ASSIGNMENTS

During a brainstorm session, the group identified two specific challenges to be studied before the next meeting: energy issues and the lack of broadband Internet in much of the Adirondack Park.

Representatives from the Adirondack Research Consortium, Syracuse Center of Excellence and Workforce Development Institute said they would work on energy strategies.

The issue of broadband Internet went to two organizations already working on the task: the Community Broadband Network and the Development Authority of the North Country. Officials from the Adirondack Park Agency and Empire State Development also said they would lend assistance.

Organizers of the Common Ground Alliance urged the conference to assemble working groups to study specific problems to report back in the fall.

LOBBYING

"We would still like a document that has 150 organizations signed on to it that can go to Albany and say this is it," said Lani Ulrich, who chairs a key committee of the Adirondack Park Agency Board of Commissioners.

Ulrich is one of the organizers who hope the Common Ground Alliance can wield some influence in the state capital.

Others -- like Fred Monroe, executive director of the Adirondack Park Local Government Review Board, which represents the interests of town and village governments inside the park -- said there are risks to lobbying or becoming another advocacy group.

Monroe said that if the alliance were to pass resolutions on specific issues over a minority, that minority would begin to feel shut out.

"You do that with enough issues and then the whole thing starts to fall apart," he said in an interview.

Bill Farber, president of the Association of Adirondack Towns and Villages, said that as long as the advocacy is a product of total consensus, it could be an impressive tool in Albany and Washington.

"As long as the advocacy is driven by our agenda, I think it's a great role for us," he said.

But getting a "formal document that everybody can agree to" is not the greatest accomplishment of the Common Ground Alliance, he said.

"They've been able to change the tenor and debate between all the interest groups of the Adirondacks."