Housing, transportation, economic development, infrastructure and the protection of the natural environment are the priorities identified by Warren County 2040, the new, county-wide comprehensive plan that was adopted by the Board of Supervisors on June 20.
“The plan will provide a critical roadmap, enabling us to navigate the county’s future with an aging population, workforce shortages and a moderate housing crisis,” said Board chair Kevin Geraghty. “Strategic planning is essential to ensure sustainable growth and economic resilience.”
“Having a comprehensive plan in place will provide the Planning Department with guidelines to make strategic, long-term decisions about the projects that are most likely to advance the county’s top priorities,” said County Planner Ethan Gaddy.
Sustainable school populations, affordable housing, recreational amenities, lively hamlets and robust employment opportunities, are “all connected,” said Norabelle Greenberger, a consultant retained by the Warren County Planning Department to assist with the development of the new comprehensive plan.
Warren County 2040 was supervised by an Advisory Group comprising county officials and county residents. After it was formed in August, 2023, the group met several times before a draft plan was completed.
A public workshop, to which every resident was invited and held January 22, 2024 at SUNY Adirondack in Queensbury, generated “really great feedback in every area of the plan,” said County Administrator John Taflan,
Those attending the meeting at SUNY Adirondack represented “a broad spectrum of the population – people of all ages, incomes, professions. We were very pleased by that,” said Taflan.
“It generated a very productive conversation about the opportunities that exist to build upon the county’s many assets,” said Norabelle Greenberger.
Among those opportunities: room for growth. “The demographic trends tell us that we can expect to see a continuing decline in population. We know that Warren County is aging much faster than many counties in the Adirondacks, in upstate New York, in rural America. And we know that the school-aged population is declining. But we can also see opportunities to capture some of the population growth now occurring in neighboring counties, most notably Saratoga County,” said Greenberger.
John Taflan, for one, sees the potential for Warren County to benefit from an expanding Tech Valley. “Glens Falls is on a great pathway forward and I’d like to see some form of businesses – perhaps in the tech arena – that would employ people on a regular basis come into the county. We have the capability to support it,” Taflan said.
Warren County has much to offer potential residents, said Greenberger. “The county can be a haven in an era of climate change,” said Greenberger. “But if it is to be that, we have to be thinking about the impacts of climate change on our infrastructure and proactively planning for a more resilient future.”
According to Greenberger, “More than 81% of those who have responded to a survey we released rank the quality of life in Warren County as good, and the definitive component of a quality of life is the natural environment.”
That environment includes opportunities for outdoor recreation, which will expand once recommendations of the county’s Outdoor Recreation Economy Plan are adopted, said Ethan Gaddy.
According to Gaddy, outdoor recreation is not just “a fun thing to do, but a source of economic activity, one that attracts and retains businesses.”
One of the county’s goals ought to be balancing environmental conservation with outdoor recreation, or “thoughtful tourism,” said Greenberger.
“Infrastructure, alternative broadband technologies, transportation, the natural environment and natural resources, are all pulled together in this comprehensive plan,” said Greenberger. “We’ve identified those priority recommendations that could be advanced by the county within the next couple of years, as well as the partners whose capacities can be leveraged and upon whose expertise we can build. We want to keep this conversation going.”
According to Ethan Gaddy, the cost of implementing the plan’s priorities were not included in the final draft because they cannot be estimated accurately four or five years in advance.
“This is a long-range policy document; its recommendations will be implemented as state and federal funds become available,” said Gaddy.
