CATTARAUGUS COUNTY RECEIVES $49,000 FOR VILLAGES FROM THE NYS QUALITY COMMUNITIES PROGRAM

Lt. Governor Mary O. Donohue has announced that Cattaraugus County was awarded a $49,000 Quality Communities Grant for 2005-2006. The County's application was called a high quality proposal with a well thought out plan based on the County Guidebook, "Saving Our Villages".

On receiving the Quality Communities grant from New York State, Gerard "Jess" Fitzpatrick, Chairman of the Cattaraugus County Legislature said: "Quality Communities thinking lets us solve local problems in new ways. We want to slow urban sprawl in Cattaraugus County by helping villages grow again. Modern life doesn't have to keep eating up our farmland as it bypasses older villages. Village downtowns can be born again with help from grants like these. We welcome this creative new tool from the state. It's great news!"

Cattaraugus County proposes to use this grant to deliver specific services to three villages in a collaborative process with village officials and consulting experts. The three demonstration villages are Randolph, Little Valley, and Franklinville.

Cattaraugus County's proposal links villages, trails and housing into a coordinated strategy to save these villages and, at the same time, reduce sprawl in their vicinity by attracting people and new housing developments away from farmland and back to village infrastructure on major highways.

The Saving Our Villages guidebook recommends an aggressive strategy in support of village renewal. It presents the results of visioning work with county consultants, Randall Arendt and Rick Swist from the past four years, who worked with each of our three demonstration villages. This guidebook shows how these villages once thrived, began to change, and are coming back in a process of community renewal. In particular, the Village guidebook illustrates:

  1. How new growth is still possible for our villages, based on new ideas (the consultant's ideas encourage thinking along design and marketing lines).
  2. How communities can grow, by encouraging stakeholders and by sharing lessons learned with other communities so that each village is not faced with re-inventing the wheel.
  3. How our villages should be added to county and regional marketing campaigns, with the intent to attract new investors and businesses for these older villages.

For more information on the Saving Our Village guidebook, you can download the guidebook in PDF at www.cattco.org/planning/planning_info.asp?Parent=12303.