Arc Herkimer’s Post

Transcript

Hi, I'm Kevin Crossley and this is executives and golf carts having fun. The president and CEO of our Kirkhammer, I take big swings for the organization and one of those big swings was our acquisition of the MV Golf and Event Center. 175 acres of pristine property, eighteen holes of golf, restaurant, bar and an event tent overlooking the beautiful Mohawk Valley. Dave Mandelman right to the DMV Golfing Events Center. How you doing? I'm doing great. Excellent. Great to see you. Ohh, let's load you up the sunshine and in Mohawk Valley here. Yeah, alright, let's do it. Alrighty. We're we're looking forward to today excellent that had some time with you and glad to have you since you are the man and art Kirkhammer and to be in your presence and being with you, you know. So Dave is the regional President of M&T Bank and has been in that role for many moons now for a little while, yeah, since M&T merged with Partners Trust in 2007 and where I became, you know, market president for Mt Bank in the Mohawk Valley and from a charitable perspective and run the business side of the bank for business banking and the Mohawk Valley. You have taken your role very seriously outside of your professional day-to-day job and and your volunteerism is has been really significant. Can you don't you tell us about a couple of those boards that you've been serving on? Well, yeah. You know, I, I get my community involvement. It's really about trying to make a difference in the community and people's lives. And absolutely everybody the same regardless of their situation. And. Yep. And I just have a lot of energy to trying to be part of boards and making that difference. Yeah. And I've served on a number of a number of boards over the years. And here you go. There you go. It's an easy game, really was. I was on the board of Hospice years ago. They built the second saw center, which is the comfort center. Yeah, that's there. OK. And I was part of that. And years later, my mom utilized those services, no kidding, at Hospice comfort care. Oh, wow. OK. So that's kind of that's very fulfilling. Well, yeah. And one example of that, it was grounded me as a young kid and influenced in my life was my grandfather, who was an Episcopal minister. New York City, OK and he did a lot of charitable and he made a lot of difference in a lot of people's lives. And one story I always tell, if I could say it real quick, is that he received the call one time and there was a mid 60s or whatever, like there in the 60s sometimes and it was from Martin Luther King. He asked my grandfather if he could coordinate with all the other clergy people in New York City to come down and Selma and help with the March, really a type of thing. Kidding. And I always take that to heart that he he received the call and he was asked to coordinate bringing people down to Selma to March. That's that's very meaningful beauty and inspirational for me. We have a lot of, you know, really good business people, charitable people that care about this community. Absolutely. Yeah. I think that makes a difference in our community and different from other communities that we are charitable, we care. Look at the MV gives program. I mean, the first year it does like 600 and some odd thousand. This last year was like 2.4 million, right. But it was on believable. Yeah, no, we were great. We we were on it. It was a great. And so it just all of a sudden, you know, you start to think, well, geez, what's what what is the possibility of this? You know, I mean, we're gonna do it next year. And actually Evan T is going to continue to be you're going to be a big part of it, be part of it again. What are some of the things that are going on in the banking world these days that concern you hear a lot about, you know, interest rates being high and interest rates haven't been high in so long, right? And it's it's a hard adjustment for people in inflation and that's a concern that's out there. But in banking, it's a very competitive industry. You know, we've got a lot of good banks and some local food banks that are here. Obviously M&T is one of the bigger banks that that are that are out here. But one of the things is commercial real estate in some of the larger urban areas are feeling some stress, not so much here, but you know, it's still a concern that, you know, it's real estate values will come down because of interest rates and inflation and things like that, though. But truthfully, our area is doing pretty well. Is that right? You know, we've had a lot of positive things. The housing market is strong. You know, posing is it's a supply. It's a housing issue. We don't have enough housing that's out there. Well, that's one of the concerns. Obviously if Micron goes into Syracuse a few years, sure we're going to spill over some of that positivity and relate it to that. And then if we look at it another chip or another company coming in to, you know, and I know they were RC, we're going to have a little housing. So probably the biggest thing I think is, is really housing, you know, the availability and the supply. Well, that's what it's all about, yeah. Connections in the community, introducing people to each other. Like, you know, introduce you to Fiber 9 and you guys did a project with them and. Developer relationship with the community and that. That's kind of what I'd love to do, is connect people with each other in the community and for the betterment of organizations and businesses in town. Obviously, the business relationship continues very, very strong way. And yeah, you know, again, we can't thank you and M&T enough for the things that you've done for us and with us. So thanks for being a part of it. Yeah, part of the part of the family as we say, right.