As ever, the topics of service-consolidation and municipality-dissolution are on everyone's minds and lips, evidenced by the recent joint municipal meeting between Ellenville and Wawarsing. Should the village dissolve? How can they cut back on duplication of services? And, most importantly, how will the various communities in the Hudson Valley region grow?

During a time of financial downturn throughout the nation, the idea of economic growth and expansion seems not just unlikely, but impractical. Sure, more businesses and people with cash coming to our area would be great — there's no denying that. But can we really afford to throw more energy and money at our region's sagging fortunes, a long-time problem that we've had here for years, even before the rest of the country began to experience the same plight? Should we, perhaps, look at the future in a new way?

Recently, a story was posted on CNNMoney.com about the city of Youngstown, Ohio, where the problems of Ellenville and Wawarsing, and that of many Hudson Valley-area communities, are reflected and magnified; Youngstown was once a thriving industrial city, boasting 165,000 residents at its peak in the 1950s. However, once the factories started closing, laying workers off in droves, residents and businesses followed, leaving the area a ghost-town. Abandoned homes and buildings with boarded-up windows and overgrown hedges litter the landscape; the remaining residents have to drive out of town to buy clothes and necessities.

Sound familiar?

But instead of continuing to devote resources to expansion and growth efforts (once, according to Mayor Jay Williams, the manufacturing void was to be filled with, of all things, a blimp factory), the city's begun to go the other direction, embracing the idea of shrinkage, giving a whole new meaning to the term "consolidation."

The city "is bulldozing abandoned buildings, tearing up blighted streets and converting entire blocks into open green spaces," says the article. "City officials are also monitoring thinly-populated blocks. When only one or two occupied homes remain, the city offers incentives — up to $50,000 in grants — for those home owners to move, so that the entire area can be razed. The city will save by cutting back on services like garbage pick-ups and street lighting in deserted areas."

Now, certainly, Ellenville, Wawarsing, and the rest of the valley is still pretty far from needing to bulldoze their abandoned buildings…though, if pressed, many residents could probably name a building or two that simply doesn't help the area's image by collecting dust and mold. But by embracing the fact that the city has shrunk, new opportunities have opened up for Youngstown. A paradigm-shift has taken place, and other areas have taken notice; the article reports, "Already, delegations from smaller, post-industrial cities like Flint, Mich.; Wheeling, W.Va.; and Dayton, Ohio, have come to Youngstown to study the plan."

We hear we should embrace our strengths and our assets. But why can't small size be one of them? Just because manufacturing and industry worked here in the recent past doesn't mean that we should keep trying to recapture that past. Why not go back further? Why not embrace the area's agricultural history? And instead of trying to lure new residents and businesses, why not focus on the best ways to serve the folks already here?

Expansion and contraction are natural parts of the economic cycle — the ups and downs we've seen in the United States over the last century are proof enough of that. So why keep trying to fight nature? Let's take a page out of Youngstown's playbook and find a way to make our small size work for us, instead of against.

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