A quarter of a century ago, we pushed for Guilderland to create its first comprehensive land-use plan. We got pushback from town officials, who claimed the patchwork of separate documents already served as a master plan. They did not.

In the wake of Pyramid’s proposal to double Crossgates Mall, to which many citizens objected, the town started a process, involving residents and stakeholders, with many surveys, public hearings, and roundtable discussions. The process took years and resulted in the town board adopting a plan in 2001 with separate areas of town being considered individually through 2016.

The 2001 town board vote to adopt the plan was 4 to 1, with the lone Republican on the board objecting. He said the plan allowed more government intrusion into people’s lives.  

Guilderland’s comprehensive plan initially raised the ire of developers and some residents in western Guilderland, who wanted water and sewer systems, like those found in the developed, eastern part of town. “It’s a smokescreen for a no-growth policy,” said one.

The supervisor at the time, Democrat Kenneth Runion, responded, “There’s nothing that will have an adverse impact on property rights or future growth of the town …. This plan talks about controlled growth potentials, doing it in a reasonable manner rather than in a haphazard suburban-sprawl manner.”

When Guilderland started its master-planning process in 1999, the town’s population was about 29,000; now Guilderland has close to 37,000 residents — so the plan didn’t stymie growth. And residents came to respect and rely on the comprehensive plan as aspects of it were codified into town zoning.

In recent years, citizens have been aroused again by development proposals in town, including Pyramid’s plans to build a 222-unit apartment complex and a Costco Wholesale store.

Before the pandemic, Guilderland was poised to begin a perhaps two-year process to update its master plan. “Over the past year,” the current supervisor, Democrat Peter Barber, told us in December 2019, “people have been asking about it.”

The update may focus, Barber said then, on parts of the plan that need to be changed, or areas that have emerged in recent years, such as becoming a climate-smart community or following smart-growth design principles.

The town was beginning to apply for grants and was to involve the public soon, said Barber in 2019. “You really have to make sure you’re involving the public from Day 1,” he said.

Then the pandemic intervened.

So we were delighted to hear the town planner, Kenneth Kovalchik, tell residents who had gathered earlier this month for an overview of planning Guilderland that the process to update the comprehensive plan has begun in earnest.

We will take Barber at his word that the public needs to be involved from the start — the plan is, after all, to embody residents’ vision for their future.

 Kovalchik explained that Guilderland has reached capacity with its water supply — a grant is being sought to filter water from two unused wells —  and said that water needs to be addressed in the town’s comprehensive plan update.

As Barber indicated, a plan that encourages use of sustainable energy and climate smart growth is essential. Also affordable housing is needed for people of all ages, incomes, and physical abilities.

Kovalchik mentioned that prices have gotten so high in the Fort Hunter Fire District that approval was needed to increase the percentage of firefighters who can live outside the district from 20 percent to 40 percent, because volunteers can’t afford to live in Fort Hunter anymore. This is simply unacceptable.

While we commend the current administration for its emphasis on parklands and trails connecting them — providing healthful activities much needed during the pandemic — more can be done with a comprehensive plan to encourage walkable communities.

While our dependency on cars has led to suburban sprawl, favoring public transit and building communities with stores and other amenities near homes can reverse that process.

We also commend the town for its recent initiative to set up a system of tax breaks to encourage property owners to leave their lands open. But, as Kovalchik noted, for the program to be successful, it needs buy-in. And the six school districts in the town have yet to sign on to the program, he said.

There’s another important way to keep open land in town — encourage farming.

In his April talk, Kovalchik noted that half-acre and one-acre home lots make the biggest demands on municipalities’ infrastructure in general as it costs money to provide their water, sewer, fire, and police services.

“The commercial, industrial, or multi-family complexes is what really solidifies your tax base,” Kovalchik said. What he didn’t mention, and what we added to the story, was the importance of working farms to the tax base.

According to a Cost of Community Services Studies conducted by the American Farmland Trust, comparing the cost in services used by residential development, commercial and industrial development, and working open land, “In every community studied, farmland has generated a fiscal surplus to help offset the shortfall created by residential demand for public services.”

But the benefit of farmland goes beyond helping the tax base while not overtaxing municipal services.

When suburbia sprawls across open space and farmland, wildlife and wetlands are lost; the quality and supply of drinking water decreases; and traffic congestion, air pollution, and energy consumption all increase as well as local taxes.

In short, the quality of life diminishes, not just for us, but for future generations as well.

Large parts of Guilderland are still rural. With proper planning, and the zoning that should follow a new comprehensive plan, those agricultural areas could be properly protected.

A recent application to put a contractor’s yard on rural Frederick Road is a perfect illustration of why zoning should be revised.

Scores of residents wrote to us, opposing the contractor’s yard, outlining their concerns with pollution, disruption of wildlife, road destruction, and more. One letter writer who favored the project, though, wrote that the zoning allows it.

While a zoning board is a quasi-judicial board and certainly has the power, and some would argue the duty, to turn down such a proposal, that doesn’t always happen. In this case, the Guilderland zoning board has referred the application to the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation, offering it the opportunity to become lead agency.

But the larger dilemma still exists. If Guilderland is serious about maintaining the open spaces it has left — as it should be for the good of the entire town — that must be part of the updated comprehensive plan.

The Albany County Agricultural and Farmland Protection Board has designated an area including the Frederick Road parcel slated to be a contractor’s yard, as a Special Agricultural District. The parcel is right next to working farms.

These days, as houses crop up where corn once grew, it’s hard for farmers — and will be harder still in the future — to put together enough land for a sustainable operation.

The supply-chain issues brought on by the pandemic have underlined a lesson we should have already learned: Buying food from local farmers is good for the health of the economy, good for our personal health, and good for the health of the environment.

New York is a home-rule state so each town can play a powerful role in shaping its own future.

An official of the state’s Department of Agriculture and Markets once told us, “Municipalities can do more to protect agriculture than, at some times, the commissioner of agriculture — even the governor — because the legislature has given to local towns the authority to develop comprehensive plans and develop land-use regulations.”

We hope Guilderland uses that power wisely to preserve the farmland it has left.

The town and its residents need to focus on more than a mall as they chart Guilderland’s future. Farmland, once developed, cannot be reclaimed. The entire town will be richer for its preservation.