People should be able to use their land as they see fit.

People should be able to feel safe in their own homes.

Most of us would agree both of these statements are true.

A problem arises, though, when one person uses his land in a way that infringes on the health or safety of other property owners.

That is where zoning and municipal regulations come into play.

The first zoning in our state was passed in New York City in 1916 — to prevent huge buildings from keeping air and light from reaching the streets below.

All of the towns in Albany County have zoning codes and zoning boards that, as prescribed by state law, serve a quasi-judicial function, allowing landowners to make their case for something outside the code.

Just as light and air were critical to New York City dwellers more than a century ago, today’s zoning codes help insure that residents’ needs are met.

Governments also serve a regulatory function. One of them is granting permits for mass-gatherings.

That brings us to the point of our editorial. On October 18, 19, and 20, a series of concerts was held at the old Gipp farm. In the wee hours of that Sunday morning, one man was stabbed and another man was shot.

Even before such violence, nearby residents were cowering in their homes. The venue is behind the Davises’ Depot Road home.

On Friday night, their dog wouldn’t go out as he usually does because of the noise — “the boom, boom, boom,” said Yvonne Davis.

She went on, “During the day on Saturday, there was liquor bottles all over the place, red Solo cups all over the place. It’s just been absolute craziness and you could hear everything back there, people screaming and yelling and the music … the town just didn’t care.”

The Davises went to bed on Saturday night.

“In the middle of the night, we were awoken by all these flashing lights going by the house,” she said. “We both got up and counted over 20 police cars and five ambulances,” said Davis.

Asked if she was scared, Davis said, “My God, yes, my God … You knew something bad was going on because all these cars were leaving. They were just leaving and leaving ….

“Even when the police were there … we could still hear people yelling and screaming. And I was nervous that people were going to start running through the woods to our house, you know, you just don’t know who.”

We heard this week from Sherry Gipp, the daughter of the man who owns the farm, William Gipp. 

She wrote, on behalf of her father, to apologize to the neighbors whose lives were disrupted. “The Gipp family has been a member of the Guilderland community for close to 100 years and to have an event like this occur with such horrid violence is unspeakable,” she wrote in a letter to the editor.

She expressed her “deepest apologies for the excessive noise and commotion to the neighbors, which was totally uncalled for and disrespectful.”

Ms. Gipp told us that her father grew up on the farm, which raised cows and pigs. The farm had been bought by her grandfather when he was a very young man, she said.

The 140-acre property has wide-open fields and a view of the Helderbergs. It is no longer farmed.

William Gipp was one of 14 children and worked hard on the farm in his youth. He is in his 80s now and is retired after a career as a school janitor. He lives in the farmhouse on the property.

Mr. Gipp was not home the weekend of  Oct. 18. “If he was there,” his daughter said, “he would have went and shut it down.”

By Ms. Gipp’s telling, Matthew Burke, who works for a construction company, was looking for a place to deposit fill. He offered to make a road from Depot Road into the field in exchange for doing so.

The two developed a relationship and Burke, who likes music, proposed leasing the land to hold concerts.

Burke confirmed that story and says he’s held four events at the Gipp farm in the past two years; the most recent one was last summer. Those events were less than half the size of this month’s event, with estimated crowds of 800 to 1,000.

“Cannabis festivals are peaceful,” Burke said, noting pot is legal in New York state and he provides a place where people “feel comfortable” listening to music.

As part of his Higher Grounds Holdings, Burke has held weed-themed events at other venues as well.

When a bluegrass event he had planned for the Gipp farm on Aug. 23 and 24 was rained out, Burke said, “I told the town I needed a rain date.”

He showed The Enterprise a copy of the mass-gathering permit he had obtained for a $250 fee. He also showed The Enterprise an Aug. 6 text exchange he had with Guilderland’s town clerk, Lynne Buchanan.

Burke texted that he was postponing the August event because of the weather and asked, “Can I keep this permit valid.”

Buchanan texted back, “Yes. I will tell EMS and GPD of the change in your schedule,” referring to emergency medical services and the Guilderland Police Department.

The permit lists Burke as the applicant and “Gipps Bill” as the legal owner.

Neither Buchanan nor Guilderland Supervisor Peter Barber would answer Enterprise questions about whether a permit was granted and to whom, after which The Enterprise filed a Freedom of Information Law request and was informed by Buchanan on Oct. 29, “we anticipate a response date of November 27, 2024.”

Both Barber and Buchanan said they could not answer questions about the permit or the permit process because a police investigation was ongoing while other media reported Buchanan saying there was no  permit.

Burke said he was approached by Daniel Giwerc and Rakim Le Monier, with Flex Entertainment, about using the Gipp farm venue since a concert series they had planned at the armory was canceled. Neither could be reached for comment.

Burke shared a copy of the “Profit Sharing Agreement for Homecoming Weekend” at 5777 Depot Road. The agreement says both Giwerc and Le Monier were jointly responsible for paying Burke $25,000 with a minimum of $15,000 to be paid the first day of the event.

“They never paid, not one dollar,” said Burke, adding that he plans to sue.

Burke said he was “horrified” at how events unfolded the weekend of Oct. 18. He said he had no idea the crowd would exceed the 300 allowed under the mass-gathering permit.

On Friday, he put up lights and cones at the end of the road to the venue as police requested, Burke said, noting the police officer he dealt with Friday had a copy of the permit.

Burke said he hired security guards from Putnam Event Center; the contract Burke had with Giwerc and Le Monier called for each party to pay wages for 10 security guards, a total of 20.

Then, after the event was over, Burke “spent a lot of time,” he said, cleaning up the fields and road. “It was a mess,” he said. “I didn’t want to leave a stitch of garbage. I wanted to make the neighbors happy.”

Burke, who is 41, said he’d like to leave his construction job and make a career promoting music. He said some neighbors of the Gipp farm had come to earlier concerts there and he envisions holding programs for children at the site as well.

“Me and Bill are on the same page,” he said of William Gipp. “We want a peaceful event center where people can enjoy the music and the land.”

Everyone in town would like events to be peaceful; the events on the weekend of Oct. 18 were not.

What’s needed here is government oversight.

When we wrote about the Gipp farm venue a year ago, some Depot Road residents were rightly distressed because they didn’t know what was happening literally in their own backyards.

When the town authorizes events through a mass-gathering permit, there is no mechanism for public notice.

A year ago, the town’s zoning department was waiting for legal advice on whether similar events at the same property should require a special-use permit in the future. Supervisor Barber would not tell us this month how that had played out, citing “the pending criminal investigation.”

Requiring a special-use permit would be a sensible course to pursue. Not only would the public be informed, but residents would have a chance to air their views at a hearing.

The town’s quasi-judicial board could then make an informed judgment, and, if granted, impose whatever requirements were needed to insure safety.

The mayhem that ensued the weekend of Oct. 18 was not only unfair to the neighbors of the venue but also to the first responders who were called upon to deal with the crisis.

A series of recordings, posted to Facebook, of police radio conversations among officers at the scene and between officers and dispatch make clear they were in an untenable situation.

Shots rang out while officers were tending to the “severe injuries” of the man who had been stabbed in the head but, in the chaos, police could not see the shooter. Ambulances had trouble navigating the narrow, rutted dirt road. The crowd was in such a frenzy that riot spray was called for.

Presumably, if a special-use permit were to be applied for and granted, requirements could be made like having ambulances or officers on the scene to start with.

Such requirements for safety are as essential as the light and air that New York City dwellers needed to survive at the turn of the last century. With that first-ever zoning, the skyscrapers still rose but the massing and setback requirements gave birth to the tiered Art Deco style, which then dominated the world.

Government regulation can work — and it is sorely needed in Guilderland.