Now the waiting begins.
New York's ten regional councils all put their best foot forward this week, in a final attempt to sway state leaders to infuse their five-year economic plans with bundles of state cash and tax breaks.
During the western New York Council's (WNY) presentation Wednesday, members tended to emphasize how badly the region needs state help.
"We have a battered image," WNY council co-chair Howard Zemsky told the five-person panel. "Our image makes it harder to attract firms, visitors and employees. Our population is declining, and we have lost a striking number of young people. Unless we attract more young adults, continued population decline is baked into our demographic cake."
Zemsky was careful not to overemphasize the negative with his presentation; he included talking points about regional strengths, like its 21 colleges and universities and a bustling border with Canada.
Western New York's five-year plan mostly emphasizes strategies for improving the decaying urban cores of Buffalo and Niagara Falls. Yet the region's other counties, like Cattaraugus, Chautauqua and Allegany, are largely left out, and aren't expected to receive much in the way of state investment, should western New York's council win one of the competition's top prizes.
"A problem or an opportunity"
Workforce training programs are one of the cornerstones of western New York's economic plan. The region's workers are diverse, but only a small percentage hold college degrees. And high school graduation rates are abysmal, especially for African-American males.
Only 51 percent of African-American men are employed because an even smaller percentage graduate from high school, according to Clotilde Perez-Bode Dedecker, CEO of the Community Foundation of Greater Buffalo and a member of the WNY council's education work group. That gives Buffalo the worst ranking among the 35 largest American cities.
Perez-Bode Dedecker told the panel that western New York is fast becoming an area with workers who cannot qualify for meaningful employment in the 21st century.
"You've got either a problem or an opportunity, depending on how you choose to define it," she says. "And we choose to define it as an opportunity."
Three distinct local job training programs will be injected with state dollars if western New York is one of the four regions chosen to receive $40 million dollars in grants and tax breaks. "Smart growth," which decries stretching a region's population further and further into "exurbs," was also thrust to the forefront of WNY's presentation Wednesday.
"The region has experienced sprawl without growth since the 1950s. And between 1960 and 2000, Erie and Niagara County shed 10.5 percent of our population, while the footprint of development doubled, which accelerated costs of maintaining overstretched infrastructure and isolated the urban poor from good job opportunities," says Aaron Bartley, WNY council member and founder of the nonprofit PUSH Buffalo.
Western New York's council also argued that three projects associated with the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus would boost the region's economic revitalization. These investments in Buffalo's downtown, the council argued, could attract private investment, a perennial sore spot in the region's economic stat sheet.
Winners of the regional council competition are expected to be announced before Christmas.
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