchess with their families coming up in the summer, what do you guys have going on? Well, think Duchess for vacation, think Duchess for tourism and think Duchess for a great baseball game and a terrific concert on August the 7th. We're hosting at the Duchess County Airport, the speed of sound. This is the second annual concert held and promoted by WDST and the Hudson Valley and we're bringing the luminaires to Duchess and we hope folks will find their way and you can link online to purchase tickets. And if you're into baseball on August the 16th, the Duchess stadium will host the New York Penn League All-Star game and of course the Hudson Valley renegades home field, the Duchess stadium. It'll be a great night out and I encourage folks to come visit and actually the Penn New York Penn League All-Star game is a great opportunity for people from across the state because your local minor league baseball team is likely to be sending players right here to Duchess stadium and I encourage people to come out and enjoy a night at Duchess at the Duch. Let's end it there. County Executive, thank you. You got it, thank you. Happy to do it. And thank you for everyone for tuning in to another episode of Mark My Words. Follow the County Executive on Facebook, on Twitter, on Instagram, as I said before, now on iTunes and we'll talk to you next week. [Music]