BY JIMMY LAWTON
North Country This Week

OGDENSBURG — City council tabled a resolution calling on the state to address blight at the St. Lawrence Psychiatric center Monday for fears that the move might impact the state prison closures, which have yet to be announced.

On Monday Deputy Mayor John Rishe garnered support from fellow councilors to call on the state to clean up the long vacant buildings at the St. Lawrence Psychiatric Center.

Rishe said that the state has taken no action to stabilize buildings on the SLPC property that have been vacant since the early 1980s.

Rishe said the buildings have been neglected to the point “that they have become a public health hazard and a blight on the City of Ogdensburg.”

“No funding has been appropriated to save these historical treasures, despite the fact that the State set up and operates a historic preservation program and office.”

The resolution says the city wants to work with the state to get the properties listed for preservation purposes on the National and State Register of Historic Preservation.

Rishe said that an application has been submitted to have the properties listed.

He said the next step is to do a $20,000 analysis of the buildings where they could decide which buildings could be listed or torn down.

“That's the effort that’s the idea rather than just doing nothing,” he said. “I just think we need to take some sort of action.”

Rishe said he’s hopeful that the resolution will get things moving on the property transfer, which has hung in limbo for years.

Councilor Dan Skamperle agreed, but called for two amendments. One was related to the language regarding the state’s eligibility for the historic status of the property. A second amendment struck a sentence from the resolution that blamed the condition of the property on the state’s neglect.

Councilors Skamperle and Michael Powers said the strong language could be counter productive to the city’s goal of getting action from the state.

While all council members said they supported the resolution Powers said he’d like to see the city hold off on passing it until after the state announces which prisons will be closed.

Powers, who is the president of NYSCOPA, said he does not have any insight as to which prisons might be closed and likely won’t until 10 minutes before they “go live.” he said.

Ogdensburg houses two prisons, one of which was on the chopping block years ago. The community rallied together to garner support to convince the state to keep the facility open and at the time gubernatorial candidate Andrew Cuomo promised he wouldn’t close the prisons in the city.

In the end councilors unanimously agreed to wait until after prison closures are announced to send the resolution to Albany.