Plans, plans, plans, and windmills

Joanie Mahoney posted her economic plan. To sum up, it lists 91 agencies in CNY that work with economic development issues. She wants to appoint a "point person" that would make sure the groups all work together. Basically she wants to make it so a small business owner can call in and get referred to all the appropriate agencies. Dale claims plagiarism. Bill Magnarelli says this is good but wants to do it through the existing county Economic Development Office. Ed Ryan's comments are mysteriously absent from the post-standard article. My take? As someone who often refers people to services in my job, I think the one thing that's often missing is an office that truly understands what everyone does and the many services that are available. I'm sure there are many helpful services I'm missing, so I'm quite sure most small business owners aren't aware of all 91 agencies, or what they all do, so this sounds like a good idea. And no I don't think she stole it from Dale. As for Bill, other than the words economic development office I'm not sure of the difference on this issue, but I'm for the plan so that's not really bad.

Meanwhile Ed Ryan wants us to go green. He wants to switch all county vehicles to biodiesel and encourage other local governments to do the same and enjoy the tax breaks. He also proposed working with ESF to reduce energy consumption and developing an environmental business council. Responses? Basically everyone agrees that we should take the lead in environmental businesses. Bill touted his own sizable list of accomplishments in this field. Joanie, like Ed, also mentioned working with ESF and taking the lead, but kind of simply stated her leadership would be better without too many specifics mentioned. Dale wants us to put "architectural" windmills on county buildings. Really. Alright, he said some more, in fact he beat Ryan's 6 point plan with his own 13 point plan, in his continual race to have the most number of points, but one of the things that was mentioned was the windmills. I work in a county building, and really have no desire to see windmills all over it. I'm betting companies and people considering moving to the area might have disagreements with this too.