President and CEO discusses the merger between Mozaic, a chapter of The Arc New York in the Finger Lakes region, and Oswego Industries and Arc of Oswego, based in Fulton
By Mary Beth Roach
In December of 2024, the boards of Oswego Industries, Arc of Oswego and Mozaic, based in the Finger Lakes, decided to merge their agencies, all under the Mozaic umbrella, to serve individuals that have developmental and intellectual disabilities. As president and CEO of Mozaic, Allen Connely, said they are in the latter stages of the merger. He talks about combining the two organizations and plans for the future.
Q: What areas geographically does the agency cover and how many people do you serve?
A: We are in five counties — Oswego, Seneca, Cayuga, Yates and Tompkins — so about 2,500 square miles. We serve around 2,500 to 3,000 people in that area.
Q: What is your budget and how are you funded?
A: With all the agencies we manage about a $53 million budget; about 800-850 employees. Our services range from day services; employment programs in all of our counties that can help individuals with disabilities to be able to learn how to work. We’re also unique in that we have manufacturing at both Oswego Industries and Mozaic. We are a Department of Defense contractor. Mozaic manufactures all the wool and fleece hats for the Army, Navy, Air Force, Coast Guard, except for West Point. We have various revenue streams that help fund us. We have about 30 different residential facilities that we manage with people that have the most severe disabilities. We are funded through the state as well through Medicaid funding for some of our programming.
Q: Are you seeing an increase in the populations that you serve?
A: Generally speaking, we serve our older population. I would say between 40 and 65 years old historically. But we are seeing more of the autism spectrum individuals coming in, and so we work with them to help them with mostly employment services. We have a virtual reality [program] that helps them investigate what they might be interested in and from there, we can put them in different types of programs and volunteer opportunities to further define what that employment might look like.
Q: With the Oswego merger, you’ve had to adapt a lot of your programs. How has that been for you?
A: We adapted in various ways. Oswego Industries and Arc of Oswego were doing very similar things to what we’re doing at Mozaic. We have that background and expertise. Oswego Industries is mostly day services, but they do not have a clinic up here. Mozaic runs a clinic for individuals with disabilities. We have psychiatrists, psychologists, occupational therapists, physical therapists. We do counseling in the counties, including Ontario County. It’s one of the things that we’d like to bring here because there’s a heavy need for that type of service.
We want to be able to do that as well as any potential residential services. Mozaic does those in various counties. It may be appropriate, we don’t know yet, to provide those types of services in Oswego County as well.
Q: What do you see as some of the challenges in overseeing this operation?
A: Since a lot of our funding is Medicaid funding, it’s always a year-to-year budget with the state and we’re constantly doing advocacy work on our own with the legislators that are in our local area, but also through state organization, with The Arc New York. There appears to be some changes. We don’t know exactly what that’s going to portend to be during the last part of 2026 going into 2027, but our population obviously needs that funding. It’s really important that that advocacy work continues. We’re struggling from year to year and that’s one of the reasons why we look at other opportunities outside Medicaid funding. We attempt to do more things so that we can be more self-funded.
Q: With this merger in the works, what are some of your goals or objectives in the next year?
A: Operationally, we want to make sure that we don’t lose sight of continuing the basic blocking and tackling that we need to do to provide services. On the back end, we have to do a lot of upgrades in terms of IT structures, payroll structure, finance structures and make sure those are all melded together. We’ve been doing that about eight months now. That’s where our focus is this year. Going forward, into later 2026-27, we would really like to start expanding services, particularly in Oswego County. I think that there’s a lot of opportunity here and we can bring a lot to Oswego County with regards to the clinic, other residential services, other manufacturing that we can get into. It appears that this might be the start of our year of doing lawn maintenance and snow removal for various facilities within the state.
Q: Is there anything else you’d like to add?
A: We’re just really thrilled about this next venture. We and our boards are expecting great things and the next phase, particularly as it relates to Oswego. With Micron coming in, we think that there could be opportunity for us. We’re just excited for the future and what can happen in this part of the state.