SARATOGA SPRINGS - The first indication something was amiss came in the form of an anonymous complaint someone made with the city, says Heather Chevally. A few days later the hard evidence showed up literally fixed to the interior walls of the house. 

“I have no idea if the two things are correlated, but the timing is suspicious," she says. “To me, it feels like someone is watching."

Chevalley works in software sales. She grew up on Long Island, where her family was employed in the home-building industry. Chevalley’s wife Adrienne grew up in the Geyser Crest neighborhood of Saratoga Springs - where her mother still resides. They recently embarked on a side project buying and rehabbing houses. 

“It’s something I’ve always wanted to do. Our goal is to make a living doing this eventually, and to be responsible people in real estate‚" Chevalley says. “Eventually, we’d love this to be our full-time job." 

There is another home in Saratoga they are rehabbing and are also involved in a project in the Rochester area fi “similar, but (in that instance) we’re going into lower income areas, to get the bad landlords out and give people a better quality of life and a home they could be proud to live in." 

Given Adrienne’s background and familiarity with Geyser Crest, they purchased a home in the neighborhood and are undertaking a $100,000 rehab with the purpose of re-investing in the community.

The home is settled in a residential community, a short song’s serenade south of SPAC, in a neighborhood comprised of single-family homes, accented by driveways and an occasional attached garage. An American flag flies here. A portable basketball hoop stands there. A cross-section of roads swoop into one another, bending around soft turns.    

“We feel like there’s a right way and a wrong way to be successful. We’re big believers in good karma and I think when you give back to the community and do things in the right way, the community and people give back to you as well,‚ she says. “I feel the same way about our realtor and our contractor. I really like these guys, trustworthy, just making sure everything they’re putting their name on is being done right.“

Five weeks into the project came an unexpected visit from the city. “Last week, the building department showed up because of a complaint fi which we thought was weird. We had talked to all our neighbors, and everybody seemed really friendly. The guys working are very friendly and the job site is kept very clean. Nothing in the house needed to be permitted, but they got a complaint and made us stop working, until I went down to the city‚" says Chevalley, adding that the complaint was made by an anonymous person, or, at least by someone not known to her. An engineer visited the home and confirmed that given the work being, done a permit was not needed. After a two-day pause, the project resumed. It was Friday.   

On Saturday morning, when the contractor entered the house, he noticed someone had broken in after the crew had left the previous day. The windows were all open, the heat turned off. A roll of blue painter’s tape was peeled off and used to create a large message that spread across two interior walls. One read: “GET OUT." The second one: N-word, plural. All in caps. 

“The crew are all people of color. It was very clearly directed at them. We were devastated. To walk in and have to look at that? They’re such good guys. I was sick to my stomach," Chevalley says. 

“Someone specifically broke in the house to send a message. There was thousands of dollars of tools and equipment there. They didn’t steal anything. They wrote on the walls in painter’s tape. They shut our heat off and left the windows open - it was a cold night and the pipes froze and busted. Honestly, it was creepy. They broke in and entered just to send a message.

Police were called and initiated an investigation. They unfurled painter’s tape from the wall hoping to secure fingerprints, dusted the windows, and found a hand-print on the wall, Chevalley says. “The police seem pretty committed. Obviously this is appalling, so hopefully they can figure out who did it."

One of the steps involves learning whether the person who initially called the building department with the complaint is connected in some way to the person or persons who broke in. The break-in occurred the first day after the crew returned to work. 

“It’s being taken very seriously because of the nature of the incident‚" said Public Safety Commissioner Jim Montagnino. He confirmed there was a search at the scene for fingerprints and that an investigation is underway. Potential charges could include offenses related to the break-in, as well as to the intentional targeting of persons regarding their race or color, by definition a hate crime.   

“I’m sure there are more hateful people out there than I want to believe, but I just can’t imagine this is how people think," Chevalley says. “I do generally feel this is an isolated incident. That not the way of the community. The community has really seemed to rally around the guys. They have been stopping by and bringing the guys lunch; people said they want to hire them for more work in the neighborhood," she says.  “You really have to have nothing going on in your life to break into someone’s house because you hate someone so much over the color of their skin. I can’t even start to try to understand that."  

SARATOGA SPRINGS —There are more than 150,000 fueling stations across America and you can imagine the scene playing out at any one of those pump-stations as much the same. The car pulls up. The driver gets out and gazes up at the sign displaying the cost of a gallon of gas. Driver shakes head in disgust, verbally unmuzzling a volley of irritations at an invisible cast of invented villainous characters that includes everything from profiteering corporations to inept political leaders and greedy oil executives. But it’s not quite so simple.   

The national average for a gallon of gas this week set motorists back about $4.25, with the state average in New York slightly higher at $4.35, according to AAA. The lowest prices – where a gallon of gas could be had for under $4 - is in the central part of the country, where a north-to-south line extends from Minnesota and North Dakota to Oklahoma and Texas. The highest costs, at over $5 per gallon, are in the westernmost states of Nevada and California. 

Earlier this month the organization noted it was seeing numbers not viewed at the pump since the financial crisis in 2008, the highest on record, and pointed to the steady climb since the start of the calendar year due to strained supply, increased demand, and a spike in oil prices following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Nearly all of the gasoline sold in the U.S. is produced domestically, however. So, why the spike? 

“People have to realize: it goes up, it goes down. It’s a commodity. That’s what it does. What’s taking place right now is fear. There was a lot of fear with Russia going into Ukraine. It spiked,” says local resident Jim Eliopulos, who has been in the oil and gas industry for over 30 years. In 1989, he founded Alexander Production Company in Saratoga Springs, transitioned out of operations in 2018 and currently deals with leasing rights to companies drilling the Marcellus wells. 

“Coming out of the pandemic, demand started to increase. We were in a very good place because people were able to see their freedom: flying, driving, shopping, whatever it is – they were more active with their form of transportation. The production side was still lagging and what people don’t understand is, you hear it all the time - that oil and gas is having a labor shortage,” Eliopulos says.  “I do want to say that the oil and gas industry is not withholding any of their gains in oil and gas to pummel the public.”

“Now when Russia invaded Ukraine, if anyone was paying attention to oil prices, it was nuts. That was nothing more than fear-based. There is always fear when things like this take place,” he says. “On the opposite side of it, in 2020 when things were shut down and people were closed-in purposefully, it was going the opposite way. Gasoline per-gallon was way, way down. I don’t think I have ever seen oil go as low as it did during that period of time.” 

Prices at the gas pump historically follow the global cost of crude oil - which is influenced by expectations of consumer demand, supply, world events, and other factors. The cost of crude oil is the largest component of the retail price of gasoline. And U.S. Crude Oil first purchase price has fluctuated wildly. 

One barrel of crude oil is 42 gallons. It is a measurement adopted as a standard that dates to late 19th petroleum producers of Pennsylvania, the world’s then-center of petroleum production. One barrel of crude oil produces 19 to 20 gallons of motor gasoline, and approximately 9 gallons of diesel and home heating oil. The remaining oil is used to make plastics and other products. 

A monthly analysis dating back several decades indicates the 1980s hit a high cost of about $34 per barrel in the spring of 1981 and a cost low of under $10 in the summer of 1986. During the next decade, a per-barrel cost topped $30 in 1990, and dipped to below $9 in 1999. 

In the current century, the cost per barrel hit the $100 mark during several months in 2008, and again in 2013, whereas the lowest costs in each decade, at under $20, were in October 2001 – Feb. 2002 (the months immediately following 9/11), and in April-May 2020 (the early days of the pandemic), according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.    

Specifically at the pump meanwhile, the cost of gas first climbed over 50 cents per gallon in the mid-1970s, broke the $1 per gallon barrier in 1980, and the $2 mark in 2005, according to a 2018 USA Today study “What A Gallon of Gas Cost the Year You Were Born,” which tracks the annual average price per gallon from 1929 to 2016.

The varying cost at the pump from one state to another is also affected by the amount of taxes each state applies. Nearly all states levy taxes or other fees on gasoline sales, which goes on top of the federal gas tax of 18.4 cents a gallon. In its July 2021 report, the American Petroleum Institute reported that New York was the ninth highest in the country in total state taxes on gasoline.    

With costs spiking earlier this month, lawmakers in Georgia and in Maryland announced measures to temporarily halt their respective state gas taxes. A number of other states, including New York, are currently debating whether to follow suit. 

To save money, there are methods drivers could employ to be less wasteful in their use of gas. Common-sense suggestions aside (avoid unnecessary trips, carpool, run multiple errands in one trip), it helps to ensure that tires are properly inflated, that vehicles don’t idle unnecessarily, and to adopt good driving habits. To the latter point, aggressive driving – speeding, rapidly accelerating and braking – can lower your gas mileage by 33 percent at highway speeds and by 5 percent when driving around town, according to a list of Gas-Saving Tips released by the U.S. Department of Energy.   

SARATOGA SPRINGS — There has been an increase in largely negative public reaction focused on late-night weekend activities in downtown Saratoga Springs of late. And while crime has not statistically increased in a significant way said Jim Montagnino, the city public safety commissioner this week introduced the first phase of a multi-phase Patrol Division Increase Initiative that will as its first step eliminate the assistant police chief position and re-allocate those funds to hire additional patrols.   

“We need as many police officers as possible to be available to keep the city safe. This is the underlying basis of the Patrol Division Increase Initiative,” Montagnino told the council during its March 15 meeting. To illustrate a point, he discussed an incident that occurred earlier this month.    

“On March 5, there was a situation in which an individual was arrested and found to be in possession of a loaded 9 mm handgun that contained an illegal clip that held 13 rounds of live ammunition. The circumstances in which that seizure occurred involves some of the most remarkable police work that the city has seen. The sergeant in charge that night had information from a witness that a particular individual had been involved in a fight at one of the bars in town and had stated to someone that he was going to return to ‘shoot the place up,’” Montagnino said.  A police sergeant was given a description of the vehicle in question, which had license plates from the state of Mississippi. 

“A car with Mississippi plates was pulled over on the corner of Spring and Circular (streets) because the driver was driving erratically and without headlights. The sergeant, in the words of the bar owner, ‘peeled out and raced over there.’ He was able to signal to the officers at the scene that there was a possible weapon in the possession of the driver,” Montagnino said.  The weapon was secured and the driver – who had a previously violent felony conviction in Mississippi, Montagnino said - was arrested without incident. 

During 2021, members of the Saratoga Springs Police Department responded to 27,784 calls for service. The largest average call volume occurred Friday evening into Saturday morning and Saturday evening into Sunday morning. Officers generated 3897 cases that resulted in 922 arrests. Of the individuals arrested, 55% were not residents of the city of Saratoga Springs.

“The on-the-ground police work that resulted in this arrest prevented what I believe would likely have been a mass shooting. The safety of this city depends in large part on the skill, training and number of uniformed police officers who are doing their jobs day-in and day-out on the street,” the commissioner said. “Despite that we are a ‘weekend town,’ and that much of the crime that involves visitors coming to the city occurs on the weekends, not one sworn officer above the rank of sergeant is on duty on Saturday or Sunday without being called in specifically for that purpose.” In all, he counted approximately 40% of the department’s sworn officers who do not work weekends. The goal of the program is to put more officers in locations at times most needed, he said. 

The Saratoga Springs Police Department ended the 2021 calendar year with several vacant positions. Currently the department is staffes with a chief, assistant chief, 4 lieutenants, 11 sergeants, 11 investigators, and 39 patrol officers. Patrol officers are divided into 12-hour shifts. Two officers are K-9 handlers, one K9 being a dual purpose patrol and narcotics detection K9 and the other being an explosive detection K9. Two patrol officers are recent Law Enforcement Academy graduates and currently in the fieldtraining program. The department currently has 9 full time dispatchers, 2 civilian employees and 3 parking enforcement officers, one of which is also the animal control officer.

The FBI 2019 Crime in the United States Report states law enforcement agencies in the North East have an average number of 2.8 full-time sworn law enforcement officers per 1000 inhabitants, placing the department below the average staffing level, according to the Public Safety Department annual report.  

Phase One of the patrol initiative plan involves redirecting funds currently used for the assistant chief of police position and was unanimously approved by the city council. The council also approved paying an invoice in the amount of about $260,000 to Axon - an Arizona-based company which develops technology and weapons such as Tasers and body cams for civilian, law enforcement and military use.  The city has a 10-year, $2.5 million contract with the company that was initiated last year. There is an option to terminate that contract, should the council decide to do so at some point.   

Assistant Police 

Chief Position

The assistant police chief position is currently held by Robert Jillson. Jillson was in attendance at the meeting but did not address the council. He was appointed full-time to the Saratoga Springs Police Department as a member of the patrol division in 1998 and rose steadily through its ranks. Three months ago, Jillson was appointed by the previous council to succeed retiring assistant chief John Catone’s position.   

The position will be de-funded and funds reallocated April 8.  Under the Civil Service law, Jillson may exercise his right to return as lieutenant. This in turn would displace the least senior lieutenant and place them in the role of sergeant - filling one of the three vacant sergeant positions as well allowing for the hire of a patrol officer, said Montagnino, adding that the Chief and Assistant Chief positions are “basically duplicative of one another.” No specific dollar figure was discussed, but the amount should be readily known at the time of the council’s April 5 meeting, when the finance department conducts its business on the matter.   

Montagnino cited the publication of the Department of Public Safety’s 2021 report as an indicator that the city “is as safe as it’s ever been. There is no statistically significant increase in crime over the last few years – and while there has been a lot of coverage of certain incidents – the total number of crimes and the total types of crimes have not changed to any significant degree from one year to the next.”

The Public Safety Department's annual report was released this week, although was not immediately available for public viewing on the city's web site.  Prior reports may be found HERE.