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Month: March 2022

Official: Community Bank NA Branch Shows Its ‘Commitment To Saratoga-Glens Falls’

Posted onMarch 14, 2022
Paul T. Wersten is the vice president, commercial banking officer, at Community Bank NA branch in Saratoga Springs. The office will serve commercial customers in Saratoga and Warren counties.
©2022 Saratoga Photographer.com

By Jill Nagy

Community Bank NA opened an office in Saratoga Springs last November, filling a gap between its outposts in Latham and Whitehall and providing a more convenient location for commercial banking customers in Saratoga and Warren counties. Jeffrey M. Levy, Community Bank’s newly named president of commercial banking, who heads the new office, said that it “demonstrates our commitment to the Saratoga-Glens Falls community.”

The office is located on the second floor of The Washington building, 422 Broadway, upstairs from Northshire Bookstore and Kilwins. At least initially, the office will serve commercial clients with lending, insurance and wealth management services. The office will not accept deposits and there are no teller cages. Its four employees are “just the start,” according to Levy. Two of them will concentrate on making loans and one each will provide insurance and wealth management services. 

Community Bank has 11 branches in the Capital Region, including Albany, Latham, Whitehall, and Lake Placid.  Their southernmost office is in Albany’s Corporate Woods. Their community focus places them in non-metropolitan areas, i.e., not in large cities. In addition to the Capital Region, the bank has offices in Northeast Pennsylvania, Vermont, Western Massachusetts, and every county in Upstate New York, Levy said.  

There are no immediate plans for further expansion, Levy said, but noted that Gens Falls “fits in with our whole model.”

Levy has been with Community Bank since 2018. Before that, he held executive positions with NBT Bank and M&T Bank.  “Today, I am from Saratoga Springs,” he said. He has lived in the city for three years, after 21 years in Guilderland.

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Business Report: Staying The Course In Uncertain Times

Posted onMarch 14, 2022
Kenneth J. Entenmann, chief investment officer at NBT Wealth Management.

by Kenneth J. Entenmann

As the world watches the events unfold in Ukraine, it goes without saying that what we are witnessing is tragic and the human toll is something that cannot be understated. Military action always brings uncertainty, and it is difficult to assess the full extent of the situation while it is unfolding. The Russia-Ukraine conflict is no exception, and it has resulted in stunning market volatility.

However, strictly from an investment and economic perspective, geopolitical events rarely cause major bear markets or recessions. The markets tend to view them like natural disasters. That is, they are highly regionalized, they cause significant loss of property and life, but tend to be short-lived. 

Historically, dating back to the Iraq invasion of Kuwait in 1990, there have been nine global military “interventions.” The time period from the onset of the event and the market bottom ranges from 0 days to 70 days. For example, the market bottomed out 10 days after the 9/11 attack in 2001. The average decline in the S&P 500 is -6.9 percent. Importantly, the markets tend to recover quickly. 

The average one-month return after the bottom is 2.2 percent, the three-month return is 5.4 percent and the one-year return is 13.5 percent. Like all geopolitical events, the Russia-Ukraine conflict is impossible to predict. That said, it is likely to follow history’s pattern for a few reasons.

First, when we look at the global economy as a whole, the Russian and Ukrainian economies are small. The U.S. economy is the largest in the world at $21.4 trillion and nearly 25 percent of the total global GDP. By comparison, the Russian GDP is $1.7 trillion and 1.94 percent of global GDP while Ukraine’s GDP is estimated to be $156 billion. 

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Business Report: The Benefits Of Accelerated Depreciation

Posted onMarch 14, 2022
Co-managing partner Carissa Conley of the tax advisory firm Bucknam & Conley CPAs.

By Carissa Conley and Bryce Kahler

Every year, business owners across the country try to find ways to lower their taxable income and pay less taxes to the government. The easiest way to reduce tax is through operating expenses, which are necessary to run the business on a day-to-day basis. One of the most important expenses a business owner should take time to understand is depreciation: the expensing of business assets. 

Depreciation requires you to spread the cost of an asset over its useful life as it loses value. The easiest method to understand is straight-line depreciation, where the cost of the asset is expensed evenly over its useful life. 

If all assets were depreciated using the straight-line method, the business would have the same depreciation expense each year until the assets were fully depreciated.  If the asset had a five-year life, it would take five years to get the full benefit of its cost.  

But there are a lot of other depreciation methods and tax elections available to the business owner that create opportunities to manage their taxable profit in the year of purchase as well as in future years.  

There are current tax laws that offer more favorable options to accelerate depreciation and immediately expense the cost of assets, thus lowering your taxable income for the year.  It also enables you to match the expense with the cash outlay or, maybe even better, expense the property faster than you’re repaying the debt and thus put more money in your pocket now (which is why real estate investments are attractive). 

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SEDC: Building An Economic Future For Saratoga County For Some 43 Years

Posted onMarch 14, 2022
Dennis Brobston, president, Saratoga Economic Development Corp.
Courtesy Saratoga Economic Development Corp.

By Dennis Brobston

One of our beloved presidents, Abraham Lincoln, once said “The best way to predict the future is to create it.” That is our belief at Saratoga Economic Development Corp. (SEDC). 

Creating Saratoga County’s economic development future has been our mission for over 43 years of existence. Working with SEDC to create our economic future are many partners: Saratoga County and local governments, Saratoga County businesses large and small, our Industrial Development Agencies (IDAs), universities and colleges and our K-12 school districts, to name a few. Over the last decade, SEDC and our stakeholders helped to create over 1,700 new jobs with over $170 million in payroll while retaining over 2,050 existing jobs at Saratoga County companies.

The year 2021 was another strange year as we all continued to adapt thru the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Like 2020, we were thrust into uncharted waters for supporting our existing businesses in Saratoga County while marketing our region for new and exciting companies looking for fertile ground to grow their businesses. And like 2020, this past year of 2021 proved to be another banner year delivering over $110 million in new investment while creating 182 new jobs and over $11.5 million in payroll. 

Over the last two years, we have supported $232 million of investment creating over 629 jobs with over $38 million in new payroll while retaining 730 existing jobs. The years 2020 and 2021 are the first back-to-back years with more than $100 million investment in our 43-year history. We are thankful for all of the projects that allowed us to excel during this pandemic.

Promoting Saratoga County’s sites and buildings to site selectors across the country and throughout Europe will continue in 2022. Our efforts to create more product (pre-zoned sites and buildings) continue as we work with our municipalities eyeing this type of growth. “On spec” flex space is being built regularly in Saratoga County and the support of the Saratoga County IDA and the Town of Clifton Park IDA is vital to that continuing. 

The rising costs of steel and building materials make it difficult to develop without the incentives our IDAs use to support new growth. Prospects require pre-approved sites and buildings in order to meet increasingly tight deadlines to produce and distribute products. We appreciate working with our planning boards and staff, property owners, developers and real estate associates as prospects look to us for guidance on efficient turnarounds for projects.

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EDC Warren County Touts Building ‘The Economy Of Now’ As COVID Eases Up

Posted onMarch 14, 2022
Jim Siplon, president and CEO, EDC Warren County
Courtesy EDC Warren County

By Jim Siplon

It is certainly not news to say that the last two years of COVID have reshaped our area economy and the work we do to support it. 

One of the often acknowledged aspects of the COVID era is the observation that the pandemic often exposed and accelerated shifts that were already underway but perhaps not yet fully understood. Our economy and its dynamic elements , things like an aging workforce and a lack of new housing, are perhaps the greatest example of this. Constructing the framework that will underpin the post-COVID economy requires us all to lean into this together-to understand and retool around the “Economy of Now.”

EDC Warren County has long been focused on the strategic work required to attracting, growing and retaining business for our community. Classically, this was a process built around enticing new business to locate here and utilize our workforce to run them. Our programs, incentives and resources were deployed primarily in ways designed to capture transitory or relocating business ventures. 

While that work continues, it is transitioning before our eyes to a model that flips the traditional approach on its head. We are now in a competition for workforce, and those areas that have it will attract and grow the most successful business and economic entities while those that do not will struggle to build a sustainable economy. 

This need for workforce is not new, in fact it has been building slowly in the demographics for years. Baby boomers are aging out, birth rates have declined and flight of our young has been going on for some time. But today this problem is not limited to the North Country or other less populated areas but is now almost universal. 

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Officials: War In The Ukraine Has Adverse Effect On Area Employment, Supply Chain

Posted onMarch 14, 2022

By Paul Post

Some restaurants aren’t serving lunch, Gore Mountain can’t keep all of its lift lines running, and one area paper company is so desperate for help that it’s put up small roadside signs, hoping to attract new workers.

An already serious labor shortage could grow worse, creating serious problems for the Lake George-Saratoga Region economy if the Ukrainian crisis keeps young Eastern Europeans from filling hundreds of hospitality and tourism industry jobs this summer, local officials say.

“Such a heartbreaking situation,” said Amanda Metzger, Lake George Regional Chamber of Commerce marketing director. “This could affect a larger region than only the Ukraine. We are prepared to market the available jobs as we had to last year, but it is with such a heavy heart that we prepare for this potential workforce shortage, thinking of what the people of Ukraine are facing.”

In a Facebook posting, the Lake George restaurant 10 McGillis Public House said, “All over the Capital Region and especially here in Lake George, we rely on the international students and J1 Student work program to staff our local businesses and boost our economy. With the exception of the pandemic in recent years, hundreds of students come to our area to work each summer. Most of them work two or even three jobs at a time and they are an integral part of some business’s success for the tourist season.”

Many student come from Poland, Belarus, Russia and Ukraine.

“Not only do our businesses depend on these students and their hard work, but many of us have made lifelong friendships and remain in contact years after they’ve returned to their home country,” the 10 McGillis Public House statement said.

Many foreign students find local summer employment through New York City-based InterExchange. In a statement, the agency said: 

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