This is an excerpt from the May 19, 2025, Saratoga Springs City Council pre-agenda meeting. I don’t believe Accounts Commissioner Dillon Moran or Finance Commissioner Minita Sanghvi were serious about whether the city needs a local police department. This is just an example of how they can wander into the most bizarre stream of consciousness in their rush to question other city officials. It’s the “throw it at the wall and see if it sticks” level of critical discussion.
In this case, their comments were meant to pick at Public Safety Commissioner Tim Coll. Coll as always, never loses his cool and responds courteously.
Saratoga Springs Politics 
Mechanicville has a City police department. The village of Ballston Spa has a police department too. Other regional towns and villages used to have their own local police departments but reluctantly eliminated them due to costs. They now rely on the County sheriff and the state police.
Having an adequately staffed and well trained local police department is a vital asset to the health and well being of a small city such as ours.
Chris Mathiesen
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Saratoga is losing it. Why are school taxes rising & we are paying to bus students to a campđźš–Sent from my iPhone
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Are they looking for ways to fund RISE and other programs?
Wait! Didn’t both Moran and Sanghvi report not that long ago the city was on solid financial ground, especially more than enough to give themselves and the entire administration a raise?
To both “administrators”: prior to making such proposals, you might want to do the comprehensive predicate research.
A government’s number one priority is to provide safety to its citizens. For the city of Saratoga Springs, add to that number tens of thousands of visitors welcomed annually.
The Public Safety division of the city of Saratoga Springs provides the highest standards of care and service in upstate New York. These men and women work in all kinds of weather and in all types of potentially dangerous and/or deadly situations are already challenged by what they have to encounter 24/7 by many a thankless person. You two want to endanger their lives and the lives of your constituents even further for cost-cutting purposes?
You are both outrageous!
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Ha! Let’s see how fast the county sheriff gets to her “someone parked in my Commissioner parking space” 911 call that was NOT accidental as she claims. Love that she tried to join in the bickering and got told by both the audience and other commissioners that she was wrong, and even thought it wise to compare a city as small as Mechanicville to Saratoga.
And he will make these comments trying to be a tough guy but will also try to belly up to any of the cops in public and claim he’s their biggest fan.
When will these two realize that acting like petulant children like this is an embarrassment to themselves, the city council, and our city. Just do your job and be professional when in the public eye it’s not that hard. Have these petty arguments behind closed doors like a grown-up.
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commissioner Sanghvi absolutely did not question the need for a SS police department. Your animosity is so transparent that sometimes you lack any journalistic credibility.
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think what you want about the author of this blog but she very wrongly tried to jump on Moran’s bandwagon and tried to compare us to a .8 square mile city of 5,000 people. What do you think she meant by that comment then? Maybe she was suggesting a more appropriate venue for the Belmont on Broadway event? Or just spewing fun little tidbits about NY that were still inaccurate and had to be corrected by both the audience and other commissioners?
she knew exactly what she was saying and so do you.
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It’s more than obvious, to enlightened voters, that the “Dillon-Minita duo” are engaged in a vendetta against Commissioner Coll. They are rapidly losing whatever credibility they have left in their final terms. I agree that Minita was jumping on Dillon’s bandwagon, ready to attack in unison, hoping to discover some sordid discrepancy in Coll’s presentation.
Dillon Moran is a disgrace to his office. There were rumors during his run for office, many many rumors. His behaviour while attending public celebrations, leaves me wondering if he knows how someone who serves the public should behave.
Keep up the good work Commissioner Coll.
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couldn’t agree more
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John,
Robert Peel, the British Prime Minister who established the modern London Metropolitan Police, identified nine principles of “ethical” policing, including this one:
“To maintain at all times a relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public and that the public are the police, the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full-time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence.”
I reference this because your posted clip suggests conflicting Council member views on Peel’s Principle. One commissioner seems to suggest that the “City’s needs” and the needs of the police are in conflict. The commissioner of public safety says he is not so sure.
The public safety commissioner is correct. Ideally, recognizing and meeting the needs of an adequately staffed, trained and progressive police agency are integral to the needs of the City. Policing and City cannot be seen as separate or competing interests, but as one in the same and mutually supportive.
Just as the “needs” of a great small city such as Saratoga Springs include adequate housing opportunities, a strong economy, an enlightened government, good health care, good schools and libraries, cultural programs, recreational facilities and leisure activities, open space and parks and a preservation ethic; those “needs,” necessarily must include public safety services worthy of and reflective of its character.
The City, after all, is not just buildings and physical infrastructure, but a sense of place defined by community values and expectations. Here those values and expectations have come to include acceptance of diverse views and beliefs, personal safety and security and shared pride in community belonging.
Yes, good, enlightened municipal policing is expensive but it is also essential to community well being. And the “needs” of both are equally worthy.
Lew Benton
What follows are Peel’s Nine Principles.
The basic mission for which the police exist is to prevent crime and disorder.
The ability of the police to perform their duties depends on public approval of police actions.
Police must secure the willing cooperation of the public in voluntary observance of the law to be able to secure and maintain the respect of the public.
The degree of cooperation of the public that can be secured diminishes proportionately to the necessity to use physical force.
Police seek and preserve public favor not by catering to public opinion but by constantly demonstrating absolute impartial service to the law.
Police use of physical force to the extent necessary to secure observance of the law or to restore order only when the exercise of persuasion, advise and warning is found to be insufficient.
Police, at all times, should maintain a relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public and the public are the police, the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full-time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence.
Police should always direct their attention strictly towards their functions and never appear to usurp the powers of the judiciary.
The test of police efficiency is the absence of crime and disorder, not the visible evidence of police action in dealing with it.
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