On Monday, Greene County legislators looked into why the Greene County Industrial Development Agency gave its director, Alexander Mathes, a $175,000 bonus last year.
According to Daily Mail, which covered the meeting, IDA's chairman, Paul Slutzky, said that Mathes was being rewarded for attracting three businesses to the county -- a liquor distributor, an aviation sheetmetal manufacturer, and an asphalt resale company:
The $175,000 bonus paid last year, Slutzky acknowledged, was large and a direct result of accomplishments from 2008. In that year, Mathes was able to secure three significant economic development projects in the county: the $27-million relocation of liquor distributor Empire Merchants North to Coxsackie, the $3.2-million expansion of Ducommun AeroStructures, formerly DynaBil Industries, in Coxsackie, and the $3.9-million relocation of PARCO (Peckham Asphalt Resale Corporation) to the former Travco Industrial Park in Athens. Those three sites are projected to provided 414 jobs to Greene County, according to Greene IDA data.
The story adds that Mathes says that without the bonus, he'd leave his job in a hot minute:
“It’s that bonus structure that has kept me in Greene County,” Mathes said.
