Delivering the Legislature's annual State of the County address at its March 26 meeting, Lynne Johnson, chairman, opened by calling the county's finances "strong" before spending most of his remarks describing costs the county is trying to avoid. According to the minutes, a study estimated it would cost approximately $55 million to replace the twenty-five-year-old Public Safety Building, which houses the probation department, the district attorney's office and the sheriff's office. Rather than build new, the county instead acquired the former Genesee Community College property to relocate probation and, likely, another department out of the County Office building — a move Johnson said the county is "confident this will save millions of dollars in construction costs." The same reasoning applied to the Treasurer's Office. A review of Central Hall — described in the minutes as the county's most expensive building per square foot to maintain — led the county to acquire a former Bank of America building instead. The new, ADA-compliant Treasurer's office is expected to open this summer. Two resolutions later in the same meeting touched Albion directly. In Resolution 141-324, legislators approved an intermunicipal agreement making the County Treasurer the "sole and exclusive authority" to collect Albion Central School District taxes for the 2024/2025 and 2025/2026 school years. And in Resolutions 142-324 and 143-324, they signed a new contract with Absolute Auctions and Realty, Inc., running through December 2028 at no cost to the county, and set terms for this year's county tax-foreclosure property auction: Tuesday, July 30, 2024, at 10 a.m., at the Albion Elks Lodge on West State Street. All three passed 7-0. The two threads — the county's building strategy and its role as tax collector — met in a detail Kimberly DeFrank, treasurer, gave in her cash report: the county was preparing to send schools and villages "a little over $3 million" to "make them whole" on unpaid property taxes from the prior year, an advance the county recovers over time through foreclosure and, eventually, auctions like the one set for the Elks Lodge. Not resolved at the meeting was a request the Village of Albion sent the same night. The clerk read into the record a village resolution proposing a "Potential PILOT Plan" — a payment-in-lieu-of-taxes arrangement — covering property the county has purchased inside the village. The minutes record no discussion or vote on the village's resolution; it was received only as a communication. Johnson used the balance of his address to describe pressure arriving from Albany. Governor Hochul's proposed budget includes a $100 million cut to road funding for counties and towns, he said, at a time when construction-material costs have approached 60 percent inflation — and he noted that 48 percent of vehicle miles driven in New York are on local roads, while less than 12 percent of the taxes and fees the state collects from drivers goes back to maintaining them. He also said the state took designated Medicaid funds from county governments last year and, when counties objected, told them to absorb the loss. Homelessness was the other strain Johnson flagged. Placements of homeless people in Orleans County have risen 273 percent since July 2022, he said, with placements outside the county up 900 percent over the same span — a trend that led the county to declare a state of emergency last year. Not-for-profits have worked on the problem, Johnson said, but "there does not seem to be any good options on the horizon." He pointed to one piece of county-village cooperation already finished: last month, the Legislature approved $174,000 in grant funding for portable radios for law enforcement agencies in the villages of Albion, Holley and Medina, completing the second phase of a multi-year radio upgrade. The first phase, completed in 2022, equipped all eleven county fire departments at a cost of $229,528. Johnson also described the county's broadband build-out — a $4.9 million project that included a new radio tower in Carlton and drew $1.8 million in Community Development Block Grant funds — as nearing completion, with the county still pursuing additional federal funding. The most consequential decision Johnson raised won't be made by the Legislature at all. A county committee has finished its report on switching to a "District Court model" for local courts, and voters will decide the question by referendum this November. Johnson said he believes the report's conclusions "leave no doubt this is the best path forward." The outcome, though, is up to voters. In the meantime, the county's new Treasurer's office is due to open this summer, the tax-foreclosure auction is set for the Albion Elks Lodge on July 30, and the Village of Albion's PILOT request remains before the county with no recorded response.