GUILDERLAND — In November, Guilderland residents will vote on whether the terms for the town supervisor and town clerk should be extended from the current two years to four.

After a public hearing on Aug. 13, the town board unanimously amended the proposed law so that voters will be casting their ballots separately for the extension of the clerk’s term and of the supervisor’s terms.

“What we did basically was look at what Colonie and Bethlehem had done,” said Supervisor Peter Barber of drafting the law.

He spoke after the close of the roughly half-hour hearing in which most of the speakers favored separate propositions and had complimentary things to say about Lynne Buchanan, who serves both as the town clerk and the receiver of taxes.

“Sometimes just copying what other towns did is not always the best route,” said Barber as he proposed making the votes on the two offices “clearly separate.”

“That’s why we have these public hearings,” said Deputy Supervisor Christine Napierski.

Among the three residents who submitted written comments and the six residents who spoke at the hearing, only one favored the law as it was first proposed.

“I think it is long overdue,” wrote Jerry Houser of extending both the clerk’s and the supervisor’s terms.

Elizabeth Floyd spoke first at the hearing and her comments were later echoed by others. Each speaker was greeted with applause from the gallery.

Floyd said she had no problem increasing the clerk’s term as the clerk does not set policy but, on the other hand, she said, “The supervisor has the power to change the quality of life for residents for better or worse.”

She said that voting is a way for townspeople to evaluate a supervisor’s performance.

When Barber had presented the proposal to the town board in July, Napierski had said she could see the benefits because “campaigning is very time-consuming and takes away from your official duties in office.”

At the hearing, Floyd said elections in Guilderland are done by slate, “so they’ve just covered campaigning for like 10 people by coming to your one house.”

That system, Floyd said, discorages newcomers from running and favors incumbents.

In July, Napierski had also asked about the rationale for term lengths.

Barber had answered, “I think the reason is because you want to do long-term planning and a lot of times you can’t do something in two years … You can’t do something without worrying about how people might perceive it. So I think it’s probably more of that. You want to be able to do long-term goals.”

The bill itself says, “The Town Board finds that an extended term will provide greater opportunity for long-term planning and is in the best interest of the public.”

“If you want to stop worrying about public perception,” Richard Gifford said at the hearing, responding to Barber’s comment in July, “the remedy is vibrant public involvement for every single initiative, but that takes a genuine commitment to seek out opposing viewpoints, not stifle them.”

Gifford said that, while Buchanan “should be given a lifetime appointment,” he had had three difficult years in dealing with the supervisor’s office, the building and zoning department, and the legal and land-use apparatus in town.

“It’s been a nightmare,” he said.

Gifford went on, “This proposal runs completely against the public interest. Elections are about accountability. That accountability is all the more important with one-party rule right now.”

He suggested, if the longer supervisor’s term were adopted, “a companion code change that will require no more than three town board members may come from one party.”

Robyn Gray, who chairs the Guilderland Coalition for Responsible Growth, said she’d never seen Barber campaign in Westmere over all the years she’d lived there.

As far as seeing projects through, Gray said, “You have a town board, you have a deputy supervisor that can carry those out.”

Echoing Floyd, she said, “It should be a separate ballot.”

Frank Casey said, “I would absolutely agree that we separate the supervisor’s request from the town clerk/receiver of taxes.”

Since the four other town board members serve four-year terms, Casey said, “We have an election every two years; three people are up for election. If you make the supervisor a four-year term, one year, you’re going to have three people up for election and the next [election] two people up … that does not allow you to see much of a change in the balance of the town board.”

Laurel Bohl, who formerly served on the town board, said, “I think the fairest thing is to have separate ballots.”

She also said, “The most powerful person in the town board is, of course, always going to be the supervisor … Having run as the voice of the residents, I can’t get that out of my blood, that I think the constituents want to be able to voice their opinion on that every two years.”

Extending the supervisor’s term, Bohl said, would not save money or benefit the town “in any real way.”

Bohl went on, “As far as how it would affect planning in the town, the opposite is true because the constituents need to be able to review every two years how the planning is going.”

She concluded that the clerk “should be appointed in a lifetime position … she does a fantastic job.”

Bohl called the supervisor’s and clerk’s posts “apples and oranges” since the clerk’s job is apolitical.

Gordon McClelland said the supervisor’s job is a policy-making post while the clerk holds “an administrative position.”

“I never thought the town clerk should be elected at all,” he said. “It’s a professional position, which, by the way, Ms. Buchanan has proven to us that that’s what it should be … with the kind of background and the kind of integrity that she brought.”