Glens Falls Chronicle Serving the Glens Falls/Lake George region; Warren, Washington and northern Saratoga counties since 1980
By Mark Frost, Chronicle Editor
SUNY Adirondack has experienced a plunge in enrollment, and its operating deficit ballooned by more than a million dollars in the past year.
Anastasia L. Urtz, J.D., the college’s new president, and Keith Kaplan, its vice-president administrative services/treasurer, delivered the sobering news to Warren County’s Higher Education Committee.
But Dr. Urtz pledged to fix the problems, underlining her determination with personal details.
“I’ve been here since July,” she told the supervisors.
“So imagine the day in August when Keith walked in and said, ‘Remember that $333,000 plan deficit we had? Well, it’s actually $1.4 million.’
“What I would like this body to know — and thank you for changing the meeting, my father passed away last week — my dad retired in December after 51 years of being the supervisor of the town that I grew up in [Lee in Oneida County].
“And that is a town where he eliminated all the town taxes, where he left reserves of millions of dollars, where he figured out how to do all kinds of important things that served the community, built the town hall and community center. He rebuilt the park.
“And I want you to know that I’m John Urtz’s daughter, and I don’t build deficit budgets. There will be no deficit budget.”
President Urtz said, “SUNY Adirondack will live within our means, and we will do what it will take to expand our service in ways that the public needs.
“We are not here today to ask you for money. We are here today to tell you that the college is 65 years old.
“I have spent my time really analyzing where, presumably, the deficit comes from, what it needs.
“I came here, and I agreed to work with SUNY and all the powers that be, I came to this college because it has a purpose, and that purpose is enduring. It is not going to go away on my watch, not unless a meteor hits us all or something, because there’s so much to work with h
“I have been gratified by the experience of meeting people who all have an ACC story and what it was, and it was about how their lives were made better.
“We are going to continue to do that work.”
Dr. Urtz’s father, John Urtz, was the Supervisor of the Town of Lee in Oneida near Rome, N.Y. “for 51 years,” wrote the Rome Sentinel.
He passed away on March 23 at 81.
“During his tenure,” wrote the newspaper, “Urtz advocated for the town to receive a portion of Oneida County’s sales tax revenues, which resulted in no town taxes for 45 consecutive years.”
It quoted L. James “Jamo” Jones Jr., “a longtime town board member and Urtz’s successor as supervisor,” as saying, “He was just very good with our money. He chased money down when it was available…
“He took us out of the negative numbers to positive by almost $9 million over the past 50 years. We had to spend some of that down due to a state audit last year that they recommended we spend it down, which we did. We bought a new fire truck through John, for $832,000 last year.”
The Rome Sentinel said, “Under Urtz’s leadership, the town also constructed its town hall, built a New York State Police substation, made enhancements to the Lee Town Park, supported youth programming, helped secure new equipment for the highway and volunteer fire departments, and made improvements to the water system.”
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