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Cleanup thanks

From left, Hannah Gibbons-Author of Saranac Lake, Emily Martz of the Saranac Lake Downtown Advisory Board and Barb Martin of the Saranac Lake Women’s Civic Chamber take part in a village cleanup on May 20, 2017, in Berkeley Green. (Photo provided — Tim Fortune)

To the editor:

Thank you to Saranac Lakers and friends who helped clean up the downtown area! On Saturday, May 20, 26 people met at Berkeley Green and spread out across the downtown streets and alleyways picking up anything from cigarette butts to busted blue coolers along the river.

This year, the cleanup was a partnership between the Saranac Lake Women’s Civic Chamber and the Downtown Advisory Board. The Women’s Civic Chamber has been organizing the annual cleanup for many years and this spring approached the DAB to take the reins. Five women created the chamber in 1955 and invited all women of Saranac Lake to join them in finding ways to give back to their community. The Downtown Advisory Board was formed in 2013 by the village trustees and provides advice to the trustees regarding ways to enhance the “experience, image and lifestyle of Downtown Saranac Lake.”

Thanks to the concerted efforts by Jeff Dora of the village’s Department of Public Works, this was the cleanest the village has been in recent memory prior to the cleanup. Saturday’s volunteers described their work as “detail” work and appreciated the time invested by Jeff’s crew. Volunteers also noted the reduced amount of “fertilizer” thanks to the prevalence of doggie bags near the parks and along the River Walk. Thank you to Coakley High Peaks Ace Hardware for its donation of gloves, which we will use next year as well.

Collaboration between the village’s stakeholder groups has been growing in the past few years. DAB is taking great strides to identify all the downtown stakeholders and their missions, of which there are at least 21, in order to facilitate communication. In 2016 and 2017, partnerships led to a brighter than usual downtown during the holiday season. At our annual mixer at Bitters and Bones in March, DAB facilitated one-minute presentations of the 21 organizations, which was attended by nearly 60 people. Look for a list of these organizations and their contact information in the near future.

For more information about the Saranac Lake Women’s Civic Chamber, visit them on Facebook @womenscivicchamber, and for the DAB, visit downtownsaranaclake.com.

Emily Martz

Village of Saranac Lake Downtown Advisory Board

Saranac Lake

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