To the Editor:

For over two full years, a citizens’ group has been advocating for saving the historic home of Dr. Frederick Crounse for posterity. Altamont has always been a village that values its historic character.

One main obstacle has stood in the way of preservation: the cost of asbestos abatement. The lowest estimate we obtained was for $50,000. That amount was daunting: so much money just to be able to begin raising funds to restore the house!

But in last week’s Enterprise, I read that the town and village have set aside $100,000 to demolish the historic home! This is the site where our first doctor cared for the entire 134th Schoharie militia on its way to the front to save our Union. This is the doctor about whom Arthur Gregg once wrote “There is something grand and inspiring about his life from beginning to end. Who can estimate the influence of his presence in this locality ... ?”

Now the village, after 15 years of doing nothing to protect the building, after 15 years of neglect and allowing the structure to decay and become the eyesore that so many have decried, after all this, they finally decide to spend money on it: to blot it out of our collective memory! And raise village taxes in the process.

To Mayor Kerry Dineen and the Altamont Village Board I say: If you’ve resigned yourselves to spending all that taxpayer money anyway, why not use it to abate the asbestos and work with interested citizens to preserve it instead?

There are rumors that the village has plans for the site. Exactly what are those plans? More development?

The mayor and the village board should openly reveal what they are considering.

The property belongs to the people, not to the politicians. Maybe their plans are praiseworthy, or maybe they’re problematic. Or just maybe their plans can coexist with preservation!

In any event, it is the people who should decide: to agree to demolishing a house built in 1833, long before the railroad came through, and erasing the memory of the doctor who helped create the community that we call home; or to preserve our history for those who will come after us.

Thomas Capuano

Guilderland