It’s time to stop the chicken-and-egg game between Mohawk Valley EDGE and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers regarding development of the nanotechnology site in Marcy. And it’s up to our elected leaders to get that job done.Agreed . . . But it's not going to happen.
Simply put, there is a matter of federal vs state jurisdiction involved and our elected leaders are not up to tackling that issue. The once Empire State is now a welfare queen, economically dependent upon the handouts of the federal government. Our leaders do not dare to bite the hand that feeds them.
Marcy Nano is not going to happen either.
Federal wetland permit not withstanding, unless the State is ready to throw a $Billion or more into the local project like it did in Malta, it's not going anywhere. Our window of opportunity shut in 2006 when Malta was chosen by Advanced Micro Devices for its chip fab. We (supposedly) had the advantage of a shovel ready site because Malta had water supply and public relations problems back then. But Malta was chosen in spite of those issues. Anyway, that is the past.
Now that other areas with greater educational resources have sites of their own, including Malta which was designed to accommodate 4 plants, what do we have to offer chip fabrication and distribution that cannot be found elsewhere .... and probably at a lower cost?
Even the Malta "success" must be recognized for what it is: concentrated taxpayer spending on a particular business. What happens when that business runs into trouble? Are we going to give them a bailout, too? Will the force of government be used to crush the competition? Developing the infrastructure and raising capital for particular businesses is the responsibility of the businesses, not the government and not the taxpayer.
It's time to move on . . .
We have wasted time trying to bribe, cajole, and trick businesses into coming here at taxpayer expense while failing to address the reasons why businesses already here continue to leave, i.e., We are too expensive and too complicated compared to other places. The extra costs for taxes, tolls, fees, utilities, and regulatory compliance cut into potential profits and produce nothing of value for either the producers or the consumers. If we really want jobs, we have to identify what the costs are and bring them into line with our competition. We may find that, to paraphrase Mies van der Rohe . . .
Less [government] is more [jobs].
5 comments:
My dear Utica friends, we have been taken out to the woodshed.
Take a drive thru Utica. If you owned a business would you move here? Our infrastructure is shot, half the City is a crime scene with drive- by shootings almost daily, high taxes, high utiity costs such as water with rate hikes annually & what we have left is a Utica which makes Newark N.J. look like paradise. And to top it off we have a bunch of politicians running the show who are either inept or worse. Utica is sinking fast & nobody has any idea what to do about it.
Dear other anonymous commenter, do you actually live in Utica? ...or do you just speak the skewed perspective of someone who once lived here but is now commenting from some cozy condo in Florida or something? Get real. Also, there are no daily drive-by shootings. Utica has a crime like any other city, it's highly concentrated and certainly doesn not spread across half of this place.
Can we just lose the retread elected clowns and all of their corrupt cronies??!! That is step one. If you are involved in this fiasco then you need to go because it's well past time for some major house cleaning
No, I don't live in Florida. Your statement that crime in Utica is highly concentrated is laughable. For one thing, even if it were true, which it's not is that ok because it's not in your neighborhhood? In any case it appears that the chip plant idea will go nowhere as the Army Corp has again denied the permits. Strike is correct. Time to move on to the next newfangled scheme to revive O.C.
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