Is Saranac Lake dying?

First a big red-letter disclosure: This post involves Saranac Lake, my home village, where my wife Susan is a candidate for village office.

But Saranac Lake is also my community, so I waded into the fray this week with a guest commentary for the Adirondack Daily Enterprise.

The question I asked: Is Saranac Lake dying? That’s the argument being made by some locals, including Harrietstown supervisor Larry Miller.

When Republicans running for village office in Saranac Lake laid out their campaign platform last month, they argued that our community is “on the verge of failure.” In a letter to the editor of the Adirondack Daily Enterprise, Harrietstown Supervisor Larry Miller echoed this claim, writing, “If the village continues down the current path it is destined for failure.”

That sounds terrifying. Fortunately, this gloomy portrait of Saranac Lake is factually, provably wrong. As a journalist, I have visited, researched and written about small towns for 25 years. Compared with most of rural America – not just in the Adirondacks or upstate New York – our village is thriving.

The discussion is drawing a lot of attention at the Enteprise’s website and I thought readers of the In Box might be interested in checking it out.

You can also get a lot more information about the health of Adirondack communities, here where the Adirondack Association of Towns and Villages has compiled a fascinating report.