AUBURN — Unity House of Cayuga County, Inc. recently announced it has added Richard Slagle to its board of directors.

Slagle, a nurse practitioner at Auburn Correctional Facility, began his new duties in January. He was raised in Washington state before moving to New York in his 20s. Slagle has been a registered nurse or nurse practitioner at a number of health-care facilities in Central New York, including Pulaski, Oswego, and Syracuse.

“When I first met Rich, he spoke about his passion for data and how it informs individual and organizational choices,” Unity House Executive Director Liz Smith said in a release. “His health care background and his love of data will lend themselves well as the board introduces our new three-year strategic plan, which specifically calls for data-driven decision making.”

Slagle holds an associate degree in nursing from St. Joseph’s College of Nursing in Syracuse, a bachelor’s degree in psychology and forensics from SUNY Oswego, and a master’s degree in nursing from Upstate Medical University.

The nonprofit Unity House of Cayuga County says it provides transitional and permanent housing, rehabilitative, and employment services for individuals with mental illnesses, developmental disabilities, and/or chemical dependencies from which they are recovering. The agency serves more than 700 people per day in six Central New York counties. 

New York dairy farmers produced 14.9 billion pounds of milk last year, down 0.3 percent from 2017 production levels, the USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) recently reported.

Production per cow in the Empire State averaged 23,888 pounds in 2018. That was 37 pounds below a year ago, NASS said.

The average number of milk cows on farms in New York last year totaled 623,000 head, down 1,000 head from 2017.

Nationally, 2018 milk production totaled 218 billion pounds, up 1 percent from the year prior, the USDA reported. Annual total U.S. milk production has increased 15 percent from 2009.