I’m Julie Stokes

I would like I to give you some context on historic preservation laws in Saratoga Springs. 

I was the first Executive Director of the Preservation Foundation and … hence the individual who along w the board of directors proposed the second ordinance in Saratoga Springs to regulate historic buildings and their surroundings. 

The first was in response to the Red Barn on a significant corner replacing the United States Hotel.  That ordinance was a simple – new buildings needed to relate to their surroundings. 

The Historic District Ordinance we proposed was much stronger – requiring city review of all exterior changes within designated historic districts.  It engendered so much discussion that the public hearing moved from the council chambers, to the second-floor court chambers and ended up on the 3rd floor which at the time had a boxing ring in the center. 

I stood in the boxing ring w our attorney – the city council sat on the stage, and I was surrounded by interested individuals and businesses.  A prominent member of the community stated that any ordinance should be limited to some of blocks on Broadway and not include Franklin Square and Washington Street. 

I will never forget – the Reverand Minnie Burns of the Universal Baptist Temple (now UPH) standing up and admonishing that individual – that the properties and buildings on Washington Street, Franklin Square and the west side were just as important as the expensive buildings on Broadway. 

In the end – the ordinance passed with some changes.  Today, in Saratoga Springs you see the results.  Historic Buildings according to an economic study done by an outside firm – traditionally pay more in taxes.

Every picture that we see touting our community – starts w “historic” and pictures of our main street and neighborhoods.

I have not always agreed with my successors on the stands they have taken.   I have not spoken out – although I have sometimes, quietly told them I disagree.  I went on to serve as the State Historic Preservation Officer (SHPO) and Deputy Commissioner with NYS Parks for nearly 20 years.

I am here today, because I don’t want the city council to undertake the wholesale rewrite on an ordinance that – that annoys some – and is celebrated by others.

This deserves a thoughtful understanding and review of where the ordinance has made a difference and where maybe it went too far.   Was it the ordinance or its interpretation

This should not happen in a vacuum.  It should happen in a considered way with all members of the public engaged.

SARATOGA SPRINGS — While racetracks, malls, and restaurants across the nation face steady declines, The Saratoga Racecourse continues to defy national trends, thriving as a bustling summertime hub in Saratoga County.

This vibrant season offers a unique backdrop for the Racetrack Chaplaincy of New York, which is currently celebrating 40 years of hope and devotion to the backstretch community.

Led by Nick Caras, director of the New York division, the chaplaincy operates on a foundational belief: everyone deserves care through every trial and success.

The organization translates this message of devotion into tangible, everyday relief for working families through a robust network of essential resources and recreational programs.

Summer Programs for Kids

Recognizing the intense demands placed on working families during the racing season, the chaplaincy coordinates full-day summer activities. Operating from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m., these programs ensure children have a safe, engaging environment while their parents work. 

The chaplaincy partners with several key local organizations to make these summer programs possible:

Afrim’s Sports, Beaver Cross in Greenwich, Sacandaga Bible Institute, The Saratoga and Ballston Spa Recreation Centers & The YMCA

Essential Community Support

Caras and his team work deeply within the community to distribute vital resources to those navigating financial or logistical hardships. Their core services include:

Family visit bus trips to keep loved ones connected across distances.

Paperwork assistance to help individuals successfully navigate complex forms.

Backpack giveaways to equip local children with the supplies they need for the school year.

For Information on Donating to: NY State Division of the racetrack Chaplaincy of America

please call: Phone: (516) 216-5196 or Mailing Address: 2150 Hempstead Turnpike, Elmont, NY 11003

Mayor Safford recently argued for narrowing the Design Review Board’s authority with the goal of providing relief to ordinary homeowners trapped by ‘permanent preservation.’ His argument relies on hypothetical instances that do not match the Board’s actual record.

Design Review only applies to limited areas of Saratoga Springs, not the city as a whole. Outside of those limited areas, demolition doesn’t involve the board at all. Within those districts, Design Review minutes indicate that demolition applications are uncommon and are regularly approved for garages, sheds, and additions – often unanimously. The cases with the most significant preservation consequences are redevelopment proposals brought forth by corporations or developers (such as Stewart’s), not ‘ordinary homeowners’ maintaining their homes.

If the Mayor’s objective is to ease the burden on homeowners, start with processes that ordinary homeowners encounter. In his January 2024 State of the City address, Mayor Safford said the Building Department’s goal was to reduce “wait time for a majority of permits to a range of four to six weeks.”

Has that goal been met?

The Mayor should be honest about who most stands to benefit from crippling the DRC. The real beneficiaries are development interests.

– Chris George

Saratoga Springs

Historic Protection Shouldn’t Be a Surprise in Saratoga Springs

Imagine that your roof is leaking. You live in the Architectural District—not the Historic 

District—and apply to replace it. During design review, however, your home is determined to be historically significant, and you are told that preserving its historic character requires a costly slate roof rather than the modern replacement material that meets design standards which you have planned to use.

Or imagine that you own a property in the Architectural District and apply for a demolition permit so you can build a new house and garage on your property. During thereview, the Design Review Board determines that the existing house is historically significant. Suddenly, what began as a design and demolition application becomes a preservation process, requiring you to explore alternatives such as relocating the house, finding someone willing to purchase and preserve it, or otherwise demonstrating that preservation is not feasible.

These examples illustrate an important question: When should a property owner become subject to the City’s historic preservation requirements?

We believe the answer should be transparent, not arbitrary. If a property is important enough that the City intends to require its permanent preservation, then the City should formally designate it as historic.

That simple principle is at the heart of the changes we are proposing to Saratoga Springs’ historic preservation program. Designation is how a community makes a clear and lasting decision that a property is historically important and should be protected—not only from demolition, but from changes that could destroy the features that make it historic.

Our recommendations have been developed with guidance from the New York State Historic Preservation Office (SHPO) and are consistent with the requirements of the Certified Local Government (CLG) program. They are also based on recognized best practices for local historic preservation. The goal is not to weaken preservation, but to make Saratoga Springs’ preservation program stronger and more consistent.

Saratoga Springs is fortunate to have an extraordinary collection of historic buildings, neighborhoods and streetscapes. They tell the story of our community and contribute enormously to the character that residents value and visitors recognize.

As the City Council considers changes to the Unified Development Ordinance, much of the discussion has focused on the Design Review Board, demolition review, and how we protect buildings that may be historically significant. An important part of that discussion is understanding the difference between identifying a building as historically significant and formally designating it for preservation.

Saratoga Springs has both a Historic District and an Architectural District. Our locally designated Historic District and individual landmarks have been formally recognized by the City, through legislation, as historic resources deserving preservation. The Architectural District—our “gateway district”—serves a different purpose. Its primary role is to protect architectural quality and community character. Both are important, but they are not the same.

What should we do for buildings outside of the Historic District that may also be important historic resources?

We believe that the City should have a meaningful, public process, using objective criteria, to evaluate its significance and determine whether it should be designated for permanent historic protection.

The Design Review Board has an important role in that process. It can identify significant resources, evaluate their historic and architectural importance, and recommend designation. The City Council, as the elected legislative body, then determines whether the property should be formally designated. Once designated, the property receives the full protections of the City’s Historic District Review in the UDO.

This distinction matters because historic preservation is more than preventing demolition. It can affect the materials an owner may use, the alterations that may be made, and ultimately whether a building may be removed at all. Those protections are appropriate for properties the community has made a deliberate decision to preserve. 

But property owners should also have clarity about when those requirements apply.

Our objective is straightforward: strong design standards for the Architectural District, strong preservation standards for the Historic District and landmarks, and a meaningful process for identifying and designating additional historic resources that deserve permanent protection.

Saratoga Springs should continue identifying the buildings and places that tell our story. 

When a property is important enough to preserve permanently, we should take the next step: designate it and protect what makes it historic.

Preservation begins with designation

By John Safford

Mayor of Saratoga Springs

The attached submission concerns the public discussion surrounding the Saratoga Springs Charter Review Commission. Rather than addressing the merits of any specific charter amendment, it focuses on the backgrounds, qualifications, and public-service records of the commission members and the role those factors play in evaluating the commission’s work. The piece is intended as commentary on the commission itself and the public discussion surrounding it.

Saratoga Springs Charter Review Commission

Reasonable people can disagree with the Saratoga Springs Charter Review Commission’s recommendations and ultimately vote for or against them on the merits.

However, when Supervisor Sarah Burger and Supervisor Minita Sanghvi characterize the commission’s work as a distraction, as failing to improve governance, or as “giving away” representation, they go beyond legitimate policy disagreement. These statements call into question the competence, judgment, and seriousness of the commission members themselves.

The Saratoga Springs Charter Review Commission is composed of experienced, community-minded public servants who have collectively devoted decades of dedicated service to our city, including:

•  Vincent DeLeonardis (former City Attorney and Commission Chair)

•  Michael Lenz (former Mayor and Commissioner of Public Works)

•  Matt Veitch (former County Supervisor and County Chairman with 18 years of experience)

•  Attorneys Matthew Jones, Matthew Dorsey, and federal appellate attorney Molly Corbett

•  Former Commissioners Stephen Towne and Lew Benton

•  Former Deputy Commissioner of Finance Deirdre O’Dwyer-Ladd

•  Retired Fire Captain Robert Murphy Jr. and longtime civic leader Dorothy Rogers-Bullis

These individuals bring deep institutional knowledge, professional expertise, and decades of public service to Saratoga Springs and Saratoga County. They are competent and community-minded.

To suggest otherwise — as Supervisor Burger and Supervisor Sanghvi have done — is unfair to the commissioners and inconsistent with their records of public service.

One can respectfully disagree with their specific conclusions. But publicly impugning their competence and dedication is unwarranted and counterproductive.

Saratoga Springs benefits when we debate ideas on substance rather than undermine the competence of respected volunteers who step forward to serve. Attacks like these discourage civic engagement and do a disservice to our community.

– David Buchyn

As Saratoga Springs continues its thoughtful review of the City Charter, it is worth recognizing the value of the process currently underway and the steady, collaborative approach being taken to improve city government.

Over the past year, Mayor John Safford’s Charter Review Commission has been meeting regularly in an open and transparent manner to examine ways to strengthen and modernize the city’s charter. The commission’s work deserves recognition for both its seriousness and its accessibility to the public. Meetings have been open, public participation has been encouraged, and the process has reflected a genuine effort to improve city government thoughtfully rather than politically.

The commission itself represents a bipartisan and experienced group of individuals, many of whom have previously served the city in various capacities. Under the leadership of respected former City Attorney Vince DeLeonardis, the commission has approached its work with professionalism, institutional knowledge, and a focus on practical governance.

Importantly, the commission has chosen to focus first on improving and modernizing the existing charter rather than pursuing a wholesale change in the city’s form of government. That was a wise decision.

Changing a city’s governmental structure is expensive, time-consuming, and often divisive. Saratoga Springs has debated these questions many times over the years, and prior attempts to fundamentally alter the structure of government have repeatedly failed to gain public support. In contrast, targeted reforms to improve efficiency, transparency, and accountability within the current framework can often accomplish far more with far less disruption.

Several of the commission’s proposals expected to come before the City Council in June appear to be practical and necessary improvements, including clarifying procedures for handling vacancies in elected office – an issue that exposed weaknesses in the current charter during the recent council vacancy process. Other proposals currently under consideration may ultimately require voter approval through referendum this November, and residents should stay engaged as those discussions continue to evolve.

It is also important to recognize that Saratoga Springs’ commission form of government provides residents with a clear and direct system of accountability. Citizens know which elected official oversees each department and can more easily identify where responsibility lies when issues arise. That transparency and accessibility are meaningful strengths of the current structure and help maintain a close connection between city government and the public it serves.

No form of government is perfect, and communities across New York State continue to face challenges regardless of whether they operate under commission systems or “strong mayor” systems. Cities such as Albany and Schenectady demonstrate that changing governmental structure alone does not automatically create better governance, smoother operations, or stronger public trust.

The better path is often the one Saratoga Springs is taking now: improving what works, addressing areas that need refinement, and doing so through an open, bipartisan, and deliberative process. The Charter Review Commission’s work reflects a commitment to thoughtful governance and continued improvement while preserving the transparency and accountability that residents value.

Connie Woytowich and Jane Weihe, Co-Chairs of Saratoga Works

Saratoga Works is a civic group of individuals from multiple political parties and diverse backgrounds who care about our city and its future (www.saratogaworks.org)

Publicly funded social assistance without requirement is irresponsible and leads to fraud. There are huge dangerous degrees affecting entire localities between assisting transients: those without intention, aimless, and opportunistic; and community homelessness. To require people seeking shelter in Saratoga to identify themselves should be considered basic. Other requirements such as past or present residence in Saratoga County or neighboring Counties without their own shelters, and a 3 day time limit for those in true emergency without the preceding criteria, are not unreasonable and should be considered. A person should be able to identify themselves and be identifiable even without a license or social security card; and anybody anywhere can currently input an individual’s name into any internet search engine and receive without cost a list of that individual’s past residences and even personal associations. Because there is no easy remedy for our current situation, shouldn’t make Saratoga Springs dumbfounded into acceptance of the untenable considering our ready access to wealth and resource. We should expect more of ourselves and each other, low barriers to anything lead to complacency and contempt. Facilitating someone’s addiction with resource or location or allowing people to domicile outdoors and thereby become public health risks is not generosity, permitting someone to slowly commit suicide in public does not clear those around them from responsibility, even begging and panhandling should not be considered a right of self determination unless you believe poverty to be a human right. Poverty is fraud profound; the measure of disparity in wealth, access, and resource, within any community, is the measure of active fraud within that community.

– Daniel Fuentes

Plastic Isn’t Saratoga’s Summer Look

As a student at Skidmore College, I see every day how much single-use plastic ends up around Saratoga Springs. Walk along Broadway after a weekend, around Congress Park, or near the Kayaderosseras Creek, and you will find plastic cups, bottles, takeout containers, and bags. Much of it eventually makes its way into local waterways and, from there, into the Hudson River.

This problem is especially noticeable in a city like Saratoga Springs that depends on its parks, waterways, and tourism. Visitors come here because it is beautiful, but overflowing trash cans downtown and plastic litter near streams and roads make it clear that we are producing more waste than our community can handle.

This is something Saratoga needs to address now, before track season begins and tourism increases. Every summer, the city becomes more crowded during horse racing season, which means even more disposable cups, food containers, water bottles, and plastic bags. If we are already struggling with plastic waste in the spring, the problem will only get worse once thousands of visitors arrive.

Right now, Saratoga residents are the ones paying for this problem through taxes, cleanup costs, and higher waste disposal fees. Meanwhile, the companies producing huge amounts of unnecessary plastic packaging continue to profit.

New York should require these companies to take responsibility for the waste they create. The Packaging Reduction and Recycling Infrastructure Act would make large producers help pay for recycling and cleanup instead of leaving the burden on local communities. It would also reduce the amount of plastic packaging in the first place.

Saratoga should not have to choose between protecting its environment and paying the price for someone else’s pollution. If we want cleaner parks, cleaner water, and a cleaner city, we need to stop asking local communities to clean up a problem they did not create.

Emily Lopez

Skidmore College

Water Quality

On October 7th, 2025 BK Keramati and Gordon Boyd stood before the City Council insisting the public was drinking from a “poisoned mud puddle.” To me this was troubling as I had to explain to my children both how the public water was safe but also how adults contort their words to justify an end. Within a week of taking office, Commissioner Keramati said the water is “perfectly safe.”

In his first independent decision, Keramati chose to forward a “Field Manager” position which will report to the garage, not the water treatment plant. When told the City didn’t have the funds, he blamed the form of government. Fool me once, shame on you; afterward shame on me.

Instead of a transition meeting with me, Mr. Keramati chose to meet with the City’s former DPW staff and its engineering consultants. Because current staff excluded, the consultant was unaware of the proactive steps we took for identifying new water sources. It seems to me that sensationalizing the quality of our drinking water was to make a campaign issue of it, not solving an actual problem.

With the City is on the precipice of another round of TTHM sampling with exceedance likely, my question is this: is the water a poisoned mud puddle or is it perfectly safe? And if it’s a poisoned mud puddle, why is he creating positions that aren’t associated with fixing it? If it’s not, why the sensationalized language? As I’ve had to tell my children, words matter.

– Chuck Marshall

Saratoga Springs

My Fellow Saratogians,

As your former Mayor from 2008 to 2014, I’m writing this letter of endorsement and support for George Ehinger in his campaign to become our next County Supervisor. I unequivocally can attest to his qualifications and demeanor to help lead our City at the County level, particularly when such attributes are increasingly rare in our over polarizing political arenas these days.

I have personally known George and his wife Tamie for many years, ever since they relocated to Saratoga Springs. Early on I recognized the value that George and Tamie bring to our community and, in fact, appointed Tamie to the Design Review Board while I was Mayor. Back then, George was still tirelessly involved in his successful businesses and raising their family. He now steps forward to give even more back to us with his strengths of approachable collaboration and common sense so desperately needed.

Please join with me in voting for George as County Supervisor on November 4th, to ensure we do what’s best for all of us going forward. Thank you.

Scott T. Johnson

Former Mayor of Saratoga Springs