To the editor:

On March 18, I will be voting for Kelly Brunette for mayor, and for Jeremy Evans and David Trudeau for the two open trustee positions. I trust that they will bring needed change to the village government. We need better informed decision-making in Saranac Lake, with transparency and appreciation of community input.

When Jimmy Williams was elected as our mayor, I had high hopes that he would be a successful village leader. He is a likable and respected local businessman who clearly loves Saranac Lake. However, over the years that he has served, my disappointment has grown. I’ve witnessed his inability to fully consider the views of fellow board members and the public, and his failure to adjust his thinking accordingly. There have been few efforts to engage the public in dialogue and an overreliance on a tight circle of like-thinking advisors.

Notable examples include planning for improved space for local emergency services, the Adirondack Park Agency’s proposed headquarters relocation to 1-3 Main Street, and most recently, the rollout of grant-funded Flock cameras within the village. It appears that each of these projects was conceived “in the dark” with minimal input from the trustees and the public. And with each, there has only been a cursory review of alternatives and no rigorous consideration of costs and benefits.

With the emergency services complex, there was an early lock-in to a plan for a consolidated facility that is too expensive and will unduly burden local taxpayers. And while questions about this proposal were solicited from the public years ago, the follow-up public meeting that was promised by the mayor has never taken place.

APA’s proposal to relocate its headquarters to 1-3 Main Street was too quickly embraced by the mayor without any public consideration of whether this was in the village’s best long-term interest. There was no insistence that the Park Agency hold a long-promised public meeting at which a myriad of questions could be answered. And even now, three years after being proposed, the public is unaware of what can be gained or lost from this proposal, what lease arrangements are under consideration and what alternative uses could have been made for the historic structure and the site.

And finally, the FLOCK cameras with integrated AI technology to a national surveillance network. The choice of this technology from a range of alternatives that were defined by the grant was made without the involvement of village trustees or with any public discussion. The recent announcement of the cameras on Facebook surprised the trustees and the public-at-large and led to such criticism that a temporary hold on further implementation was announced.

The last four years have demonstrated decision-making that falls far short of what we should expect from representative government in our village. We can do far better than this. Please consider joining me in voting for Kelly Brunette, Jeremy Evans and David Trudeau.

Stephen Erman

Saranac Lake