Business & Tech

Businesses Must Collaborate To End Suffolk's Recession

Elected officials and business leaders believe collaboration and smart spending are needed to fuel job growth.

Hauppauge businesses should be looking towards collaboration in order to grow and create jobs in 2011, according to elected officials and business leaders.

Hauppauge Industrial Association of Long Island hosted its annual meeting including the State of Business on Long Island panel address on Wednesday. The common thread addressed by government officials and business organizations was the need for collaboration and growth to bring an end to the economic recession in Suffolk County.

 “If history has showed us anything, recessions end not because the government add more jobs but because private sector is adding on those jobs. Small businesses are the economic engine in our county,” said Suffolk County Executive Steve Levy.

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Levy cited the creation of Suffolk County Economic Development Consortium in 2009, which has identified 10 key points to make business between the government, or public sector and private sector more successful. These included the creation of the Suffolk County Permit Portal, making one application for building permits across all towns in the county, and acting as a conduit to get business grants out to local businesses.

HIA-LI President Terri Alessi-Miceli said her organization has taken the first steps towards collaboration in 2011, having held a meeting with the Long Island Association and other business groups within the last week to discuss common interests.

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One goal is to ensure workers are properly educated to fit business needs, stressing skills for manufacturing by pairing to host a manufacturing symposium in the fall 2011.

 Another project is the Hauppauge industrial park transportation study funded by a $650 million grant looks at an ongoing problem on Long Island, the need for easing traffic, providing mass transportation and reducing the carbon footprint of businesses there.

 “Most of the office buildings out there are wasting 25 – 40 percent of the energy they use. That means there are huge opportunities here,” said Dorian Dale, Town of Babylon’s energy director and chief sustainability.

 Dale said businesses should look for ways they are wasting energy and potential revenue, and retrofit to go green and save energy.

 Town of Smithtown Supervisor Patrick Vecchio noted speakers before him stressing money for expansion, and spoke of spending only what’s necessary for business and making smart contractual deals.

 “Come to Smithtown, we are the microcosm for what should be done in this nation. We don’t have an overflow of employees. When the economic downturn began, we did not fill jobs lost by retirement or attribution,” Vecchio said.

 These savings, the county executive hoped, combined with collaboration will generate jobs to lift the economy.

“If you are able to hire in 2011, that’s taking people off unemployment, people off welfare rolls. You are putting money in their pockets, so they are going out and buying and it comes in sales tax,” Levy said. “It’s a big cycle, a big partnership.” 


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