By Brian Rubin As part of an ongoing effort to reduce spending, Mayor Jeff Kaplan and the village's trustees are looking to reduce the village's $5,000 fee for participating in Ulster County's Empire Zone, a program which provides tax benefits and credits to qualifying businesses within the zone's borders. While $5,000 is the minimum amount required for a municipality's participation, Mayor Kaplan said at a recent village board meeting that the fee seemed disproportionate to the benefits the program is currently providing the area.

There are seven sub-zones within the county that make up Ulster's Empire Zone, two of which are Ellenville and Wawarsing. One of Kaplan's reasons in asking for a rate reduction in the future centered around a familiar point of contention: both the town and the village each pay separate $5,000 participation fees, while any zones within Ellenville are also within Wawarsing's borders. Mayor Kaplan pointed out that Ellenville was the only village on the list of areas boasting sub-zones, which are Kingston, the towns of Ulster and Lloyd, and two zones in Saugerties.

"It's a lot easier to justify [the participation fees] in Kingston and Ulster, where your empire zones are generating significant assets for the community, than it is here where it's not, it's just potential," said Kaplan at the board meeting after a presentation by Steve Finkle, the city of Kingston's Economic Development Office Director, who came to the meeting as a representative of the Empire Zone program.

"We need the potential, but we have to get a little bit of a break from the Empire Zone that says, 'look, we're gonna be knocking on your door once you get those businesses in your zone to make up for when you weren't.' And I have no problem with that, but while we're waiting, it's really a hardship," said the mayor.

Finkle was sympathetic to Kaplan's concerns, and asked that the village still contribute the $5,000 it had already agreed to for this fiscal year, after which he would look into what could be done about reducing the rate. Finkle explained that the Empire Zone program itself is also suffering from the same economic crunch as the rest of the county.

"This is not a profit making venture, we're treading water, just like everybody else," he said. "What the lion's share of the funds go to is just to payroll to administer this program."

Currently, there are five businesses taking advantage of the Empire Zone program: Canal Street Cutlery, Ellenville Vending, J.M. Originals's Manufacturing division, Gillette Creamery, and Optimum Windows, the latter two having been "grandfathered in" to the program once the zone's borders changed a few years ago to encompass a specific area of the village, what's currently known as the "industrial district." There are two operating businesses utilizing Wawarsing's zone, Creative Stages Day Care and Freskeeto Frozen Foods, while former participant Hydro Aluminum left the area for greener pastures last year.

Village manager Elliott Auerbach says that Ellenville could get more use out of its participation if there were a more active hunt for businesses to move to the zone, a hunt which would be made easier by the oft-proposed economic development officer, a subject that was discussed at this week's joint meeting between the town and village.

"We need a person or persons who are going to go out on behalf of the village of Ellenville and the town of Wawarsing and be the conduit to attract businesses to the community," says Auerbach.

"It reminds me of the story about the guy who stands next to the empty fireplace, and says, 'I'm not getting any heat out of this,' and yet he refuses to throw any wood in," says the village manager in reference to Ellenville's sub-zone. "We need to start throwing some wood into the zone."

One of the companies not currently participating in the program, but which resides within the current sub-zone's borders, is Top Shelf Jewelry. When asked why her company was not enrolled, owner Barbara Hoff's answer was simple: she didn't know enough about the program. After calling Finkle's office in response to the Journal's inquiry, Hoff has reported that Finkle will be making a trip to Ellenville later this month to see whether or not her business qualifies for the program's tax benefits.

An informational packet Finkle handed out at the meeting describes some of the benefits the program offers: eligible businesses can earn a "Wage Tax Credit," which, for up to five consecutive years, refunds $3,000 of a business's tax expenses for "hiring full-time employees in newly-created jobs…with a credit of $1,500 per year for all other new hires." Businesses creating new jobs and making new production investments can also receive "Investment Tax Credit and Employment Incentive Credit," a 19% credit of the company's investment.

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