The Saranac Lake Village Board is moving closer to leasing the Paul Smith’s Electric Light and Power building at 1-3 Main St. to the Adirondack Park Agency. The plan has been presented largely as a done deal with with details hammered out behind closed doors and little or no public input.

The lease, when approved by the village board, will require the eviction of the Saranac Lake’s police department, which is headquartered in the pump house portion of the building.

Mayor Jimmy Williams has proposed building an emergency services building to house the police department as well as the fire department and rescue squad at 33 Petrova Ave., a property the village has yet to buy. The sale of the property, owned by Citizen Advocates, is awaiting a subdivision permit from the APA, which has jurisdiction because wetlands are present.

Mayor Williams has claimed the two proposals are unrelated, but of course they are directly linked in a way that presents a serious conflict of interest for the agency whose responsibilities include protecting wetlands.

If it succeeds in leasing the 1-3 Main St. building to the Park Agency, the Village will foreclose an immediate solution to the police department’s urgent need for expanded space. In 2018, Landmark Consulting of Albany delivered a report commissioned by the Saranac Lake village board on possible uses for the 1-3 Main St. building. The report concluded that the single best use for the building would be for the village to reoccupy the property using the ground floor for an expanded police headquarters and the second and third floors for village offices.

The Landmark study projected the cost of upgrading the building — while restoring its historic character — at $1,888,000, a figure that comes to $220 per square foot. By comparison, the proposed emergency services building presented to the public in March will cost $27 million or $386 per square foot for the roughly 70,000-square-foot structure. This figure does not include ongoing annual maintenance for a structure 20% larger than a football field.

Moreover, the village has secured only $15 million in earmarks from this year’s federal budget.

Two things are clear: 1. The proposed emergency services facility will take years to realize — potentially leaving the police department homeless — and 2. Much of the $12 million shortfall in funding will need to be made up by village taxpayers in one form or another.

Currently the village has over $2 million in a reserve fund for expanding emergency service facilities; it could use that money to upgrade 1-3 Main St. (which will also save taxpayers on rent it now pays for office space in Harrietstown Hall), leaving the federal money to build a combined fire/rescue complex on land the village purchased for this purpose near Broadway.

Another Landmark Consulting Study commissioned last year by the current village board recommended restoring the current firehall for emergency service offices and building new apparatus bays with ample room for access and egress directly behind the historic structure.

Mayor Williams and Deputy Mayor Matt Scollin, both of whom sit on the Emergency Services Facility Committee, have rejected repeated requests to consider this obvious and fiscally sound solution to the village’s pressing need for expanded police fire and rescue facilities. They have yet to explain why.

It is time for the remaining members of the village board, in due diligence, to conduct a full and honest cost comparison of available options for village emergency service facilities–before holding any vote to commit 1-3 Main Street to a longterm lease. The Adirondack Park Agency’s wish to relocate elsewhere in Saranac Lake should be encouraged. But the village board cannot put the agency’s interests ahead of the interests of Saranac Lake village residents and taxpayers.

Mark Wilson, Saranac Lake

Doug Haney, Saranac Lake

Laura & David Hull, Saranac Lake

Donna Day, Saranac Lake