Richard Moody is reporting for Columbia-Greene Media a new poll of Columbia County businesses found that 30 percent of respondents believe the local business climate has improved somewhat, while 5 percent believe the improvement has been considerable. The plurality of respondents, or 49 percent, said the climate remains the same since last year. The first annual Columbia County Business Leaders Survey was conducted by the Siena College Research Institute and commissioned by the Columbia Economic Development Corporation. The results of that survey were presented April 24, during the agency's annual meeting at Kozel's Restaurant on Route 9H in Ghent. Thirty-nine percent of the 176 business owners surveyed said 2017 was a successful year for their enterprise. However, business owners expressed concern about the quality of the potential employee pool in the area, with 73 percent rating the suitability of the workforce as fair or poor, and 74 percent reporting the technical skill levels of those potential employees as problematic. And 70 percent of local business owners opined that the work ethic among local workers is either "a somewhat or very significant problem." Read the full story at HudsonValley360 [dot] com.