COBLESKILL — The race for two Village Board seats got smaller and more complicated this week after incumbent Trustee William D. Gilmore Jr. dropped out for medical reasons and Trustee Carol McGuire’s challenge to campaign petitions from candidate Robert La Pietra were denied by county elections commissioners.

That leaves McGuire, La Pietra and Recreation Commission Chairwoman Linda Holmes on the ballot for the November election.

But whether or not La Pietra is a legal village resident, as required by municipal law to hold a board seat, remained unclear Thursday.

La Pietra lists his voting registration address as 784 E. Main St., according to elections officials.

According to village Code Enforcement Officer Michael Piccolo, that location contains a downstairs pet shop and only “illegal apartments” because neither La Pietra nor his son, Robert W. La Pietra, who owns the building, obtained the required building permits, electrical inspections and Planning Board permissions, before renovating the second floor into three apartments more than two years ago.

“A stop-work order was issued July 24, 2006,” Piccolo said Thursday.

Since then, he said, the apartments have “been rented and re-rented … and he still has people in there.”

“I don’t see how it can be his residence when it’s an illegal apartment,” Piccolo said.

La Pietra’s residency was among one objection in a series of challenges McGuire filed against his petitions Aug. 27. On Tuesday, however, Schoharie County’s two election commissioners invalidated her challenge on procedural grounds, and did not actually rule on her specific objections, according to county elections officials.

Elections Commissioner Lewis Wilson and Deputy Commissioner Ellen Snowdon said election law requires that the person filing the specific objections notify the challenged candidate by mail or in person, but McGuire did not.

“So we were precluded from making a decision,” said Wilson.

Decisions to initially uphold petition challenges are made by Wilson, the Republican commissioner, and Clifford C. Hay, the Democratic commissioner.

The major political parties are not a factor in the village races, where candidates run independently.

McGuire, a village trustee since 1998, said Snowdon told her that elections officials would notify La Pietra of the specific objections, but Snowdon denied saying that.

“I did not tell her that,” Snowdon said. “During conversations with Carol, I said numerous times, we do not give legal advice. … The assumption is that the candidates will avail themselves of legal advice or read the election law itself.”

Even if elections officials notified La Pietra, however, it wouldn’t matter, according to Wilson, because the law still requires the filer of the objections to personally notify the targeted candidate within the two business days that ended Tuesday.

McGuire said election laws run about 600 pages and “are very complicated, even for lawyers,” She said she relied on Board of Elections staff.

“I did everything I was told to do,” McGuire said. She said her challenges included claims that many signatures were not legally filed or witnessed.

She said she was notified of Tuesday’s commissioners later Tuesday via her telephone answering machine, but it was too late to object.

“It’s over with as far as we’re concerned,” Wilson said. Hay could not be reached for comment Thursday.

Piccolo said state Supreme Court Judge Eugene P. Devine ordered last April that residents in the La Pietra apartments be evicted, but the order has not been complied with.

A conference between Village Attorney Meredith Savitt and La Pietra’s lawyer, Edward Wildove, is scheduled for Wednesday in an effort to resolve the matter, Piccolo said.

Neither La Pietra nor his son could be reached for comment Thursday, but Wildove said “the issue is whether it’s a legal residence or not.”

Wildove said the petition challenge is “a separate issue.”

Gilmore, a former mayor who lost to current Mayor Mike Sellers in a three-way race with La Pietra in 2005, said he agreed with McGuire that La Pietra’s petition “is an invalid application” that he claimed contained illegible signatures and wrong addresses.

“If I hadn’t been in Ohio, I would have filed [a challenge] myself,” he said.

Gilmore, 64, was elected to an interim one-year trustee term last year, and filed petitions to run for a full four-year term in November, before discovering he needs several heart-related aneurysm surgeries.

He said he decided to withdraw because “if you tell people you’re going to do the job, you do it. And I wasn’t going to be available for the first nine months or so [after surgeries.]”