FORT ANN — Wrapping up two days of testimony last Friday, Rory Russell acknowledged what his neighbors had accused him and Albany County Legislator Deborah Busch of doing last summer: They walked onto the deck of the Bolens’ lakefront cottage and tested its exterior paint for lead.

When Town Judge James Richardson on Wednesday found them both guilty of trespassing, a noncriminal violation similar to a parking ticket, he cited the testimony, which revealed that the neighbors had a history of tensions over their properties that came to a head as Russell suspected the Bolens’ abatement of lead paint was making him and Busch sick.

“…It led me to believe that they were not there for an open, social visit,” Richardson wrote of Russell’s testimony in his Nov. 12 decision.

Russell said Wednesday that he and Busch were sentenced to each pay a $125 fine and a $125 surcharge to Fort Ann Town Court. They disagreed with the decision. Busch said Wednesday they do not plan to appeal, but Rory Russell, in a voice message left Thursday, said his attorney would like to appeal the decision.

“This is a no-win situation,” Busch said, and referred to the burden of their $12,000 in legal fees from the bench trial, along with the fines and surcharges.

Russell testified that he and Busch were visiting an elderly neighbor on Sunday, July 13; they crossed through Thomas and Carole Bolen’s Kattskill Bay property between them and stopped to touch their lead testers to the Bolens’ house on the shore of Lake George.

Russell told The Enterprise he and Busch had cut through the property a year prior to help the same elderly neighbor who had fallen. When they did so in July, it was at Busch’s suggestion, as Russell had wanted evidence before writing a letter to the county’s department of public health, she said Wednesday, frustrated that a prior notice of code violations hadn’t been enforced.

“I don’t necessarily think things are behind us,” Thomas Bolen, 56, who works in marketing, said on Wednesday. “We still live less than 30 feet away from each other, but I think, even for such a small charge, it was a worthwhile effort on the part of the DA’s office and on our part….It was important for my daughters to confront this, which they did, and see that the system works, even for such a minor offense.”

Assistant Washington County District Attorney Devin Anderson, who prosecuted the case, said Russell and Busch could have had the case adjourned in contemplation of dismissal so long as they stayed off of the Bolens’ land. If they had agreed, the case would have been sealed as long as they hadn’t been arrested again in six months’ time.

“We probably should have done that,” Russell said yesterday, “but my lawyer and Debbie’s lawyer felt this had no legs to it.”

Russell, 57, owns Acquisition & Funding Services, a brokerage specializing in the security alarm industry and lives at the lake all year.

Busch, 51, is a nurse manager from Berne, representing most of the Hilltowns in her first term in the county legislature. She did not testify in the trial, she said, as her attorney was concerned of the attention she would draw as an elected official.

“The only thing I really regret about it is the damage this may have brought to my name,” said Busch on Wednesday. “I’ve always been someone who’s served the people.”

Calling the prosecution “malicious,” Busch said the experience changed her views on the death penalty, now seeing prosecutors capable of condemning innocent people.

Shouts in court

The prosecution stressed Russell and Busch were never given permission to go onto the Bolens’ property, and the defense said they were never warned to stay off, noting “No Trespassing” signs appeared on the Bolens’ property only after the July 13 encounter.

Russell and Busch were on the deck next to the Bolens’ kitchen window as the Bolen family pulled into their long driveway. Living in Queensbury, the Bolens generally use the cottage just on long weekends during the summer. That evening, they were returning from their daughters’ lacrosse tournament, and decided to check at the property for any fallen trees after a storm, Thomas Bolen said in court.

Busch and Russell hurried back to Russell’s property as Thomas Bolen leaned on the car horn and kicked up stones driving down the driveway, Russell and Carole Bolen both testified. Russell and Busch yesterday both denied the Bolens’ testimony that they left the property frantically and that Busch jumped over a retaining wall.

“It told me, the way that they were approaching, they didn’t want us there,” Busch said Wednesday of the Bolens’ arrival.

In July, she had told The Enterprise she had only been using a neighborhood path and was inadvertently caught in a neighbor dispute.

In their testimony, Carole and Thomas Bolen, as well as two of their 15-year-old triplets, said no such path exists and that they know not to go onto Russell’s property.

“We don’t have a relationship at all,” said Carole Bolen in court. “We can sit on our dock and he sits on his dock, and it’s like there’s a glass wall, and we’re fine with that.”

Before the Bolens owned the property in December 2012, Russell said in court, he was friendly with Thomas Bolen’s father, Robert, and walked across the property “hundreds of times.”

Russell said his relationship with Busch started in August of 2013.

The defense attorneys, brothers Robert and John Winn, shouted with Anderson in the tiny courtroom and called multiple times for a mistrial and to have the charges dismissed. They pointed to the complaint the Bolens made to police, which stated Busch and Russell had been told in the past to not come onto their property, and contrasted that with the Bolens’ courtroom testimony.

“He’s just grandstanding in front of the court right now,” Anderson said as Robert Winn, once the Washington County District Attorney, called for a mistrial on Oct. 24, the first day of the trial, when Thomas Bolen said he hadn’t had a direct conversation with Busch about trespassing.

Bolen said he was speaking “in the context of 20 years of problems” in which the neighbors knew they were not allowed on one another’s property.

Russell told The Enterprise that his lawyer had filed a sworn statement with the State Police on Nov. 1 that accuses Bolen of making a false statement in July.

Tensions increase

Both Russell and the Bolens said their tensions were brought to a new level this summer, shown in letters obtained by The Enterprise through a Freedom of Information Law request.

They intersected in 2006 and 2013 before the Lake George Park Commission as Russell applied for boat and jetski lifts at his dock. In 2013, Russell had Busch testify to his credibility as a responsible boater when the Bolens said he had backed unsafely close to their dock, where teenagers were swimming.

Russell’s application was denied by the commission. The chairman said Russell’s dock complex was out of compliance. Thomas Bolen agrees, saying further modifications to Russell’s angled dock would block out the sunset he can see from his land, which has one of the widest views of the lake.

Listing his own complaints about the Bolens’ property, Russell wrote to the Fort Ann town supervisor that he was afraid it would reduce his property value. He said the fence he installed was for that reason, not to keep people out.

“It was more to keep from looking at that blighted property,” Russell said in court. “It is a terrible looking place.” Russell said his house is from the same era, toward the start of the 20th Century.

Russell’s letter to the Washington County Department of Code Enforcement in March complained about the conditions at the Bolens’ lakehouse — among them its aged electrical wiring, stormwater drainage under the house, fallen trees, a probable lead paint hazard, and rodents seen entering beneath the structure — all of which were included two weeks later in an order from the administrator to the Bolens that the violations be addressed.

“I am requesting your immediate attention to this matter and that you conduct an investigation and recommendation to address the amelioration of lead currently being deposited into the lake from the ground runoff,” Russell wrote in May in a letter to county code enforcement, frustrated that no action had been taken since his first letter. In a response, the Bolens’ attorney wrote that much of the family’s time was spent taking care of an ailing parent.

As the Bolen family was removing paint from their cottage over the summer, Russell sent more letters. He contacted to the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation, and the county’s board of supervisors and director of public health, saying the Bolens didn’t follow safe practices, and his bedding, air filters, and blood had tested positive for lead.

Russell said in court that just one lead tester was used when he and Busch were on the property, but Thomas Bolen said he found four red marks the following day, including inside a doorframe and inside an enclosed porch.