ALTAMONT — The village’s quasquicentennial, or 125th year since its founding, brought renewed emphasis on the qualities and history that make Altamont unique.

The village board considered and finally rejected an application by convenience store and gas station Stewart’s to expand into a residential zone; the village museum and archives hosted an exhibit of stained glass windows from the three Altamont churches; and the village began to consider reroofing the historic Crounse House to put a halt to weather damage, in hopes of restoring the property in the future.

The year also brought a strong message from the mayor, after Altamont had been listed on a hate map, that the village was a diverse and accepting place to live.

Stewart’s

Originally, officials from Stewart’s went to Altamont’s planning board to ask about renovating on their current site, at 1001 Altamont Blvd., without expanding. The confines of the current site made it difficult to do any substantial reworking of the building and parking lot, because of issues related, for instance, to required distance from pumps to store, and setback from the adjacent creek.

At a subsequent planning board meeting, Stewart’s began to explore the idea of buying the property at 107-109 Helderberg Ave., in order to be able to rebuild within a larger footprint of the two combined lots. 

The property, owned by Peter Baumann, was being rented to two families and would have needed to be rezoned from R-10 to Central Business District.

The planning board sent Stewart’s to the village board, which the planning board said was the correct entity to decide the question. There was some controversy at later village board meetings over whether the planning board had recommended at that time that the village board approve the proposal.

The planning board minutes from Feb. 23 say the board unanimously agreed to refer the matter to the village board, recommending that 107-109 Helderberg Ave. be absorbed into the business district because it is adjacent to the district, was previously zoned for business, and will expand the business district within the village.

The village board considered Stewart’s plans over much of the year, and conducted an environmental review of the proposed design for the site. Each month, the board received numerous letters from villagers for and against the project and saw many residents stand up to comment on the proposal.

The board also sought input from village residents at several public hearings over the course of the months-long discussion.

Residents who were for the proposal cited the need to support business in Altamont as well as their reliance on Stewart’s as a close and convenient option for coffee, ice cream, and light groceries. Those against said that the size of the project was out of scale with the village’s small, quaint character and they were uncomfortable with seeing the boundaries of the Central Business District expand into residential areas and erase the buffer between the business district and the homes on Helderberg Avenue currently provided by the rental property. Finally, many expressed reluctance to displace families with children at a time when Altamont Elementary has been struggling to stay open.

In October, the village board issued a negative declaration on the state-required environmental review of the Stewart’s proposal, meaning that it found that there would be no significant environmental impact if the zoning change were approved. The proposal then came up for a vote. There were just four board members voting, since trustee Cathy Glass had resigned effective Oct. 1 (although Glass had already said she would recuse herself from any vote, since she was on the planning board when Stewart’s first appeared before it).

Voting against the zoning change were Christine Marshall and Dean Whalen; Whalen said that as an architect he could see that it was impossible for Stewart’s to improve the building within the current footprint, but that in a democracy he needed “to hear the majority.”

Voting for were Kerry Dineen, who said the environmental review findings should drive the decision, and Mayor James Gaughan, who expressed frustration with what he called Stewart’s refusal to change key elements in its design to satisfy residents’ often-expressed concerns about making the new design less monolithic and better suited to a small village.

Since the vote stood at 2-2, and a majority vote was needed for any action to be taken, the proposal failed.

Officials say: No signs of hate

In March, the Southern Poverty Law Center, an internationally known organization that tracks the activities of hate groups in the United States, listed Altamont in the Hate Map for 2014 as the only location in New York State to have an active chapter of the Ku Klux Klan.

After the list was publicized, Altamont’s police chief, Todd Pucci, met with representatives of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the New York State Police, the Albany County Sheriff’s Office, and the Guilderland Police Department.

“None of us have any substantiation of any chapter of the KKK here,” said Pucci after the meeting. “The most recent activity in this area was back in the 1920s.”

Mayor Gaughan, expressed similar doubts. “We have no local evidence of any kind here from citizens, the media, or from law enforcement ... Here in this village, where I know so many people, I am still stretched to believe these claims, with nary a whiff of suggestion.”

Gaughan also said, “As I investigate this, I am having one heck of a time trying … to assess the reality here, so that we can first of all provide education and provide information, so people don’t unnecessarily get haunted by their memories of the past, of how this organization terrorized people.”

Pucci also pointed out that the Altamont ZIP code is much wider than the village proper, and that any activity, if it really exists, could be in an outlying area. He went on to say that Klan members, like anyone else, have First Amendment rights to freedom of speech and to peaceably assemble. “If they did rally, then we’d be the first out in the street to block traffic,” he said of the Altamont Police.

The police chief reiterated, though, that there had been no interaction between Klan members and law enforcement in the region.

Remembrance          

Curator of the village archives Marijo Dougherty created an exhibit called “Remembrance: Images of Selected Memorial Windows from Altamont Churches,” featuring new, high-quality photographs of stained-glass windows from Altamont’s three churches.

The photos of windows at Altamont Reformed Church, St. John’s Lutheran Church, and St. Lucy/St. Bernadette Church were painstakingly shot by Altamont resident and retired pathologist Ron Ginsburg. The 56-page exhibit catalog contains the photos and a wealth of information about the history of the churches and their windows, as well as several essays.

The village held a celebration of the quasquicentennial and unveiling of the exhibit catalogue at the firehouse on Oct. 18. The celebration was attended by about 200, including Bishop Emeritus Howard Hubbard, Congressman Paul Tonko, Assemblywoman Patricia Fahy, and then-Guilderland Supervisor Ken Runion.

The exhibit will remain up at Village Hall, during office hours, through Jan. 5.

Crounse House

The property at the corner of Route 146 and Gun Club Road has an 1833 Federal home where Altamont’s first doctor, Frederick Crounse, lived and practiced medicine.

The house has sat empty for about three decades. Roof leaks in the last few years have caused water damage inside.

Mayor Gaughan and the village trustees solicited bids this fall for the work of repairing the roof, in order to prevent further damage. The roof will be paid for from the village’s general fund. The plan is then for the village to recoup the money through a legislative grant.

Outgoing Guilderland Town Supervisor Kenneth Runion told The Enterprise this fall that Patricia Fahy has obtained a capital project grant for $175,000. Of that, $150,000 is earmarked for specific improvements to Guilderland’s parks, while $25,000 is set aside for the Crounse House project.

Asbestos was also recently discovered in the siding on a part of the building, said Gaughan. The village had an assessment done of the cost of abatement, and found that it would it be less than $5,000, which “shouldn’t be an impediment,” the mayor said.

About 10 years ago, Gaughan and the board of trustees, village archivist Dougherty, and Guilderland historian Alice Begley formed a committee to begin to consider the long-range use of the property, exploring the idea of turning it into a historic center for the village as well as for the rural outskirts of Guilderland and areas up through the Helderberg Hilltowns.

Gaughan plans to begin to revive that discussion, in an effort to see if there is interest among village residents in maintaining and beginning to use the property. His dream is to move the village archives there and establish a visitors’ center.

Some may argue, he said, that the house should be torn down so the village can receive taxes on the property. But in fact, he said, the village would not receive taxes, since the house is across the village line, in Guilderland, and not Altamont.

The village bought the house, together with the town, a decade ago, for about $40,000 in back taxes.

Gaughan hopes that the groundswell of public interest in maintaining the village’s unique character that arose around the issue of the Stewart’s bid to expand can be channeled in 2016 into enthusiasm for saving the Crounse House.

Kristin Casey, one of the village residents who fought the Stewart’s expansion, told The Enterprise, “There are many people in the community who care about our history and who I believe will rally around the effort to maintain his legacy, and the property, in some fashion. The Crounse property connects Altamont with Knowersville, and is ideally located for a Visitor Information Center for the area, as well as a place to showcase Dr. Crounse's story. I have no doubt that there will be support among Altamont's residents to preserve this important chapter in our history.”

One year in

The village also saw the completion of the first year’s work by a new library director and a new fair manager.

Joe Burke, the new director of the Altamont Free Library, said that the welcome he has received from the community has been “totally overwhelming.” Since he was well aware of the “phenomenal” work of his predecessor, Judith Wines (“who did such amazing things for the community and for the library”), he said recently that he decided from the start that “things were working really well here and that I wanted to come in and not monkey too much with success.”

He has continued the library’s many popular programs, including potluck meals featuring food each month from a different country, story times, and craft nights.

He has added new events including tai chi classes in Orsini Park taught by “a guy named Joe Mansfield, who actually happens to be my father-in-law” and who “volunteered to do it.” Burke said that the tai chi classes are very popular and help with the library’s mission of “community-building” and that they also bring in “some folks who might not otherwise be using the library.”

Burke also mentioned a “great program” that the library offered this summer, in which young people built raised garden beds — using hand tools and recycled wooden pallets — in back of the library. “After that, we had the Cornell Cooperative Extension come in and do some gardening classes for the same folks.”

Participants learned to use tools like saws and drills and also learned gardening basics. The gardens will always be there now, Burke said, and can be used for library programs for patrons of different ages — for instance, offering programs on growing your own ingredients for certain dishes, and having small children listen to garden-related books during story time and then go out and water the garden or plant seeds.

Altamont Fair board member Pat Canaday said that new fair manager Amy Anderson’s first year was very successful. She noted that the Belgian draft horse exhibit was a hit at the 2015 fair — which ran from Aug. 11 to 16 — and that, for the first time ever, the Belgians pulled the old steam-pumper fire engine, with a long-time fire department member aboard, around the track.

The Ag Awareness trail, a scavenger hunt throughout the entire fairgrounds, drew in over 140 kids to find agricultural facts and win prizes. Despite the statewide ban on poultry exhibits, chicks were hatched from an avian flu–free hatchery, “and the kids were amazed,” said Canaday. Visitors also enjoyed the “great exhibits in all the museums” and had a lot of fun at the midway, she said.

Anderson has “big plans” for 2016 that will unfold in the coming months, Canaday said. She added that fair officials look forward to a successful event again in 2016, “with, hopefully, a little less rain.”

Appointments

Village residents were appointed to several positions over the course of the year: attorney James R. Greene was appointed by the mayor, effective April 1, to replace Lesley Stefan as village justice following Stefan’s resignation in January; engineer Nicholas Fahrenkopf was appointed effective Dec. 1 to replace trustee Cathy Glass, who resigned in October, citing health issues within her family. The planning board appointed member Timothy Wilford to replace James R. Greene as board chairman.

If Greene and Fahrenkopf wish to continue in their positions, they will need to run in a special election to be held in March 2016.

Victorian Holiday

This village-wide annual event, held this year on Dec. 13, was very successful, said Connie Rue, secretary of Altamont Community Tradition, the not-for-profit organization that runs the event.

“We sold 225 house-tour tickets,” Rue said, “which is about normal.” She was referring to tickets to the popular tour of Victorian and period houses that this year also included several newer homes.

“That number is probably about average, but with all the new activities we had and the larger number of vendors than ever before,” Rue said, “we really felt that attendance within the village was much higher than normal.”

The Victorian Holiday has featured a handful of vendors in the past — “maybe a dozen”— but Rue estimated that there were 50 this year, including craftspeople, artisans, and artists at sites throughout the village such as ReNue Spa, the Severson Agency, the American Legion, and the Community Room at the village hall.

In addition to the “classics” like the Living Nativity at the Altamont Reformed Church and the auction of decorated wreaths at the Masonic Temple, activities this year included a number of choirs that sang all afternoon at St. John’s Lutheran Church, separate dog and cat holiday costume contests at Altamont Country Values, story time with Santa at Hungerford Market, several book signings, a wine tasting at Mio Vino, and hay rides in Orsini Park.

Rue also guessed that about 300 children lined up to meet Santa when he pulled into the village on the Christmas Train.

Water pipes

Water pipes at a number of buildings on Maple Avenue in the village froze for several weeks in March.

Jeff Moller, superintendent of public works, said at the time that he thought eight buildings were affected. He told The Enterprise at the time that village law stipulated that the village is responsible only for needed repairs to the water mains. Repairs to the pipes that run from the main all the way into the residence are the responsibility of the homeowner.

So homeowners along Maple Avenue tried all sorts of workarounds. Barry Gasparro of ReNue Spa borrowed water through a hose from a next-door neighbor. Then-publisher of the Altamont Enterprise James Gardner used a hose to supply water from one of his buildings to the other next door. He didn’t try to actually fix it. He said at the time that, apart from the hose, “I’ve ignored it and let it go, and hopefully it will thaw out soon.”    

Marc Smith of Altamont Antiques, at 133 Maple Ave., was one of the only homeowners who succeeded in thawing his pipes. He did it by running hot water through the pipe, using an on-demand hot-water boiler that he was able to hook up to run water down into the pipe from a neighbor’s house.

Asked if the village had done anything to prevent the same thing from happening in 2016, Moller said, “The only thing at the time that we figured that we could try to do would be to seal off some of the catch basins in that area, on Maple Avenue, where the pipes were freezing, and stop any of that cold air drafting through and getting into the ground.”

In order to do that, he said, the village crew planned to take the grate out, put in a porous membrane cloth underneath the grate that would allow water through, but stop gusts of cold air. The village hasn’t done it yet, though, he said recently, “because it’s been so warm. If it stays like this, we won’t have to worry about it,” Muller said last week before the spring-like weather turned cold.

Smith said that he spoke with experts at the time who told him that the way to avoid frozen pipes is to keep the water running slightly. “If I go away, I’ll just give the neighbor a key and say, ‘Go over and flush the toilet once a day for me.’”

But problems may be unlikely to recur. Gardner said at the time that he had been working at 123 Maple Ave. for 60 years, and that this was the first time in his memory that the pipes had ever frozen.