ALBANY — County Executive Daniel McCoy decided that for his 12th State of County address, he’d take his show on the road. 

McCoy on Thursday spoke from the campus of Plug Power’s recently-opened fuel-cell manufacturing facility in Slingerlands. Given the location of the speech, much praise was heaped on Plug for its decision to build its 350,000-square-foot battery factory in Albany County, where the company has been headquartered for over 25 years. 

Prior to his speech, a 15-minute video produced by the county sought to tout McCoy’s accomplishments over the past year. 

The presentation leaned pretty hard on what the county saw as fairly big economic development wins for the area, pointing first to the Advance Albany County Alliance and its efforts to “foster and promote investment” in the county.

The alliance is Albany County’s three-year-old local development corporation, a private, not-for-profit entity that receives about 62.5 percent of its funding from the county itself and is exempt from many of the statutes and provisions placed on local governments, like the state’s competitive procurement bid process and its public-records and open meetings laws. 

The video presentation lauded the alliance for providing a “one stop shop for businesses looking to locate or grow in Albany County, assisting with site search and development, offering competitive incentives, and connecting companies to work for support.” 

The alliance also oversees the Albany County Business Development Corporation’s Al Tech Loan Fund, a competitive-loan program that offers as much as $1 million to county businesses “to help them grow,” according to the presentation. At some point later this year, the alliance will open a “a new one-stop shop office” whose aim is to “keep Albany County’s business climate strong,” by bringing under one roof the county’s other economically-focused offices: the Industrial Development Agency, its Capital Resource Corporation, and Land Bank. 

Later in his speech, McCoy noted the “catastrophic effects that the pandemic had on the arts,” an area of the economy that struggled to get back on its feet while others had no problem. “We must work together to change the current path,” McCoy said, as he  announced the formation of a “new public and private partnership to ensure the health and viability of arts and culture in Albany County,” which is to be spearheaded by a new arts and culture subcommittee of the Advance Albany County Alliance.

Other economic-development achievements praised on Thursday included the county finally prying away the keys from the tax-delinquent owner of the former Central Warehouse and handing them over to a much-celebrated local developer. Two major projects at ports in Bethlehem and Coeymans were trumpeted for the significant investment and jobs they’ll bring to the area, and positioning Albany County as a “national leader in offshore wind manufacturing” and cementing it as a “hub of innovation.”

The earlier video presentation touted McCoy’s leadership for taking on the pharmaceutical industry over the role it played in the opioid crisis, and noted the county recently received $1.5 million from the $26 billion settlement municipalities around the country struck with the industry. 

“We’ve already received $1.6 million from other settlements with over $10 million over the next 16 years from current settlements,” McCoy said, adding that the funds will be used to “bolster our addiction treatment and recovery efforts.”

There were 120 opioid-related deaths in Albany County in 2022, according to McCoy, who noted the county’s commissioner of mental health, Stephen J. Giordano, is a member and past chairman of the state board tasked with overseeing the process of fund distribution from settlement. 

McCoy then praised Giordano for his handling of the county’s ACCORD program; the acronym stands for Albany County Crisis Officials Responding and Diverting. 

Started in June 2021, the program paired a social worker with a county-trained emergency medical services worker and had them responding to mental-health-related 9-1-1 calls, which  Giordano said at the time deserved a specific mental-health response.

McCoy said, since the program’s inception, ACCORD workers had responded to nearly 750 calls in the Hilltowns. 

“The team successfully de-escalates tenuous situations, evaluates the needs of individuals,” McCoy said, “and provides support, not just at the moment, but also in the future in conjunction with other resources available.” Because of the program’s success in the Hilltowns, McCoy said the decision was made to expand ACCORD through the county. 

McCoy said recent reports about the country’s school-age population, images of bullying and stories of suicide, had been unwelcome news.

“This is tragic and we need to do more,” he said. “We must invest in mental-health curriculum within our schools.” 

He then pointed to efforts made by two fellows from the Rockefeller Institute who had worked with local school districts over the past year on developing and implementing such a program, which the county executive said would “provide our youth with tools and coping mechanisms, as well as support systems.”

McCoy said just recognizing there’s a need to pay more attention to a young person’s mental and physical health is the start to a healthier community. But investments have to be made, he argued, both to bring bullying to an end and to “remove the stigma from mental health services and save children’s lives.”

In 2022, McCoy said, the county helped nearly 300 young people at its children’s mental-health clinic.

McCoy observed that a number of the county’s successful programs might not have been possible if it weren’t for the strong financial situation the county is in. “Fiscal responsibility is imperative to the success of government,” McCoy said, noting the country had replenished its reserve funds to “record levels,” while still lowering landowner’s county property taxes by close to 20 percent during his tenure. 

He concluded his Feb. 23 speech by stating, “Let us continue on this path of strength and continue toward a new day filled with hope and rooted in data-based solutions that provide equitable and exceptional programs to our citizens and visitors.”