June 16, 2020

Saraid Gonzalez:
Good morning I’m Saraid Gonzalez, and welcome to “Sullivan 180 Presents… Take Five!”. Our guest today is Freda Eisenberg from Sullivan County Planning and Community Development. Hi, Freda. Welcome. And thank you for being here today.

Freda Eisenberg:
Thanks Saraid! It’s great to be here with you.

Saraid Gonzalez:
Can you take a few minutes and just introduce yourself and give us a brief introduction about your organization?

Freda Eisenberg:
Sure. I am a planning commissioner for Sullivan County and , as you mentioned, the Division of Planning and Community Development. We work with municipalities and other partners throughout the County on a range of issues related to planning, development, the built environment, environmental protection, community design, all of that. And you know, we provide technical assistance. We review regionally significant development proposals, and we go after a lot of grants to try and get stuff done.

Saraid Gonzalez:
What are some of the new initiatives your organization is working on in response to COVID-19?

Freda Eisenberg:
Well, our Deputy County Manager, John Liddel has convened what we’d be calling a ‘recovery working group’, and that’s bringing all of the entities that are involved in economic development in the county together to talk regularly about the pandemic and our response. That includes, not only county agencies: planning, workforce development…but also the Partnership for Economic Development, the Southern County Visitors Association, the Chamber of Commerce, the IDA. All of us get in and coordinate a response. We have a revolving loan fund program that we set aside some funds for small business loans, and those loans are being administered through the Partnership for Economic Development, because they put money into a fund too, and rather than confusing people and having, “Oh, where do I go?”. Just go to the Partnership. We’ve also been working very closely with the county’s communications director on putting out information and messaging throughout the past couple of months. We’ve been inundated with information about the payroll protection program, the other SBA loans for small businesses, the regulations from the state about what can be open, what can’t be open. We try to disperse that information. Initially, we’ve been doing it as we’ve gotten it. And it’s been a little overwhelming, frankly. Recently, we’ve worked on cutting it down to just the essentials and making a webpage on the County site. That’s a little easier to navigate. We’ve assembled both public and private resources for businesses not only funding, but also on managing employees, safe conduct…pretty much the whole gamut and we want to be a resource for businesses. And then finally, we’re also looking into bulk purchasing of PPE and cleaning supplies to lower those costs for businesses as they reopened.

Saraid Gonzalez:
Can you talk a little bit about your efforts with the Census Complete Count Committee?

Freda Eisenberg:
Sure. As planners, we deal with census information all the time. Demographics, planners are geeks and we deal with numbers. We put out reports. When we go after grants, they are always asking for data, which we rely on this census to provide. So, it’s a very, very important tool for us. It’s also important as ‘market studies’ rely on census data. We sort of put our best foot forward and have as large a count as possible to demonstrate that we’re worthy of investment and also to generate the federal funding that is tied to census statistics. So, about a year ago,we worked with the County Legislature, and they formed a Complete Count Committee, which, you, Saraid, are an instrumental person in that effort. It has been a bit of a challenge because, you can appreciate many organizations in Sullivan County are strapped for capacity and strapped for resources and taking on yet another campaign, another initiative…it’s the last thing we need! But it is very, very important. We have a lot of people around the table with the libraries and schools, BOCES, Sullivan Renaissance, Sullivan 180. I’m not going to name everybody, because I know I’m gonna miss people who are at the table, and we need more involvement. We need the religious community, more outreach to the minority community…really all sorts of entities to get the word out about how important it is to respond to this census because it’s a ‘one in 10 year opportunity’ and we get our numbers wrong. Now, if we get an ‘under count’, those impacts last for 10 years.