Governor Hochul: "It is not an overstatement to say that New York is the capital of the semiconductor industry, and the Syracuse community is the epicenter of that world and that is really significant. So, never for resting on our laurels, we'll go bigger, we'll go bolder and we'll get better."
Hochul: "It is a statewide shared sense of pride that we're going to be manufacturing something here that the rest of the world thinks about and dreams about and tries to compete with And you'll never match the quality of our workforce, the intellects, the innovation,"
Earlier today, Governor Kathy Hochul announced details of key proposals from her Fiscal Year 2024 Executive Budget to grow jobs and boost the economy in Central New York. In line with the 2023 State of the State, the budget includes a major investment to increase housing supply and expand economic opportunity and innovation in the region. The investment includes $36 million for Onondaga Community College, $11 million for local workforce and economic development initiatives, $10 million for the New 15th Ward public housing project and $26 million for the state fair and local parks. Governor Hochul also announced $45 million for GO SEMI: Governor's Office of Semiconductor Expansion, Management and Integration, which will provide administrative and operational support to Micron during its historic $100 billion investment for a new megafab in Central New York and lead a broader effort to develop New York's semiconductor industry.
VIDEO of the event is available on YouTube here and in TV quality (h.264, mp4) format here.
AUDIO of the event is available here.
PHOTOS of the event are available on the Governor's Flickr page.
A rush transcript of the Governor's remarks is available below:
Good morning. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. It was like a homecoming coming back here once again. And it really felt good. It really felt great actually, to be able to come back to a community that I know so well and love so much. And especially the people, the people in this region of Central New York are really quite extraordinary. The leaders, the elected people are always important, but also just the community engagement and the business engagement, I think is second to none. And I really wanted you to know, I don't take that for granted. And so, I thank you for welcoming me back. I want to acknowledge some of the leaders you're going to be hearing from in our program.
Dr. Warren Hilton, the President of Onondaga Community College has joined us. Ben Walsh, our Mayor who I've spent a lot of time working with, and he never stops giving me more things to do and more ideas. Manish Bhatia, the Executive Vice President of Global Operations at Micron. Micron - it's a word that's synonymous with hope and opportunity and I'll always be so grateful to everyone who is part of the team to let Micron see what we've always known. That this is an incredible place to live, to work, to do business. So, we're so excited about what the future unfolds for all of us in this area. So, I want to thank - also, I know we have Helen Hudson has joined us. Helen, our City Council President, Common Council President. Chris Ryan, the Minority Leader in Onondaga County. Thank you, Chris for being here. Rob Simpson, Rob. thank you for all you've done. We've never stopped working together. We were at a football game trying to recruit more businesses and you know, we're never off. We're never off even in the most casual encounters like, "You sure you're not a supply chain to Micron, you want to come to Central New York?" So, we have our pitch. We have our pitch.
But also, to all the Onondaga County Legislators who've join us and elected leaders at the City of Syracuse, Common Council members, and also our friends in labor who will be building, building our future. So, I thank you all for being here today. And you know, no secret, I went to school here and I come back to this building in particular. I was talking to Ed Riley about this. The day I graduated from Syracuse University, my parents brought me to the most beautiful place in Syracuse, the Syracuse Hotel. Hotel Syracuse. And they took me to lunch. Now, you have to understand when you come from a very big Irish Catholic family with a lot of, lot of resources, when your parents take you to a place that has a white tablecloth, it's really, really, feels important. So, I knew it was a great day of celebration and I remember. Silly memory, but there was a little glass votive on the table and I was commenting how pretty it was. My mother asked the waiter if we could buy that as a gift for me. So, I still have the glass votive from here from many, many years ago.
So, this is a special place. And, also just to add - to see the rebirth of this, from the beginning, you know, the peeling back of the murals and realizing there was a story that had been covered up and now we had a chance to reveal it to the rest of the world. I love this place. I see Meg here talking about what we've done at Salt City Marketplace, all the entrepreneurs who just, their lives have been transformed, you know, being able to be successful in the businesses they've always dreamed of. And so that's what I see happening here. And so much is going on with our Regional Economic Development Councils. And, you know, my public life really started here, and I was here many, many times. I'm glad to be back. And what I see here, just we think about the economic numbers. I mean, you can talk about anecdotes and stories and how good it feels, but also there's some numbers that just even, you know, statewide, we look at, you know, some of our economic numbers and unemployment, where we are in Syracuse, I swear it was double digits when I was here. I mean, I was just, you know, heading upwards and upwards. It seemed like, you know, Buffalo is 12, 14, 15 percent. Now unemployment is at 3.8 percent. I mean, unbelievable. Unbelievable. And what we're - 3 percent for Syracuse, statewide is 3.8. Syracuse is even better. Total jobs, we've had, statewide, over 586,000 jobs created, and I'm talking about just since I became Governor. I'm not saying I did every single one of them, but you know, if they all, if we lost 500,000 jobs, I'm sure I'd get blamed. So why can't I take the credit for this? Right?
But the Syracuse region is, you know, had an increase in jobs. I mean, over 15,000 people just in one year. And that's just pre-omicron energy. So, that's the trend we're on right now and I think that's a very positive one. And again, having been here when the trend was, "Oh my God, unemployment is high, people are leaving, there's no jobs." I mean, I lived through that. And it never leaves you, it always gives you this sense of anxiety about what could happen, but also appreciation when things are heading in a right way. And I'm so grateful for that.
And of course, we'll never forget, you know, October 4th - Micron, I was joined by Senator Schumer and Sanjay and just talking about, you know, every, it's like, it's like Cher. You can just say Sanjay, everybody around here knows who you're talking about. And the great CEO of Micron who believed in us and that investment of a hundred billion over 20 years, you know, the largest chip facility in the world, 50,000 jobs to this region. It's really important to us. It's really transformative and so that allows us to really write the next chapter of the upstate manufacturing story. And a lot of people didn't even think we were ever going to have a story, just kind of dead and buried and now it's going to rise up and it has set off a chain reaction.
When I am in New York City, Long Island, Hudson Valley, people are saying we all want a part of this because it's not just one name, it's just not one region. It is a statewide shared sense of pride that we're going to be manufacturing something here that the rest of the world thinks about and dreams about and tries to compete with us. And you'll never match the quality of our workforce, the intellects, the innovation, whether they come out of our community college or come out of our local colleges. I mean, there's nothing like this. People are going to want to come from all over the state, all over the country to work here. So, we have done, you know, even Edwards Vacuum I was calling into England, you know, making phone calls, "Hey, thinking of coming here?" And so, they're the British-based leader in vacuum and abatement equipment in the semiconductor industry. And like probably never heard of them before, but now they're going to be part of the New York family because they want to build a pump right here in Genesee, right down the road in Genesee County, creating 600 jobs, I mean 600 jobs for a place like Genesee County is a big deal, is a very big deal.
So, at these kinds of investments, New York is now home to 76 semiconductor companies. I would call that a critical mass, and who employ over 34,000 New Yorkers right now. So that's Global Foundries, Wolf Street, onsemi and also IBM. And so, you also think about the assets we have. We have the Albany Nanotech Complex, which was an important driver of why New York was so successful, and it's some of the most sophisticated semiconductor research in the world. So, it is not an overstatement to say that New York is the capital of the semiconductor industry, and the Syracuse community is the epicenter of that world and that is really significant.
So, never for resting on our laurels, we'll go bigger, we'll go bolder and we'll get better. And so, we're going to, as we build this new ecosystem, I want to let people know that this is not just an, "Oh, we've got them and now we move on." This is a commitment, this is opportunity for us to open the door to other companies, be part of the supply chain. Whether you want to be right in the neighborhood, close by, or anywhere in Upstate New York, anywhere in New York State, doesn't matter at all.
But now the question is - this is what Sanjay and Manish talked about - are we going to be able to have the workers to fill the jobs? And the answer is yes, and we're going to train them, here and all across the state.
And so, we have to identify the skills that are needed, and that's why during my State of the State address, I announced the first ever Governor's Office of Semiconductor Expansion, Management, and Integration. Now, coincidentally, all that stuff adds up to GO SEMI. So, I have such a clever team. So, $45 million, that's skin in the game. That's on top of the other incentive that says we need to have a place that businesses will know is the place you go to get all your questions answered, get pointed to the right direction, how we can help manage what the needs of Micron and others are. Who are the suppliers you need? How close do you want them to be? What can we do to incentivize them to come here?
So, we'll be bringing companies here, but also coordinating community investments, making sure that between the federal, state, and local, it's not so confusing for people to know the kind of a package that can be on the table to lure them to come to our state versus another. So that's important. And as I mentioned, we have to train up New Yorkers to fill these jobs. So, we'll continue to position this area as a leader, the leader in semiconductor manufacturing, but also send the message that this is a pro-business environment for people to work, bring their businesses, expand their visits, all happening right here.
And that is, again, a generational shift from what it had been when I was younger, probably two generations ago now, and it's amazing. It's amazing that it happened in our lifetime. So, we're going to continue with this, but also, you know, I work with the Mayor all the time - a great champion for this area, very innovative and has a lot of ideas. We talked about how we can train people for these jobs. And part of it, I view that as economic development. Randy and I spoke about this a lot. You can talk about jobs over here. You can talk about training over here, but if you don't blend them together, you're missing something. You know, for us to think that our job training facilities are meeting the needs of employers without engaging them is just foolishness. I've said this since my days in Congress over a decade ago. You have to marry the community colleges, the training facilities, the apprenticeship programs with the employers to say, "What do you want taught?" Let's not waste everybody's time. We want them to have a pipeline to these jobs. Let's just teach them in a very intentional way.
And that's why, you know, having seen many of our job training centers, I know how to do this, and so, we're going to make sure that what's happening here in Syracuse. We're going to be adding an additional million dollars to a program called Syracuse Build Pathways to Apprenticeship Program. This is for Syracuse. The Mayor told me this is a good program. He said it was a good program, got the Mayor's seal of approval. The Council said, "Okay, good program." I said, "Okay, that's all." So, this will be serving 115 building trade apprenticeships from I-81 to Micron Construction and so much more. And also, the Syracuse Surge High Tech Careers Bridge program will go do outreach and have more mentoring and exposure for semiconductor careers.
And so, you know, money to help with that, you know, to help with that as well. And we also know, you know, we have to help invest in our mom-and-pop shops too. You know, this is really important. These are the - no business starts out big. They all start small and sometimes they need little help moving along. So, we're going to have a 5 million revolving loan fund to help businesses, you know, do the renovations they need, the expansion, whatever they need, housing, you know, the construction they need, rehabilitation, whatever they're looking for, and so, a flexible finance program for the City of Syracuse, so you can help how this money's spent.
Also, you know, we have to have housing. This is what we talked about, right? Where are all these people going to live? We want to make sure that the center city, the city itself, is the main attraction I would say, because we saw what happened when people left our cities. Mayor wasn't born yet, but it happened a long time ago. When you're this old, you can say whatever you want, but I remember it was white flight out of the cities. You know, highways are built intentionally to connect people from the suburbs to jobs, whereas there was a time before when they all lived in the cities. And so, we are trying to fix the last vestiges of racism that happened in our transportation and our building of infrastructure.
But now we have an opportunity to invest in housing in the city, but also, we will need more housing overall. That's just a statement of fact. And you have to offer a variety to people. You know, you get empty nesters, want to be in the city. I'm an empty nester living in a city right now, and, you know, young people starting out.
But also, there's a certain age group - you're going to want to be out near the baseball field and have more space. So, we have to meet people where they are. And if we fail in that, we'll fail to provide what I promised Micron was not just a workforce, but they have to live somewhere. They're not all staying at the Syracuse Hotel here. They have a place to live. So, we have to make sure that we do this in a smart way, but not just smart - it has to be aggressive. It has to be, "Let's get started yesterday" because we have a lot of catch up to do, a lot of catch up. So, we have to incentivize developers to build more wide range of housing, affordable workplace housing is what we're going to be talking a lot about. But also, just making sure that people know that, you know, we are keeping our communities safe and there's, you know, opportunities for us, like never before.
We talked about this last year, the abandoned Developmental Center. You know, last year I announced $29 million to help demolish it to make way for new housing. Housing - at the time, we didn't even know how critically important it was going to be, but now it really is. And also, a tech hub, and I know that that is moving along, right Mayor? I'm going to ask you. We're moving along, right? I'm going to give you this money, I've got to make sure it's being spent.
But on top of that, we have to talk about my New York Housing Compact, and people get all anxious. I get it. I was in local government a long time. But I also knew that local governments have tremendous power to open the door and be welcoming and build and give young people a chance to raise their own family in the community they grew up with - affordable, around the grandparents, babysitters. So, there's a lot involved in this. I'm a grandma now, I can say that, but we have to build over 800,000 new houses in the next decade to meet the demand. That is a good thing. Remember the old days? You couldn't give a house away in Buffalo or Syracuse because nobody was - they were leaving. And now the prices are going out because that's again, a statement of how desirable our cities in New York are and our communities are in New York, so that's nice. But if it's a barrier to be able to own a home or even afford an apartment, then it doesn't work.
So, let's just go into the future with our eyes wide open of what this challenge means. We can't protect the status quo and be like this when people want to come here. This is a new dynamic. It's a new dynamic. We have to be open, open-minded, so we're going to build those 800,000 homes. Last year, we announced $25 billion - another billion, lot of billions when we talk about Micron and $25 billion to create 100,000 affordable housing units again, where our workers will be living.
And also grow the housing stock, and I want to grow the housing stock upstate. Now, this is not a radical number - get ready for this - one percent. Okay. I think we can blow past that number. Okay? I know we can blow past that number, but one percent for communities upstate over the next three years to be able to increase the housing stock, so people have options and a place to live, and that's what's so important to me.
I know, out of my local government days, when you build housing, there's other associated costs. You might need a new school. You might need to put in new sewers, new roads. We are putting together $250 million, so I would get in line first. I'd grab that money while you can. There you go Mayor. And also, not every community has a large, sophisticated planning department, so how are they going to manage this? You know, our smaller communities, we're going to put aside $20 million for planning assistance. Again, I know what it's like at that level. And if everybody just opens up their minds to the possibilities and doesn't get trapped in the past, there is no stopping us. I believe this to my core, and that's why I'm excited about it.
I like challenges, and I know we can get it done with community support. I like the leader support, business support, everybody rowing together with the same objectives to give people an affordable place to live because people want to be here. That's what's so amazing about this. Also, let's look at places like the new 15th Ward public housing, $10 million, how about 10 million public housing, this is going to be gorgeous. This'll be gorgeous. Now again, a once thriving neighborhood divided by a highway, and now it's time to reconnect - bring people back home, bring back the beauty and the grandeur of a neighborhood that was so radically changed, and now we're going to start fixing the wrongs of the past. And I love that. I love doing that. And again, these are large investments, but to me it is so worthwhile. The funding will go in three phases to a multi-year project, but it's time to reconnect a vibrant community once again.
I look forward to touring there. We're heading here afterward. Right, Mayor? So, I'll be monitoring the progress. I'm going to ask you every couple of months how we're doing. "We're moving along on this?" But I'm really excited about this. But as we draw people to our state, to our communities, our cities, we have to assure people that they're going to be safe, and we will. We will. You know, crime is down dramatically. There was a national surge. I just want to point out a national surge in crime in the aftermath, the final years of the pandemic that is still very real. But New York State, check it out. New York State is the safest large state in the country. That's based on - and we're comparing ourselves to all the states - the large ones. And maybe Vermont has a couple few, I don't know.
But we're talking about violent crimes, property crimes, quality of life crimes and we developed an approach. We started talking to the mayors last year, and from my local government experience, I know how important the mayors are. I offered to the Mayor of Rochester; "Do you need extra help?" Mayor of Syracuse, and we pulled together - talking about even bringing together our federal resources. Are the U.S. attorneys providing assistance? What else can the state police do? What else can I do with crime labs and analysis and coordination that never happened before? Because for too long law enforcement lived in silos. ATF, FBI over here, sheriffs over here, local police departments over here, state police over here. And I said, I came in a year ago. I said, "Nope. Same team. Same team. We have the same objective. Let's pull together. Let's pull our resources together. Let's do intelligence sharing." Because we have to do this to make sure everybody not just feels safe but is safe.
So, we still have some challenges ahead on public safety, but I'm putting more money into the gun violence issue. I'm watching the numbers closely here. More money. $337 million, an increase over $110 million from last year to reduce gun violence. That is significant. Last year, we made an $18 million investment in the Gun Involved Violence Elimination program. It's a fancy way of saying the communities that need it the most. We had $1.3 for Onondaga this year. I'm going to double that. I'm going to raise it up to $3.6 million because we're not out of the woods yet, but we're making real progress.
And I mentioned our crime analysis centers. I toured one about a week and a half ago in Albany, but the Syracuse Police Department is not only home to the Central New York Crime Analysis Center, but it's one of our first four original centers and we're going to continue supporting these centers. I wanted them to know that if they needed more equipment, make sure their technology's up to speed, that we're going to invest in this as well.
Also, one thing that made sense to me, it wasn't being done. The illegal guns aren't being made in New York State. Right? Where are they coming from? They have to all be coming from another state where they're manufactured legally. They're not being made here in New York. So, you logically say, "Well, how do we stop them from coming across the border?" A lot of them come from gun shows and events in Pennsylvania, come straight up Route 81, and all of a sudden, they're in the streets of Syracuse. So, not only at the time that I had talked to my state police and say, "I know you got a lot of work to do, but I need you to be interdicting guns at the border, tracking people." But then I realize I've got a lot of states that aren't talking to each other.
A year ago, I announced a nine-state consortium of like-minded states from the Northeast who are now talking about when they see a trafficker, they know they're coming up 81, 95, wherever they're coming from, and we can track them, share data, arrest them, and stop the guns from coming in the State of New York.
So, we have tens of thousands of guns, illegal guns off the streets now. I wish that was the end of it, but they keep making more. So, we are not giving up our efforts in this space. But we talk about crime, gun violence, shootings, but how do we give people who grow up in a community and think that they don't have a better alternative? That life does look pretty hopeless to them. How do we give them an alternative? That's why we have to be very intentional in targeting money toward youth programs, youth employment programs, summer youth programs that are great, but guess what? Their lives aren't changed just because schools start. They still need healthy activities throughout the year. And I'm going to make those investments as we talked about.
So, directing young people away from violence into productive activities with adult supervision, letting them know despite what's happening in their homes, there's adults out there who care about them and will help them. And will help train them and get them in a better place and realize they do have a great future.
Also, we're doubling our investments in Alternatives to Incarceration because there's a lot of people who, whether it's substance abuse, mental health challenges, or other reasons why traditional incarceration is not the right path for them. We need to help turn them around and be thoughtful about this. But we have to make sure that it's a true system of justice. Our criminal justice is a true system of justice. Full stop. And that's what we're going to do.
Also, we have a lot of court-appointed attorneys. My God, they work hard and we're going to give them the first raise, a significant raise in 20 years. And there's been a lot of talk about the bail laws. Now, I'm going to just get everybody's mindset on this one. When we talked about that spike in crime all across the nation, everywhere, and everybody's blaming New York State bail laws for crime going up everywhere. You know, Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington, D.C., so that had nothing to do with it.
Let's just deal in realities here. But let's talk about the fact that right now, after having some changes last year to the bail laws, we want to make sure that people accused of low-level offenses, who don't have money, don't end up sitting in jail when someone else accused of the same offense who happens to have money or their parents can bail them out, gets to go home. That is the description of injustice. That is what the bail laws changed. And we're not talking about changing that, but when you get to serious crimes, violent crimes, crimes involving guns or harm to other people, you have to give the judges the discretion to be able to take a look at that.
So right now, the law says there's factors a judge should consider when deciding whether someone should receive bail, and these are bail eligible cases. By nature, they're already serious cases. Otherwise, they wouldn't be before a judge for bail. But our law also says that the judge has to consider the least restrictive means to ensure they come back to court. Do you see the inconsistency of what I just said? Consider all these factors, but you have to use the least restrictive means to get them back to - I just want to fix that. I just want to say that in these more serious offenses that are bail eligible in the first place and many crimes are not, let the judges have the discretion to weight past offenses, order protection violated, hate crimes, you know, gun involved. I mean, there's so many things you want a judge to think about instead of just saying, "Oh, are they likely to flee to another country or not?" You know, the flight of risk. You got to - we have to do that. So, to me it's common sense. I need all of you to help me let everybody know what's behind this. My values are strong, but also, I'm going to be protecting society at the same time. They're not inconsistent values, and that's what I believe in the State of New York.
We've also - I mentioned the State Police earlier - so I'm increasing their ability to go into communities. You know, the Mayor gives a call, "I need extra help, we're having a tough time, we have a spike here. Can you get out literally on the streets with us?" And I want to be able to offer that as well, so we're increasing almost $13 million to help that space as well.
So, when we talk about violent crime, I mentioned people sometimes have mental health challenges as well, the driver of some of our issues here, and homelessness. We have ignored the mental health crisis for far too long. Way too long. I'm here to declare that the era of ignoring people with mental health needs is over. It is over. People deserve a system that works. I'm going to fully fund a complete transformation of how we deal with these individuals and offer a continuum of care that actually works, $1 billion, $1 billion to transform our health care system. We need psychiatric beds available. We'll have funding for state beds and state facilities, but also, we increased the reimbursements for hospitals to have more hospital beds - the Medicaid reimbursements - so hospitals will open up more beds. A lot of them came offline as we needed more beds during COVID, but they're not back online, so I don't even have enough psychiatric beds with trained people to take care of individuals.
So, we also have to have meaningful wraparound services, and that's not just a slogan. This means when someone's had to be admitted because of a severe mental illness or an incident, before they leave, I want to know that someone is going to be monitoring their progress, making sure that they show up with the therapist, that they go into supportive housing, that they get what they need, instead of just letting them drop off the cliff again and cycle back into the system, whether it's homelessness or incarceration. That's what we have to do. Now, that is not an easy task, but you have to call it out, put the money behind it, and just get moving on it. That's what we're going to be doing here as well.
And lastly, I mentioned the pandemic a few times - a year ago, we probably wouldn't have been doing this in person very easily - but think about the kids. They didn't snap back to normal the day they could show back up at school and the pandemic was getting easier to manage. They're still suffering. Our kids are still suffering the effects of two solid years of either isolation or disruption, and teachers having to do the most extraordinary, extraordinary work trying to teach them remotely - they have their own kids they're trying to take care of at home and then back in the classroom. So many children who were not suffering effects before are now dealing with their own mental health challenges.
We give them a good education, but if we don't start thinking about them now and investing in them now, giving them preventative care now, having people embedded in our schools now to identify this, then we are setting these kids up for failure and a lifetime of needing help, so why don't we just be smart and help them while they're young. We can help bring them back from the edge and help save these kids' lives. Let's get that done as well. Let's invest in it.
So, we're continuing to invest in our schools. I will continue investing in our schools because we have no option. I have employers waiting to have highly educated young people. We're going to make those investments. We have the largest increase in school aid in the history of New York State. We also fully funded foundation aid, which was a subject of legal disputes for as long as we can remember, and that money was $2.7 billion, we're fully funding it for the first time this year.
What does that mean for here in Central New York? $1.7 billion in school aid for Central New York. That's an increase of almost $170 million, a 10 percent increase from last year to this year. And I know that that's an investment that is smart. It's what we have to be doing. And also, to make sure that our schools are providing the mental health and support system that our kids so desperately need.
So, we're going to continue focusing on that. I'm excited about that. I'm going to be visiting more schools and telling our teachers how much we support them, but we think about schools, we also have Native American schools in Onondaga, and they've been neglected for far too long. So, we're putting $11.2 million to help the Native American schools in Onondaga, renovation and maintenance.
Now, how about higher education? Now we're all of a sudden getting Onondaga Community College's attention. $36 million for Onondaga Community College. We're going to be helping with $15 million for the school of health expansion, increase our candidates to go into the jobs because we've lost a lot of individuals during the pandemic. We need more healthcare workers and elder caregiving roles. I appreciate that.
$5 million for the Micron collaboration classroom, supportive construction for 5,000 square feet for training students in semiconductor and microelectronics industries. I think that's a smart investment. Also, $3 million for a workforce career lab to open up a warehouse space to help with engineering and technical skills and workforce education. So, I think that's going to be well spent. Don't you? Okay. Alright.
Also, the fairgrounds need some work again. We are always investing, but we have to maintain this year, we have to maintain, and we have to invest. We're investing over $14 million for the fair about 14 percent of the buildings are over 100 years old in the State Fairgrounds and 26 percent are over 75. So, they've received minimal upgrades. We've had some nice flashy exhibits and everything, but all of a sudden, the infrastructure starts deteriorating, the building starts deteriorating. So, I'm proud to say that this is a rebuilding year to make sure that we don't neglect our responsibilities to keep investing in the fair. So, we're going to be making sure we do that.
Also, making sure that we have our Green Lake State Park, which I love. I think it's a gorgeous park. It's our most popular lake beach. And the money's going to go toward boardwalks and beach access there. Selkirk Shore, $7 million for new comfort stations. You never can have enough of those when you're a mom with little kids, and all sorts of improvements there as well. So, we are really excited. There's so much going on here.
We talk about achieving the New York Dream, the New York Dream. We got Syracuse, which is literally geographically the heart of New York. That is the heartbeat of our state. And what happens here can be an incubator for what we do elsewhere because we're the right size community, the right size region, to be able to make profound transformative changes that others can say. How do they do that? Let's do it in my community as well. That's what I want to stimulate here. That's why I believe in the leadership of this community, again, the business, the electeds, the academics. The community foundations and not-for-profits, the way you pull together, the way you put such a great spotlight on this area. Attracting a Micron, attracting other businesses. I want you to continue that, but I want you to know I will be at your side. I will be there to support you. I will help lift you up, so I'm very excited.
Thank you all for coming. Look forward to seeing you at many, many more events, as we unfold ribbon cuttings and groundbreakings. We're just getting started. Thank you, everyone. Thank you. Thank you.
And with that let me bring up our great Mayor, Ben Walsh, who has just been an extraordinary, extraordinary partner. I want to thank him for his efforts. You know, young family, he believes in this area and his family's steeped in public service, so I'm great to call him, not just our Mayor, but also my friend, Mayor Walsh.