A crisis can provide opportunity, skirting dangers.

This struck us last Wednesday night as we sat in a packed hearing room at Voorheesville Village Hall. The hearing was for a Planned Unit Development district that would allow a large rental apartment complex to be built on property owned by St. Matthew’s Church at 25 Mountainview Street in the village.

Many in the room said they hadn’t been informed about the project —Kenneth Connolly of Danbury Court had gone door to door to let nearby residents know about it.

The mayor and village lawyer said they had followed the letter of the law in publishing a newspaper legal notice. The board was wise to keep the hearing open, delaying a decision on the proposal.

The danger here would be to ignore concerns raised by those at the hearing —concerns about wetlands on the property, about the cost of upgrading the sewer system to accommodate 40 new units, about loss of property values for nearby single-family homes, and about the process itself.

Kevin Garrity, an adjacent property owner and a member of the village’s planning commission, said at the hearing that he hadn’t been made aware of the proposal and that the planning commission hadn’t been consulted.

“We’re picking and choosing what we’re doing rather than looking at an overall approach,” he said.

“It appears to be circumventing the zoning law,” said David Taber, a member of the zoning board, which also was not consulted on the proposal.

“I fundamentally disagree,” responded the village’s attorney, Richard Reilly. He said it was important to “keep the authority and ultimate decision-making with the board of trustees.”

Here is where opportunity comes in. This crisis gives the village a chance to take a step back and map a clear course for its future.

When the hearing on the planned unit development district opened in July, it was stated that the village zoning law was its comprehensive plan. That’s not enough. A decades-old zoning ordinance is not the same as a current comprehensive land-use plan.

Six years ago, in this space, we urged Voorheesville to draft a master plan. At that time, John Bossalini, project executive of Amedore Homes, building 40 new homes on the edge of the village abutting a golf course, said that the desire to move to Voorheesville is huge. “It’s a great school district,” he said. “Taxes are reasonable. It’s an easy commute,” close to Albany and the state campus.

All of these things, except proximity, can be spoiled without sensible planning. Taxes go up as families move in with kids who go to school, and they require other municipal services, too.

A decade ago, the Open Space Institute released a report, documenting sprawl in the Capital Region.  It detailed the many problems that come with sprawl and reduce the quality of life. The report noted that the state allows five planning methods for municipalities. One of them, and it is one of the most important, is a comprehensive land-use plan.

That same year, we raised the question of the nearby village of Altamont during our election interviews. All of the winning candidates said they advocated creating a comprehensive land-use plan. They then fulfilled that promise.

Trustee Dean Whalen, an architect who headed Altamont’s master-planning committee and went on to head the committee that drafted zoning to fit the plan, told us at the time, “We don’t have anything on how we see ourselves in the 21st Century. We don’t want to get steamrolled.”

Now Altamont has a plan, and the zoning to back it up. It has stood the test of controversy, as when the Stewart’s Shop in the village wanted to expand into a district designated residential by the new zoning.

Altamont’s master-planning committee went about its work in the right way, which could form a valuable template for nearby Voorheesville. It surveyed village residents and held public workshops.

Both villages grew with the train stations that put them on the map; both have many original Victorian homes as well as newer developments. We’ve seen no indication that multi-family units have decreased house values in Altamont.

“Historic resources are clearly part of a community’s physical and visual environment, and therefore the municipal home rule power includes the power to regulate historic resources,” says a paper from New York’s Department of State.

The paper outlines various techniques to preserve historic resources, which includes overlay zones to cut across underlying districts, applying a common set of standards; transfer of development rights, where an owner of a designated property may sell his quantitative development rights to the owner of a receiving property; and acquisition easements that allow town boards to acquire fee or easement interests in historic properties by purchase, gift, or other means.

Framers of a plan for Voorheesville may well see the value of its historic buildings as the village seeks to attract visitors to the head of the rail trail. A new pavilion echoing the historic train station with its witch’s hat for a roof, is already a nod to the past. It was torn down years ago.

It is important to act now before more of Voorheesville’s history is torn down. This crisis provides the perfect opportunity.

If the Planned Unit Development district proposal were to pass, it could apply to up to a half-dozen parcels larger than the specified 7.5 acres. Projects on these parcels could radically change the look and feel of Voorheesville as well as straining its services.

A process to involve residents with different interests in the village — representing, among others, the planning and zoning boards, the businesses, the schools, the churches, the library, residents of historic houses, and residents of newer developments — is essential.

At last Wednesday’s hearing, Toni Goetz said residents of Salem Hills had been treated like second-class citizens as the trend is to put multi-family dwellings near Salem Hills with its older homes rather than near the newer more expensive homes.

“Compressed housing is profitable; it’s where the money is,” he said. “We don’t want to live in a place we moved away from.”

The village board should not proceed with a planned unit development but, rather, should start a master-planning process, using the expertise of its boards and citizens to map a sound future. The village board will still have the final say as it is the body that would ultimately adopt the zoning to make the plan functional.

This process would give the village a chance to publicly work through its priorities — from resources, traffic, and environmental concerns to social concerns like the need for affordable housing or viable community centers that the elderly could walk to.

The village needs to preserve the very things that make it so attractive. Now is the time to do that.

— Melissa Hale-Spencer