Saratoga Springs Democrats criticized proposition’s language, timing of filing with Board of Elections
By Wendy Liberatore, Staff Writer
Sep 9, 2026
SARATOGA SPRINGS — A ballot proposition asking voters to allow a Saratoga Springs commission to amend the city’s charter will not appear on November ballots.
The Saratoga County Board of Elections announced Tuesday afternoon that the board’s Democratic and Republican commissioners were split over whether the timing of the ballot question’s submission disqualified it from the November election. When they cannot agree on whether to include something on a ballot, it isn’t approved, according to Board of Elections Commissioner Cassandra Bagramian.
Bagramian, a Democrat, and fellow Commissioner Joseph Suhrada, a Republican, sent a letter on Tuesday afternoon to Saratoga Springs City Attorney Tony Izzo informing him of the decision.
The decision follows a Sept. 4 letter the city’s Democratic Committee Chair Ron Kim sent to the elections board. In it, Kim cited state election law requiring a ballot question be submitted three months before Election Day. The committee contended the city submitted the ballot question 25 days after the Aug. 3 deadline.
The state Board of Elections confirmed on Tuesday that deadline for the Nov. 3 election. County Board of Elections documents show the city filed its proposed ballot question on Aug. 28.
“The transmittal is untimely on its face,” Kim wrote the board. “Absent a court order directing otherwise, the Board should apply the plain text of the statute it administers.”
Izzo, however, argued to the commissioners that Municipal Home Rule 36(5) (b) governs the transmittal of a ballot question to the Board of Elections. Therefore, he wrote, the city had between 60 and 90 days before the election to file the proposed proposition.
“In the simplest of terms, the Election Law requires a city clerk to somehow transmit to the Board of Elections something which Municipal Home Rule Law does not yet even require the city clerk to have,” Izzo wrote.
Mayor John Safford appointed a Charter Review Commission in May 2025, since the city must review the charter every 10 years. While the commission did not recommend changing the city’s century-old commission-form of government, it did seek a number of changes, such as duties performed by the commissioner of accounts, the budget timeline and how the city handles vacancies.
On Tuesday, Safford, a Republican, accused the Democrats of hypocrisy, noting that they didn’t want the City Council to vote on selected portions of the proposed charter changes without a referendum. Now, he said, voters won’t get the chance to vote at all.
However, Kim said Tuesday they were asking for a pause on the vote to align with election law and give voters a chance to understand the proposed charter changes. In a statement, he said the city’s Charter Review Commission has not planned or hosted any public forums to explain the changes it seeks.
“With early voting just weeks away, and no meaningful plan from the city to explain any of this to the folks being asked to approve these charter changes, Saratoga Springs voters deserve better,” Kim’s statement read, “and the law entitles them to better.”
In his letter to the county Board of Elections, Kim argued the proposed ballot question — “Shall the Saratoga Springs City Charter be amended as proposed by the Charter Review Commission?” — does not provide enough pertinent information for voters.
He further contended that the language violated state election law requiring the summary of the text for a ballot question of up to 30 words to be “written in plain language, that describes the change in policy to be adopted.”
The charter question, Kim wrote, “conveys nothing of the proposal’s subject matter … nor does the accompanying abstract cure the defect: read together, the question and abstract fail to state the purpose and effect of the amendments concisely and clearly … a voter reading this question learns only that a commission has proposed something.”
Izzo, in his response, said that according to municipal home rule, when an entire charter is being voted on, the only words allowed are those that the city submitted to the Board of Elections for the Nov. 3 ballot question.
Ultimately, Kim said, Democrats want to see significant changes to the way the city is run, not a rewrite of the current charter that keeps the city married to a commission form of government. That form, which most cities have relinquished, is overseen by a City Council comprised of a mayor and four commissioners. Each council member must manage a department.
“The city can’t get good candidates because the City Council members have to work in the executive branch and the legislative branch,” Kim said. “Real reform is what (the city) should be doing.”
While Saratoga Springs will remain tied to the commission form of government for now, Mechanicville, the only other New York city with that form, may not. The elections board confirmed that on Nov. 3, Mechanicville voters will decide whether the city should change its form of government to one led by a city manager and City Council.
Its referendum question, according to Mechanicville’s Charter Review Committee member Matthew Carmichael, was returned to the city by the Board of Elections to be condensed because it gave the voters too much information on the change. The shortened version will appear on the reverse side of the November ballot.