Lawmakers approve $36 million bond for Center for Discovery

Money will pay for new autism facility

By FRITZ MAYER

MONTICELLO, NY — County lawmakers have voted to support a $36.2 million bond to pay for an autism campus for the Center for Discovery based in Harris. The vote, which came at the government center in June 21, was unanimous.

The Sullivan County Industrial Development Agency (IDA) will issue the bond, which will be paid back by the center. Lawmaker and IDA chairman Sam Wohl said the campus would be the first of its kind in New York State. He said, “It is so important to the nearly 800 autistic children in New York State, whose families are now forced to send them out-of-state for treatment in Massachusetts and Colorado, because it means that soon the children might not have to travel so far for the best medical care available.”

As the second largest employer in Sullivan County after the county government, the center employs 1,100 people in the area. The creation of the autism campus will lead to some 300 additional jobs.

Robert van Dusen, chief financial officer of the center, made a few remarks before the vote. He told legislators the jobs would include “nurses, physical therapists, speech therapists and others.” He said starting wage for the lowest paid workers at the autism campus would be $10.50 per hour, with an additional benefits package.

Claude D’Alessandro, the center’s vice president of finance, said the center does business with “well over 100 vendors in Sullivan County,” and this project alone would generate $200 million yearly to the local economy.

D’Alessandro also noted that the issue of the center’s tax status has arisen over the years because, as a nonprofit organization, it is largely tax-exempt. He said the land on which the autism campus would be built is already owned by the center, therefore no additional land would be taken off the tax roles.

By way of providing lawmakers a brief “history lesson,” D’Alessandro said that a significant part of the center’s property is situated on land that was formerly owned by the county, therefore not many parcels were taken off the tax roles to create the center.

The autism campus will be located on land adjacent to the center’s Thanksgiving Farm, which is located on Holmes Road in Harris.

According to the Autism Society of America, autism is a developmental disability that, among other things, affects the social interactions and language use of children and lasts into adulthood. It is the fastest growing developmental disability in the United States, expanding at more than 10 percent per year. The condition occurs in about one out of every 150 births.

The Centers for Disease Control in Washington, DC reports that “more children than ever before are being classified as having autism spectrum disorders (ASD). But it is unclear how much of this increase is due to changes in how we identify and classify ASD in people, and how much is due to a true increase in prevalence.”

Others, however, suspect that environmental factors are playing an increasing role. Some researchers, for example, suggest that ingredients found in childhood vaccines may be related to the increase in autism.

Visit www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/autism or www.autism-society.org for more information.