SARANAC LAKE — AI music videos; personal attacks; allegations of propaganda, misinformation and secrecy; concerns of a lack of transparency and hurt feelings. Emotions ran high in a discussion around the proposed public safety complex at 33 Petrova on Monday, as several long-standing arguments around the project came to a head in a four-and-a-half hour meeting.

The project has been discussed in some aspect at nearly every single one of the two village meetings per month since it was first proposed nearly three years ago.

Though it was a bit chaotic, trustees also felt the discussion was a healthy outletting of frustrations and emotions that have been pent-up over years of the slow-moving project.

Trustee Matt Scollin said after the meeting that he felt it was “necessary.” When you have a “festering boil,” you have to lance it, he said. This was Saranac Lake’s “decidedly different” way of doing it.

Trustee Aurora White, the most vocal critic of how the project’s been planned on the board, said the debate on Monday was more of an open discussion with the public than the board’s had in a while.

New information was shared, fears were voiced, alternatives were weighed and frustrations were brought into the open.

Critics of the project feel that the plan to renovate the former St. Pius X High School into a complex for the three emergency departments is too expensive, too big and that the village should alter or abandon these plans for smaller, more affordable ones. They also feel the village has not been transparent enough with the details of the project.

Proponents of the project feel the village is keeping open discussion with the public on the project, that the building is ideal for the emergency departments and that though it’s expensive, there is plenty of time to get more grants to take the load off local taxpayers. They also feel the new facilities are long overdue.

Mayor Jimmy Williams feels the opponents are being stirred up by NIMBYs who are dishonest in their intentions, fearmongering and trying to ruin the village’s only chance at finally getting adequate facilities for these departments after decades of inaction.

The combined complex for Saranac Lake’s fire, rescue and police departments was estimated to cost $27.5 million several years ago, but will likely cost more now due to inflation.

The village currently has a down payment of up to $8 million in grant money and saved-up fund money to put toward that cost, and would then pay off the rest over a long period of time through loans called bonds.

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The armory

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Village resident Keith Murphy asked if the state has denied the village long-term use of the armory. The police moved to the former Army National Guard armory on state Route 3 last year to make room at the department’s former 1-3 Main St. building for a potential move of the Adirondack Park Agency headquarters from Ray Brook. Some have proposed the police stay there, allowing the work and cost at 33 Petrova to be scaled down.

The problem with the armory is that it is owned by the state, is not in the village and would likely be considered Forest Preserve land, blocking its sale.

The village police don’t even really have a lease for the armory — more of an agreement. Williams said, at any point, the state could give them 30 days notice to leave.

It would take an amendment to Article 14 of the state constitution to reclassify the land and allow the village to buy it, Williams said.

A constitutional amendment needs to be passed by both houses of the state legislature in two consecutive legislative sessions, and then ratified in a statewide vote among all New York voters.

In November, an amendment bringing the winter sports complex at Mount Van Hoevenberg into compliance with the law narrowly passed the statewide vote. Other constitutional amendments, like one which would release the abandoned Camp Gabriels prison land from the Forest Preserve, have languished in the state legislature for years and years, passing one house but not the other over and over.

Around a decade ago, after the New York Army National Guard pulled its troops out of the armory, the idea of the village buying the building and land was proposed. The idea of it being a police station or a YMCA was discussed.

Then-state Sen. Betty Little worked very hard on a constitutional amendment, Williams said, and even she couldn’t get it done.

It’s not impossible. But it would take several years at minimum to do.

Trustee Kelly Brunette said she’d take the lead on pursuing a constitutional amendment.

Bob Testa, a member of the village’s public safety building committee, said several armories around the state are in similar situations and there’s an idea of consolidating them into one constitutional amendment vote.

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AI video

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Williams had the village clerk pull up a video posted by the “Better Saranac Lake” Facebook page, which he said “offended,” “demoralized,” “disgusted” and “hurt” local emergency volunteers, to the point where some mentioned considering stepping down.

The video, titled “The 12 Days of the Mayor’s Petrova Palace,” includes a song and music video created with artificial intelligence in an approximate style to “The 12 Days of Christmas” lampooning the size of the building project. It has lines like “19 toilets flushing,” “20 private bedrooms,” “three big-a** day rooms” and “and one mayor’s rule by decree.”

“This is satire — but the issue is real,” the post states.

Williams said the video is “not free speech,” but “propaganda.”

Lines about a “25% tax increase” he called “misinformation.” At the previous board meeting, the trustees had agreed they would not approve a tax increase that high. Trustees agreed they felt comfortable with taking out a bond of $5 million to $10 million. Any more than that would have an impact on taxpayers they felt would be too high. More information on the tax impact analysis can be found at tinyurl.com/4d6na5wf. Village Manager Bachana Tsiklauri is slated to provide more data on the analysis at the board’s Dec. 22 meeting.

Williams has previously said he is “100% confident” the village will get more state and federal grants and said the village won’t go out to bid without getting more grants.

Williams also took issue with the song saying the project will have a “$36 million price tag.” The cost of the project is expected to rise from the $27.5 million currently estimated. The village expects to get a new estimate by the end of January. But Williams said $36 million is speculative.

Trustee Sean Ryan, a member of the Saranac Lake Volunteer Rescue Squad, called the video a “slap in the face” and said though it might have been targeted at the village administration, the volunteers feel attacked.

Former SLVFD Chief and current member Brendan Keough said he was embarrassed by the video. Volunteers are taken for granted, he said. They miss every major holiday with family because they’re saving lives and he said they’re questioning why they get up in the middle of the night to respond to an emergency if this is how they’re treated.

Volunteers are stressed and demoralized already, he said. Comments like “Petrova Palace,” “Taj Mahal” and “golden toilets” hurt. Currently, the fire department is in a 100-year-old building, built back when they used horse-drawn fire carts. The floors are falling apart and the fire trucks will eventually fall through the floor, Keough said.

“We’re hanging on by a thread with our volunteers,” Keough said.

He asked for an apology from the video’s creator and for the video to be deleted.

Village resident Steve Erman said the reason for this video is a failure of the village and the departments to communicate with the public about the project. As offensive as it is, he said it exists because the public has been left out of the process.

Trustees White and Brunette are involved in the Better Saranac Lake group, which is the Saranac Lake village Democratic party committee, but both denied creating the video when grilled by Williams about it.

White said these posts get people’s attention to an important issue.

Village resident and neighbor of the project Mark Wilson, who has worked for years as a political cartoonist, said political satire is not a sniper shot. It’s buckshot. It can be offensive, but also serve as catharsis for frustrations.

Williams accused Wilson of criticizing nearly every aspect of the project on a “quest” to disrupt it because it’s in his backyard.

“You are a cartoonist. Not a SEQR expert,” he told Wilson, relating to Wilson’s previous criticism of the State Environmental Quality Review process in this project.

“Jimmy stop. You are criticizing a member of the public,” White said.

The debate deviated from the project and started getting personal. Several members of the public were all standing and speaking at once, voices were raised and feelings were hurt.

Eventually, Scollin said he felt they hit “peak constructivity” for the evening and called for a motion to adjourn. It was a bitter ending to the meeting.

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Size discussion

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Murphy said initially, the three departments had a total 17,746 square feet of estimated need. The current plans have nearly 60,000 square feet.

He said larger towns have smaller buildings for individual departments. It’s hard to compare because few towns co-locate all of the departments in one place, but still, the taxpayer-to-square foot ratio is “way out of sync.”

Keough said they’ve made some cuts, but felt they can’t shrink the footprint much more. The size of the former high school is set. He said they can’t cut it apart. And garages have to be added to the structure, because the foundation of the school isn’t strong enough to support parking emergency vehicles on it.

The building has a large existing footprint, he said, mostly from the gymnasium.

This gym can be used for in-house training, as well as public use for sports, he said.

Keough explained some of the reasons the building plans have so many amenities. The current fire hall has two kitchens, two day rooms and three bathrooms for its paid live-in members and volunteer part-time members. The new plans have the same amount allotted for the fire department, while also adding a decontamination suite, which is a requirement the current fire hall does not fill.

The men and women who fight fires are exposed to cancerous materials in the process, he said. If 30 firefighters show up to a house fire, when they finish, they all need to shower before they can go home.

SLVFD has the largest fire district in the state, Keough said, and needs equipment to fight fires all over the place on different terrain.

The building can be an emergency shelter for natural disasters or other disruptive events. It can also be a public space for events.

The fire department has around 36 volunteer members, around half of what it used to have a couple decades ago. The SLVRS has 45 members, 14 of whom are volunteers. The Saranac Lake Police Department has around 12 members.

Village resident Tammara Van Ryn said environmental studies found mold, lead, PCBs and asbestos at 33 Petrova Ave.

She felt the cost to remediate these issues will be too much, and the village should tear down the building and build a smaller manufactured structure instead.

Williams said some of these issues have already been abated, others are small and others cannot be abated until the project is closer to starting.

White asked Williams to ask architecture firm Wendel Architecture, Engineering, Surveying and Landscape Architecture if the 8% fee it is charging will be levied on the conceptual plans or on the final designs. She said Wendel has incentive for the building to be more expensive if it’s on final designs.

She said, if the project is deemed too expensive and the village needs to shrink the building, she worried about paying twice for new designs after designing a project many already feel is too big.

“If we end up not being able to afford (it) and we have to design a smaller building, are we incurring more costs right now by pursuing these improvements to the building design as they are, that are unnecessary?” she asked.

If they spend time designing something too big and have to scale back, she wondered if they’d be wasting money to continue to design big.

Williams said he’d ask Wendel about this.