Thoughts on Possible Chamber Merger

It seems that the Montgomery and Fulton County Chambers of Commerce are giving serious consideration to merging. I have mixed feelings on the idea, depending on how I look at the role of the COC in the business community. On one hand, I think a merger could very well benefit some types of businesses. My [...]

How Amsterdam can thrive in the Emerging Economy

In the comments section of my last post, we began to discuss ideas for future business development in Amsterdam. I’d like to get into this topic in a little more detail because I believe that our current “default” strategy in this area is incomplete and out of date. I believe that there are great opportunities [...]

Big A for Amsterdam

I’d like to take a good look at an initiative (dubbed “Big A”) for getting Amsterdam growing again that was recently proposed on Flippin’ Amsterdam. I would urge anyone who holds out any hope for revitalization in Amsterdam to read through the entire post and consider it. The ideas behind the proposal are ones that [...]

The Mohawk Valley Regional Economic Plan

The Mohawk Valley Regional Economic Development Council, along with other regional councils across the state,  have submitted their final strategic plans which are essentially applications for an initial 40 million dollars of  NY state economic development funding. The economic councils are part of a new strategy initiated by Gov. Andrew Cuomo to manage economic development [...]

Collaboration Consternation

“Consolidation” and “shared services” – seem to be two buzzwords that are being used a lot these days. All three mayoral candidates have expressed (in varying degrees of detail), their support for working with other municipalities to cut costs of services. The idea of  consolidating local governments gets mentioned a lot by some county supervisors, [...]

How To Eat Fried Worms

There’s a new proposal from Amsterdam Material Recycling to build a Construction and Demolition landfill on the edge of the Edson Street Industrial Park. Several years ago, the zoning ordinance to allow the landfill to be built got voted down. This new proposal comes at a time when Amsterdam, like almost every city in NY,  is having [...]

Rebuilding Amsterdam’s Economic Foundation

The Comprehensive Plan’s second directive is to rebuild Amsterdam’s economic foundation. Easy enough right? And after we’re done with that, we’ll work on achieving world peace! I’m being sarcastic because the sheer magnitude of the task of turning around a city economy that has been in decline for 70 years and also happens to reside in [...]