GUILDERLAND — 2023 was a year of looking ahead for Guilderland — for the town, for the school district, and for the village of Altamont.

This spring, the town was swamped with applicants to serve on a committee to update its two-decade-old comprehensive land-use plan.

Once selected, the committee members hosted a public forum to gauge what was important to residents. After a slow start, when some critics complained the hired consultant was running the show, subcommittees were formed.

Each of the six subcommittees — on agriculture, economic growth, environment, housing, open space, and transportation —  produced a report this fall. The reports, posted on the town’s website, dovetail in many instances.

For example, the subcommittee on agriculture recommends smaller lots to leave more space for farming while the subcommittee on open space suggests clustered developments. At the same time, the housing subcommittee wants to strengthen the distinction between the town’s developed and rural areas.

Town board members have twice discussed at public meetings enacting a moratorium so that, once a plan is finalized, zoning codes can be updated to give the plan some teeth.

“I think we’ve all said at various times that a moratorium would be appropriate. The only question I think is going to be: When?” said Supervisor Peter Barber at the board’s December meeting.

Moratoriums adopted while a town works on its comprehensive plan, Barber said, are typically six months with a six-month extension beyond that if needed.

Barber went on to say, “We really have to be careful ….. the idle talk of a moratorium” had led to several people calling him.

At that same December meeting, Councilwoman Christine Napierski recited a list of recommendations from the reports that she said “would, in fact, require changes to our zoning code.”

She named preserving farmland and open spaces, preserving viewsheds, cluster developments, smaller lot sizes, and accessory dwelling units. She also mentioned the need for rules on short-term rentals like Airbnb because of a recent case before the zoning board.

Also in December, Governor Kathy Hochul announced an initiative that is sure to bring an influx of workers to Guilderland.

A $10 billion partnership with leaders from the semiconductor industry such as IBM, Micron, Applied Materials, Tokyo Electron, and others will establish “a next-generation semiconductor research and development center” at the Albany NanoTech Complex, Hochul announced.

“This project will create at least 700 new direct jobs and retain thousands of jobs, leverage at least $9 billion in private spending and investment, and establish significant commitments to support and build talent development pipelines, including through partnerships with the State University of New York,” according to the Dec. 11 press release from the governor’s office.

 

Behemoth

The behemoth that currently dominates Guilderland continues to be Crossgates Mall, both in terms of the town resources it uses — Guilderland Police typically make more than half of their arrests at the mall, for example — and in terms of the tax money it contributes, or doesn’t.

This spring, after receiving a year-long extension to pay off its nearly $244 million mortgage, Crossgates Mall was unable to secure new financing and defaulted on the loans, which led to it having to auction off the mortgage.

Securities and Exchange Commission filings associated with the three commercial mortgage-backed securities holding Crossgates’ $243.7 million in debt stated that Pyramid filed a notice of default the week of May 8 and that a draft appraisal of the mall had been received. 

Control of the 1.7-million square-foot shopping center remained in Pyramid’s hands after it defaulted on the mall’s mortgage in May; the loans were subsequently placed up for auction. 

Real-estate data firm Trepp reported in August that the loans were sold for nearly $174 million, which, after subtracting $29.6 million in liquidation expenses, left $144 million in net proceeds — an approximately $98 million loss for bondholders.

On Dec. 7, Pyramid announced “it had  successfully worked with its lenders to extend the loan on its Crossgates property for five years.”

Meanwhile, Pyramid has continued its quest to pay less in taxes.

In July 2020, Crossgates’ appraised value had been lowered from $470 million to $281 million. Pyramid is currently suing the town of Guilderland in an attempt to lower the mall’s assessed value from about $234 million to approximately $109 million. A win would save Pyramid millions in annual property taxes. 

The suit has been particularly difficult for the Guilderland school district, which collects the most in property taxes.

Assistant Superintendent for Business Andrew Van Alstyne presented a rollover budget to the school board this month with a $1.7 million budget gap for next year if it were to keep the same staffing and programs it has this year.

“One big thing that we are waiting to find out is the outcome of the Crossgates tax certiorari case,” said Van Alstyne.

In July, Crossgates filed its fourth lawsuit in as many years to lower its taxes. In tax year 2023, Crossgates paid a collective $6.1 million in taxes to the town of Guilderland, its special districts, school system, and Albany County. The school district is the major recipient.

Van Alstyne said there was money in the budget to cover fallout from tax certiorari cases and, if need be, the money owed could be borrowed. “There are lots of permutations depending on the scale of whatever the verdict is …,” he said. “But the uncertainty makes it challenging.”

Pyramid had sought, and gained, approval from the town for projects on three parcels near the mall — one for 222 residential units; another for a Costco store; and a third for which an application has just been submitted for a regional cancer center.

The $55 million cancer center would be located on 8.36 acres in the Transit Oriented Development district at 4 Crossgates Mall Road, according to the application for a special-use permit filed with the town by Columbia Development Companies. (See related story.)

In 2020, the Guilderland Planning Board completed its review of three projects that Pyramid had proposed for land near its Crossgates Mall.

The planning board on Aug. 10, 2022 approved a site plan for the United Group of Troy, which had bought the site from Pyramid, for 192 apartments and 30 townhomes; United will not build 90 additional apartments that Pyramid had planned for the site at some point in the future. 

Known as Apex Crossgates, the first phase of that project, located on a 19-acre parcel west of the mall, is to be completed in 2024.

A Costco with fueling stations is to be built on 16 acres, located between the mall and Route 20, Guilderland’s major thoroughfare. A fifth lawsuit challenging that project has yet to be decided.

The cancer center is proposed for the third site of about 11 acres next to the Costco site and similarly located between the mall and Route 20. To the east of the site is a hotel built by Pyramid, which it sold for $30 million in 2022 to a company based in Maine.

Tensions were high this summer as several groups — Save the Pine Bush, Mothers Out Front, and the Guilderland Coalition for Responsible Growth — protested Pyramid’s requests for breaks from the Guilderland Industrial Development Agency.

At a public hearing in May, ​​Pyramid claimed the project would not move forward without its tax-exemption and road-condemnation requests, requests that IDA board member Paul Pastore wanted to make sure were correct. 

“If this agency does not approve the application,” Pastore asked, the “project will not go forward?”

“The answer is yes,” answered the Pyramid representative.

Guilderland resident John Haluska told IDA board members, “This is corporate panhandling. We see it with the taxes that the Crossgates has repeatedly challenged. Here, we’re supposed to give them a gift. This is not a poverty-stricken corporation by any stretch of the imagination. Please don’t sell us out.”

Wendy Dwyer also spoke at the hearing as well as writing a letter of protest. “And wouldn’t you think Guilderland would want to support the businesses they already have including gas stations??? Na. Kiss the corps,” she wrote. “It is the usual screw the people, screw the planet, this ends up screwing the children and pad the pockets of the corporate thieves.”

Nevertheless, the IDA in August unanimously approved $2.2 million in tax breaks for the planned Costco on Western Avenue while also agreeing to condemn portions of abandoned roads needed to build the price club within the project site.

IDA board members on Aug. 22 approved $2.1 million in sales-tax relief and a $75,000 break on the state’s mortgage-recording tax for Crossgates Releaseco, a Pyramid Management Group LLC. 

 The IDA also agreed to use its power of eminent domain to acquire portions of five abandoned roads within the project area and convey them to Pyramid, conditioned on payment of fair-market value to the town as determined by an independent appraisal. Also, the IDA will acquire and extinguish certain historic deed restrictions on adjacent parcels of property.

 

Altamont

The village of Altamont — population: 1,700 — assembled a committee this year to review  possible updates to the village’s 2006 comprehensive plan.

At the board’s March meeting, Trustee Michelle Ganance, who along with John Scally are spearheading the review for the village, noted the review would be just that: a review.

“This is not a rewrite; this is a let’s take a look it’s been a while [and] see if there’s improvements need to be made, or maybe they don’t. It’s just an assessment and I thought it would be good if John and I got a group together to discuss it,” she said. 

This fall, Historic Altamont was awarded $50,000 through Albany County’s disbursal of American Rescue Plan Act awards, money from the federal government meant to help with fallout from the pandemic.

Historic Altamont, as its name indicates, wants to preserve the authentic, original nature of the village. Part of its vision is to keep the largely Victorian village, which was built up around the train station, surrounded by a ring of green rather than having it enveloped in suburban sprawl.

Tom Capuano, founder of Historic Altamont, said some of the money will be used to hire an engineer to design trails around Altamont that will connect to trails at the Mohawk Hudson Land Conservancy’s Bozen Kill Preserve and also to the Long Path.

The 357-mile Long Path starts near the George Washington Bridge in New York City and ends at High Point on the Helderberg escarpment above Altamont.

Capuano said that where the Long Path ends now is “in the middle of nowhere.”

Historic Altamont has secured a parcel of land, he said, near the Altamont Free Library, housed in the historic train station, and the bulk of the grant money will be spent on building a pavilion that will serve as a terminus for the Long Path, bringing hikers into Altamont with all of its amenities.

Meanwhile, the Mohawk Hudson Land Conservancy is hoping to extend the Bozen Kill Conservation Corridor, which currently covers 467 acres, on the outskirts of Altamont.

Lauren and Bryan Swift, who for decades have enjoyed hiking and skiing in the wilderness near their home, have purchased that land — 225 acres — and this fall the conservancy launched a campaign to raise funds to buy it.

“As they say, you can’t take things with you, but you can always leave them in a better state than you found them, so this is our way of doing that,” said Bryan Swift, explaining why he and his wife took the risk of buying the land along with neighbors, knowing full well they will not get back all of what they paid for it.

Life in Altamont ebbed and flowed as usual this year, with one important exception. The annual tri-county fair was well attended. The village’s Memorial Day parade was led by Grand Marshal Robi Whitehurst, who loves to wave to people as they pass by his group home.

Altamont Community Tradition carried on its mission, as its name suggests, of both building community and honoring tradition with a strawberry social and fall and winter festivals. The Altamont Free Library published a long-range plan and dedicated a patio to Dick and Ellen Howie.

“The Altamont Free Library community is a diverse one,” says the long-range plan, “containing a broad range of income levels, ethnicities, occupations, religious and political affiliations and interests … The characteristic that unites our members is an overwhelming sense of community-mindedness,” it says, stating that the renovation of the historic train station “is a clear expression of that sensibility, driven as it was by a large-scale grassroots effort over the course of many years.”

The one exception to normal village life this year is that, with the end of 2023, the Altamont Rescue Squad, founded in 1937, will no longer be providing service.

“I hate to say it, but we’re the oldest rescue squad in the state, and we’re going to be gone,” said one of the squad members at the Sept. 26 Knox Town Board meeting. The Altamont squad had also served half of the neighboring town of Knox.

Coverage of the village and that part of Knox will now be handled by the Guilderland Emergency Medical Services.

Guilderland, in addition to providing town-wide advanced life support, will take on the Altamont Rescue Squad’s previous duties: basic life support and transportation. The total cost for all services will be about $80,000, according to GEMS director, Jay Tyler.

To cover the village, Tyler said GEMS would continue to use space provided by the Altamont Fire Department, at the village hall on Main Street. “Until we find a more permanent solution for the village, we’ll be operating out of the fire department there,” he said. 

The rescue squad owns its current Main Street location in the village; the property is assessed at $412,400. 

Altamont is very early in the process of trying to build a new firehouse. 

In July, village trustees were shown findings from a feasibility study commissioned last year to look at the possibility of a new, stand-alone Altamont firehouse. 

The study recommended the new building be placed at the site of the former Doctor Crounse House, which was demolished by the town and village in 2021.

Trustee Nicholas Fahrenkopf in July offered The Enterprise a ballpark figure of between five and 10 years for the project’s timeline. 

Water safety continued to be an issue. Early last year, high manganese levels prompted the village to turn off two wells on Brandle Road, which came online in 2007. This year, ​​the village board approved a study for an amount not to exceed $20,000, which Mayor Kerry Dineen told the board would come out of the village’s American Rescue Plan Act money.

The pilot would be done in partnership with the University of Rhode Island, which has been researching the use of potassium ferrate to bring down the level of manganese.

Also this year, after more than four years of first broaching the topic, the village board adopted a law that allows residents to have chickens on their properties.

The board voted unanimously in favor of the law, which received equally broad support from residents, after first completing a State Environmental Quality Review that found the law would not have an adverse impact on the environment.

 

GCSD

 The Guilderland Central School district continues its work with diversity, equity, and inclusion.

The district began in earnest after the murder of George Floyd when the school board formed a DEI committee and created a new administrative post of DEI diretor.

The first person to fill that post, in 2021, was Matthew Pinchinat, a Guilderland social studies teacher, who gave this year’s commencement address. Pinchinat wept on stage at the Albany arena as he received a standing ovation. He left the district in July to work as deputy managing director of DEI for the state Teachers’ Retirement System.

Derek Westbrook was one of 42 applicants to fill the post, and the only one who had applied the first time around.

“He showed persistence matters,” said the district’s superintendent, Marie Wiles.

What drew him to DEI in the first place, Westbrook said, is, like his academic field, “Cultural studies is looking at the whole education; it’s where you reproduce and refine the best of who we are as a people.”

Westbrook concluded, “This is where it all happens. And we want to make sure that everyone feels that they’re connected, that they belong, and that their voices are being heard.

“I wanted to help make sure that we are creating a learning community where everyone feels valued and welcome and learns about each of us so that we can truly make America the best of all of us. Not just the people who are in the majority position but all of the people who have contributed to this country.”

This fall, Westbrook spoke to over 600 staff members who assembled in the high school auditorium about how each human being exists on three levels.

The first is people are all part of the human race, sharing that in common. The second is each person comes from a culture, whether its geographic, racial, ethnic, or religious. And the third is that each person is an individual unlike any other. 

Wiles said of Guilderland staff, “Our work is recognizing that everybody is all three of those things.” She went on, “We take very seriously the obligation and the responsibility that we have to make sure that each child feels like they belong, that they’re part of our school community, and that we’re providing for them the opportunities to learn and grow and develop and change and find joy in being in our classrooms and on our campus.”

The three incumbent school board candidates who ran unopposed this year — Kim Blasiak, Rebecca Butterfield, and Judy Slack — echoed those sentiments. The uncontested election followed a hotly fought race the previous year when 10 candidates ran for four seats. For the first time in years, some candidates ran as part of a slate. Two slates of four formed while two candidates ran independently.

One slate was formed through a Facebook group called “Taking back our school boards” as part of the national Pro-parent Choice movement that started with parents objecting to their children having to wear masks in school.

The winning slate, which was supported by the teachers’ union, was made up of three current school board members — including Blasiak, who was chosen among six applicants to fill a vacancy in October 2020 — as well as a teacher.

 “I am proudest of our work over the last 3 years in diversity, equity and inclusion,” said Butterfield of her reasons for running. “When I joined the Board to fill a vacancy in 2019, I was part of a very frank phone call with recent Guilderland graduates on racism that they had experienced in the recent past at school. These conversations have continued for the last 3 years with students feeling more open about calling out these incidents and bringing them to the attention of school officials.

“But we know that so many incidents remain hidden and include those that are not only focused on race but also on gender, religion, disability, and sexual orientation, among others.”

In February, the board voted to call the federal holiday that fell on Oct. 9 this year solely by the name Indigenous Peoples’ Day.

When the board members discussed the proposed school calendar at their Jan. 10 meeting, the draft had designated the holiday as both Indigenous Peoples’ Day and as Columbus Day.

“The time to lead is now,” said Butterfield.

Gloria Towle-Hilt, the board’s longest serving member and a retired teacher, who cast the sole dissenting vote, said she had “great respect for” Indigenous Peoples’ Day and thought it could co-exist on the calendar with Columbus Day but that Columbus Day should not be erased.

“Not having it on the calendar is wrong,” she said of Columbus Day.

“It’s hard to marry both names … when the holiday is shared between someone who committed genocide,” said Butterfield, arguing for eliminating Columbus Day.

Towle-Hilt responded, “The date wasn’t set up to honor someone who committed genocide. It was set up to honor someone who had done something unusual and spectacular at the time ….

“No one in history was a perfect person. It’s always a mix — the good and the bad. At that time in history, he was honored … [for] going out into the unknown and finding a continent. We can argue about what happened after that … There’s a lot of history on both sides.”

The third annual student-run anti-hate rally this spring focused on the role of allies — friends and faculty who are supportive of students who are facing prejudice.

Several of the courageous students who spoke this year are transgender.

“We, in America, are in the process of a trans-genocide,” said one of the students to the attentive crowd of more than 100 who sat on a sunny day in the parking lot of their high school.

Allyship, said another of the speakers, is not “a quick fix” but rather a journey. “It’s being present for the long haul. It’s taking a stand that begins with having an open mind and ears ready to hear …. If I didn’t have allyship, I would never have the confidence to speak what I believe or face the hate I get as a person who’s part of the LGBTQ+ community.”

One change this year was brought about by two students speaking out. In October, the school board approved a policy change that will allow girls, with their coaches’ say-so, to wear sports bras without shirts for practice.

The subject had been broached last May by two girls, then in ninth-grade, on the Guilderland High School track team. The athletes, Olivia Mair and Angelica Sofia Parker, each independently wrote a letter to the Enterprise editor and sent the same missives to the school board.

“I was really happy about it,” Mair said of the school board’s decision. “Other people on my team and at school are happy about it too.”

“I feel empowered and I hope other students do too,” said Parker.

She also said, “If you want to change the world, you need to make noise. The squeaky wheel really does get the grease, and The Altamont Enterprise helped us to be heard!”

Also in May, the district’s $120 million budget passed easily with 70 percent of the vote.

With the historic restoration of Foundation Aid from the state, the Guilderland budget maintained all current programs and added staff to reduce the class sizes in the sixth and seventh grades at Farnsworth as it had done for eighth grade in the current year.

“It will make a big, big difference,” said Wiles of the smaller class sizes.

She also praised the rigorous programs and social-emotional supports that the 2023-24 budget finances and concluded, “I’m very grateful to our community.”

It was the first Guilderland budget shepherded by Van Alystyne, following the retirement of Neil Sanders, who had been Guilderland’s business administrator for 18 years. Van Alstyne had assumed the post in January.

Van Alstyne, who started his career as a college teacher, left academia because he wanted to do work that had a direct impact on people’s lives. He worked for six years at the Association of School Business Officials of New York and was the director of Education and Research when he left.

During the pandemic, he saw what those members had to do to meet the needs that their students and communities faced.

“I found it seriously inspiring,” said Van Alstyne.

So he decided to enter the trenches himself and, in 2022, he started looking for a school district administrative post. “Guilderland checked every box,” Van Alstyne said, citing the “committed leadership” and “great schools.”

Safety remained a district priority this year. Last December, after much debate and discussion, the school board agreed to station a police officer in the middle school for the rest of the school year as a pilot program. An officer is already stationed in the high school.

Guilderland Police Chief Daniel McNally had offered the second officer, for free, until the end of the year, but some members of the board had been reluctant, expressing concerns that students of color may feel intimidated by an officer or felt that the money — if it became a permanent position funded by the district — could better be spent elsewhere.

The program was deemed a success and this December the Guilderland Town Board voted to hire Nicholas Crodelle as a Guilderland Police officer to serve at Farnsworth Middle School. “This new position is funded in the 2024 budget,” Chief McNally wrote in a memo to the town board.

The district is not only looking to make its students ready for the future but its buildings as well.

School board members took a trip to the Queensbury Union Free School District in Warren County to get ideas on upgrading Guilderland schools.

“They have looked at how students learn, how teaching and learning happens best in collaborative kinds of settings,” said Superintendent Wiles as she projected pictures of the Queensbury tour at the Dec. 5 school board meeting.

“The biggest part of that trip that I took away was just thinking how excited those students must be going into that building …,” said board member Kim Blasiak.

“I found it inspiring,” said board member Blanca Gonzalez-Parker.

Wiles’s presentation was to make a pitch for Guilderland to form a task force to “focus on educational programming priorities and implications for our facilities,” she said — an idea the board embraced.

Wiles outlined what she termed an “aggressive” timeline for the “future-ready” task force. Task force members are to be appointed by the school board in January and are to share their recommendations with the board by the fall of 2024 with the goal of having a capital project referendum in May 2025.

 

Environment

While the school district continued its long-standing summer program at Farnsworth Middle School of students educating the public about the value of native plants and their necessity for wildlife, like butterflies, the town was well positioned at the start the year having passed a law at the end of 2022 to encourage residents to plant native trees.

A tree committee was formed both to educate residents and to help with selection of appropriate trees for town land.

Canadian wildfires over the summer produced particulate matter that made it hard to breathe. Guilderland, with the rest of the state and most of the Northeast, was under a health advisory on several occasions.

“We’ve smashed the records on smoke from wildfires,” said DEC Commissioner Basil Seggos on July 17 as most of the state was mapped in red for “unhealthy” air quality.

“It’s been an extraordinary summer,” said Seggos, noting that 25 million acres of forest have burned in Canada while, at the same time, floods in New York and neighboring states have been prevalent.

“This is the new unprecedented,” said Seggos. “It’s fueled by climate change.”

Both the town and, eventually, the school district voted this year to give tax breaks to volunteer firefighters, whose duties have increased with more calls to pump out flooded basements.

Locally, the Albany Pine Bush Preserve, which is located partly in Guilderland, updated its fire-management plan as it has since 1991.

By regularly conducting prescribed fires, the preserve reduces the risk of wildfires as well as controlling invasive species.

“The risks posed by wildland fire in the preserve are greatly mitigated by 30+ years of fuel treatments, a robust training program and sound investments in wildland fire resources,” said the report, prepared by Conservation Director Neil Gifford and Fire Manager Tyler Briggs.

Public awareness of environmental issues in town was evident throughout the year. At the end of 2022, residents of Armstrong Circle addressed the Guilderland Town Board, concerned about trees being felled in forested land near their homes.

The town had issued, at first to the wrong parties, cease-and-desist orders, saying the logging ran afoul of three town subdivision regulations and a state regulation. 

However, the logger doing the work, René Savoie, told The Enterprise in January he had no knowledge that a subdivision was going to be proposed when he struck a deal with the property owner in July. He checked the town’s zoning, he said, and also contacted the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation because he was aware of the designation of the northern long-eared bats. 

Savoie got the go-ahead from the DEC to start logging as long as he did so within the time frame of Nov. 1 to March 31, he said. This is the period when the bats are hibernating in caves and so not affected by the felling of trees.

Savoie told The Enterprise that his livelihood was threatened by his having to stop work.

In February, since the developer planning the large subdivision on the outskirts of Altamont had withdrawn his application, and since a stormwater management plan for logging had been approved, tree-cutting was allowed to resume.

Savoie then told The Enterprise then, “We’re happy we’ll be able to go back to work.”

In October, there was a pronounced public outcry over a variance request that would have allowed a developer to build a contractor yard with storage warehouses within the 500-foot setback to the Watervliet Reservoir, Guilderland’s major source of drinking water.

The zoning board’s unanimous vote to deny the variance followed a public hearing in which 20 people spoke against the plan; the zoning board also received 15 letters opposed to the project.

“We should be buying land around this reservoir,” said Guilderland resident Aaron Mair at the hearing. “Our water is a critical asset to this community as well as the city of Watervliet.”

In December, the town board, in addition to setting parameters for a robust rainy-day fund, also established several new reserves. One of them is for environmental protection.

During the November elections, all four candidates running for town board — incumbent Democrat Jacob Crawford with his running mate, first-time candidate Gustavo Santos, along with Republican challengers Jamie Ralston and Brian Sheridan — all agreed that water was an important issue for Guilderland.

The election results — a Democratic sweep — were not surprising as Guilderland has nearly twice as many voters enrolled as Democrats than as Republicans.

The only other contested race was for town justice as Republican Stephen Chesley made his third try for the post but was bested by Margaret Tabak.

Democratic Supervisor Barber was unchallenged, winning a fifth two-year term. And Democrat Lynne Buchanan was unopposed for town clerk as was Democrat Robert Haver for highway superintendent.

In December, Justice John Bailey, Councilwoman Rosemary Centi, and Highway Superintendent Greg Weir — all retiring after long careers as Guilderland leaders — were presented with many proclamations and heard many words of praise from federal, state, county, and local politicians.

 

Homicide

After one of the most brutal crimes in the town’s recent history, Jason Seminary of Guilderland was sentenced in April to two to four years in state prison, having pleaded guilty to criminally negligent homicide as part of a plea deal following the death of Kentish Bennett.

Seminary was 43 when he was arrested on Dec. 26, 2021 for second-degree manslaughter, which would have come with a sentence of up to 15 years.

Bennett was 41 when he died on Dec. 23, 2021. He was well known locally as a musician and drag performer.

At the time of Bennett’s death, the mother of his two children, Anika Jordan-Alexis, described Bennett as talented, lovely, and gentle. “He was too kind of a person to die that way,” she told The Enterprise.

Bennett had lived at 3771 Western Turnpike, a farm in Guilderland, with John L. “Jack” Seminary, Jason’s father.

At the sentencing, Seminary’s lawyer, Michael A. Feit, said that Kentish Bennett “had been the paramour … of Jason’s father for 14 years” and that Jason Seminary “could not have foreseen” what happened on Dec. 23, 2021.

Seminary said he was sorry for Bennett’s family and sorry for his father whom he said “has a broken heart.”

He said he had spent a lot of time with Bennett at the farm and that he and Bennett were the same age.

“I’m not a monster although I get painted like a monster … ,” said Seminary as he cried. “I do have remorse … I never set out to be a criminal … I never meant to hurt Kentish … What happened was an accident.”

Seminary went on, “I was just trying to stop him … I’m 280 pounds.”

Through sobs, he said, “I don’t know what’s gonna happen to me.” He went on about Bennett, “He had his problems but he was a good person … and I never meant to hurt him.”

Assistant District Attorney Fallon responded that some of Feit’s statements were unfair. She said there are far more reports of the police being called on the Seminary men for harm to Bennett than there are for Bennett harming the Seminary men.

While there were ongoing issues of violence in general at the household, Fallon said, violence was primarily directed at Bennett.

The Enterprise filed Freedom of Information Law requests with the Guilderland Police for reports of calls from the Seminary home just after Bennett’s death, in December 2021, and then again after Seminary had pleaded guilty to criminally negligent homicide in November 2022.

The requests were denied because “the case remains open.” The Enterprise filed another request on April 18 after the sentencing.

The Enterprise has yet to get a response to its Freedom of Information Law request.

The Enterprise reporter was the only person in the courtroom gallery for Seminary’s sentencing.