MONTICELLO — Sullivan County Legislators voted unanimously in February to authorize a contract with the Sullivan County Partnership for Economic Development for $100,000 for one year.

The amount was $25,000 less than in the previous three years.

Chairman Rob Doherty said the reason the Legislature did not provide the same funding as previous years was to ensure that taxpayers' money was spent wisely.

At a meeting of the legislature last month, it was proposed that the County of Sullivan Industrial Development Agency (IDA) will pick up the shortfall.

But during the March IDA meeting, the board voted to provide payment for services of only $18,750 for the first quarter, which was the same amount offered last year.

When asked if the IDA will provide the additional funding in the future, Chairman for the IDA Ira Steingart said, “It has to be discussed with the board first. We are not doing anything at the moment. We are going to review [the] contracts.”

The IDA has been providing payment for services to the Partnership since 1995.

According to the Partnership's CEO, Marc Baez, if the IDA provides the additional funding, they would have to offer more services to the agency.

Baez said that by the end of the year, they could see the additional funding from the IDA, adding, “they'll come up with some programmatic function that they want to get done and we'll negotiate what that is. The terms will be decided, and it could be up to the additional $25,000 [but] not necessarily.”

Moreover, Baez said services that were provided to the county would be less because of the decreased amount provided in the new contract.

“We're not going to do the same thing for less money,” said Baez. “We're going to have to adjust what we're going to be offering and we're in the process of doing that.”

Furthermore, Baez said, “We've done an exceptional job over the last 25 years. That's indicated in the level of unemployment, the level of jobs created, and the level of investment in the county [that] has been no greater than it has been at this point in our existence.”

Baez added, “We're really proud of that, and we're continuing to do that moving forward to the benefit of our members.”