GUILDERLAND — The year 2024 was a time for both the town of Guilderland and the school district to look forward.

A committee of volunteers advised by a hired consultant completed two years of work in updating Guilderland’s comprehensive plan, presenting their recommendations to the town board late in the year for action in 2025.

The school district, under the leadership of Superintendent Marie Wiles, assembled a future-ready task force of volunteers to come up with proposals on how to make learning spaces relevant with an eye towards a public vote on a capital project in May 2025.

Marie Wiles announced in October that she would retire in June after 14 years at the helm of the district. Her husband, Timothy Wiles, had resigned as the director of the Guilderland Public Library in early February.

A rocky period followed when an owner of the café business housed in the library leveled charges of racism against library staff later in February. The charges turned out to be unsubstantiated and the library is once again on an even keel under a new director, Peter Petruski.

Meanwhile, the village of Altamont, which is located in the town of Guilderland, has a developer proposing a massive complex in the center of the village while a volunteer group is working to preserve the village’s historic character, envisioning a “green belt” protecting it from suburban sprawl.

 

Town

Supervisor Peter Barber’s State of the Town address set the tone for the year as he described a “progressive and aggressive agenda.”

“The town is taking a leading role in climate change,” he said of reducing it, with 30 percent of the town’s land mass preserved.

He noted that the Mohawk Hudson Land Conservancy has purchased an additional 225 acres to add to the protected Bozen Kill corridor, meaning the town had met the 30 x 30 mark of preserving 30 percent of its land by 2030.

Guilderland has also adopted legislation and created a committee to encourage planting native trees. This year, the town continued to improve its parks and trail systems.

The retirement of C.J. Gallup, Guilderland’s parks director, was announced in November.

“I don’t know somebody who took more abuse better …,” said Barber. “The guy was calm and he delivered.”

Also in November, the town board released $75,000 from the Parkland Assessment Fund to reach the $300,000 needed to build a box lacrosse facility, with artificial turf. Youth Lacrosse had received $200,000 in American Rescue Plan Act funds, through Albany County, for the project. At the November town board meeting, an advocate for the handicapped, Christine Duffy, had said the money should instead be spent on providing playground equipment for handicapped children.

Deputy Supervisor Christine Napierski said Duffy was right, stating, “All children should be able to play in our parks with their friends and their families. And all our parks should be handicapped accessible and have handicapped equipment that all children can use.”

Currently, there is no handicapped playground equipment in town parks although several of Guilderland’s public elementary schools have such equipment.

The Enterprise reported in early January complaints from Anne Tucker Rose, a former Guilderland supervisor and recipient of retiree benefits from the town, that the switch from Capital District Physicians Health Plan to Humana left her looking for a new doctor. 

On Feb. 3, The Enterprise published an editorial about a retired Guilderland Police officer, Dean Spadaro, whose treatment for stage 4 prostate cancer was being compromised by the switch to Humana.

That was followed by a letter from another former Guilderland officer, Dan Cocca, whose career was sidelined by an on-the-job injury, with similar complaints about the switch to Humana.

After saying the switch to a new health care provider for its retirees would be a good thing for former employees, the town reversed itself to have employees covered by United Healthcare.

The town currently has the largest police force in its history, which this year handled the usual range of traffic violations, shoplifting incidents — primarily at Crossgates Mall — and domestic and neighbor disputes.

 But in October, one man was stabbed and another shot during a concert held at a venue off of Depot Road.

Several large events had been held at the venue at 400 Gipps Lane previously and neighbors had asked for the town to intervene. Barber told The Enterprise at the time that the town’s zoning department was awaiting advice from legal counsel on whether similar events at the same property should require a special-use permit in the future. 

No answer was ever forthcoming to the public. And, while The Enterprise saw a copy of a mass-gathering permit secured by Matthew Burke who had organized events at the venue, neither Barber nor the town clerk would comment, citing an ongoing police investigation.

A Freedom of Information Law request was never answered.

“We realized it was a dangerous situation,” Kristopher Scarano, the public information officer for the Guilderland Police, told The Enterprise of October’s weekend event, so State Police, the Albany County Sheriff’s Office, and police from the State University at New York were called to the scene to disperse the crowd.

One of the neighbors who was scared by the weekend events, Yvonne Davis, said, “If you make a venue that big, it’s going to get out of control, and that’s what happened this weekend.”

The Enterprise published an editorial calling for special-use permits to host such events.

The town’s ambulance service has grown to encompass the areas served by the now-defunct Altamont Rescue Squad, which had been the state’s oldest squad but shut down on Jan. 1, a victim of falling volunteer rates and increased requirements for training.

Guilderland Emergency Medical Services is now covering Altamont as well as the neighboring town of Knox, which had been covered by the Altamont squad. Its Guilderland coverage includes part of the State Thruway and part of the University at Albany campus.

Guilderland opened its third ambulance station, next to the town-owned golf course near the intersection of routes 20 and 146, in October. The demand for emergency response is growing, with a record 6,717 calls answered last year.

“We’ve had our trials and tribulations here,” said Jay Tyler, who directs GEMS. “But we have an excellent product here, and it’s going to serve the community for many, many years to come.”

With a $500,000 grant from Albany County and contributions from Guilderland’s volunteer fire departments, the town this year built a new $900,000 fire training center in the Northeastern Industrial Park.

In February, the Guilderland Town Board considered a bill, drafted by Barber, that would regulate short-term rentals in town. 

Several months earlier, the town’s zoning board had sided with the town’s code-enforcement officer about an Airbnb on Becker Road, finding it in violation of town code.

A hearing followed in March, during which several residents raised concerns. Ultimately, the board decided to wait to see what would happen with proposed state legislation on short-term rentals.

On Dec. 21, Governor Kathy Hochul signed the first statewide Short-Term Rental Registry into law. 

In June, Pyramid cleared its last legal hurdle — the fifth in four years — to build a Costo warehouse on Route 20 in front of Crossgates Mall. The project, initially one of several projects proposed for adjacent properties, had already been through the state environmental review process and the town’s planning board review.

Since first presenting the proposal as all its own, Pyramid sold the apartment project site to a Troy developer — Apex at Crossgates opened this year —  and while it still owns the eight parcels now slated for a cancer center, Pyramid is not the project’s developer.

In November, the town’s zoning board approved Columbia Development to build for New York Oncology Hematology, a $55 million, 105,000-square-foot regional center to be located between the Hilton hotel and the future Costco on Route 20.

While one longstanding Route 20 eyesore raising environmental concerns was resolved this year another much larger one remains.

The Rustic Barn property, with a stream that feeds into the Watervliet Reservoir, Guilderland’s major source of drinking water, had been cleaned up by the Department of Environmental Conservation but the property, with decaying buildings, remained in legal limbo.

Ultimately, the neighboring property owner, Ryan Caruso, and his wife were able to buy the property from Albany County for $500 and the Nellis brothers from Fort Plain dismantled the frame of the historic Dutch barn on the property to rebuild it at their family homestead.

In October, the Guilderland Comprehensive Plan Update Committee finalized its recommendations in a 198-page document, referring it to the town board.

The plan makes recommendations for agriculture, business and employment, the environment, neighborhoods and housing, parks and historic resources, transportation, and governance.

In November, the town board declared itself the lead agency in reviewing the recommendations under the State Environmental Quality Review Act and directed the planning department to coordinate the review that will go to at least 14 local and state agencies.

After another public hearing, the town board will decide whether to adopt the plan and then will have to update the town’s zoning law if it wants to implement changes in the plan.

A town board discussion in December on whether to allow the Foundry Square Planned Unit Development — proposed by the developer as a solution to an eyesore and environmental hazard — to proceed touched on recommendations made by the update committee.

The developer, Guilderland Village LLC, has proposed two massive four-story buildings with a combined 260 apartments, which is both denser and taller than allowed by town code, at the intersection of Route 20 and Foundry Road.

While one board member said it feels like the Foundry Square developer is holding a gun to the town’s head, the town planner said there was no threat and the developer has made compromises and will do heavy lifting to solve longstanding pollution and traffic problems.

Kenneth Kovalchik, the town planner who favors the project, cited the town board’s approval of becoming a Pro-Housing Community, a state designation that allows it to apply for grants and also cited ​​portions of the recommendations the committee made to update the town’s comprehensive plan that would favor workforce housing.

Ultimately, the town board postponed its decision on Foundry Square until its reorganizational meeting on Jan. 7.

 

School

Late last year, Guilderland School Board members visited the Queensbury Union Free School District in Warren County and were inspired.

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

With facilities, Wiles said, Guilderland has “two big goals”: supporting technology and developing “a shared vision for future-ready facilities.”

Wiles proposed exploring what it means to be “future ready” both in terms of educational programming and “in terms of the space in which we do that.”

Over 50 volunteers formed a task force, beginning their work in January. They were divided into five working subcommittees dealing with: elementary programs; science, technology, engineering, math and career skills; secondary humanities; gathering spaces; and performing arts.

The group was advised by CSArch, the district’s architectural firm. A ThoughtExchange, an online survey, was launched to gather views from faculty, teaching assistants, aids, and monitors.

“The responses indicate a strong desire for updated, clean and esthetically pleasing facilities that are safe and have good temperature control and lighting,” said Wiles, summarizing results for the board. “Flexible seating options and updated classrooms with functional furniture also highlighted specialized environments for special education classes and spaces for collaboration and independent work are deemed necessary but need for technology that is compatible with operating systems and thoughtfully placed within classrooms as emphasized.

“Respondents also called for more visually appealing shared areas, comfortable seating spots and adequate staffing to meet individual and student needs. They suggest that the cafeteria should be updated to promote a sense of community.”

The goal is to have a capital project voted on in May along with the school budget.

In December, Assistant Superintendent for Business Andrew Van Alstyne presented a rollover budget for next year — keeping the same staffing and programs as this year — of $130 million, with a $3.1 million gap between projected revenue and projected expenses.

The current year’s $125 million budget was challenging to draft because it included most of what the one-time federal funds to help with the pandemic had provided.

One item that school board members favored was the floating nurse that pandemic funds had paid for but ultimately the nurse was not included in the budget because the board did not want to pierce the state-set tax cap.

During the budget process, parents of some of the special-needs students at the high school complained about the isolation their children felt in transitioning from the middle school. The board discussed doing an audit of the special-education program.

Wiles told The Enterprise in November, “Those students are doing great this year.”

The budget process was also difficult because Governor Hochul proposed several changes in aid. In August, the Rockefeller Institute for Government, which was tasked with making recommendations on the state’s Foundation Aid formula, held a hearing at Guilderland High School. The institute’s report was released in December.

Ultimately, Guilderland’s budget passed in May with 72 percent of the vote. 

At the same time, two bus propositions passed handily: one for $1.3 million for replacing the usual buses and the other for $407,500 to buy two electric buses. The electric buses will ultimately cost Guilderland taxpayers nothing, giving the district a chance to learn how to drive and repair the vehicles administrators have said since the state is mandating their use.

Finally, the largest approval —  with 87 percent of the vote — was for the district to sell its 1860 Cobblestone Schoolhouse in Guilderland Center to the town for $10,000.

Voter approval was needed because the sale price was below market value. Wiles said when the proposition passed, “I’m happy to put it in another set of hands with a nice grant.”

Assemblywoman Patricia Fahy, who was instrumental in seeing that the schoolhouse stayed in the public domain, secured a grant towards its preservation.

School board elections this year — a five-way race for three seats — did not involve radically opposed views as in the elections two years ago.

The three winning school board candidates — top vote-getter Tara Molloy-Grocki, incumbent Blanca Gonzalez-Parker, and newcomer Nina Kaplan — like their two opponents all supported the district’s ongoing diversity, equity, and inclusion initiative.

The school board’s president, Seema Rivera, had resigned after being named to the state’s Board of Regents in March.

In July, Gonzalez-Parker became the board’s president with Kelly Person assuming her original post as vice president.

Also in July, Hochul started her “listening tour” in Guilderland on a smartphone ban, which she hopes to make statewide.

Wiles had told The Enterprise earlier, when asked about the possibility of a statewide ban on smartphones in schools, “I would prefer that we arrive at a decision like we arrive at most decisions, which is by engaging our community, getting feedback, providing information and insight, and then moving forward rather than, ‘Well, we have to do it.’”

In August, all nine school board members agreed to explore a cell-phone ban in Guilderland.

The president of New York State United Teachers, Melinda Person, attended the governor's session, and the August school board meeting opened with a letter from Person being read by the board’s president, Gonzalez-Parker.

Person, writing as the mother of four children in the district, called for a full ban of student use of smartphones “with reasonable exceptions on their use for instructional purposes and/or health and safety.”

“For students,” Person wrote of smartphone use, “it has sparked a mental health crisis, fractured attention spans and contributed to a wave of learning and social emotional deficiencies.”

In December, the district hosted a forum on the ban. At that forum, Ann-Marie Holmes, an assistant principal at the high school, said, “Nine out of 10 of issues that come to our offices stem from social media from the phones. There’s very rarely a conflict that is verbal anymore.”

She went on, “We have physical conflict in our building and, within a matter of seconds, that video and humiliation is already posted and it’s going around.”

Holmes said of students, “They don’t know how to resolve whatever’s in their heart and their mind. And then they’re just spewing out there and we’re talking really serious comments, derogatory statements, harmful statements that perpetuates into other self-loathing feelings.”

Also at the forum, Matthew Hanzlik, with the Guilderland Police, said, “Social-media bullying is definitely a constant source of our complaints.” This is true with the work of school resource officers — Guilderland has one SRO stationed in the high school and another at the middle school — as well as “out in our community with our patrol officers,” he said.

Students report on kids “posting mean things,” Hanzlik said, adding, “These students are very creative; they’ll use social media to harass and cyberbully others.”

In August, Judy Slack, who had served on the school board for 16 years after a career in teaching and serving as a teaching assistant at Lynnwood Elementary School, announced she was retiring, at age 80.

In September, the school board held a forum to find a replacement. Four candidates were interviewed by two students in a televised public session during which school board members listened and took notes.

The board selected Meredith Brière, who was sworn in in October.  “Two qualities stood out for me,” Gonzalez-Parker told The Enterprise on why Brière was selected. One was Brière’s “world view” and teaching experience; she had taught in China as a member of the Peace Corps.

The other was Brière’s experience in securing grants. “We are strapped for cash and could use that,” said Gonzalez-Parker.

In December, the Guilderland School Board was lauded by the New York Coalition for Open Government because it filled the board vacancy by conducting interviews in a public videotaped session.

“This is unfortunately a rare event,” said Paul Wolf, the coalition’s president. “All too often public bodies, when they have a vacancy on their board, they will interview candidates behind closed doors in an executive session,” which is not in compliance with the Open Meetings Law.

“I’m super-duper proud because we exist for our community,” said Blanca Gonzalez-Parker. “We exist for our students and our students were the moderators, which is a tradition that I really hold dear.”

 

Library

The Guilderland Public Library was rocked by accusations of racism soon after its director, Timothy Wiles, retired.

As he prepared to retire on Feb. 2, Wiles told The Enterprise, “When I took over in 2014, the staff morale was very low and customer service was really bad. And the building itself was in awful shape and the board had kind of put all their energy into that 2012 expansion effort, which was, you know, beaten at the ballot box, 3 to 1.”

Wiles went on, “I was brought in to kind of repair the relationship between the library and the community and to work collaboratively … I think I was able to do that.”

With the library upgrade and expansion, Wiles was proud that, for the first time, it offered a café.

After less than six months at the library, the Café con Mel closed on Feb. 21, with no warning.

“I have faced racism, harassment and constant disrespect,” said a post on the Café con Mel Facebook page written by co-owner Melanie Diaz Partak, who for months declined to elaborate on her accusations. “These issues have not only come from patrons, which I am no stranger to dealing with, but they have come worse surprisingly from the Library staff members.”

The library held a packed listening session that was widely covered but produced no answers. The library’s trustees, two of whom resigned soon after the accusations were made, hired Guidepost Solutions, a firm based in New York City, to investigate the racism charges for $15,000 plus travel and research expenses.

The week that the café abruptly closed at the Guilderland Public Library, The Enterprise filed a Freedom of Information Law request for any and all documents related to complaints made by or about the café’s owners.

On Friday, April 26, The Enterprise received 77 pages in response to that request that were heavy on financial and managerial matters but not related to racism.

On Sept. 30, the library posted to its website an 18-page report from Guidepost Solutions said, “We found no evidence of comments or affirmative acts by employees of GPL directed to Cafe staff based on race or any other protected class. We also found no record of any complaints made by either of the Café partners to GPL or the Board, of any alleged violations of the GPL Non-Discrimination / Anti- Harassment Policy.”

The report did note comments, already covered extensively by The Enterprise, made by several library or café patrons “about the type of food served and the ethnic backgrounds of certain staff members,” which the report said are “often referred to as micro-aggressions.”

A committee of board members had been formed to investigate the management issues that were raised in the wake of the café’s closure. Peter Petruski, who started as the library’s director in May, two months after the café’s closure, told The Enterprise in September that that committee “is still ongoing, looking into the administrative aspect.”

Petruski said there is “no timeline” for that committee to present its findings. The findings have not yet been released.

In the period between Wiles’s retirement on Feb. 2 and Petruski becoming the director in May, the library’s interim director, Nathaniel Heyer, stepped up to oversee the library.

Heyer said he took a collaborative approach in drafting the budget, working with the board of trustees.  “We are bringing in sensitivity training … creating those kinds of conversations about diversity and inclusion,” he said in the wake of the library’s café closing with the owner alleging racism.

Despite the controversy, the library’s $4.4 million budget passed in May with 70 percent of the vote. 

The library board reduced its number of trustees from 11 to 9 and all three candidates who ran in May are now on the board: Barbara Fraterrigo, who has been a trustee since 1988, was the top vote-getter; incumbent Michael Hawrylchak, a lawyer, came in second; and Michael Puspurs, a librarian, making his first run for the board, came in third.

“I wanted to make sure that the library was being a place that’s welcoming to everyone,” he said. “There shouldn’t be any kind of discrimination.”

Peter Petruski took over as director on May 22, the day after the budget handily passed.

“This is what I’ve been building my entire career for …,” Petruski said of leading a library.

He said he hoped to provide stability for the Guilderland library. “I don’t look at librarianship as a job or a career,” he said. “I look at it as a calling.”

 

Village

The village of Altamont and its free library retained their many traditions throughout 2024. Altamont Community Tradition held its summer strawberry social as well as fall and winter festivals.

Altamont’s Memorial Day parade featured decorated World War II veteran Ken Bailey at age 102 as grand marshal, riding along the parade route in a motorcycle, waving to fans.

Bailey died on Dec. 1, 2024, two months shy of his 103rd birthday, at his long-time Voorheesville home under the care of his family.

The American Legion Helderberg Post 977, based in Altamont, celebrated its centennial this year. Its first commander was Harry Gaige, a corporal in the 51st Pioneer Infantry Regiment who served from May 1917 to July 1919 and spent the period between August 1918 and July 1919 overseas.

Its current commander is Harry Gaige’s grandson, James Gaige, himself an Army and Navy veteran who’s served in one manner or another for nearly half a century.

Post 977 has about 100 Legionnaires, but what makes it unusual is it isn’t just a handful of members doing all the work, which can be a rather common problem in service-based volunteer organizations. 

And it’s not just Legionnaires pitching in; there are the dozens and dozens of grandmothers, mothers, sisters, and spouses who make up Altamont’s Auxiliary. Then there are the Sons of the American Legion, a program that allows the sons and grandsons of veterans to be a part of the organization; Post 977  has about 70 Sons, Gaige said. About two-thirds of Altamont’s Legion Riders are non-veterans, Gaige said.

The Post 977 Legion Riders, Gaige said, formed about 12 years ago, and has been “a big shot in the arm for us.” Altamont started with 13 riders in 2012, Gaige said; that number is now up to 60.

What makes the post special, said Gaige, “is stick-to-itiveness, the glue that holds the organization together; we work together.”

The post was overflowing for hours on Nov. 23 when a memorial gathering was held for Cindy Pollard. She died on Nov. 2 at the age of 89.

Her Main Street thrift shop and later the Altamont café she owned with her husband, Jack, were places the community could gather. Everyone was welcome.

The Home Front Café was a place where painful memories could be safely shared.

It was also a place of celebration and learning, offering food for thought and sustenance for the soul as well as food to eat.

For Christmas this year, the post was decked out with myriad lights and greenery, with a giant “100” at the peak of its roof.

The Altamont Fair had a rain-free week in August, leading to large attendance for the tri-county event. The fair this year hosted its own fall festival and, when the plan to host the Albany Police Athletic League holiday lights show fell through, the fair contracted with Magic of Lights to have a drive-through show at the fairgrounds.

The longtime popular principal of Altamont Elementary School, Peter Brabant, retired in June and was replaced by Steve Wolf, who had served as a Guilderland High School administrator.

Throughout the year, the village continued to wrestle with water problems. Altamont had been notified two years ago that a sample from its wells on Brandle Road contained more manganese than allowed by federal standards.

Brandle Road had produced about a third of Altamont’s drinking water, but has largely been closed save for periods of peak usage, at which point the Brandle Road supply gets mixed into the village’s other water supply, from Gun Club Road. 

The on-again-off-again problem became a live issue once again at the end of November when the village had to notify customers that manganese levels were above the recommended level. 

The village has been looking at a way to chemically treat the wells, with potassium ferrate, but the product, used successfully in a pilot study, is not yet commercially available.

This would be less expensive than the traditional use of a greensand filter.

In December, the village discussed connecting with Guilderland’s water supply. Altamont’s engineer, Richard Straut, told the village board, “We’ll be looking at if they connected, how much would it cost to connect? How feasible is it? Verifying that Guilderland has the water, how much would Guilderland charge them for the water?”

An interconnect had been discussed by the committee making recommendations to update Guilderland’s comprehensive plan.

Also this year, developer Kent Hansen proposed turning the former Peter Young Center, which perches on the Helderberg escarpment above the village, into a 30-room hotel with a 45-seat restaurant and multiple event spaces, both indoor and outdoor.

The Kushaqua, a once-lavish Victorian-era hotel, was built on the site in 1885. A series of inns and a golf club followed before the building became a convent and then, in 1925, a seminary for men studying to be priests. The original remodeled Kushaqua building burned in 1946. 

The LaSalette Fathers built a new brick building on the same site, opening in 1953, which served as a seminary until 1979 when the lack of men wishing to enter the priesthood led to a change in the use of the building.

Then, under Father Peter Young, it served as a treatment center for people battling substance-use disorders. 

Providing potable water to the site has been a concern cited by various entities since the Inns of Altamont project was first made public, in July. 

In October, Guilderland’s zoning board was told the village of Altamont said it could provide up to 5,000 gallons of potable water per day. 

An on-site tank able to hold 5,000 additional gallons would be installed as a backup for when the hotel and event space go over their daily allotment, which is likely to happen the board was told. As for fire protection, underground storage tanks would be installed.

Late this year, developer Jeff Thomas revitalized an earlier proposal to build a Victorian-inspired complex at the center of the village consisting of a new post office, mixed-use space, and stand-alone residences.

The village’s zoning board raised concerns similar to those raised by the planning board in 2018 — issues with traffic, water and sewer, and stormwater management, among others.

One of current zoning board members’ chief concerns, as it was in 2018, was that the project, as proposed, isn’t allowed under village code: 120 Park Street is located in the village’s Central Business District, which doesn’t allow for stand-alone multi-family housing.

But Donald Cropsey, a member of Thomas’s development team and, at one time, Altamont’s code-enforcement officer, told the board there was language in the village’s density control schedule that references mixed-use buildings, which suggested that the code, while perhaps ambiguous, did provide a basis for the proposed development.

Meanwhile, Historic Altamont, a not-for-profit group of volunteers, envisions a “green belt” around the Victorian village to keep it from being subsumed by suburban sprawl.

The group is calling the initiative the Helderberg Greenway and envisions a six-mile public corridor surrounding Altamont.

“Westmere is lost and McKownville was lost long ago,” said Historic Altamont President David Bourque, who has lived in Guilderland for 50 years, the last 30 in Altamont. “Voorheesville is on the cusp of being lost to suburbia.”

In 2023, Historic Altamont received $50,000 in federal pandemic funds through Albany County. The group has spent $20,000 hiring a firm to map a network of trails around the village and will spend the remaining $30,000 to build a kiosk that will serve as an end point for the Long Path.

The path begins in Manhattan near the George Washington Bridge and wends its way north, currently ending at High Point on the Helderberg escarpment.

Steve Siegard, who is spearheading the project to have the path end in Altamont, says the first of three phases, to get from High Point to the village, is set with the Joshua Foundation on Leesome Lane allowing the path to run through its land.

Now he hopes to find Leesome Lane residents who will allow the path through their property to reach the Altamont Road.

The Enterprise wrote an editorial in November supporting the endeavor.

“I’d really like to meet or talk with anyone who is interested,” said Siegard. “We’re hoping for a grand opening next November.”

“By hiking the trail,” Siegard concluded, “you are part of the wilderness, you are part of the forest, and you are preserving this wonderful area into the future.”