Lake George Village opts out of cannabis sales and cafes
From a village press release, Nov. 16: Lake George Village Board of Trustees has unanimously voted to opt-out of allowing retail establishments and on-site consumption of cannabis in the resort village.
Village officials held a public hearing recently where everyone in attendance urged the Village Board to prohibit the sales that have recently been approved by New York State.
Most at the hearing cited past problems with users at their properties and the image of the Village as a family-resort. Others spoke about the effects users might have on police presence and children at the many village events.
The village does not have a police department.
No one attended the meeting where the formal vote was taken, but all trustees and the Mayor spoke against allowing retail dispensaries. Some mentioned they could opt-in later or when the State regulations became more defined. All mentioned the revenue expected would be small compared to the expected problems.
[Read more about expected funding here.]
Guerra Arraigned
Samantha Guerra who ran for Commissioner of Accounts in Saratoga Springs this fall, and was accused of collecting or attesting to fraudulent election petition signatures was arraigned on Wednesday Nov. 18. She faces two counts of Misconduct in Relations to Petitions, under election law, not criminal law, her lawyer Oscar Schreiber said. The charge is an unclassified misdemeanor.
According to a story in the Daily Gazette, her case has been assigned to Schenectady County District Attorney as Saratoga County’s DA Karen Heggen told the judge she had a conflict of interest.
Dillon Moran, the Democrat and presumptive winner of the city council seat, held a press conference in September accusing the Republican of possibly forging signatures on the petitions and of DA Heggen’s office of not acting on letters received. Other people brought the accusations forward. Saratoga Springs and the state police investigated the accusations.
Schrieber said outside the courtroom Nov. 18, “I believe this is all about politics.”
He said the Board of Elections had approved the petitions, and the Democrats are merely trying to weaken a political rival who ran a close race in case she decides to run again.
She goes back to court Dec. 21.
Sign of the times: Capri Village is emptying the cabins
A Facebook yard sale-style ad says “Bring your tools, extra hands and cash!”
The new owners of the Capri Village motel in Bolton Landing on Lake George are “selling everything,” the ad says. Almost all will be razed. The new owner, David Massaroni who closed on the property earlier this month, is constructing a house for himself near the lakeshore and is working through the Bolton Town planning process to construct a number of homes for sale on the property.
[Read our coverage here.]
Therefore, everything on the property currently must go: bed sets, dressers, nightstands, sleeper sofas, tables, chairs, refrigerators, air-conditioning A/C units, microwaves, coffee makers, Cooktops, grills, picnic tables, umbrellas, propane hot water tanks, and much more, the ad says.
Repaired statue re-installed in Congress Park
From an announcement: The NY 77th Infantry Regiment Monument (“Civil War Statue”) was vandalized in July of 2020 requiring significant repairs to the zinc statue. On Tuesday, Nov. 16, 2021 at 10 a.m. in Congress Park, the company that performed the statue repairs will re-install the statue on it’s base in coordination with the Department of Public Works. No one has been arrested in the case.
Warren EDC fishing attack nets “angler” $2,000
Jim Siplon admitted to the Warren County Economic Development Corporation board that an email-based fraudulent fishing expedition caught an employee of the EDC. He explained this at the monthly meeting, Tuesday Nov. 16. Siplon is the president of the WarrenEDC.
He said that remote work and reliance on email communication had caught the company with its guard down. He said that a request was made to change one employees’ payroll, “and we executed it.”
Clearly bothered by the situation, he said it was traumatizing for the organization that has worked a lot remotely and suffered through quarantines.
“This was a significant emotional event for staff,” he said.
The board members then spoke about remediation, the need and cost for training against this sort of attack. One of the membership said the anti-fraud training can be expensive, but worth it: “It’s not cheap, probably one hundred bucks a head...Thank goodness [the theft] wasn’t something bigger.”