ANCA readies for upcoming annual meeting in Tupper Lake

TUPPER LAKE — The theme of the upcoming annual meeting of the Adirondack North Country Association (ANCA) is “Growing the New Economy of Tomorrow.”

The event is set for Sept. 23 from 1-3 p.m. at the Wild Center in Tupper Lake with a reception to follow. 

Those attending will include business owners; farmers; municipal leaders; environmental advocates; workforce-development professionals; utility providers; tourism agencies; chambers of commerce; and community leaders, per an ANCA email about the event.

Besides the guest speakers, the event will include video presentations by Julian Mangano of Della Terra Farm in Castorland in Lewis County; Chrissie Wais and John Levy with the Belvedere Restaurant & Property in Saranac Lake; and Community Liaisons: Center for Businesses in Transition.

Those attending will also have the chance to tour the Wild Center’s new “Climate Solutions” exhibit with executive director Stephanie Ratcliffe. 

The annual meeting will also include an outdoor reception with light refreshments by ADK Food Hub of Tupper Lake and craft beverages from Raquette River Brewing and Four Maples Vineyard & Winery of Champlain.

Based in Saranac Lake, the independent nonprofit ANCA says it “uses innovative strategies for food systems, clean energy, small businesses, and equity and inclusion to create and sustain wealth and value in local communities.”

Guest speakers

The ANCA annual meeting’s guest speakers include Lorenzo Boyd, a nationally recognized expert in police-community relations and an authority on urban policing. Boyd currently serves as a professor of criminal justice and community policing at the University of New Haven in Connecticut, per the ANCA website.

Maxwell Nason, who has owned Happy Camping RV LLC in Vermontville in Franklin County since December 2021, will address the gathering as well.

Attendees will also hear from Pete Nelson, who is co-founder of the Adirondack Diversity Initiative (ADI) and leads ADI’s community policing program. Nelson is also a mathematics teacher and member of the Diversity Task Force at North Country Community College in Saranac Lake.

The guest speakers also include Emmett Smith, who co-founded Northern Power & Light (NP&L) in 2018 to connect his family’s hydroelectric plant — Azure Mountain Power in St. Regis Falls — directly to local customers using New York’s Community Distributed Generation program. NP&L now works with independent hydro generators throughout the region, providing local homes and businesses with a renewable-power option.

In addition, attendees will hear from John Culpepper, Jennifer Perry, and Katie Culpepper, who will talk about Compost for Good (CfG). Compost for Good is a community scale organics-recycling partnership between ANCA and AdkAction. The CfG team supports community scale composting in the North Country and beyond to “reimagine waste,” per the ANCA website.