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Village renews lease for Harrietstown Hall

Seeks other sites for Saranac Lake offices

SARANAC LAKE — Village officials discussed an exit strategy from the Harrietstown Town Hall Monday, even as they narrowly approved a new two-year lease to keep the village offices there for now.

Mayor Clyde Rabideau said he will meet Friday with state Sen. Betty Little to discuss the possibility of the village using the now-closed state armory on state Route 3.

“Betty’s going to come up from Albany and give us the lay of the land,” the mayor said after Monday’s village board meeting.

Earlier, Rabideau cast the tie-breaking vote to re-up the village’s lease with the town of Harrietstown for another two years. The village offices have been located on the second floor of the town hall since December 2011.

The new lease was tabled last month after village trustees said it was too expensive and raised concerns about some of its clauses, like the village paying $750 rent to Paolo Magro for public use of the parking lot he owns next to Wholesale Furniture & Appliance. They were also upset with a clause that lets the town be part of any negotiations the village enters into for high-speed, fiber-optic cable internet service in its offices, so the town can get the identical service.

Reporting back on negotiations with the town at Monday’s meeting, Trustee Allie Pelletieri said the latest version of the lease reduced the village’s rent from $15 to $14.42 per square foot. That means the village will pay the town $41,256 per year, or $3,438 per month for the roughly 2,800 square feet of office space it uses in the building.

Pelletieri said the $14.42 is the same rate the village charges Adirondack Health for use of the former village offices at 3 Main St. The town also agreed to drop the high-speed internet clause from the deal, although it has to approve where the fiber-optic lines would run through the building, Pelletieri noted.

“I think we have to go for this,” he said. “They don’t seem like they’re going to change. We can’t just move out. It would take us an easy year if we started going at it now to find a place that was ready.”

“We’re stuck,” Rabideau said.

Pointing to a set of armory blueprints on the table, Trustee Tom Catillaz asked if there’s “any forward movement” on the village’s potential use of that space.

“The room looks adequate,” Rabideau said. “We’re going to spend some time with these prints, meet with some department heads and hope to come back to the board. In the meantime, I’m going to meet with Betty Little on Friday.”

Still, the mayor said it could take up to two years for the village to be able to work out a deal for the armory. Should a new location surface sooner, Pelleteri noted the village can opt out of its lease with Harrietstown by giving 90 days’ notice.

“I think the village offices should be downtown and easily accessible,” Catillaz said. “I don’t think (the armory) is (accessible) to the common, everyday person, but I think we should be looking more long-term for a permanent place, and this is not it up here (in the town hall). It’s really on the expensive side.

“I think if (the armory) does not pan out, we could go to Van Buren Street and build a building, and in 20 years it would be paid for,” Catillaz added. “We’d have a permanent place with offices, the police department and village workers up there, too. Everything would be in one spot and easily located by any person in the village.”

The board discussed setting up a work session to discuss the possibilities. Pelletieri said there are a lot of variables, noting that the Saranac Lake Volunteer Fire Department needs a new firehouse. Maybe the fire department could go to Van Buren Street and the firehouse could become village offices, he said.

When the discussion came back to the town hall lease, Trustee Paul Van Cott said he has a problem with the village paying a commercial rate to rent space in a municipal building.

“For the people who live in the town of Harriestown, in the village, it’s basically taking money out of this pocket and putting it into another one,” Van Cott said. “The only people who really come out ahead are the people who live outside the village in the town of Harrietstown, because they’re getting the benefit of revenues coming from the village to pay for this. The whole thing just seems very dysfunctional to me.”

Instead, Van Cott said the village and town need to work together on ways to consolidate to save taxpayer money.

The lease was ultimately approved on a 3-2 vote, with Rabideau, Pelletieri and Trustee Rich Shapiro in favor, and Catillaz and Van Cott opposed.

After the meeting, Rabideau was asked what’s wrong with the current location of the village offices. The first thing he said was the lack of parking, even though there’s public parking just down Main Street in the lot next to Wholesale Furniture & Appliance.

“It’s a block away. People don’t walk that far,” Rabideau said. “We’re also on the second floor, with a terrible office layout. It’s enough to make us look around. No hard feelings. It’s just not a prime, grade A location. We have a big traffic flow through here, people coming in to pay their bills and do village business. It’s not convenient.”

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