GENEVA \u2014 The Ontario County Industrial Development Agency could be providing administration for the Geneva IDA soon.<\/p>\n
The IDA, led by Ryan Davis \u2014 he also serves as the county\u2019s director of economic development \u2014 is proposing to provide administration for the Geneva IDA, work currently done by Acting City Manager Taylor Youngs.<\/p>\n
Davis said the proposal needs to go before the county IDA later this month. He said no cost has been determined and that he didn\u2019t believe the IDA had made a formal request for the county IDA to take over administrative duties.<\/p>\n
Mayor Jim Cecere, who briefly spoke on the proposal at City Council\u2019s Aug. 5 meeting, supports the city getting out of administering an agency not directly tied to city government.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have a resource constraint in the city as Acting City Manager Youngs, who currently serves as executive director of the IDA, has a full plate with her new role and simply cannot dedicate the proper amount of time for the IDA role,\u201d Cecere said. \u201cAlso, as acting city manager, her serving as the executive director may pose a conflict of interest.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cecere said he is \u201cglad the city IDA is reviewing this with the county. It\u2019s a prudent move to align with the county and their fully staffed economic development office. I have full confidence that both the city IDA and the county economic development office will generate terrific results for Geneva.\u201d<\/p>\n
Speaking at the Geneva IDA\u2019s meeting Aug. 7, board Chair Anne Nenneau said she\u2019s open to a change in how the agency is overseen.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think we\u2019ve got an opportunity to see how it works with the county,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Davis, who attended the IDA meeting, said he expected a period of 12-15 months to start out with under a proposed city-county arrangement. However, he said while county administration of the Geneva IDA could continue beyond that point, it would be premature to estimate if this would be a permanent framework.<\/p>\n
A deal could come before the start of the Geneva IDA\u2019s next fiscal year, which begins in September.<\/p>\n
Youngs admits there are issues with representing the city and the IDA.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s easier to have one hat on,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
This would not be the first time the IDA was administered by someone outside City Hall. MRB Group provided interim services following the departure of City Manager Sage Gerling in 2022.<\/p>\n
Nenneau also observed at the Geneva IDA meeting that the agency, which is tasked with economic development, appears to be at a crossroads, citing the costs of keeping the Geneva Enterprise Development Center running and what she viewed as a lack of community support for economic development projects.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe message has been pretty clear over the last couple of years: \u2018We don\u2019t want developers coming into town.\u2019 And that\u2019s unfortunate,\u201d she said. \u201cWe\u2019ve tried to fight it.\u201d<\/p>\n
She added that \u201cArticle 78s (court actions) are pretty easy\u201d to file and can stall or prevent projects \u201cthat are viable and helpful.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"GENEVA \u2014 The Ontario County Industrial Development Agency could be providing administration for the Geneva IDA soon. The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":115807,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[7],"tags":[56308,5872,39,65],"class_list":["post-115806","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-geneva","tag-development-economics","tag-economic-development","tag-economy","tag-geneva"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ch\/117099410431132267","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115806","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=115806"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115806\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/115807"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=115806"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=115806"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=115806"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}