LAKE PLACID — Village Mayor Craig Randall said this village’s Board of Trustees will vote at its next regularly scheduled meeting on Feb. 6 on whether to borrow up to $750,000 in serial bonds to buy and install a 115-kilovolt circuit breaker for its electric department.

The vote was originally scheduled to take place at the village board’s meeting two weeks ago, on Jan. 17, but Randall said it was “slightly premature.” He said he and Trustee Peter Holderied want a more complete construction estimate and a clarified timetable on the proposed project from longtime village electric Superintendent Peter Kroha, who is scheduled to retire from the position at the end of March.

Randall further elaborated on why he feels the village is in a position where it is pursuing borrowing in the ballpark of three-quarters of a million dollars for the project, saying it is long overdue.

“When the new high line was brought into Lake Placid before 1980 (the year Lake Placid hosted the Winter Olympics), back in 1978 and 1979, the switch right now that would shut off our power if we needed to kill our power is in Lake Colby,” Randall said, “which means that when you power down, we would be powering down everybody that’s served on that high line all the way from Lake Colby through portions of Saranac Lake — including the prisons and Ray Brook.

“The installation of this is something that was known about as early as the late 1970s and ’80s,” he continued. “They put it in, none of us were around then — my guess is they were rushing to get that line in because power demands were increasing rapidly.

“There are also certainly penalties right now we would incur if we were to power down that we would have to pay National Grid,” Randall continued. “Peter Kroha, in his discussions with me, has indicated we need to put our own circuit breaker in and now is the time to do it and get it done. It’s just one of those projects that the department hasn’t moved on until now.”

At the Jan. 17 board meeting, Holderied expressed concern over why the village needs to commit to borrow $750,000 for the circuit breaker before a bidding company offers an estimate for the project. Village Treasurer Paul Ellis responded that the village needs to adopt a bond resolution first.

Randall said last week that he is gathering more information on the project before the planned vote on the bond resolution Monday. He mentioned a new structure would need to be constructed as well to house the circuit breaker.

“I know that there is other elements of this installation, there is a building that there has to be a contract issued for that that will go out for bid,” he said. “I don’t know (who) the manufacturer of the circuit breaker switch is, what they are focused on right now or who installs it. I really don’t know. I think we were asking for the department to give us more information.

“The project that we are doing is just an issue (where) I think our superintendent working with the engineering company wanted to get that piece out there so they could get that out for bid,” Randall said. “There aren’t a lot of companies that make those, only two or three.”