GUILDERLAND — Democrat Paul Pastore, a lawyer who joined the town board in 2006 after serving for six years as assistant town attorney and counsel to the planning board, is running for re-election.  

Pastore said he thought it was an oversimplification to say either that the dramatic increase in some residents’ tax bills was the result solely of the sampling used by the state, or that it was the result simply of the length of time between townwide revaluations in Guilderland. There were a number of factors that came together to cause this “unreasonable” and “shocking” result, he said.

He has a lot of unanswered questions about the process the state used, such as: “How do you increase the valuation of the commercial properties in Guilderland 35 percent in two years?”

When the state did its assessment, he said, it valued the town’s commercial properties at $935 million in 2015. “And then,” he said, “two short years later, they valued those same properties to $1.26 billion.” Meanwhile, the state sampled only five parcels of property, two of which are apartment complexes, he noted, concluding, “I mean, they themselves admit that it’s a flawed process.”

The board that heard the town’s appeal, he said, had only three members, when it is supposed to have five. “There’s something inherently wrong there,” he said.

There are municipalities throughout Albany County that had not done a revaluation in a “significantly longer” period of time than had elapsed in Guilderland, “but their residents haven’t seen a  huge increase in their school tax and a decrease in the equalization value.”

The town has done what it could, he said. “We relied on the expertise of our own town assessor; when a decision was rendered, we appealed that decision.” The taxes in question are school taxes, not town taxes, and while, when it comes to general challenges of assessments, the town works as closely as possible with the Guilderland School District, it has no influence over other school districts, he said.

In fact, school districts have elected boards that set their own budgets and levy taxes. Town taxes would not be affected by a change in equalization rates; it affects only taxes that stretch beyond a town’s boundaries as with some school districts, some fire districts, and county taxes.

Guilderland, Pastore said, is now considering doing a townwide revaluation, to help residents.

Pastore said he cannot understand why a single standard of assessment is not recognized and enforced throughout the state. The lack of a single standard, he said, “creates the possibility of difference and disparate treatment.”

There is no requirement now, he said, for when municipalities must do a revaluation. A guideline would be beneficial, he said. For instance, the state could specify that a reval should be done every three to eight years, or even 10 years, or every 15, and municipalities could be put on notice that if, they don’t a revaluation on that time schedule, they run the risk of the state setting a “skewed equalization rate.”

Pastore said that Guilderland’s abandoned buildings represent only a “handful” of the almost 13,000 total parcels in the town.

He noted that the town had the “foresight and the vision” to create a local law about abandoned buildings, but that, when it comes to residential properties, to the best of his knowledge, that law has been preempted by a state law. “So when it comes to residential properties and abandoned properties, you have to defer to the law that’s on the books.”

He said that abandoned properties could have any of a number of issues, related to conveyance of property from one owner to another; outstanding taxes owed; an owner in bankruptcy, with the result that a municipality could be stayed from proceeding against the property by bankruptcy rules; insurance issues; and issues with the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation.

The town cannot just go in and demolish properties it does not own, Pastore said. If it did, “the town would suffer an immense amount of liability.” What the town can do, he said, is motivate owners to take action by imposing fines — fines that run with the land — for safety or building-code violations, which the town does now.

Pastore said that Guilderland has done an excellent job of connecting residents through sidewalks. “Compared to years in the past, we’ve obtained grants for new sidewalks on both sides of Western Avenue, from the city line all the way to Route 155 and on Route 155 from Western Avenue to Dr. Shaw Road.”

The town has also been requiring developers to put in sidewalks that have a logical beginning and ending point, that do not just trail off in the middle of a development.

All three boards — the town, planning, and zoning boards — have, he said, done a good job of ensuring that developers create interconnection within developments and to other developments, and of seeking and obtaining grants for new sidewalks throughout the town.

One area that still needs to be addressed, he said, are the many cul-de-sacs off busy roads that are without sidewalks. Residents of those areas might wind up having to “walk around in the circle of their development, because it might be too dangerous to have them walk out on the more major streets, or the state-controlled streets.” He called this “unfortunate.”

This work is continuing, Pastore said. “We’re willing to try to connect as best we can areas of our town, and try to make it safer for people to walk and enjoy their surroundings.”

Pastore does not think that, at this point, there is any need to declare Guilderland a sanctuary town. “I’m not aware of any issues with this type of discrimination that exists here within our town,” he said.

Guilderland is a town of residents who are conscientious, caring, and tolerant, Pastore said. He is liaison from the board to the police department, and has not been made aware of any problems involving lack of tolerance or fear of reporting problems. “We could certainly revisit it if it came up, but at this point, I don’t think there’s any need for it,” he said.

Likewise, he thinks that Guilderland residents are already conscientious about recycling, whether they have a private company pick up their trash and their recyclables, or they bring garbage to the transfer station and place their different types of recyclables into the various stations — cardboard, plastic, glass, etcetera — there.

“When you’re talking about adding an additional cost,” of a composting program, he said, “I guess you’d have to do an analysis and see whether it is really cost-effective” to start another program, or whether the current system works well. He said he thinks it does.

Pastore, 52, is an attorney with private practice who concentrates mainly on commercial litigation. He has lived in Guilderland for about 26 years; he came to the area to attend Albany Law School, where he got his law degree, after doing undergraduate work at Notre Dame. He is single and has no children.

As a surprising fact, he offered that he lived in Italy for a year of foreign study during college and traveled throughout Europe.