SARANAC LAKE – Local electricians blew a fuse this week over the village’s decision to do away with licensing requirements for electrical contractors who work in Saranac Lake.

More than a half-dozen local electrical contractors, all of whom hold village licenses, showed up at Monday night’s village board meeting to complain about the board’s May 11 vote to repeal its electrical licensing program.

The village did away with the program, which involves taking an exam that’s sent out for grading and paying a $25 fee, because it said it’s not needed. A building permit has to be obtained before any electrical work is done in the village, and that work must be inspected and approved by a village code enforcement officer and/or a qualified electrical inspector, according to the resolution the board approved May 11 on a 3-0 vote with no discussion.

Those existing inspection and approval requirements “provide adequate protection to the village,” and “it is not in the best interests of the village to require that electricians working in the village also obtain an electrical license,” the resolution reads.

However, the contractors who showed up in force Monday said the lack of village licensing would mean more contractors improperly installing wiring in homes and businesses.

“Having electrical work done properly is one of the biggest safety issues we face for fires today,” said Joe Gladd of Gladd Electric. “I have gone into a lot of projects in Saranac Lake and have seen some pretty atrocious wiring techniques that do not meet code and are unsafe for the people in the village.”

“There’s too many slipshod things being done. It’s bad,” said Ron Laramee of Saranac Lake Electric Company. “There’s no sense in not having a license.”

“It was not that many years ago that we lost a young child in an apartment building behind Stewart’s due to faulty electric,” added Tom Ammon of Ampersand Electric, recalling the 1995 Depot Street blaze that killed 16-year-old Paul Schlitt, which investigors blamed on bad wiring.

Others said the licensing program levels the playing field among the area’s electrical contractors. Some, including several longtime village license holders, described their certification as a source of pride.

“Anybody that’s taken that test has really had to study hard for it, go over the code and know the code,” said Elwin Hall, who holds village electrical license number 17. “I think the village opened itself up to liability when it did away with licensing.”

“I believe I’ve earned my license,” said Dale Reeder, an electrical contractor in Saratoga Springs who said he has a village license and family in this area. “It’s something I’ve worked very hard for; all of us have. This is our craft. This is our livelihood. This is what separates us from other guys that are just learning. We’ve past the test.”

Another contractor, Rick Stephenson of North Country Electrical Services, a village license holder since 1993, said the licensing requirement has never really been enforced in the village.

“I think it really needs to be brought back and enforced to provide the safety everybody would like here,” Stephenson said. “It’s going come down to somebody getting shocked, something burning down, and then we’ll go back to licensing.”

There was no such outcry in May when the board abolished the licensing program. Gladd told the Enterprise that’s because he and other contractors weren’t aware it was on the table; they found out about it later.

Village board members didn’t respond to the electricians who spoke during the public comment period at Monday’s meeting. Mayor Clyde Rabideau, a building contractor who has a village electric license, said he didn’t want to turn it into a debate and would have village staff respond in writing.

Rabideau later spoke with the Enterprise and wrote a series of posts on his Facebook page about the issue. He said doing away with licensing was a recommendation from village Code Enforcement Officer Patrick Giblin and Community Development Director Jeremy Evans, who’s also a licensed code enforcement officer.

Rabideau noted that no other municipalities north of Albany have their own electrical licensing program. He said Saranac Lake had a reciprocal agreement with several counties in the Albany area where each other’s licenses were recognized, but Rabideau said the village’s licensing program is not as stringent and rigorous as those other counties’ programs.

As a result, some people in those counties, who may not be eligible to take the exam in their own county, would come to Saranac Lake, take the village’s less demanding exam, get a village license and use it in their home county, Rabideau said.

“It is true that the simple answer would be to stop the reciprocation agreement with the other counties downstate and end the disparity, but (Giblin) also found no law on the (Saranac Lake) books requiring licensing in the first place,” Rabideau wrote on Facebook. “Trustees also questioned the cost to the village and the need for licensing in our small village when we are surrounded by hundreds of townships, villages and counties not requiring a license” and because of the existing building code inspection requirements.

Rabideau noted that many of the village-licensed electricians who spoke Monday said they come across shoddy electrical work in the village, which he said “undermined their argument” about the effectiveness of the village’s licensing program.

The mayor said he thinks electrical licensing should be done “the right way,” but he doesn’t think the village has the resources to administer such a program. It should be done at the county level or state level, he argued.

Nevertheless, Rabideau said Giblin plans to ask local electricians to attend a meeting where the issue could be discussed further.