To the Editor:

I am writing in response to and to clarify points made in last week’s editorial, “Letting developers decide what’s good for the town is like letting a 6-year-old buy the groceries.”

I would like to thank The Altamont Enterprise for giving this subject its attention and focus. It is a subject that deserves a hard look from board members and residents alike.

I would just like to clarify what could be seen as a misleading quote from me in this editorial. I did grow up in Guilderland when it was mostly single-family residences, but we still had many very nice apartment complexes (Heritage Village, Presidential Estates, Regency Park, etc). I myself stayed in an apartment when I was in college.

I am not against apartments in Guilderland at all. And I must emphasize that I strongly welcome and embrace diversity in our town, which I am very glad to see is increasing. I take offense to any implication to the contrary.

By “transient” I meant simply that living in an apartment is often a short-term situation, not a lifetime situation. That’s all. A town should have a mix of types of accommodations, definitely.

What I am concerned with is the sudden burst of numerous apartment complexes within a particular one-mile radius on a very busy part of the Western Avenue corridor, on a dead-end road no less. There needs to be some real thought given to the wisdom of this, especially environmental, traffic, and safety concerns.

I am not anti-growth at all; but there are many, many better spots for such high-density projects.

And as for the pause, the Guilderland Citizens for Responsible Growth is merely asking for a pause in the town board’s ability to rapidly issue rubber-stamp approvals on these projects. The pause would allow time to come up with a 2019 plan for this area that would let the town members, developers, and residents actually examine the wisdom of doing this massive development in this one highly sensitive area (the last plan was over 12 years ago; times have changed dramatically).

And the pause would also allow for a Generic Environmental Impact Study to be done, something we all seem to agree is the smart thing to do. Thank you for allowing me to set the record straight.

Laurel L. Bohl

Guilderland