GREENE – Thirty grand for the Village of Greene may be a tiny drop in comparison to the $91.1 million sprinkled throughout the Southern Tier last Wednesday by Governor Cuomo’s Regional Economic Development Council, but Mayor Marcia Miller called it “the perfect Christmas gift.”

“I didn’t even realize we had received the money; we are very pleased,” she said Friday. The money will be used to contract with Hawk Engineering of Binghamton for an engineering design and alternatives for upgrading the village’s outdated 1960s era waste water collection system. A new system is estimated to cost in the millions, but Miller hopes to fund it completely and have it up and running within the next five years.

The Southern Tier shot up in the rankings this year in earning development funding from the Regional Economic Development Council. The new, bottom-up approach, begun in 2011, brings local communities together to chart their own economic destiny. The Governor said the awards will deliver funding for critical projects and investments in communities across New York and help put New Yorkers back to work to rebuild the economy.