Mayor Clyde Rabineau swears in Zelda Newman as Village Board Trustee. (Facebook / Clyde Rabineau)

SARANAC LAKE — At Monday night’s meeting of the Saranac Lake Village Board of Trustees, Mayor Clyde Rabineau appointed Zelda Newman of Saranac Lake as a new trustee. Newman fills the vacancy left by Patrick Murphy, who recently resigned to devote more time to his position as executive director of the Saranac Lake Area Chamber of Commerce. Newman will hold the position until the next mandated election, in March 2021.

“She’s very independent-minded,” said Mayor Rabineau by phone on Tuesday about Newman. “She has a stake in our future,” he continued, adding that he’s known her for years and that Newman just bought a house in town.

The Board of Trustees will fill its other open seats, two four-year positions, in a Sept. 15 election, itself postponed from March by the pandemic. Rich Shapiro and Tom Catillaz, both Democrats, and Fred Balzac, representing the Green Party, are the three candidates for those two seats.