St Lawrence County is big: it has 2,680 square miles! It is one and a half times bigger than the next biggest county, Essex, and it is more than three times the size of the average county-size of 820 square miles. Is this a blessing?
Consider that St Lawrence County (SLC) maintains 573 miles of county roads, as opposed to a smaller county like Westchester which maintains only 160 miles of roadway. Meanwhile the primary revenue source for county road maintenance are county property taxes: the more property value per county, the lower and the more reasonable the tax rates. The total property value in SLC is $7 billion according to the 2023 NYS Office of the State Comptroller’s office, while Westchester’s is $210 billion. So while SLC has 3.5 times more roads to maintain than Westchester, we have have 30 times lower property value, which seems unfair.
Meanwhile, the net revenue of most institutions is closely tied to population density. Shopkeepers rely on customers to make financial ends meet. Nonprofits likewise rely on net usage to either charge or receive funding to continue operations. Here too, SLC is at a disadvantage, as it has the sixth lowest population density (40 people per square mile) compared to, say, Westchester, with a population nearly 60 times bigger. Nonprofits like ReachOut of SLC or Hospice of SLC face the daunting task of providing services over hundreds of miles, from Massena to Gouverneur to Star Lake every day, with minimal employees as state funding decreases with number of people served. K-12 schools and emergency first responders face similar battles for survival in SLC.
Certainly I consider it a blessing that we can drive our kayaks to remote isolated lakes and waterways and hike pristine mountain passes. But I would feel better were the population of St Lawrence County increasing rather than decreasing, and were the pool of people ready to assist the many essential services in our county bigger.
Local Government Matters 