Radio Chatskill

The Sullivan County Visitors Association is making a case to county lawmakers that the key to boosting the local economy lies in reaching a different kind of tourist — one flying in from St. Louis or Milwaukee, not just driving up from New York City.

At a Sullivan County Legislature meeting last Thursday, SCVA Executive Director Michael Martellon laid out an ambitious vision for transforming how the agency markets the Catskills region, centered on a shift toward digital advertising and away from the print ads and trade shows that have historically driven the agency's outreach, according to Liam Mayo of The River Reporter. 

Fewer Day-Trippers, More Overnight Guests

The underlying logic is simple: the further away a visitor comes from, the longer they tend to stay — and longer stays mean more money flowing into the local economy through lodging taxes, restaurant bills, and retail spending.

Martellon was also eager to clarify where the SCVA's money comes from in the first place. As Mayo explained, "He really emphasized that the SCVA doesn't get tax dollars that are generated on people who are living and working in the county. The SCVA is funded fully through the lodging tax that is collected on hotel rooms and Airbnb stays in the county."

Martellon said the county currently sits at about a 25% annual occupancy rate across its hotels, inns, and short-term rentals. Nudging that number up even modestly, he argued, could translate to significant revenue gains. A jump to 30% occupancy, he projected, would generate roughly $2.69 million in additional sales and lodging tax revenue. A climb to 40% — a figure he said he achieved over eight years while leading tourism efforts in Telluride, Colorado — could mean $8 million more, with $5.6 million of that coming through sales tax alone.

He acknowledged the figures are projections, not guarantees.

Showing Up on ChatGPT, Not Just Google

To attract those distant visitors, Martellon said the SCVA plans to invest heavily in what he's calling "generative AI engine optimization" — making sure Sullivan County appears when someone asks ChatGPT or Google Gemini where to vacation, not just when they type a query into a traditional search engine. He also described plans to build out a direct digital marketing infrastructure, allowing the SCVA to reach potential visitors without relying solely on broad media buys.

The approach is supported by early data. A campaign the agency ran this past December and January showed interest from well beyond the tri-state area. "Some of the sites were other places in the Northeast like Hartford, New Haven, Connecticut, Boston, Massachusetts," Mayo noted. "But there were some sites further afield in there as well, like Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Orlando, Florida and St. Louis, Missouri."

Mark Baez, president and CEO of the Sullivan County Partnership for Economic Development, backed the direction, noting that digital-first strategies have become essential for both tourism promotion and economic development broadly.

Not Everyone Is Fully Convinced

The pivot away from traditional marketing drew some questions from legislators. Mayo described a notable back-and-forth between Martellon and Legislator Cap Scott: "She was asking for more of a specific report on what the SCVA was doing sort of to increase tourism on a day-to-day basis. And he was saying, 'I'm trying to focus on the overall direction — focusing on tactics is getting a little bit too much in the weeds.'"

The concern from lawmakers, Mayo said, was straightforward: "Yes, we're all about the digital, yes, we're all about this new direction, but let's make sure that we're not transitioning too quickly away from what we were doing before we know quite what we are doing."

Grant Program Gets a Reset

Lawmakers also received an update on the SCVA's tourism event grant program, which Martellon has restructured since taking the helm.

When he first arrived, Martellon froze all pending grants — including some that had already been promised to county businesses. After conversations with affected business owners, those were ultimately released. But the episode set the stage for a broader rethinking of how the grants would work.

Under the new model, the SCVA received $1.6 million in funding requests and awarded $150,000. As Mayo put it, the new philosophy boils down to this: "We gave less money to a lot more people." The grants are now framed explicitly as marketing dollars — the SCVA will cover up to 20% of an event's marketing budget, but it's not in the business of funding entire events.

The second round of SCVA tourism event grants is currently open. Information sessions run March 16 through March 26, and the application deadline is April 14. More information is available at sullivancatskills.com.

LIVINGSTON MANOR, N.Y. — For the Catskills Community Land Trust, the dream of permanently affordable housing in the region just got a lot more tangible. The organization has been awarded a $98,000 grant through New York State’s Smart Growth program — money that will allow it to purchase its first piece of land and take the first concrete steps toward building a two-family rental home in Livingston Manor.

“We’re excited to say we can start doing the fun part of this work — buying land, building homes,” said Gwen Schantz, one of the organizers behind the effort. “It’s a huge first hurdle for us to get over, just owning our first piece of land.”

WHAT IS A COMMUNITY LAND TRUST?

The Catskills CLT was formed roughly a year ago with a clear diagnosis: housing costs in the region have outpaced what local workers earn, and the area lacks rental housing altogether. In much of the Catskills, the service industry is the backbone of the local economy — but seasonal wages and soaring rents make it nearly impossible for those workers to stay.

A community land trust addresses that tension by removing land from the speculative real estate market entirely. A nonprofit organization holds ownership of the land in perpetuity, while homes on that land are rented or sold at prices calibrated to local incomes. The housing stays affordable not just for one tenant, but for every resident who follows.

“Real estate is treated like an investment opportunity, and that has had a big impact on housing prices and land prices,” Schantz said. “The goal of the nonprofit community land trust model is to keep housing accessible to people no matter how much money they’re making.”

THE FIRST PROJECT

The grant will fund the acquisition of a small vacant lot on Meadow Street in the Town of Rockland — a parcel the town board voted to sell to the CLT nearly a year ago. Remaining funds will go toward hiring an architect and preparing the site for construction, bringing the project to what Schantz calls “shovel-ready” status.

The planned structure is a two-family rental home built with local hemlock timber frame — a material Schantz describes as not only durable and beautiful, but a carbon sink that helps offset the footprint of construction. The building is designed to be climate-resilient, a priority in a region with a long history of flooding, and energy-efficient enough to keep tenants’ heating costs low.

“We want to build something that’s strong, beautiful, and helps beautify the street,” Schantz said. “We really think we can solve a lot of problems at once — beautification, affordable housing, and making our town greener and more climate resilient.”

Actual construction will require a second round of fundraising. The grant gets the organization to the threshold — land owned, design in hand, site prepared — but building the home is phase two.

WHO WILL LIVE THERE?

The CLT intends to prioritize local workers — people already employed in Livingston Manor, Roscoe, and surrounding hamlets who struggle to find housing they can afford on local wages. Rent will be set at roughly 30 percent of household income, the standard affordability benchmark.

“Local businesses are struggling to hire and keep employees because it can be really expensive to live here,” Schantz said. “If you’re a family working in town and making $20 or $25 an hour, we want to make sure the rent is affordable to you.”

A MODEL FOR THE REGION

The CLT is thinking beyond Livingston Manor. Schantz says the organization’s scattered-site approach — identifying vacant infill lots rather than pursuing large developments — translates well across the small river-valley hamlets that define the Catskills. The Binghamton-based First Ward Action Council, a long-established affordable housing nonprofit, serves as one model.

Looking further ahead, the organization envisions not only building new homes but also acquiring and renovating vacant historic structures — a persistent problem in the region, where old homes sit unoccupied because repair costs are prohibitive.

The Town of Rockland has been a key partner, having earned a state “pro-housing community” designation last year through the New York Homes and Community Renewal program. The Community Foundation of Orange, Sullivan and Rockland has served as fiscal sponsor for the young nonprofit.

For Schantz, the timing feels right. “Things are thawing out, and it feels like it’s springtime for our organization,” she said. “We’re excited to hit the ground running this summer and literally get some foundations laid.”

The Sullivan County Sheriff’s Office has increased local spotchecks at sensitive locations following the U.S.-Israel war with Iran. Sullivan County Undersheriff Eric Chaboty says the county sheriff’s office has identified a list of local potential sensitive locations and is patrolling the areas. Radio Catskill's Kimberly Izar reports. 

Under the Trump administration, every part of the country is confronting a massive uptick in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) activity that knows no legal bounds. Immigrant communities throughout the United States have been forced to live in fear amid constant ICE raids and especially following the murders of Minneapolis residents Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti. But ICE violence should not be isolated to this moment. 

Radio Catskill’s Julia Kim had the chance to speak with Angelo Guisado, an attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights who specializes in immigrants’ rights, and Weldon McWilliams, who serves as chair of one of the oldest Black Studies departments in the nation at SUNY New Paltz on how the history of ICE goes much deeper than what Americans are seeing right now and may be foundational to how we understand this country.

At your local library, you’ll find lots of books – but you may also find tax preparers, museum passes, and yoga classes. But library advocates say the services they provide are at risk under New York Governor Kathy Hochul’s latest budget.

The state budget proposes more than $11 million in cuts to the state’s library operating aid and construction budget. Advocates say this follows a rocky year of federal funding threats from the Trump administration to thousands of public libraries. Radio Catskill’s Kimberly Izar reports.

A landmark legal battle over birthright citizenship is now before the U.S. Supreme Court — and advocates who work with immigrant families in rural New York say the outcome could reshape everyday life for communities that depend on immigrant labor and leadership.

At issue is Executive Order 14160, signed by President Trump, which seeks to limit who is recognized as a U.S. citizen under the 14th Amendment. The order would deny citizenship to children born on U.S. soil to parents who are in the country without legal status or on temporary visas — upending more than 125 years of legal precedent.

A coalition of civil rights and legal advocacy organizations, including Rural and Migrant Ministry (RMM), has filed an amicus curiae — or "friend of the court" — brief urging the justices to uphold that precedent. 

"What is at stake is basically the overturning of a precedent that's over a hundred years old, which basically states that if you are born on the soil of the United States of America, you are an American citizen," said Juana Cortes de Torres, Director of the Immigrant Legal Rights Project at Rural and Migrant Ministry.

A Century of Precedent

The brief filed by RMM and its partners leans heavily on United States v. Wong Kim Ark, an 1898 Supreme Court decision that affirmed birthright citizenship for children born in the United States regardless of their parents' national origin or immigration status.

"It is one of the first cases that basically explains that anyone born in the U.S. is a citizen under the Constitution," Cortes de Torres said. "That precedent memorializes the words of the 14th Amendment."

From a legal standpoint, she argued, no executive order can accomplish what the administration is attempting. "In order to do that, that would be tantamount to amending the Constitution without the role of Congress," she said. "And in my opinion, that would be chaos."

Twenty-two state attorneys general have also joined the legal fight to block the order.

"A Moment of Crisis and Fear"

Cortes de Torres said immigrant families across New York — from Western New York to Eastern Long Island, the geography RMM serves — are frightened.

"Individuals that come to America are often fleeing the hardships and civil rights violations of their country," she said. "They come to the United States to seek safety and harbor."

If the order were upheld, children born in the United States to undocumented parents or parents on temporary visas could be rendered stateless — without access to healthcare, public education, or the right to vote.

"You're talking about health care, the right to vote, every single social benefit that an American citizen has access to," Cortes de Torres said. "These children will not have access to that."

The Stakes for Rural Communities

The implications are particularly acute in agricultural communities like Sullivan County and the Hudson Valley, where immigrant workers form the backbone of the local economy.

"Who's tending to the fields? Who's cultivating the land? Who is milking the cows? Who works in the mass factories that produce all different kinds of food products?" Cortes de Torres said. "It is resounding to say that all of that work is being done by Latino immigrants."

She argued that the administration has failed to account for the economic contributions immigrants make — from farmworkers to healthcare aides to DACA recipients who have become doctors, lawyers, and scientists.

"They're not really evaluating the worth, the net economic worth, that immigrants bring to the table," she said. "And the fact that that analysis is not being done will, in the end, be harmful to America."

A Political Motive?

When asked what she believes is really driving the effort to restrict birthright citizenship, Cortes de Torres was direct.

"The right to vote," she said. "Children born here of immigrant parents will have the right to vote. Their voices will be heard, and they will be the majority of people. It is political in nature."

She also placed the current moment in historical context, noting that waves of anti-immigrant hostility are not new to the American experience.

"You're seeing history taking place again, where immigrants — this time specifically Latino immigrants — are being attacked," she said. "Other immigrants that have come to this country have also faced these types of attacks. The fact that you are different or you have a different culture should not equal a lack of citizenship by any means."

Looking Ahead

Cortes de Torres said she hopes the Supreme Court issues a ruling before the close of its current term, expected in late spring.

"I'm looking for the Supreme Court to do what is necessary and what is correct legally — to uphold the rule of law and precedent and to uphold the United States Constitution," she said.

For immigrant families anxious about the outcome, she had a simple message: "Don't give up. Always have hope. We're here to help you, and we will help you."