MONTICELLO – To begin the Executive Committee meeting of the Legislature on Thursday, January 25, the Sullivan County Resiliency Plan draft was presented to the board. Commissioner of Planning for Sullivan County, Heather Brown, introduced the Resiliency Plan before handing it off to Shachi Pandey and her team via Zoom. 

Pandey is the Founding Principal of Metropolitan Urban Design (MUD) Workshop, a multidisciplinary team based in Brooklyn which the county hired to help them identify local threats and challenges, as well as develop key milestones to hit and recommendations for improvement. 

Also involved with the presentation of the plan was Gabriella Getacho, also from MUD Workshop, Tina Lund, the President of Urbanomics, who was in charge of the economic and housing aspects of the plan and Mark Freker, Senior Planner at BFJ Planning, who was involved with the strategies with utilities as well as transportation in the early stage. 

“In 2019, Sullivan County signed a contract for a grant with the Department of State in the amount of $250,000 to support the development of a county-wide resiliency plan,” Brown said. “We have been working fast and furious in the last year to get this plan over the finish line before next Wednesday, January 31.”

Brown said that January 31 will be the five-year mark from when they originally received the grant. 

The Commissioner of Planning also said that there are three angles that Resilient Sullivan is targeting through this system, which are economy, community and environment. 

“We have taken perspective from three different angles,” she said. “One being community, which is how we can improve access to critical resources and services for all communities, especially those that are the most vulnerable. Second is economy, which is looking at how we can improve financial, social and physical infrastructure to anticipate potential upheavals while ensuring sustainable livelihood and opportunities for county residents. 

“Lastly, we looked at this from the environment, which is how we can support the natural systems and man-made infrastructure that provide critical services and protect county citizens,” Brown concluded. 

Pandey said that there have been three key factors to rely on during the entire process, which are project info goals, engagement and taking recommendations. She referenced three tiers of engagement - direct community engagement, through their website, resilientsullivan.com and interactive mapping and survey, stakeholder engagement and county engagement. 

The website also has municipality fact sheets, which list resiliency facts for each municipality in the county. Stakeholder engagement involved interviews, which Pandey said about a dozen were conducted between March, April and May of last year, and working sessions. County engagement also involved interviews as well as meetings with county government agencies. 

“We are in the process of finalizing the existing conditions, analysis, goals and vision, as well as the engagement documents which is about 140 pages,” Pandey said. “We hope to be uploading that along with the presentation before January 31 on our dedicated project website, resilientsullivan.com.”

The MUD Workshop team also presented five main themes to target and improve throughout the county. These themes are Housing; Farming & Farmland; Natural Resources and Infrastructure Systems; Food, Jobs & Services and Utilities. In going over these five themes, they went over recommendations, goals, challenges, strategies, opportunities and threats for each. This is similar to a SWOT Analysis, which is when businesses identify their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT). 

“Housing was by far the number one issue, goal and theme,” Pandey said. “Both in terms of affordability and availability, as well as the aging housing stock.”

During her portion of the presentation, Lund backed up Pandey’s point about housing being the biggest issue across the board. Lund said that there are about 30,000 year-round households in Sullivan County, but then there are also an additional 16,000 residential units reserved primarily for the summer months. 

“While summer folks are a great boom to the economy,” Lund said, “that external real estate pressure drives up housing costs for year-round residents. You see that in the high rates of households that are paying more than 30 percent of their income for housing. This particularly affects older homeowners who are on fixed incomes, as well as renters.”

Lund said that the main housing goal is to ensure the availability and affordability of housing by supporting strategic growth in the county that promotes safe and walkable communities. Some of the strategies she discussed are expanding affordable housing and building and renovating to green standards.

“There are grant opportunities that will help fund that sort of smart building to build a healthy community,” Lund said. 

Two other strategies included improving neighborhood amenities for safe outdoor activities and addressing the need for air conditioning. Lund also said that addressing homelessness and interim housing is another strategy for them to work at. 

Pandey said that they are currently in the stage of developing the final draft plan which will be sent over to the State Department by January 31, as well as have it to the Legislature to gather feedback over the next 30 days and make any changes needed.