Governor Hochul: “So, I'm excited about, as I mentioned, two of my favorite programs are the DRI and the New York Forward, and so I'm really proud to announce here today our winners. While we're here and today we're proud to announce that one of our first pro-housing communities is also the $10 million winner, and that is the great City of White Plains.”
Hochul: “Everybody has a story to tell and a story worth telling to others… So, we make these investments, the people of those communities start walking around with a little more lift in their feet, a smile on their face. I've seen it. And when we make these announcements, the cheering that goes on here, the excitement – it is powerful. So, I thank the people of this community and looking at their downtown and bringing housing as part of the project.”
Earlier today, Governor Kathy Hochul announced that White Plains will receive $10 million in funding as the Mid-Hudson Region winner of the seventh round of the Downtown Revitalization Initiative, as well as Highland Falls and Montgomery as this year’s Mid-Hudson Region NY Forward winners, receiving $4.5 million each. For Round 7 of the Downtown Revitalization Initiative, each of the State's 10 economic development regions are being awarded $10 million, to make for a total state commitment of $100 million in funding and investments to help communities boost their economies by transforming downtowns into vibrant neighborhoods.
VIDEO of the event is available on YouTube and in TV quality (h.264, mp4) format.
AUDIO of the Governor's remarks 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. Good morning. Oh, it is great to be back in the Hudson Valley, one most beautiful parts of our State. This region has it all from sprawling suburbs to escape the hustle and bustle of New York City to the most charming downtowns and hamlets along the Hudson River, which is so extraordinary, and I just cannot gush enough about this area. And I know you know it because you're here, because you love it as well. And it's also so fascinatingly an incredible hub of innovation and that has attracted some of the smartest people and we have some of the greatest institutions anywhere and look no further than White Plains where we are today.
I know our Mayor, Tom Roach, who was always my Ambassador to this community for nine years as Lieutenant Governor, could not be here with us today, but we look forward to catching up with it again soon. But I came out here because he invited me to see really the beginning of the clean energy revolution that he was undertaking here with his council and the fleet of electric cars and the charging stations. He walked through parking ramps, and he showed me the charging stations and this area was designated as one of the first clean energy communities and one of our— we talked about clean energy and smart energies, affordable housing buildings at Brookfield Commons, and so many other great things he did at – zero emissions vehicles – we announced that here. So, we've been talking about this for a long time, and I just want to say that this, this is a community that really punches above its weight in terms of leading in these innovations and creating models for other parts of our State. And so, it's always great to be back here and I do want to recognize, and you heard their names, but you really have an incredible delegation here as well. So, to all my partners in government, our, our State Assemblymembers, our Senator, let's give them another round of applause for what they did.
And the Mayors who are present, you know, I come out of local government, so I have a special bias toward Mayors I'll be introducing some in a couple minutes by— Mayor Spano is here as well, and I want to thank him for always making you feel so welcome in neighboring Yonkers, our Secretary of State, Robert Rodriguez, who is— going to hear from him in a couple minutes about an incredible program that I love and turned near and dear to my heart is the DRI Program Downtown Revitalization Initiative, the New York Ford Program, and he's just as passionate about these programs, so let's give him a round of applause as well. Maria Imperial, the Commissioner of the Division of Human Rights has joined us and of course you'll be hearing from our County Executive George Latimer. I want to thank you for always, always rolling out the welcome mat when I come to Westchester. So, thank you for that. And we've done so much together, and you've been extraordinary leaders through some really challenging times – we work closely during the pandemic to just give some relief and support to the people of your County. You were right there on the front lines. I want to thank you for that, but also all the great projects that you've innovated and initiated. And so, what an amazing partner.
Our County Executive, George Latimer. We also have our Co-Chairs of the Regional Economic Development Council, Marsha Gordon, one of my dear friends. Thank you. And Dr. Kristine Young has joined us, so thank you. Thank you. So last month I presented a $233 billion spending plan for fiscal year 2025. And it supports people all across the State, all across the Mid-Hudson region from White Plains to Woodstock. And what was important to me was that we find the right balance between fiscal responsibility as we're all required to do even in our own homes, but also great ambition.
And I believe we struck that balance. And what we're doing is increasing support for the people of the State of New York by $6 billion without raising taxes. And that is so important to me in this State, knowing that people have left because they've said our taxes are too high. And so, we have to manage this and bring this under control, but also deliver first-rate services so we can fight the right fights and deliver common-sense solutions – and that's what this does.
And it also makes sure that we do one thing, which is our number one responsibility. Keeping new Yorkers safe fighting crime. And since I took office two and a half years ago, I watched the numbers like a hawk. You know, where are we trending? Are we going up? And we were going up for a long time, in violent crimes and property crimes and in areas where just people were feeling this great sense of insecurity as they walked their streets, but now we've driven down gun violence down by a third, and that doesn't happen because you wanted to. Ithappens because you put the resources and the man and woman power behind it. So, we're off to a good start this year. We're down– shootings are down another 25 percent since January 1st. And so great, great progress – but we never wanted to spike the football and say, we're done here. Right? Football, we don't really want to talk about football. I wish I hadn't said that. I'm rooting for nobody this weekend. I just want to put that— next year.
So, we're maintaining our funding levels 347 million dollars, which is quite extraordinary when you think about all that is to keep New Yorkers safe and our gun violence prevention programs. But we also have some other persistent areas of crime that we cannot ignore. Hate crimes are up. Domestic violence is up, retail theft is up – hurting our small business owners. And this is personal to me – I worked really hard when I was younger to help my mother start a little retail shop in a village, not unlike the villages here in Hudson Valley. And, you know, it's hard. You put your whole life in all your dreams in a little business, was a little retail shop, sold flowers, sold gifts and crime was not what it is today. She did not have to worry about people coming in and sweeping the shelves and walking out and selling it on eBay as part of an organized crime ring. So, a lot of things have changed, and we have to make sure we're protecting those who are really giving our communities their character, their charm, our downtown businesses.
So, we're focusing on that. And I want to say back to hate crime. I've had done a lot of events with your District Attorney here, Mimi Rocah, and she's Mimi Rocah. She's– I just had her in New York City talk about what she's doing to fight hate crimes here in Westchester and just a few weeks ago we talked about this – vile images and hateful speech scrawled across storefronts in Scarsdale and New Rochelle right here in this day and age. And these are stories that were frequented by members of the Jewish community to make sure that they saw it and I want to be really crystal clear. We will not tolerate any form of hate in our State, and we're going to lay down the marker every single day if we have to and find the perpetrators to make sure that there are consequences and as we changed the bail laws last year, that hate crimes are bail eligible.
This year, I'm also trying to expand the categories of crimes that are hate crimes. We have some inconsistencies in our law. For example, if one person assaults an individual in an act of hate, and that's obviously apparent, but one person does it, it's a hate crime. But if a gang of people, do it, it's not a hate crime. So, I want togive work with our Legislature to fix some of these areas where we can really tighten up and send a strong message of our priorities as a people that this will not be tolerated. So, we also have to protect the institutions, the synagogues, the shivas, the mosque, the schools, anywhere where people are feeling this sense of vulnerability. And we invested $25 million to secure locations – give them the grants they need for cameras or whatever else they need. It was 25 last year, we are bumping it up another $10 million to $35 million this year because no one should live in fear.
I would tell you – I had an incredible experience. I see our friend Paul Adler is here. Paul and I went over to the Holocaust Museum over at the Community College in Rockland. It was extraordinary. The images there and just the presentation and knowing that 40,000 students come through there and they're forever changed after they see what happened during that time that so many people would pretend doesn't exist.
But also, what was fascinating was the Haverstraw, the African Heritage Museum. Did I get that right? What a great place that was. The two – the synergy between these two organizations and sharing the knowledge with people to really try to eradicate the hate in their heart that they're not born with, but somehow they're taught somehow, either it's in their families or their schools or online, wherever it's coming from we as a society have to make sure that it does not take hold of us, that we stand up and fight back. And I saw that on display in such a beautiful way just across the river in Rockland. So, let's continue supporting those organizations all the time.
So, I want to make sure that we're dealing with every facet of crime, and we know that mental health has also been a driver of some crimes and people need help. Some people are intentional in their actions – others are dealing with a crisis themselves. So we also have to focus on not just the various crimes, our homelessness problem, getting people on the streets the service they need, but when you think about mental health as a mom, as a fairly new grandma – I never thought I'd be having to talk about another crisis in our State, and that is the crisis of mental health with our kids – our children. And sociologists can figure out where it all came from, but I do believe that there's two factors. One was the pandemic – that isolated our kids, especially those that were at a formative time, our middle school kids, our high school kids they were sort of afloat without a life raft. They didn't have any connection to people who cared about them and or the mental health services they might have been receiving, but also social media, the combination of the two where kids go into this dark, dark place and the negative images that are bombarded against them through algorithms that are intended to capture your child's attention and to really poison their minds.
These are factors that none of us adults ever had to deal with. So, we have tostand up and recognize it and talk about it and make sure that our kids are getting help as well.
Last year, last November, we announced mental health satellite clinics at 28 Hudson Valley schools. I say, let's build on that momentum. I believe that every single school, every single school should have mental health services for our kids, so we can catch the problems early. So, they're not relegated to a lifetime of needing our help later on. And that's a commitment that I'm making to the people this State.
And it's happening right here in the Hudson Valley. So, we're directing $45 million to youth mental health services, peer programs, wraparound services, any way we can tackle this problem. And again, it's part of a larger re-imagining of our mental health services. And I want to, again, thank the legislators for standing with us last year when we made a billion-dollar commitment to mental health and people were just stunned at the scale of that and we said, “No, we're making up for lost time because nobody else talked about this before.”
Our state investment in mental health is up 45 percent overall, $4.8 billion up from $3.3, so we really increased the amount of commitment to this. And we also have to recognize that there are individuals in our society that you don't think of when you're thinking about mental health challenges. And I'm talking about law enforcement, and I think it's high time we recognize that those who put on a uniform, our police officers or even our firefighters, first responders, they see humanity at its worst. They have experiences that none of us ever have to endure, and it has an effect on them because they're human beings. But there has always been a stigma that you cannot talk about, you cannot seek help, you cannot tell your supervisor you need this or a little time off to take care of some mental health challenges because you may not have a job when you come back. And that's what we're fighting against now. Try to give people help they need.
So, it's stunning to me to know that suicide rates among law enforcement is 60 percent higher than the average rest of the population. And we just lost another individual on Long Island this past week.
I'm proposing additional money, $13 million statewide but $1.3 million for this region to help connect our veterans and those in law enforcement with peer-to-peer services that'll help them get through this. The other challenge that we faced really hard here in this area is the scourge of opioid deaths and overdoses, and we’re just not getting this solved. We are just not; we're not making the progress. We'll keep investing money and finding services and supporting the providers. I've been doing this for the last decade as having lost a family member to this – but there's still too many families that came afterward that when we say no more, we need to do even more.
And even Sullivan County, beautiful little place, great county, their overdose rate is one of the highest in the State. It's 108 percent higher than average. What's happening in our communities? Yeah, I'm not talking about just in city streets. I'm talking about in rural areas where people have given up hope and we have to give them support again
So, we're allocating $66 million for addiction treatment, recovery prevention, harm reduction programs right here in this region – $66 million dollars, and I want every dime of that spent. I want to make sure we're doing everything we can in our power to help save the lives of our citizens here, whether they're teenagers or adults or struggling veterans. They all need us.
It's also just making investments in our healthcare system overall; this is so critical. We are deploying $82 million in transformative projects, capital projects, and healthcare facilities right here. And it's important that we help our safety net hospitals who were beaten down so much during the pandemic, $550 million to support them right here in the Hudson Valley, including $62 million right here for three hospitals in this region – St. John's Riverside, St. Joseph's and Montefiore. We're going to give them the money they need because they provide critical services to our people, and they must make sure that they're healthy and strong.
Let's talk about schools. I love schools. I love teachers. I love students. I also love our taxpayers. Okay, so they're not inconsistent. And in partnership with the legislature, we've increased school aid by the largest amounts ever in history, everimaginable, $5 billion, not total, but increased over the last five years in fully funding foundation aid for the first time in history, and I'm proud of that.
If you look at this chart to show the increased in education funding, and with this year, since I've been Governor, we'll have increased foundation aid by 33 percent since 2021. That is progress. That is making up for all that lost time. Now, no one said we can keep that rate going forever, right? That's not reasonable.
Let's look at how high that number is. Proud of it, but it cannot be sustained year after year after year. We have to manage within our means. So, what we're talking about for the Mid-Hudson area is $120 million in additional school aid this year, $120 million for a total of $3.8 billion, including a $52 million increase in foundation aid.
So, we're bringing the money to our communities and adapting, making adjustments where classes are not what they used to be. They're not. We’re funding empty seats these days when you base it on a formula that goes back to 2008. So, I want to have the conversations with the legislature, how we make the right adjustments, how we do what's right, certainly for our students, certainly for our teachers, but also for the taxpayers who are saying, “Why are the school system sitting on enormous reserves?” Let's talk about that as well. Let's talk about that. I'm willing to have that conversation.
But it's not just how we fund our kids; it's how we teach them. And I want to just get back to basics when it comes to reading. We deviated for the last 20 years with some other theory of teaching our kids and it has not worked. The numbers show that our kids are not thriving, and I need to boost up our numbers in student performance and reading and math. And we have this challenge before us. We have been funding programs. We have the resources, we have the best teachers in the nation. I know we do, but something is not clicking.
And when I asked started asking questions, I realized that other places – they're starting to move away from what had been the newfangled fancy way of teaching. So, getting back to basics or getting back to phonics – and I'll tell you when I talk about this, I get more hugs from teachers than anything I've ever done. They say, “Why did we ever leave it?”
So, we have to get rid of the debunked theories, get back to the try and true methods. And I know that the teachers were all trained a certain way, especially our younger ones. So, I'm putting $10 million to help 20,000 educators get retrained statewide and make sure they're ready for this shift.
So, let's just get that done. It's high time. We say, “This is what our children need.” But when our kids are down getting their great education K through 12, let's make sure that they stay in our State and go to our great institutions. We have great private institutions and I'm very committed to making SUNY shine and become the beacon of excellence that it always should have been and will be once again.
We're investing $207 million for CUNY and SUNY, $1.2 billion in capital projects. We have to do this. These institutions are getting older. They're getting run down, and when you're in competition for a limited number of students, you think about this – there aren't many 18-year-olds anymore. That's a challenge that our schools are facing. We knew it was coming. I knew I came from a family of six kids, and I only had two, and I only have one grandkid, just hinting. So, let's increase the population. Okay? Come on, do your jobs, everybody.
But think about it. So, we knew that we have these classrooms, whether it's K through 12, our high schools, our colleges are getting hit and we just don't have the numbers we used to have. And so, we have to make them attractive. We have to have curriculum that's relevant. We have to train students for the next generation of jobs that keep coming and coming to our State, which is a great story. So, we have to rethink education and be adaptable and make sure that our infrastructure is being spent in all these great institutions here, you can see them on the screen.
But infrastructure also means roads and transportation. We're investing $98 million in the Westchester County Transit system. That's a five and a half percent increase from last year. There you go. Also committing $108 million for roads, potholes. I hate potholes. I travel more than anybody, when I was Lieutenant Governor, I hit every pothole in the State. I know them personally. And so, no more. This is the great State of New York. Our road should be perfect and we're going to keep making those investments and the roads and highways and bridges should be extraordinary.
We're going to resurface and expand sidewalks on Fair Street and John Simpson Road in one of our communities. And fix Route 17-Exit 122 in Wallkill and alsoraise the elevation of the Annsville traffic circle in Peekskill. So, there you go, raising that – raising the bar.
And we're also going to make sure we're working on all our other projects as well. So, I'm excited about that. Actually. I do get excited about infrastructure projects. I come out of local government, fixing roads and sewers and bridges, actually, youfeel like you're doing something that matters. It's tangible, it's visible, and it's important for public safety, but also something we're dealing with that we don't have a lot of control over. And that is the dramatic effects of climate change on this region in particular. The amount of water that has come out of the heavens since I've been Governor is amazing. The flooding for weeks and weeks and weeks on end, it just unrelenting what we're dealing with. And everyone talks about these 100-year events. Why am I getting them every two years? I mean, someone owes me ninety-eight years of not asking FEMA for money for flooded areas, but we did just get approval for FEMA flooding this week, approval to get reimbursements, which is important.
But I saw it firsthand in Highland Falls. Anybody here from Highland Falls? Oh yeah. Oh yeah. That was tough. I was right out there and walking with the boots through flooded streets and the downtown shut down a loss of a life of a young woman. How tragic was that? What was the of the little diner downtown I went to? They still there? Are they doing okay? Yeah, they're the only one feeding breakfast. I thought it was great. Tell I'm coming back. But not for a flood. I'm not coming back for floods. We're done with the floods. You had a 1,000-year event. Has anybody figured out how they know it's a 1,000-year event? We're saying it and it's sticking, but 1,000-year event, I'm not sure it was keeping track back then, but somebody must have been. But it was bad. Let me just say it was really bad.
And so, in other pockets of origin, Rockland County, just last summer in last fall, historic amounts of rain and we had to send $3 million of emergency dollars to help the homeowners. And we now need to help these communities get ready for this new normal. It's not a good new normal, but it is the new normal. So, we're setting aside $435 million for critical climate and flood resiliency programs. We have to get ahead of this as best we can to defend our communities, and I want to make sure that they have the services they need.
Also giving local Hudson Valley governments $159 million to deliver services of AIM money. And one thing we do have around here, and they do get flooded themselves, but our extraordinary state parks. They're just so beautiful and we're allocating $200 million for some of our flagship locations. $39 million for Bear Mountain State Park, $25 million for John Jay Historic Site, but that's not all, that's just from our Budget. We have Bond Act money that we're also investing in two other state parks here – $78 million for Lake Sebago at the Harriman State Park, and $70 million for the Sojourner Truth Park in Kingston. Great, great assets, make sure you visit them.
But also, it's wintertime. Haven't seen a lot of snow, but Belleayre – how beautiful is that? $37 million to keep maintaining the upgrades there, because if you don't make the investments now, you're going to pay a lot more later.
And let's talk about one more key issue that a lot of people told me not to talk about, but I won't stop talking about it because no one talked about it for decades. And in the meantime, we fell behind. We fell behind other states that we're building even our neighbors Connecticut, New Jersey. So, when you talk about the out-migration of New Yorkers, the top five places people are going to – California. I'm sorry, not California. They're having a little problem these days too. Texas and Florida. Okay. There you go. Texas and Florida. The other ones are all neighbors. It's Connecticut, New Jersey are two of them – Pennsylvania. So, New Yorkers aren't fleeing for better weather or lower taxes because they're all comparable. They're leaving because we're not building enough housing for them to live in.
So, I have employers, we had a great roundtable here, we had a great event, and I was so proud of all the businesses who stood up – many of you are in this room – who stood up last year during the epic battles over whether or not we were going to build more housing or not. And we had a plan, brought it to the table, said let's build more. We have to because otherwise, there's no homes for our kids when they graduate from these great colleges. They're going to leave the area or stay in your basement, which, how's that for an option? Seniors who want to downsize don't have a nice multifamily place to go where they can be with other people and have a human connection. They stay isolated in their homes. Our firefighters and teachers and police officers can't live in the communities they serve. Great companies like IBM with $20 billion of expansion, Regeneron, all the expansion they're doing, they're attracting people, but people have to have a place to live.
And we've not been open for people. And I need to get that changed. And I'm really proud that we've stayed with this because there's more jobs coming. As I mentioned, IBM, Lionsgate – people want to work there, but they're not going to have a place to live. So, I'm doing everything I can in my power to reverse that trend.
And first of all, we announced this already, our five-year, $25 billion plan to build 100,000 units. Again, thanks to our friends in the legislature for supporting that, but think about what I just said. $25 billion gets you 100,000 affordable housing units. I need 800,000 units to start. So, we need communities to step up. We need developers to get to know that there is a path for them to build. And I'll do what I can with state-owned sites. I've put a half a billion dollars on the table to develop abandoned sites or underused state sites, trying to be real creative here, trying to control what I can here.
And there's some good options, but that only gets me 15,000 units. So, they're important, but we have to go big. My favorite saying is, go big or go home and I'm not going home. So, I know many of you are rising to that challenge right here in the Hudson Valley. You are charting a new sustainable path forward where you're inviting people in and you're giving the residents, kids who grew up there, who want to have their kids grow up near Grandpa, you’re giving them a chance to stay. And that's everything.
And just yesterday, I welcomed members of this region to an event we did at the Capitol. We announced the first 20 pro-housing communities because I was told last year, we will do whatever you want, you just have to give us carrots. So, I brought carrots to the meeting. I literally had a bunch of carrots in my hand. I should have brought some today. I said, get those really nice big ones, not the little, tiny ones you get in the plastic bag. I said, I want the nice big carrots to show I'm serious about this. And I literally put – I said, I've got carrots on the table. $650 million of carrots for you. So, they stepped up.
And six as mentioned are here we have Poughkeepsie, Croton-on-Hudson, Newburgh, the Village of Red Hook, New Rochelle, and last but not least, White Plains. So, thank all of you. I want to applaud you for disregarding the naysayers and having the political will to just say, we're going to build more housing in all these communities. I'm sure they don't want anybody else to apply because at $650 million they got their eyes on, but it is expanding exponentially. Literally, we had 20 more requests just the night before. So, we now have over 80 communities throughout the State and it's just getting started.
And this'll free up the money for the DRI, New York Forward, the Main Street programs, the Mid-Hudson Transformation Fund that we put together last year. All those communities to agree that we're going to pass a resolution, make the commitment, we're going to break down barriers we're going to build, and the percentage that we're tracking is very modest. You can do, actually do a lot better, but we have modest goals because we have to start getting moving here. So, I'm excited about, as I mentioned, two of my favorite programs are the DRI and the New York Forward, and so I'm really proud to announce here today our winners.
While we're here and today we're proud to announce that one of our first pro-housing communities is also the $10 million winner, and that is the great City of White Plains. And I keep mentioning my background is a local official, and you're going to hear it over and over because once you're a local official, you never stop being a local official. It's embedded in your DNA. You always think about it from that perspective. And I know when I was a on town board and we had two villages that if someone had said we had $10 million all at once to realize our vision that we worked on as a community with businesses and electives, pull together a plan that in one shot, one infusion of money, you can work on so many projects. Connections to Waterfronts, fix the streetscapes, build housing downtown, change your zoning, do streetscaping. I would've died and went to Heaven because that never happened. I worked so hard, like, “Oh, you got a Department of State grant for $50,000 this year, come back in five—”
Like it took – no offense to their Secretary of State. You would not have done that to me, but it is that one time infusion of mind that changes not just the landscape of a community and the identity of it, it changed the psychology of a community. I've seen it all over the State where people felt that they were, you know, no one cared about them, especially our smaller communities. They feel like they're overlooked. And this says, you matter to us, you matter to this Governor because I've been there, I've represented the most rural parts of our state, the small communities, and I represent the cities. And everybody has a story to tell and a story worth telling to others.
So, we make these investments, the people of those communities start walking around with a little more lift in their feet, a smile on their face. I've seen it. And when we make these announcements, the cheering that goes on here, the excitement – it is powerful. So, I thank the people of this community and looking at their downtown and bringing housing as part of the project. And so, housing is part of your project and I'm really excited. You're going to expand more green space, just really had enhanced the community spaces, so congratulations.
And I have two more awards because I was also told, because I do listen to our elected officials, that $10 million is great, but some communities are a little smaller and it's hard to even figure out how you would spend $10 million. So, we're left over here, and I said, “No, we're not leaving anybody out.” So, we came up with the New York Forward plan, which allows our smaller communities to be able to put forth a plan to win $4.5 million – a smaller grant. And the first one I'm here to announce goes to the Village of Highland Falls, which I mentioned earlier. You've been through a lot. You've been through a lot, and so I hope this gives you a little bit of lift, and energy back. And it'll help the traffic flow on the main street and draw more people to the waterfront. Communities that have waterfronts– for so long, people just ignored what an amazing asset that is. I mean, they put it. I mean, I grew up in Buffalo. We had a steel plant spewing out pollution all along one of the Great Lakes with the greatest freshwater bodies and water on this planet and you could not even see it because of all this gasping steel structures polluting everything in sight. That's where my dad and grandpa worked, and my uncles.
So, we have not treated our waterfronts well. Now we are, we're recognizing their value in some communities long overdue. So, let's make those connections. So, Mayor, I want to thank you. Stand up, Mayor Joseph D'Onofrio. I want to thank him for what you did. Thank you for being, you know, bringing back hope to your community after what it went through last year, and to your entire team for making this happen.
Our other winner is— for the New York Forward is the Village of Montgomery. You know, talk about hidden gems on the Wallkill River and filled with beautiful architecture and it's one of the loveliest little villages in all of New York and it's just oozes charm but we have to make sure that we also keep some luster. Make sure that we don't get run down at all. And so that's what we do. We give you the $4.5 million, you can spruce it up and make it more accessible to pedestrians and tourists without compromising that attraction that the locals all love so much. So, I want to— The Deputy Mayor's here. Darlene is here. Deputy Mayor? No. Okay. Congratulations anyhow, to Roger Montgomery.
So, we'll come back. We'll come back and see your progress. And I know I'm going to see more smiles. I'm going to feel that sense of energy and optimism that so many of these winners have, but I do feel that about our entire State. I want to leave you with that thought. This is the most fascinating place in the entire Country. We have everything. We have incredible natural resources, and assets and beauty that is beyond belief. We have people that are so hardworking, they never gave up on the State, even through some of the tough times and I grew up at a time when our greatest export was our kids, but now our kids want to stay here. And we owe it to them to give them the best quality of life, the best education, the best colleges, the best healthcare, the best mental health services, childcare for when their parents— and above all, they need to have a home. So, join with me as we move forward, and I'm saying we can take on these issues.
We have the capacity. We have met every single challenge in the State of New York and always came out ahead of things, and that's who we are. And so, I want to make sure that we're going to keep these investments going and keep the quality of life high – and tell everybody that they have a Governor who believes in this area. And I want to introduce at this point, one of our great partners in government and have him say a few words about what we're doing here today. And that is our County Executive George Latimer.