ALTAMONT — Village Hall was packed again on Tuesday as residents expressed their views on a zoning plan and the public hearing, first held in October, is now entering its fourth month.
"We feel it’s important to inform the public," Mayor James Gaughan said yesterday of why he proposed extending the hearing for another month, until the village board’s Jan. 8 meeting.

After hearing from about a dozen residents on proposed village-wide zoning regulations, first introduced earlier this fall, the board committed to removing the contentious R20M designation on Bozenkill Road but maintaining the R10M designation within the village, though it took no formal action.

The M stands for multi-family, which would allow for apartment or condominium style housing on the property. Both designations are residential.

Most speakers at Tuesday night’s meeting were opposed to the M designation, and many were opposed to any development at all.
"Why can’t we leave things the way they are"" Joseph Dover asked the board. Like many of the other speakers, he received applause from residents for his comment.
"I want to develop my land," Carl Schilling told the board. "It’s what I do for a living."

Schilling owns the roughly five-and-a-half-acre parcel slated to be zoned R10M in the village. He brought to the meeting a sketch of his plan for the land, which showed the buildings clustered in one area and surrounded by green space.

Local developer Troy Miller, who used to co-own the land along Bozenkill Road, addressed the board after Schilling, and pointed out that the M designation helps to facilitate the green space that most of the residents had been asking for. Allowing for only one- and two-family homes encourages development that is spread out over all the acreage to be built on, whereas multi-family units can be clustered, leaving much of the land empty.
"When you take away the M, you can be sure that your yard will butt up to someone else’s," he said.

After the board had heard from residents, board members shared their thoughts, starting with Trustee Kerry Dineen, who said that she had never supported the M designation and was opposed to it; trustee William Aylward agreed with her.

Trustee Christine Marshall, who serves on the committee that developed that proposed zoning regulations, said that she would like to see Schilling’s property in the village be zoned R10M, but she’d like the property along the Bozenkill to be zoned without the M designation.

Trustee Dean Whalen, an architect, who chairs the committee that wrote the proposal, said that the M designation was part of an effort to address a need expressed by residents during the comprehensive planning process for a diversity of housing types to accommodate all income levels in the village. The comprehensive plan, adopted by the village board earlier this year, recommended an overhaul of the village’s zoning regulations. Whalen, too, said that he could see the Bozenkill land without the M designation, but thinks it is necessary for the land within the village.

Finally, Mayor Gaughan echoed Whalen and Marshall, and the board agreed to those changes, though it put off the vote until the January village board meeting.

Other business

In other business, the board:

— Voted unanimously to approve an internship with the Altamont Police Department for Jillian Agnew, a student at the State University of New York at Canton;

— Voted unanimously to appoint Taylor Brandt as an apprentice firefighter in the Altamont Fire Department;

— Voted unanimously to pay $10,500 to Bruce Cadman, of General Code Regional Sales Team, to put village documents and laws into an electronic format. There will also be an annual maintenance fee of $550; and

— Voted unanimously to offer a Medicare-supplement health plan to village employees and retirees who are at least 65 years old.