Mayor bids adieu with thanks to many here

by Dan McClelland

“You folks are lucky tonight,” Mayor Paul Maroun told the dozen or so local government students attending Wednesday’s village board meeting. “Because this is my last meeting,” he explained to them.

He offered something of a brief swan song that evening.

“First of all I want to wish my successor, Mary (Fontana) the best of luck in your new term. It will be an experience for you. It’s a little different from town government. I’m sure you’ll enjoy it, as I have, and move Tupper Lake ahead,” the mayor began.

“I also want to thank my deputy mayor,” he said, nodding to Leon LeBlanc. He said the trustee has been his deputy during his entire term as mayor going back 13 years.

“Leon took care of things when I was ill, when I was away, and when I was in the hospital, when he called me every day.”

“I appreciate it, Leon. You did a great job!”

“My pleasure, Mr. Mayor!” Trustee LeBlanc told him.

“I also want to thank this board. I know sometimes we’ve argued on things but we’ve all worked to do what we thought was best for Tupper Lake and the entire community. We’ve had some different ideas on things over the years, just like you students do,” again pointing to the students in the room. “We don’t always agree on everything but we always try to do our best to help both the village and the town.

He also thanked the members of the previous boards that he had directed for their hard work and dedication to the jobs before them.

“I also want to thank our office staff who take the day to day complaints, the calls, yells and screams” about the bills they receive and for what the village has done or not done for them. “We have some great people on our staff in our office here.”

He thanked Electrical Superintendent Mike Dominie and his crew. They do a great job for us, year in and year out...in bad weather, wet weather, stormy weather. They dealing with high voltage...theirs is a dangerous job.”

He said he was proud that the entire electric crew is now fully trained and certified as linemen. “It’s been a long time since we’ve had that situation in place in the village!”

“In our water and sewer department, we’ve had some issues. We’re all working hard on them and hopefully they will all be corrected in a year or so,” he said of the brown well water and the toxic water from Little Simond Pond.

The mayor said that in addition to those troubling issues for that department, Superintendent Mark Robillard and his crew work very hard every day to tackle many other routine infrastructure problems like broken mains, sewers backing up. “We try to do the best we can, but we can’t break the law either like going on private property to work.”

The water and sewer crews do a great job as do Supervisor Bob DeGrace and his DPW crew- sometimes working “extra hard” to combat things like the ongoing vandalism in the park, as well as keeping up maintenance of our village streets and sidewalks.

“We all know we don’t have a big enough staff to do all the things we know we should do- but our crews all try to do the best they can with the monies available to them.”

“Our police department has done an extraordinary job in recent years….Chief, thank you. We don’t have a full-time police department and we’re still hopeful we may soon be able to pick up a few more officers to go full-time again.” With the one-shift and fewer officers they are all working harder, and with the way the state justice system is now and the bail reform, law enforcement is a much more difficult task today.

As for our volunteer fire department, “these guys and gals are available night and day, 24 hours a day, when asked. They don’t get paid anything...it’s all volunteer service.” He told Chief Royce Cole he and his team have done an excellent job keeping people safe and saving buildings during his time as mayor. As a long-time member of the department, he promised the chief he’ll participate more now that he’s leaving public office, in department service and functions. “I’m going to have time to go to more fires now,” he said, joking: “so don’t throw me out yet!”

“Our firefighters do a great job for us!”

He said while the village doesn’t formally operate the Tupper Lake Emergency and Rescue Squad, “they are an integral part of our community, and so important to residents here.

“You don’t have a good community, if you don’t have emergency services!”

He told the senior students in the room he hoped some of them would find time in their adult lives to give back to their communities through volunteer services to public agencies and organizations.

The mayor said to the students who manage to stay in Tupper Lake he hoped they will volunteer their spare time to help these many important agencies here.

“We’ve had many grants won by the village during my time here- and perhaps as many as any mayor in recent years. So I’d like to thank Melissa McManus, our community development director.” He said she has landed many grants for the village for infrastructure and recreational improvements this past decade or so, “and she does a great job!”

“Melissa knows how to write a grant, she knows how to employ it and she knows how to talk to people in Albany, in Washington and even in Malone who award them to get us more money and work for our betterment.”

“Last but not least, I couldn’t have done my job, and I don’t think anyone around this board table could have either, without the help of Mary Casagrain.” He said Tupper Lake has never had a village manager, but the village clerk manages the day to day intertwinings of the village, plus Mary, as treasurer, works on all the numbers of all the departments. “She works with me at meetings every day. Takes calls from me in the evenings and at night...we both stay up late. So Mary thank you for everything you have done for me and the village over the years!”

“Serving as a village official isn’t easy. People are demanding...some things we can provide for them and some things we legally can’t! I’ve tried to bend the rules as much as I can without a police office arresting me, but there are some things you just can’t do. -And people don’t always understand that!”

He told his board members how his and theirs have not been easy jobs, “but I think we’ve all tried to do our best we can for the community!”

The outgoing mayor promised a major announcement for later this week that he said he thinks the community will be very interested to hear.

“I want to thank all of you and the community for giving me the opportunity to serve Tupper Lake!”