ELLENVILLE – After only one year on the job, the village's economic development officer, Dan Hauspurg, is moving onto other things.

"I was contracted for a year, and I did what I could through the end of June, and the end of June signaled the end of the year period, and that was that," said Hauspurg about the end of his work in Ellenville.

"We had asked him to stay on for the end of the summer, to wrap up some grants he was working on, and he decided that he wanted to leave at the end of June," said Ellenville Mayor Jeff Kaplan, also a member of the village's Local Development Corporation (LDC), which created and administered his position.

"It was very interesting working in the capacity [of economic development officer]," said Hauspurg, "and challenging dealing with the bureaucracy of the state. I see a huge amount of opportunity within Ellenville, but pursuing that opportunity is very, very difficult."

Hauspurg said that his experience of working in Ellenville was "absolutely positive, with some significant disappointments that were not rooted in any one direction, but with just the general difficulty in moving forward in a community that is so wracked by the problem of high property taxes. How do you encourage investment and development in a community where there can be no return on that investment?"

The village government itself, said Mayor Kaplan, will seek to hire an independent contractor to pick up the duties left by Hauspurg's departure. As to what the LDC will do now, it seems as though they will go back to the drawing board in terms of defining the position and its parameters for the future. Indeed, one of the sticking points that Hauspurg said stymied his ability to get out there and sell the village was the required disbursement of the LDC's microenterprise grant, a task he found trouble achieving considering the nation's dour economic climate, and the lack of interested candidates. As such, Mayor Kaplan confirmed that the LDC will look into changing the position's requirements to see if it may be better served without that component.

While the economic outlook in Ellenville is still in dire straits, Hauspurg does think that he was able to effect some positive change in the village. One effort he cites as a positive impact are his work with the Gillette Creamery site, which he and representatives from Ulster County began working on in conjunction with the Rondout Valley Growers Association to set up an agri-business incubator project. Furthermore, Hauspurg said he feels that he was able to get some more consideration from the county in general on the village and its need for assistance from outside its borders.

"Bringing the attention of the county to Ellenville, I think, is one of the success stories I had, because it was clearly being ignored prior to that. How does that continue? I don't know," he said.

Mayor Kaplan shared some thoughts on the difficulties Hauspurg faced as, halfway into his tenure, the United States' economy hit the skids.

"I think that it was a tough year to have an economic development officer when the economics of the nation in general are suffering, and no one is looking to open up new businesses," said Kaplan. "Basically, there are not many people who either have the funding, or are looking to open new businesses, so in some respects, it was an unfair year to see if that office could pay for or warrant a need. In concept, I can see a need for it.

"You could put P.T. Barnum in here, and I don't think that he is going to be motivating people to open up businesses in this environment. It's going to be a slow process — it's almost like when the Yankees bring up someone from the minors and say, you have this shot to make it in the majors, and either you make it today, or you're back in the minors. Really, that's a lot of pressure to put on an individual, or a position, so I really wouldn't say it's anything Dan did or didn't do.

"I wouldn't say it's an experiment that failed by any means, but on the other hand, it's a learning experience that we're going to try to build on for whatever we do next," said Mayor Kaplan.