GUILDERLAND — In a town where there are nearly twice as many voters enrolled as Democrats than as Republicans, the GOP is running two candidates for town board and one for town justice.

All elected town officials are currently Democrats.

The incumbent supervisor, Democrat Peter Barber, is unchallenged as he seeks a fifth two-year term; he also has the Conservative line.

Incumbent Lynne Buchanan is also running unopposed for town clerk on the Democratic and Conservative lines.

 Robert Haver is running unopposed for highway superintendent, on the Democratic and Conservative lines, because Gregory Wier is retiring from that post. 

Judge John Bailey is also retiring. The race for town justice pits Margaret Tabak — on the Democratic and Working Families party lines — against Stephen Chesley, who has Republican and Conservative party backing. (See related story.)

Councilwoman Rosemary Centi, who was elected to the post in 2015 after serving as town clerk for 13 years, is retiring too.

Incumbent Councilman Jacob Crawford is running to keep his seat alongside Democratic running mate Gustavos Santos.

They are being challenged by Republicans Brian Sheridan, making his second run for town board, and Jaime Ralston, making her first run.

The town board candidates’ profiles are under their pictures and what follows is a synopsis to their views expressed during an online forum, posted below.

According to the Albany County Board of Elections, Guilderland has 25,517 enrolled voters: 10,854 are registered as Democrats, 5,685 are registered as Republicans, 597 are Conservatives, 82 are registered in the Working Families Party, and 37 are in the Green Party.

That leaves 8,263 Guilderland voters who are not registered with any political party.

Election Day is Nov. 7 and early voting runs from Oct. 28 to Nov. 5. 

The Enterprise candidates’ forum centered on four issues. .

 

 

 

Water

All four candidates agreed that water is an important resource for the town.

“We actually don’t have a lot of our own water here in Guilderland,” said Crawford. Guilderland, he said, purchases water from the city of Watervliet, and from the city of Albany and the town of Rotterdam. 

“We’re spending over a million dollars a year,” he said.

Crawford said the town “would like to get a federal grant to get green filters” so that old wells could be used again “so we’d have more efficient, cleaner water available for all of our residents.”

Crawford also said the town was never at risk of having a construction warehouse built within the buffer around the Watervliet Reservoir.

“We have to protect and preserve our drinking water … It’s important to our kids’ future,” said Ralston.

She said she would research the topic further but remembered a friend moving into Altamont who didn’t have water accessible in her home. Crawford responded that the village of Altamont has its own water system.

“I would like to work with Mayor [Kerry] Dineen to see if we can get a federal grant, again to fix our wells, maybe even do a water interconnect for the village of Altamont which I think would be phenomenal as a backup for the village,” said Crawford.

“I believe in having the best water there is in the world,”said Santos. He said he appreciated the importance of good water, having been born in Honduras “where we don’t have good water.”

“It’s a no-brainer,” said Sheridan of protecting the town’s water.

“We have other issues going on in the town that I think are being swept under the rug when it comes to our drinking water around the pine bush …,” said Sheridan. “We don’t know the exact chemicals that they’re using in the pine bush. We know that they’re doing these burns.”

(According to the Invasive and Overabundant Species Management Plan for the Albany Pine Bush Preserve, the preserve uses several different herbicides for chemically managing plants, depending on the time of year and specific plant species to be controlled; most commonly, the preserve uses Glyphosate, which is the active ingredient in Round-Up.)

Sheridan also cited a case on Mohawk Drive where he said, “There’s actually a sinking hole forming right there from where the reservoir runs, one of the pipes underground.” He said the town should be “actively involved” in solving that problem and in finding out what pesticides are used in the pine bush

Crawford responded that many homes in the part of town near the pine bush have private, individual wells not regulated by the town. “Water can be anywhere from 26 feet deep to even more shallow because; they’re completely in sand,” he said.

Sheridan then responded, “We should work on getting those people town water, and I know there’s a cost to that, but that’s what we should do.”

 

Housing

“There are a lot of apartment buildings popping up,” said Ralston. “I recently had to do some research on available apartments in Guilderland because a family member of mine was looking to come closer to the area. And I think the monthly costs for apartments, especially the bigger ones, is very expensive.”

She spoke of the need for more affordable housing and suggested, “Let’s repurpose the dilapidated buildings before building on green space.”

Ralston also said, “Let’s provide incentives to do so, so that small businesses can come together and thrive.”

Santos said that, when he came to the University at Albany, he “fell in love” with Guilderland. “I am glad that Guilderland is such a great place to welcome individuals like myself and from other countries and to be open. We are open to everybody.”

Santos said that affordable housing has been harder to come by since the pandemic and it is important to talk to developers about building it.

“Being a labor leader, a lot of our people who are unionized certainly want to live in a great town like Guilderland and maybe with a comprehensive plan that we are working on, which I’m also part of …,” said Santos who serves on the Neighborhoods and Housing Subcommittee, “we’re going to come up with some recommendations in the next year or so in terms of dealing with issues of of affordable housing in Guilderland.”

Sheridan said people come to the area for college, “they meet their significant other, and they settle down.” Nice parks, clean water, a great school district, and lower taxes feed into the decision of where to settle, he said, noting his family settled in Guilderland for those reasons.

“We have too many apartments …,” Sheridan said. “If one more person says the term ‘Apartmentland’ when I knock on their door, I’m going to have to just shake my head and walk away. It’s really too much.”

Sheridan said people are leaving to settle in Saratoga County, which has jobs and lower taxes.

Crawford said that Sheridan has almost told his story: Crawford and his wife went to the University at Albany and then settled in Guilderland to raise their three daughters.

Crawford said Guilderland had the lowest taxes in Albany County and also praised the town board for working with Knox to secure Section 8 subsidized housing slots.

“Ninety-five percent of the affordable housing units in this town are currently held by seniors, which is a greater problem … Our seniors require affordable housing to be able to stay in the community where their families are as they get older. That’s one of the reasons the Housing Subcommittee came up with the idea for the accessory dwelling units,” Crawford said, which would let seniors age in place.

He also said developers are less likely to build single-family homes “with the current price of materials.”

 

Harmony

On dealing with divisiveness, Santos said, “ I am a person who has been a uniter for all my life; being a labor activist, I have worked very well with management on my job.”

With the national political divisiveness, he said, some family members coming home for Thanksgiving can’t even talk to one another.

“I try to listen to both sides of the equation here because I’m more of a listener than a talker,” said Santos. “That’s that's how I was raised, to listen to individuals” even if they have different views.

 “I think we have come to a point in this nation where [the attitude is] if you don’t listen to me, I don’t want to talk to you. I am not that type of person and Jake is not that type of person,” Santos said of his running mate.

Sheridan, while acknowledging that Joe Biden is the duly-elected president, said, “I don’t think there’s an openness to the other side of just about any argument … There is a Republican versus Democratic divide.”

People in the same political party work together, Sheridan said. “That’s how it is.”

He also said of himself and his running mate getting elected to the town board, “There’s going to be two of us versus three Democrats.”

Sheridan told of a Westmere Terrace resident he had visited while on the campaign trail who was upset that a berm meant to shield his neighborhood from a new apartment complex hadn’t done its job. Sheridan described the resident as a “proud union-supporting Democrat” who said “I’m voting for you.”

“Nobody listened to his complaints and he’s on your side,” said Sheridan.

Crawford said he happened to visit the same Westmere Terrace resident “the day after Brian knocked on his door.”

“We talked about that hill …,” Crawford said, “I brought that concern back to the town and we made sure that, if the developer did not maintain that berm as they were supposed to, they would have a work order shutdown by the end of the week. That berm did get cut and maintained by the end of that week.”

Crawford said he has noticed a change in civility since 2016. He called Sheridan’s view that only people of the same party work well together “completely false.”

“I’ve never once asked a resident what their political party was before helping with a constituent issue,” said Crawford.

“There’s been a major change in how people treat each other,” said Crawford, citing the changes he has seen over the years at zoning board meetings. “We need to get back to the time when we can treat our neighbors with respect and be civil, especially in our public meetings.”

Ralston said, “We need to listen to one another. We need to respect one another, but I also think it’s the town board’s responsibility to ask people as well. So listen, but also take the initiative and ask what people want because not everybody can make a meeting.”

Ralston gave the example of a fall bulletin from the town that arrived in her mail, detailing grant money being used in town parks.

“It’s exciting,” she said, “but I’m really concerned that how that money is going to be spent was already decided on without any outreach.”

She said people in the community should have been asked: What would you like to see?

“I live in the neighborhood that surrounds Volunteer Firefighters Memorial Park and the bulletin announced there’s a dog park going in there.” While Ralston said she wasn’t opposing another dog park in Guilderland, she was saying there “should be a conversation.”

She concluded, “I hope it’s not too late because I think getting everybody involved and making decisions together …. is crucial.”

 

Planning

Crawford said he is going to call for a pause on building apartments in town.

“While we’re pursuing this comprehensive plan, I think it’s time we take a pause in building large-scale apartments in the town,” he said. “And I think it’s something that we need to sit back and reflect on where we want to see the future development.”

Crawford stressed repeatedly that the comprehensive-plan update was always meant to be a two-year process.

Sheridan said he frequently drives on Route 20, on his way to a city hospital in the early morning and coming home from his office in the evening.

“The traffic is a big concern, especially around Foundry Road and Willow, and nothing is being done about that,” he said. “There are accidents upon accidents there on a regular basis.”

He also cited the row of “dilapidated” buildings near that intersection, which includes a closed dry cleaners that polluted the ground.

(Charles Bohl, who owns the 13-acre property at the corner of Route 20 and Foundry Road, part of which the state deemed a threat to public health, has told The Enterprise that he hopes a developer will purchase the property and take responsibility for its cleanup; the contamination from the dry cleaners predates his purchase of the property. A senior-housing facility that had been planned for the corner backed out of the project because Bohl had not wanted to pay for the cleanup.)

“We need to go to the state because I understand it’s a state route and we need to fix Foundry Road and Willow,” said Sheridan.

On the town’s initiative to encourage residents to plant native species, Sheridan said, “Let’s educate people on that. … Just get that information out to people, suggest what they can plant and then leave it up to them, obviously.”

Crawford said of the town’s new law that created a tree committee, “We’re trying to make sure that we are protecting as much of that in town as possible and trying to avoid as many invasive species as possible, especially when there’s proposals for either development or when we’re wanting to protect something for agricultural purposes.”

Crawford said, too, that Route 20 is a state road and he hopes the state will improve the timing of the traffic light at the intersection of Route 20 with Foundry Road and Willow Street.

He noted that the row of rundown buildings there is not owned by the town; plans for development by a private owner have “not come to fruition,” he said.

“We would love to see something done to clean up that brownfield,” he said.

Crawford responded to Ralston’s comments on the dog park by saying it “was discussed at multiple town board meetings” and that meetings are streamed and also posted to the town’s website. He also said that residents could show up at meetings to speak during the public-comment periods or submit written comments.

“We get great feedback,” he said, “about wanting improvement to all of our parks.”

“I think you validated my point pretty well that people can write in,” responded Ralston. “They can make comments, they can show up to meetings but the town board could also be reaching out to people on their own.”

Ralston said she watched several meetings looking “for anything that talked about what was going to be done with this park money, and I couldn’t find it.”

She went on, “In my neighborhood alone, we’re literally surrounding the park, not any of the houses that I’ve talked to were asked: What would you like in your backyard?”

She urged, “go to the parks, talk to the families that go there every single day, see what they want because that’s not being done.”

Ralston also said, “I also think we need to make sure that public safety is completely funded and we have enough officers on the street because the town is seeing an uptick in cars being broken into, in burglaries and more serious crimes, and automobile accidents.,.”

She concluded, “We need to listen very closely to what the police department is asking and needing because keeping our community safe is really the most important thing in my opinion.”

Santos said, “The comprehensive plan is very, very important to our town because it’s certainly going to indicate where you’re going to go from five to 10 years from now.”

He also said that one of the things that have eased traffic problems is the creation of roundabouts in town. Santos cited a roundabout built near Crossgates Mall and said, “That certainly has been a great improvement in terms of avoiding accidents and having better flow to Crossgates Mall.”

As a legislative body, the job of the town board is “really to listen,” said Santos, noting, “All my life, that’s all I’ve done is to listen.”

He concluded, “We have, you know, some issues that we disagree on … but we also have a lot of issues that we agree on in Guilderland. So I think that the town board right now is doing a great job in terms of listening to our constituents, and the comprehensive plan that has been put together is really going to be the blueprint and the mandate that’s given by our community … to see the future of Guilderland.”