Ted Remsnyder is reporting for Columbia-Greene Media the CREATE Council on the Arts is looking to renew its relationship with Greene County. The county contributes $34,000 a year for the administration of the council and $40,000 for grants to be distributed to county arts groups. This year the county did not dispense the $34,000 in funds for administrative costs after the group went on hiatus following the departure of former Executive Director Marline Martin. Two of the agencies that receive funding from the council — the Bronck Museum in Coxsackie and the Michael J. Quill Irish Cultural and Sports Centre in East Durham — collected their portions of the funding after contacting the county. The rest of the money allocated has yet to be disbursed this year. “They basically went dormant,” Greene County Administrator Shaun Groden said of CREATE. “Without an executive director, all of the programmatic things were shelved. So they just kind of went dark. So we never got their annual application for funding, so the funding just sat there unexpended.” Former CREATE Executive Director Kay Stamer over the summer offered to volunteer to help jumpstart the council and shortly thereafter a new executive team was put in place. Executive Director Nathan McLaughlin and new Council President Anthony DeSantis appeared before the Legislature’s County Resources Committee last week to express their commitment to Greene County and propose the nonprofit group continue its arrangement in distributing the county’s arts grant funding. McLaughlin said the group plans to stay in its space on Main Street in Catskill, where it has been headquartered since the 1980s. Greene County Legislator Matthew Luvera said he wants to see the grant funding dispersed. “We didn’t really want to see the grants go away,” he said. “We were actually in the process of renaming it the Greene County Cultural Fund so we could issue the funds.” Ed. note: WGXC-FM is a program of Wave Farm, a recipient of financial support from the county Legislature through the County Initiative Program, administered by CREATE. Read the full story at HudsonValley360 [dot] com.