By Matthew Saari

The garage located at 45 Poultney St. is proving to be akin to a bad penny for the Whitehall Village Board. Once they think they’ve gotten rid of it, it shows back up.
Steve St. Clair approached the board last week asking the trustees to revisit enacting a local law that would prohibit businesses from operating on property that has been removed from the tax rolls.
“We’ve been over this before, the steps that have been taken,” said Mayor Phil Smith, referring to St. Clair’s inquiries into the same matter in May, at which time Smith advised him such a law would be unconstitutional.
St. Clair’s renewed interest in the issue stems from a recent conversation he said he had with the state Department of Environmental Conservation, which oversaw the cleanup of the garage in 2010.
Said St. Clair: “I called DEC…and I said in the winter the building was caving in, there was snow all over in there, windows were broken. The guy told me all we had to do was condemn that building and they would have come in, tore it down and cleaned that up – exact words.”

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