ALTAMONT — When Mayor Kerry Dineen was appointing Deb Hext as the next chair of the Altamont Planning Board at the October board of trustees meeting, the mayor said that members of the planning board had made it clear to her that Hext was the best person for the job. 

For her part, Hext said that any of the other three board members would have done a good job, but added that she was glad to be chosen and hopes she can live up to expectations.

“It will be hard to fill Tim’s shoes, he did an excellent job,” Hext said of the resigning member, Tim Wilford, who had chaired the board. 

Wilford did not return calls seeking comment.

Hext has had two stints on the planning board; most recently she was reappointed to the board in April 2017. 

Hext said that she’s taken the appointments because she wants to do what’s best for Altamont. “I love this village; I’ve lived here since 1986,” she said. 

And she thinks that it is important for residents — all residents, not just those in public positions — to be familiar with what is going on in the village, which is also what Hext pointed to when asked about her proudest accomplishments on the board: An informed citizenry.

Hext thinks residents appreciate the time and effort the planning board puts into the decisions that it makes.

For example, the construction of a cell tower on village-owned property on Agawam Lane that the board approved in February. “I know I spent days and nights not sleeping because I wanted to do right for everybody,” Hext said, adding that her sleeplessness had been a common experience for other board members as well.

Hext said that the board pored over the emails it had received,“took them apart one-by-one” and listed out every pro and con.

And the planning board did take additional steps to engage and educate the public, holding the public hearing open for two months and asking that Enterprise Consulting Services, the company installing the tower, perform a second “balloon float” test, which was used to determine the visual impact the tower would have on the village. 

Residents voiced their concern about the tower, especially the impact to public health, but the board, Hext said, was bound by federal law to not use public health as a consideration for rejecting the tower’s construction. 

“I think people got that after a while,” she said, but it also took the board explaining to people why it couldn’t reject the tower on those grounds. “If you can do something or you can’t do something, explain why you’re doing it or why you can’t do it,” Hext said. 

And soon, should the village board approve the rezone of 107-109 Helderberg Ave. so that Stewart’s can build a new shop on the site, the proposed project would be before the planning board for its review. 

The proposal, Hext said, “Will come to us [at] some point in time, and we’ll be able to take that apart block by block, stone by stone, brick by brick, and come up with a solution that, even if everybody is not happy with it, maybe we can get everybody to say, ‘I can live with that.’ That’s my goal right now.”