ALTAMONT — A handful of residents filed into the village hall, comprehensive plans in hand, to grill the planning committee on its vision for the village.
"What was said was tremendous," Dean Whalen said yesterday of the public’s feedback. Whalen, a trustee, chairs the comprehensive planning committee. A portion of Tuesday night’s village board meeting served as a public hearing on the plan.
Most residents asked about the process — would the zoning changes suggested in the plan have to go through separate hearings before being adopted" Yes, they were told, if the plan is adopted, any changes that it recommends would have to be approved and implemented individually.
"This is almost like a working blueprint," said trustee and committee member, Harvey Vlahos.
Some parts of the plan might not be possible, Whalen said, when asked how much of the plan he expected would be implemented. He added, " We have to look at at least 50 percent of the things in the next couple of years." Zoning, the business district, and the noise ordinance are things that are important to act on soon, he said.
The gray water pilot project is one item that Whalen identified as probably being cost prohibitive. The idea behind the project is to connect a pipe system to buildings in the village to collect "gray" water — washing water rather than sewage — to be used elsewhere rather than treating it like waste water.

Also listed in the green-initiatives section of the plan is support for geothermal systems in municipal buildings, an idea that Whalen thinks might be more feasible. Geothermal heating and cooling is a method that involves drilling into the earth, to reach a depth that remains a constant 55 degrees, and running water through so that the stable 55 degree temperature is transferred to the water.

In the winter, setting the thermostat at 65 degrees would require only energy enough to heat the water 10 degrees, rather than, like a traditional system, heating air that comes in at 20 degrees to 65, he said as an example, and cooling is almost free.
"All you’re really running is a pump," he said. "The initial kicker usually is 20 percent more than if you were replacing or doing a new system conventionally." He added that the payback can come very rapidly.

In essentially its current form, the 44-page plan with 71 pages of appendices will be given to the board, officially, by Friday, Whalen said. He doesn’t expect to make any substantive changes to it as a result of the hearing. It will be presented to the Albany County Planning Board by Dec. 14, he said, and that board will have 30 days to respond.

There will be a public hearing on Jan. 16 at 8:15 p.m. at the village hall for the proposed comprehensive plan, before the village board votes on the plan.
"It has a lot of broad-stroke references and reminders," said Whalen, adding, "and dreams."

Water granted

The board voted unanimously to provide William and Andrea Gizzi with village water as soon as the village’s new well, on Brandle Road, is connected to the municipal system. Mayor James Gaughan said that the project is on schedule and will likely be completed by mid-February.

The Gizzis, who are building a house on Gun Club Road, just outside the village line, had requested municipal water. Altamont, faced with a limited water supply, has a moratorium on granting water outside the village.
Kate Provencher, a member of the comprehensive planning committee who also serves on the zoning board of appeals, addressed the board before the vote to grant water to the Gizzis came up. "It’s not a good idea to keep giving water when we have no supply," she said. "You have to set a precedent in the policy."

Access to village water was third on a list of three requirements given by the county’s Department of Health in order for it to grant the Gizzis a temporary certificate of occupancy for their new house at 6396 Gun Club Road. The couple drilled a well in May that has been contaminated by coliform despite repeated attempts to clean it. The Gizzis will use bottled water until they are hooked into the municipal system.
"There seems to have been a bureaucratic hiccup," said Vlahos of how the Gizzis had gotten a building permit without having a suitable water source. He concluded, "It’s not going to leave the village open to a flood of these requests."

No vote on voting machines

The village board tabled, until next month, its recommendation to the county on voting machines.
"You all remember the fiasco in Florida," said Vlahos as he introduced his prepared recommendation to the board. He was referring to the 2000 presidential race, which led Congress to pass the Help America Vote Act. New York is the last state in the union to comply with new voting machines; the deadlocked state legislature left the decision up to individual counties. (See Enterprise coverage from August 2005 and June 2006 at www.altamontenterprise.com)
Vlahos recommended paper ballot optical scan voting machines over direct recording electronic machines. "The ability to be comfortable with the fact that every vote has been counted is fundamental to American democracy," he said, referring to the paper trail left by optical scan machines and the absence of such evidence with DREs.
In his resolution, Vlahos wrote, "PBOS voting machines are more accurate, are half as expensive, last twice to three times as long, take up much less space, require less special handling, and are user friendly compared to DRE touch screen voting machines."
Trustee William Aylward said that he had invited some county legislators to the next village board meeting and Trustee Kerry Dineen said that, since she was busy with the Victorian Holiday celebration this weekend, she had not had time to properly look over the information from Vlahos. Dineen said that she would like to "hear the other side" of the debate.
"I would like to look at the full picture," said Gaughan. The board then agreed to table the vote until January.

Other business

In other business, the board:
— Heard from Norman Bauman that the neighborhood watch group has recruited "13 or 14 block captains." The next meeting for the group will be at 11 a.m. on Dec. 16 at the police station, he said;

— Voted unanimously to appoint Stewart Linendoll to the zoning board of appeals to fill the remainder of Claude Moyse’s term, which ends in 2008. Linendoll had been serving as an alternate; he will be replaced by Danny J. Ramirez, also until that term ends in 2008;

— Voted unanimously to hold a public hearing on Jan. 16 at 8 p.m. at the village hall to consider renewing Time Warner Cable’s franchise in the village for 10 years. The company pays the village over $20,000 a year, from a portion of the subscriber fees paid by residents, Gaughan told The Enterprise. He would be open to other cable options for the village, he said, but "there is no other option available right now";

— Voted unanimously to contract Barton & Loguidice, P.C. to evaluate the village water system following the recent lead and copper action level exceedance, at a cost of $5,500.
"The safety of the water is fine," said Tim McIntyre, superintendent of public works. The reason for those levels, he said, is because of the old, corroded pipes in the village’s water system, a problem that is addressed in the proposed comprehensive plan;

— Voted unanimously to hire Michael Smith as a full-time laborer, for 40 hours per week, to be paid $12.65 an hour beginning Dec. 6;
— Voted unanimously to enter into a shared services agreement with the town of Guilderland, starting on the first of the year, for $3,000 a year "for staff services of 4 hours per week to design, coordinate, and promote special summer events and programs at Orsini and Bozenkill Park, weekly farmers’ market, and administering senior grants’ activities and programs"; and

— Voted unanimously to approve up to $45,000 for payment to National Grid for power service to the new well site.