The Adirondack Diversity Initiative has a new director starting next month, Tiffany Rea-Fisher. I spoke with her over the phone last week about her role as an area choreographer and her upcoming role at ADI. Rea-Fisher will take the helm after former Director Nicole Hylton-Patterson left in the fall.

I also spoke with members of ADI’s core team and staff with the Adirondack North Country Association, which houses the ADI program. There will be a push this state budgetary cycle for a $100,000 increase in what the state gave ADI last year ($300,000). You can read more about ADI’s new leader and the organization’s future in our story here.

Though we know that ANCA hopes for more funding from the state budget this year for programs like ADI, we’re still waiting on Gov. Kathy Hochul’s proposals. The governor’s state budget presentation last year was on Jan. 18. We’re now at Jan. 23, and we are still unsure of when Hochul’s budget presentation may be. We will be covering it once we know. It will mark the beginning of a months-long negotiation process before a final budget is adopted in April.

On the Adirondack Park Agency front, the Explorer learned Monday afternoon that Commissioner Andrea Hogan did resign from her post. Hogan announced her resignation as Johnsburg town supervisor last week, but APA spokesman Keith McKeever had told the Explorer she had not resigned from the agency as of Thursday. The Explorer asked McKeever Thursday if Hogan had reached out about her commissioner position and did not hear back. Hogan also did not return the Explorer’s calls. Monday afternoon, shortly after the Explorer’s newsletter “Adirondack Report” was published, McKeever wrote that Hogan had in fact submitted her resignation to the APA on Friday evening. Read more here.

In case you missed it, my colleague Mike Lynch had a story about the Northeast Wilderness Trust acquiring Bear Pond Forest, an over 1,000-acre inholding in the Five Ponds Wilderness. More on that here.

Photo at top: Tiffany Rea-Fisher is the new director of the Adirondack Diversity Initiative. Photo provided

This first appeared in Gwen’s weekly “Adirondack Report” newsletter. Click here to sign up.