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After a dozen years, Terry Martino is retiring as the executive director of the NYS Adirondack Park Agency. Terry is an admirable person who has had a difficult job of balancing the pressures from APA applicants, staff, members and the Cuomo administration – and much else.
But for more than a decade she – like many others – loyally saluted as a member of Team Cuomo, the Governor who:
- put up those banners in Ray Brook that the Park was Open for Business;
- weakened both the Private Land Use and State Land Plans;
- weakened the APA and was satisfied with token environmentalism on its board;
- steered APA further off course from its mission as a planning agency in an era when climate change accelerates the urgent need for better land use planning.
General inquiries about the Adirondack Almanack should be directed to editor 
Loss of Institutional Memory at the APA
Veterans should be empowered to help newer hires understand that they are part of an important historical legacy. This is not to say that the institution cannot adapt to new circumstances and improve. It must. It is to say that there ought to remain a commitment to always keep the legacy in view so that the compass points in the same direction.
Adirondack Park Agency staff are highly skilled resource professionals doing a difficult job on a huge scale, working under difficult legal timelines and, like the rest of us, isolated from their colleagues during the pandemic. However, judging from comments some of them made last week during the permit issuance for the Woodward Lake major subdivision, I believe the Adirondack Park Agency has lost significant amounts of institutional memory. That can lead to mission creep.
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