To the editor:

A disgruntled former Saranac Lake village trustee is asking village Mayor Jimmy Williams to resign because Williams does not live in the village.

I was going to give that former trustee “a pass” on this one (as my friend Jim Frenette used to say) but decided against it.

That former trustee is taking a knife to a gunfight. There are others who have served as mayor who did not live in the village but used a “political address,” as Mayor Williams is doing.

Precedent seems to rule in some legal decisions. This is one case that I remember well. Phil Wolff had a big business in the town of North Elba — Wolff’s Nursery and Floral Company in Ray Brook and a flower shop at 11 Academy Street in Saranac Lake, plus a thriving landscape business.

He served respected and re-elected as a North Elba Town Magistrate for a long time. Everyone knew he did not live in North Elba. He lived at 1066 Kiwassa Lake Road, Saranac Lake. Maybe Phil slept one night a month in one of his huge greenhouses on his Ray Brook property.

So Phil paid a lot of taxes to the town of North Elba. Mayor Williams probably pays more taxes to the village of Saranac Lake than all the other four village trustees combined. In addition, another one of his village activities, with his family, is to sponsor the Turkey Trot every year, which has contributed tens of thousands of dollars for charities in Saranac Lake. Look it up.

I can’t help but tell about this neat political gambit. In Saranac Lake into the 1960s, one had to be a taxpayer/property owner to be qualified to run for a seat on the village board.

There was a vacant lot in the village that changed hands so many times there must have been a hundred names hanging off the bottom of that property deed. I have to be careful now, my mother must have told me 10,000 times not to exaggerate.

I hope the residents of Saranac Lake will support Mayor Williams to continue his good service to Saranac Lake based on the above information.

Howard Riley

Harrietstown