NEW LEBANON — New Lebanon’s mayor quit.
He said his last day on the job was earlier this week.
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The name tags inside New Lebanon’s village council chambers Friday said David Nickerson is the mayor in this community.
But he no longer holds that title or that office after he submitted a resignation letter News Center 7 got a hold of, saying his last day was Tuesday.
“I kind of expected that was going to come, especially when there was a petition going around to try and get him out of there,” Amanda Hardin of New Lebanon said.
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Nickerson mentions that recall effort in the five-page resignation letter where he outlines what he calls “the coordinated political subversion, personal character assassination, and direct physical safety threats that have made continued executive oversight impossible without exposing myself, my family, and newly aligned reform-minded council members to severe hazard.”
News Center 7 went to Nickerson’s home Friday to try and talk to him about his decision to resign, but no one answered the door.
We talked to several people who live in New Lebanon Friday off camera about Nickerson’s resignation.
They all described the dynamic on their current village council in ways we can’t repeat on TV.
Hardin has lived here for 46 years and told me she shares that concern.
“I think we have a very divided (village council), and I think that we need the (village council) to kind of decide what direction New Lebanon needs to go. And I think everybody needs to be on the same page in order to move it forward to go that way. And I don’t think that they have that completely right now,” Hardin said.
News Center 7 checked New Lebanon’s village charter.
It says that with the mayor’s office vacant, the vice mayor becomes mayor.
Then the rest of the village council needs a majority vote to appoint a new vice mayor.
There’s a mayoral election here in New Lebanon in November 2027.
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