By Richard Schaedle
Now that the state budget has been passed, New York's $24.6 billion share of federal stimulus money should start hitting the streets fast.
Perhaps too fast: Most will be spent in 12 to 24 months.
Moving so much money so quickly could let slip many millions in slushy spending benefiting developers and not the economy. The New York State Economic Recovery and Reinvestment Cabinet must be hypervigilant to avoid a special-interest feeding frenzy.
Clearly, projects that aren't shovel-ready, have questionable or negative fiscal, economic and environmental impacts, and are divisive and controversial rather than consensus-building, should not be candidates for stimulus funding.
But that won't stop developers from seeking it.
One case in point is the Belleayre Resort, a high-priced, high-elevation, high-density, steep-slope, sprawling, speculative ski condo and golf course developers want to build on a sensitive Catskills mountaintop.
You'll find it listed under Delaware County-area proposals on the 774-page list of stimulus proposals under state review (www.recovery.ny.gov/assets/pdf/internet_20090325.pdf).
There is listed a request for $62 million to expand the publicly owned Belleayre Ski Center "and with it, the development of the privately owned Belleayre Resort."
It's widely agreed expanding the public center is a good thing, provided for in the state constitution. But the private, exclusive resort is a different, more-controversial matter, so it tries to piggyback on broad support for expanding the center. Developers purposely blur the line between the two, but the resort is a separate, inappropriate profit grab that should be cut loose.
Ulster County Legislature Chairman David Donaldson recently wrote Gov. David Paterson urging him to approve stimulus money for the center; the letter doesn't mention the resort. Donaldson seems genuinely unaware of any possibility that money would go to land purchase and trail development for the resort.
But he is not alone in this confusion; they are so deliberately enmeshed even experts can't always tell where the center ends and the resort begins.
The blurred line between them also confuses permitting. Donaldson's letter claims the project is "shovel-ready," but the resort is no such thing. It hasn't passed the environmental impact statement, or EIS, phase. Permitting is contested and at best a long way off.
Building would trigger loss of irreplaceable mountaintop habitat, huge water consumption, increased erosion and flooding _ already at dangerous levels _ and compromised water quality and reservoirs.
The resort's energy-intensive snowmaking and traffic impacts would aggravate the region's Clean Air Act compliance problems, making it harder and costlier to get federal transportation funds.
Stimulus funding would signal a presumption that the resort would be getting built regardless of environmental impacts, prejudicing the environmental review process.
Its likely economic impacts are no better. Paterson's office has said that stimulus spending in New York should give a 20-to-1 return to the economy. But instead of a positive multiplier effect, spending on the resort would mean more taxpayer costs.
Claims of the project generating 600-800 jobs are unsubstantiated and overblown. There is no commitment as to how many jobs will result, salary levels or whether local residents will get them.
If the resort employs cheap labor from outside the community, that would strain local services and cost taxpayers, in addition to the huge hidden subsidies and unpaid service costs that most greenfield development entails.
Citizens have seen no fiscal impact analysis supporting the positive environmental impact claim, and Freedom of Information Law requests for it have been denied.
Meanwhile, independent research shows destination resorts suck money from local municipalities and compete with local tourism businesses, which is what the 2006 Draft Environmental Impact Statement said the Belleayre Resort would do _ provided it stays open.
Comparable high-end ski resorts that boomed in the early 2000s are now closing.
Giving the resort stimulus funds would also undercut worthier, genuinely shovel-ready projects that deserve them.
The regional transportation authority wants new roads, bridges and pavement on state Route 28 from Hurley to Shandaken.
As state health budgets shrink, Margaretville Memorial Hospital, built in the 1960s, is in need of a $17 million renovation. Projects to protect area water resources, suffering from DEC budget and staff cuts, merit federal support.
Our long-term future is in skilled jobs such as Tech City and the planned solar consortium in Ulster County.
Those are the sorts of stimulus-worthy projects New York needs, and around which broad consensus forms. At best, the Belleayre Resort confounds and divides local opinion.
Nevertheless, there it is, on the list of projects under consideration for stimulus funding and arranging special pleadings to the governor.
There are some 15,000 projects on the list; I happened to track this one only because my group is fighting it.
But it makes me wonder, what other inappropriate, destructive projects lurk under the radar on that 774-page list, and how can the Recovery Cabinet police them all?
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Schaedle is the chairman of the grass-roots organization Catskill Heritage Alliance, which is online at www.catskillheritage.org.
