GUILDERLAND — Two new appointments in Guilderland have Darrell A. McKnight joining the Environmental Conservation Advisory Council, which considers the environmental impact of proposed building projects, and Sean Maguire becoming the seventh member of the Industrial Development Agency, which attracts business, job creation, and investment in the town through tax incentives.

McKnight

McKnight, 54, is retired from working for New York State’s Office of General Services.  doing inspections of all of New York’s state prisons. In his unit within OGS, Design and Construction, he also did drafting and consultant management.

For 12 years he also served as a system mechanic in the Army National Guard.

He attended Hudson Valley Community College at night, in industrial technology. He has a codes license in building inspection, and did an apprenticeship with a carpenters’ union in the 1980s.

He has been a member of the Guilderland Democratic Committee for “eight or 10 years,” he says.

McKnight grew up in the the coal mining town of Beards Fork, West Virginia. He became aware of environmental issues, he says, as he watched his grandfather, a coal miner, come home every day covered from head to toe in coal dust.

On the council, he wants to “make sure that everything is going to be on the up and up” and that there will be “no chance of having environmental spills.”

He believes global warming is happening, he said, and wants his children to grow up to have a clean environment.

With McKnight’s appointment, there are seven members, including Chairman John Wemple. The council hears presentations from any applicant wishing to subdivide or develop a property. It then goes out to walk the property before crafting a recommendation to the town’s planning board about environmental impact, visual impact, traffic concerns, and other matters, as well as outlining any conditions that should be set.

Town Supervisor Peter Barber told The Enterprise that the town looks for people not only with environmental backgrounds to fill this board, but that it also values people from other backgrounds who have an interest in the town’s parks and a desire to serve. The town also welcomes the chance to increase a board’s “regional diversity and diversity,” Barber said.

McKnight was appointed to fill the unexpired term of David Bosworth, the long-time chairman of the Guilderland Democratic Committee who died on April 18.

The term will end at the end of this year. All council members serve one-year terms, Wemple told The Enterprise.

As of 2017, council members are paid a stipend of $1,546, according to Stacia Smith-Brigadier, the town’s personnel administrator.

McKnight lives on Pinewood Drive with his wife and two school-aged children.

Maguire

Maguire, 39, is the director of economic development for the Capital District Regional Planning Commission. He is also a member of the Albany County Planning Board.

He previously worked at the New York State Department of State as a municipal management consultant and project manager. Before that, he was the senior economic development planner for Albany County.

This spring, Maguire ran unsuccessfully for the Guilderland school board. Five candidates were vying for three seats, and he came in a close fourth.

After the June 6 board meeting, at which the board voted to appoint Maguire, Barber called his resumé “incredible” and said that the board “couldn’t ask for a better candidate.”

Donald Csaposs, who is the Guilderland IDA’s chief executive officer, told The Enterprise that Maguire, in his role with the Capital District Regional Planning Commission, had actually provided the IDA with some analysis in connection with the Crossgates Mall hotel application for tax relief.

That role will stop, though, with his appointment, and, in the future, someone else from the commission will do any analysis requested by the Guilderland IDA, Maguire said.

Maguire lives in the Campus Club neighborhood with his wife and two school-age children.

IDA members are not paid. The board had six members, Csaposs said, but is authorized to have seven.

Over the past year, the board has been busy. It usually considers an average of less than one project a year, Csaposs told The Enterprise in May, but this year it has considered three: the Mill Hollow II apartment complex, the Crossgates Mall hotel, and the Promenade Senior Living facility. It also expects to receive two more in the coming months: Pine Bush Senior Living near the corner of Route 155 and Western Avenue and Concordia Senior Living at Foundry Road and Western Avenue.

The IDA granted both mortgage-recording and sales tax exemption to both Mill Hollow and the hotel project. It turned down a request from the hotel’s developer, Pyramid Companies, for the real-estate tax relief known as a PILOT, or Payment in Lieu of Taxes.

No decision has yet been made on Promenade. That project also involves a PILOT application in addition to the other two forms of tax exemption.