The 33 Petrova Ave. property is seen in September. (Enterprise photo — Aaron Marbone)

SARANAC LAKE — Funding and fiscal responsibility have come to the forefront around Saranac Lake’s plans to build a unified complex for volunteer fire and volunteer rescue squad departments at the site of the former St. Pius X High School.

The project aims to bring together the three emergency departments into one building on Petrova Avenue.

This plan has been contentious with neighbors and some others in the community, who from the beginning have opposed the size and location of the building. Recently, they’ve also raised concerns about the cost. They worry the project will saddle the village with debt.

Village leaders say they are working on responsibly budgeting for the project. They say the St. Pius X location is the only place in the village to fit the emergency services departments. Their consultants tell them it’s not feasible for the departments to grow in their existing locations, and department leaders agree.

The total cost is currently estimated at $27.5 million.

The village will have a down-payment of 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. The questions opponents are bringing up are — “How much will be bonded for?” and “How much will village taxpayers be on the hook for in the coming years?”

Currently, the village is anticipating having between $7.3 and $8.1 million for the project on-hand, depending on how certain villagewide grants are spent. That would leave around $20 million for the village to take out loans for.

But Mayor Jimmy Williams is “100% confident” the village will get more state and federal grants — he’s just not sure how much these grants will be for.

“These efforts are ongoing. This isn’t the amount that will need to be funded by the village resident,” he said.

He said they can’t even apply for many of these grants yet. And there are several other cost-cutting and fundraising measures he said the village will be pursuing.

Ideally, he wants a project that will not increase the tax burden. Residents have attended recent village board meetings to say they are concerned about taxes going up and pricing them out of their homes.

The state limits the amount of debt municipalities can carry to 7% of the combined full valuation of its taxable properties. For Saranac Lake, that cap is around $25.4 million. If the village takes out the majority of that debt for the EMS building project, opponents say this would leave the village with less credit for other projects, and a large bond. Even if it’s payed for over many years, this could increase property taxes and strain other departments.

“Affordability is feasibility,” Petrova neighbor and opponent of the project Mark Wilson has said several times.

Opponents say the village should have a plan to pay for the project set up first, before spending more money on planning the project. Williams says the village won’t know how much it will have to pay until it gets all its grants. And it can’t get some grants without paying for project plans.

“A lot of these funding opportunities are not available until you have at least a footprint and square footage of a building,” Williams said.

He added that the village is close to having a footprint finalized.

Williams said the project is still in its “infancy,” even after two years of work. It took a while to finalize the purchase of the property, study the wetlands and get preliminary plans drafted. They’ll need to have the project fully-funded before it can be bid for construction.

To know how much the village will pay, they need to know how much they have in grants. To know that, they need to know what they’re renovating and building. They still don’t know what they plan to renovate and build on the site.

Williams said the village is not holding back information. They just don’t know yet.

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The numbers

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The previous village administration earmarked $2.5 million for the project in 2022. Williams said that account has accrued $200,000 in interest so far and sits at $2.7 million now.

So far, $700,000 has been spent from this account for the purchase of the property and the first phase of design. This leaves around $2 million left of village money set aside for the project.

The village received a $4.5 million federal grant in March 2024 through a funding request submitted by North Country Rep. Elise Stefanik.

In October, the village was awarded $200,500 through a Volunteer Fire Infrastructure grant through the state Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Services.

The village also has received two grants from the state Energy Research and Development Authority which can be used on projects villagewide, potentially including the EMS building — a $275,000 grant for energy savings upgrades and a $500,000 grant for designing geothermal heating/cooling systems.

This is also not finalized, but Williams said the Saranac Lake Volunteer Rescue Squad has talked with the village about considering handing over their Broadway properties as a contribution to the project. Unlike the fire and police departments, the rescue squad’s headquarters are not village-owned. They are owned by the rescue squad itself. They’d need to get the buildings appraised, but Williams estimates them at around $650,000.

Williams also said the village could ask local towns which have contracts with these emergency services departments to contribute to the facility. The towns would need to agree to this and factor this expense into their already-tight budgets.

The latest blueprint the village has also cuts 9,000 square feet by potentially reducing the new garage space to be built and demolishing an existing addition to the original Pius X building, but these plans are not finalized.

Williams said this downsize could potentially shave an additional $2.7 million off the $27.5 million estimated total cost.

Currently, the building is sized at having a 38,890-square-foot first floor with a 24,235-square-foot crawl space. Initial plans called for around 30,000 square feet of garage additions.

The three departments currently take up 17,746 square feet in their separate locations. The consultants put the estimated space need for the three departments in the next 20 years — to improve their current situations and be prepared for the future of emergency response — at 67,000 square feet. The building proposed at 33 Petrova has had a rough floor plan of almost 69,000 square feet, though that is likely to change.

Williams also said the village could save money by doing site preparations and demolition in-house with village employees, instead of contractors.

Last summer, the village board approved a $340,000 contract with the architecture firm Wendel Architecture, Engineering, Surveying and Landscape Architecture for design work as part of a broader $1.78 million contract.

Long-term cost

Residents have brought up concerns about the long-term cost of a new facility — what it will cost to operate, maintain and heat a larger structure year-after-year.

Williams believes that, cumulatively, the annual operation and maintenance costs for this planned new facility could be less than the current three separate buildings would cost over that time-span. A new building will be much more energy efficient and have fewer repairs, he said.

Although it’s impossible to calculate, he believes it will be a long-term cost savings to the village.

The existing facilities are all in 100-year-old buildings. If the departments were to stay in them long-term, they’d need new roofs, repairs and insulation. The fire department roof is leaking. The heating system at the police station requires yearly repairs.

New buildings use significantly less energy than old ones. But, 33 Petrova is also a much larger space to heat and maintain.

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Other project details

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The plans for the project were first announced in 2023. The village purchased the land at 33 Petrova from Citizen Advocates in January 2024 for $350,000. Currently, the fire and rescue departments are at 100 Broadway and the police station is at 1-3 Main St.

Williams said he knows people want answers about details of the project. He wants answers, too. But he said it takes a while to get them. The process has been years in the works now, but it goes slow. Every change to the plans means considering wetlands, getting input from the three departments and weighing the costs. Every time they go back to the drawing board with a new request or change, it takes weeks to rework everything, Williams said.

The village and its consultants say the departments cannot grow in place, like opponents of the 33 Petrova complex believe is possible. The firefighters wanted to stay in their historic building, but said they said they accepted that it is just not feasible. They are convinced 33 Petrova is the only plot of land able to accommodate the police, fire and rescue squads. They say renovating or expanding at the departments’ current locations is impossible because of the lack of land or the high price.

The current fire hall is in really bad shape, and firefighters say it is always dangerous pulling out of the garage on emergency calls, with heavy foot, bike and road traffic directly outside the doors.

Members of the community have also requested the village look into housing at the 15-acre 33 Petrova property — instead of, or along with, the EMS building. A change.org petition by neighbor of the property Doug Haney has gathered 424 signatures as of Thursday.

But Williams said they are unlikely to be able to do housing there. The majority of property is on wetlands or within 100 feet of wetlands, he said.

The opponents and the village differ on if the building being between two school zones is a benefit or detriment to safety. Opponents of the plan take issue with police headquarters, fire trucks and ambulances being outside of the heart of town, citing concerns about increased response times to emergencies.

The current plan would be for emergency vehicles to use Bay Boulevard — the road which runs through the Citizen Advocates property and connects the complex site with Edgewood Road, right on state Route 3 — to enter and leave the facility. Williams said this keeps them from needing to build an access road through wetlands, which would complicate things.

Also, some members of the community have said that if the village needed a wetlands permit for such an access road from the Adirondack Park Agency, it could constitute a conflict of interests, since the APA plans to move into the former police headquarters at 1-3 Main St.

The police have already moved their headquarters out of this building, recently relocating their station up the road to the former Army National Guard armory on state Route 3 to make room for the APA while waiting on the EMS building to potentially be built. To read more about this move, go to tinyurl.com/yyemy9jv.

Williams is uncertain what will happen with the former EMS facilities if the complex is built at 33 Petrova. He said those decisions will come down the road.