Rensselaer County Executive Steve McLaughlin gave his seventh State of the County address today at the Franklin Terrace Ballroom in Troy.
McLaughlin opened his address with a nod to his early days as County Executive, when he promised to bring fresh ideas to county government and his drive to "reimagine Rensselaer County," which updated county facilities.
"When I said I was going to modernize this county, I wasn't kidding," McLaughlin said. "Because the county needed it. It had to be done. Our facilities were quite honestly substandard. They did not meet the mission of today ... And it was very important to us to get those facilities up to speed and get them where they needed to be. And you might say, as a business owner, 'how does that impact us?' It does impact you, I think, because the synergies that are there really, really important between government education, and the business community. So the better we're functioning, the better it's gonna be for our business community."
The Republican said new offices at 99 Troy Road in East Greenbush are in service, while renovations and improvements at the County Office Building to host human services departments are nearing completion. A new county senior center has opened in Troy and the county's Emergency Services Training Complex is fully operational. A new highway garage will be built in Cropseyville. He also discussed a major infrastructure project underway that uses federal funds to extend water and sewer lines along U.S. Route 9 in Schodack, extending from the 9 and 20 split to the Columbia County border, which Mclaughlin characterizes as “far under-utilized as a highway.”
“It's a seven-mile project, we did use our ARPA funds, some of that some of those funds, I would have bonded for that if I had to, that's one of those things that if you had to borrow money, it's worth doing because you're going to get the dividends back tenfold for 20-fold in the investment that is to come out there," said McLaughlin. 'Hint, if anybody's looking for property start looking at 9 and 20. Because it's gonna take off like a rocket. As I said, it's within three hours of 30% of the U.S. population. So it's a great place to be distributing from.”
McLaughlin says with county finances "in phenomenal shape" he'll continue to look to expand retail opportunities.
"In 2019, we led the entire state of New York in sales tax revenue growth, pretty impressive with 62 counties, to lead it in sales tax revenue growth, then we broke through the $100 million mark. But we didn't stop there we went right to $110 million that year. And then last year, again, it was somewhere around $122 million. That's just because of the increase in sales, and obviously sales tax. But the reason that happened is the increase in retail spending opportunities for the people. So we're going to continue on that mission," said McLaughlin.
McLaughlin said the county is becoming known across the state as a leader in reducing property taxes.
"We get it done, we had a 10% property tax rate reduction last year alone. That's important. That gets us back to a tax rate of about $3.85 per 1000. That's what people were paying here in the 90s," said McLaughlin, noting that during his six years in office property taxes have plummeted by 37%, and under his watch 255 miles of county roads have been paved while the county has attracted "record investment and job creation."
The address came year after McLaughlin was acquitted after a two-day campaign finance trial related to the use of campaign money while the Republican was in the state Assembly, which came soon after he revealed a prostate cancer diagnosis.
