If there was ever a spit-take moment in recent county government, it was last week’s news that the Ulster County Economic Development Alliance is planning to ask the NoVo Foundation for something like $678,000 for office furniture. $678,000. For office furniture. (You could buy a small and probably rat-infested house in Kingston for that kind of money!) After your Editorial Team wiped off the torrent of beverage we spat all over the monitor, we did the only thing we could at the time: make a meme about it.

But the matter merits a deeper dive. As they say on the internet, there’s a lot to unpack here, so let’s start with the facts, courtesy of our friends at the Daily Freeman. The Alliance, a.k.a. UCEDA, wants the money to furnish the new county offices at iPark 87. According to the Freeman, the furniture will be used for several county offices which have recently set up shop at the former IBM-Kingston site, including the Office of Employment and Training, the Office of Economic Development and the Tourism Department. Tenants Ulster YouthBuild, an Ulster BOCES offshoot that’s done commendable work in training young people for a life in the construction trade, and energy policy reform advocates Communities for Local Power. (We first got to know Jen Metzger about 10 years ago when she, head of that organization, was legitimately prophetic in warning us that the Fortis-Central Hudson merger meant nothing but trouble for the utility’s ratepayers.)

Now, we know the UCEDA’s job one is to find tenants for iPark 87, and while county government and BOCES have leased a fair amount of square footage there, the success of Ulster’s most available commercial space hinges on whether private-sector concerns want to rent that space. As landlords do, the Alliance wants the space to look as nice as possible — doubly in this case as there’s still a lot of unenticing dilapidation there.

“I think one of the purposes of NoVo donating this money as a grant is to kind of make it a little be more inviting and make it a nicer place than what a government can typical afford,” UCEDA board member Christopher [sic] Cerrone is quoted in the Freeman story as saying. “If we are able to buy high-grade, high-quality material that will last … this is what you get.”

Well, it is true that everything costs more these days, furniture not excepted. But the good news is that it’s gone down a little bit over 2024, or else UCEDA would be asking for a million or more. Now it may be a bit zero-summish to link getting nice furniture to UCEDA’s performance — “No jobs added this quarter? Sit on a crate!” — but during our outlining process for this editorial, we naturally wondered exactly how the Alliance has done at developing the county’s economy.

Here, we get into a bowl of alphabet soup, so we need to be mindful of the acronyms. In our search for data, we were pointed in the direction of the county 2023 Executive Report. The UCEDA is not the UCIDA (Ulster County Industrial Development Agency); unlike the quasi-independent IDA, the EDA is a part of county government’s executive branch. Nor is the UCEDA the UCDED (Ulster County Department of Economic Development), though the UCDED performs administrative tasks and manages the revolving loan fund for the UCEDA. The Executive Report has some pertinent information about what the EDA did in 2023: facilitated about $11 million in economic development grants from the state and federal governments; made over three years over $2.7 million in grants to county businesses — including the parent company of Kingston Wire — as part of the not entirely scandal-free CARES I and II programs; made from 2021-23 some 18 low-interest loans from the revolving loan fund; and handled 128 requests for “site selection” information, which could have led to new businesses coming to town or existing businesses relocating to new sites. We won’t have stats for this year until next year, however.

It's difficult to assign a letter grade to all of that, so we won’t try. In the end, what happens with iPark 87 will be what the UCEDA is judged by and it’s still too soon to say it’s failed, or succeeded. But we can say that they’re doing something. We’re not going to retract our meme, but we concede that it didn’t tell the whole story. (That’s not what memes do, anyway.)

The NoVo Foundation/NoVo in Kingston has given out a considerable amount of money since it got here, maybe as much as $500 million at this point. It has given a decent chunk of that to local governments to, as NoVo puts it, pay for things that aren’t usually part of a government’s budget. Office furniture is part of municipal governments, but County Executive Metzger supports the UCEDA’s ask.

“The grant funding UCEDA is seeking is for the public and educational spaces for students and jobseekers at the planned Workforce Innovation Center at iPark 87, which is currently being renovated. I want to thank UCEDA for seeking private funding to help reduce County costs and create an inspiring space to learn and develop the skills for a future career, with appropriate furnishings and technology for an education and training center,” Metzger told Kingston Wire on Monday. “UCEDA is applying for funding to a philanthropic foundation for sustainable non-vinyl flooring, high-performance LED lighting, audio/visual and security equipment, and furnishings for educational and public-facing spaces. Educational and training furniture and equipment tend to be more specialized and more expensive than typical office furniture, but it is a worthy investment to equip our residents with the skills and training for family-sustaining jobs and to attract cutting-edge industries to Ulster County. And, from a taxpayer perspective, seeking private funding is a responsible approach.”

EDA board member Herb Litts was the only one to vote against the request, the Freeman reported, balking at the price tags. “$516 each for a stackable chair seems high today,” Litts said, the Freeman reported. It does to us too. “A reception desk for $2,500? I think you can go to the state [Office of General Services] products list and find a similar product for probably 20 percent of the cost.” You could probably get a better price from IKEA too: The one in Paramus isn't that far away and they have those yummy meatballs.

Look, we don’t want anyone, much less an operation charged with Ulster’s economic growth, sitting on crates. Perhaps our years in newsrooms, where none of the furniture is new, all of it is dingy and some of it smells, makes it hard for us to get our collective editorial head around why anyone would need seating that pricey. But in the end, it’s NoVo’s money and it’s up to them how they use it. We think it could be better spent, but we speak from a place where money is tight, as opposed to places where $678,000 is small change. So it goes. Excuse us, but we’ve just heard someone’s dumped a desk on the side of the road and we have to go get it. Maybe we’ll find a few new crates too.