SARANAC LAKE — Village Administrative Assistant Cassandra Van Cott will be leaving her position in the Community Development Department at the end of the week.

Village Clerk Amanda Hopf said the village is offering the job to people on the Franklin County civil service list first, and if no one takes it by the end of the week, will open the position up.

Van Cott has been on the job for five years now. It has evolved as she has learned and taken on new duties.

She has been involved in lots of behind-the-scenes work for the village — working with home and business owners applying for area variances and small site plan reviews; keeping the village development board informed of the projects they vote on; working with “robust” village advisory boards; and recently, completing all the special use permits for preexisting short-term rentals under Saranac Lake’s new STR law.

Van Cott said the development board has approved 46 of these permits so far. The village received a total of 91 applications for these preexisting STR permits, but Van Cott said a couple have dropped off because of people selling properties or unlisting them from STR services.

The administrative assistant position is a unique one because of the village’s unique community development department, Van Cott said. After getting hired in 2019, she eventually outgrew her initial position, and expanded her scope of work.

Van Cott said she has taken another job in planning, as an economic development assistant at the Lake Champlain-Lake George Regional Planning Board.

Van Cott said her favorite moments on the job have been the uniquely Saranac Lake things. She remembers a morning in 2019 when a group of volunteers, headed up by local artist Tim Fortune, painted the village logo at the Main Street and Broadway intersection.

She said this combined the artistic talents of town with the planning concept of traffic calming, creating a point of visual interest with a low sight-line in the street to slow traffic at a busy intersection.

Van Cott said the position is good for someone with knowledge about state entities, grants, and funding for village events and infrastructure; good communication and organizational skills; and knowledge of village planning terms and code.

Her advice for her successor is that the administrative assistant is part of a team, and to learn to rely on them.

Van Cott’s last day on the job is Friday. She will finally be taking her honeymoon with her husband Dylan Van Cott, travel and be with family before starting her new job. But leaving a job she’s had for five years, this is a “bittersweet” week, she said.