Sergio Ristorante owners Alban and Ylka Gashi came before the Village of Pelham board Tuesday seeking a required approval for a fast-casual Mediterranean eatery they’ve proposed for 139 Fifth Ave.

The Gashi’s signed a lease for the space a month ago. The restauranteurs need a change in the building’s site plan so that 548 square feet set aside as community space can be used for the restaurant.

The board of trustees sent the Gashi’s request to the planning board for review. The new apartment building at 139 Fifth Ave., which opened last fall, was built with space for two ground floor retail tenants.

The board debated whether to vote on a resolution to modify two permits so cell phone towers on the fire house can be replaced with towers to be located on the Pelham Green apartment building that is under construction. The wireless equipment must be moved because the fire house will be demolished once the village’s new municipal center is completed.

An attorney for Pelham Green urged the board to adopt the resolution, while Mayor Chance Mullen said the board had only received the documents an hour before the meeting and did not have time to read them. Village Administrator Chris Scelza said the completed application with all supporting documentation had been turned in on Nov. 7.

Mullen suggested tabling the resolution on the permit and two related measures covering the relocation of the antennas owned by T-Mobile and AT&T until the board’s next meeting on Nov. 26.

David Cooper, an attorney from Zarin & Steinmetz LLP representing Pelham Green, said waiting two weeks for the permit would translate into a significant delay in construction because it takes about seven weeks once a tower is ordered for it to arrive and be assembled. Pelham Green cannot continue construction until all that is done, he said.

“That’s two business days,” said Deputy Mayor Mike Carpenter, referring to Scelza’s statement on when the permit application was filed. “That’s not really a fair ask of us. Is there any place in the world you can apply for a permit like this and in two business days get the permit back?”

Mullen said, “The seven volunteers [on the board] are now speeding up and are responsible for all of the potential delays because all of the attorneys and all of the telecommunications folks, during the last couple of months, they could have just sped this process up by an extra week so that we wouldn’t be in this position, but they didn’t do that. Instead, it is on the village board to move with absolute haste, lest it all come crumbling down.”

According to the resolutions, the village and the wireless companies have been negotiating on the new sites since May 2021.

In the end, the trustees decided to hold a special meeting Monday at 6 p.m. to revisit the three resolutions.

The village board authorized T-Mobile and AT&T to stop paying rent for the tower locations on the fire house as of last Jan. 1, the resolutions said, and the village will pay all the costs of putting up the new towers, with the unpaid rent from this year accruing toward those expenses.

PKF O’Connor Davies, the independent accountants for the village, presented the audited financial statements for the 2023-2024 fiscal year ending on May 31. According to the presentation, the village had $815,000 in revenue in excess of expenditures that year.

Mullen said the shift to in-house garbage and recycling collection lowered expenses for those services from $1.1 million in 2022 to $642,000 in 2024.

“The village is in great financial health,” said Robert Daniele, a partner with PKF O’Connor Davies.