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Cornell Cooperative Extension asks committee to consider higher county support amid funding pressures
Summary
Melanie Forstrom told the committee Cornell Cooperative Extension served nearly 24,000 people last year and faces rising costs and lost federal nutrition-education funding; she asked members to consider the agency's 2027 appropriation request and noted a landlord-proposed rent increase.
Melanie Forstrom, director of Cornell Cooperative Extension of Ulster County, presented service metrics and budget pressures and asked the committee to consider the organization's 2027 appropriation. "We served just 48 people shy of 24,000 people directly last year who participated in our programs," Forstrom said, and she described a long-term real-dollar decline in the county appropriation compared with 1992 levels.
Forstrom walked through revenue sources and program impacts: volunteer hours she estimated in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, new private donations and sponsorships, Eastern New York commercial-horticulture cost-shares, and a recent loss of federal nutrition-education funding. She said the agency's budget ask translates to about a 15% increase compared with the prior year and asked the committee to consider also covering a proposed rent increase at the Kingston Plaza site. Forstrom closed by inviting committee members to upcoming public presentations of youth program work.
