Archive » September 2022 » News

ALTAMONT — Nadia Raza was visiting family in Pakistan this summer when the floods came.

“We didn’t even know. I woke up one morning and I had text messages and Facebook messages from the entire Altamont community,” said Raza who owns a Pakistani restaurant in the village.

There appears to be a disconnect between the town of Guilderland and the state Department of Environmental Conservation over the definition of tree-clearing. 

“It’s probably been the most difficult budget to prepare with all these uncertainties,” said Supervisor Peter Barber of next year’s tentative spending plan, which is up against the state-set levy limit. “It’s probably been the most difficult budget to prepare with all these uncertainties. We still have a very conservative approach. We hope that things turn out better than we fear.”

The $3 million tentative budget hits its 2-percent tax levy limit, but that won’t apply to all residents in the town since the important increases occur within three of the town’s special districts. 

Several school board members said they would like to see the district meet the dietary needs of, for example, Jewish students who keep kosher or Muslim students who follow dietary laws specifying which foods are halal, or lawful, and which are haram, or unlawful.

“We went down this pathway, as a team, of figuring out: How do we honor those that came before us and were the original stewards of this land?”