Last month, Altamont Mayor Kerry Dineen presented a bill that would do away with Altamont’s planning and zoning boards and replace them with a single zoning board of appeals whose “powers and duties” would comprise both bodies. During a Tuesday public hearing on the proposal, Dean Whalen, who’d been a trustee for 16 years, took issue with what could be considered a rather large change to the proposed law. 

It was recommended to Altamont resident John Polk during last month’s zoning meeting that he try to get the village board to change the law through an amendment process laid out in the zoning code.

On Friday, the Guilderland school superintendent emailed a notice to families that a sex offender has moved into the district. John E. McIntyre lives at 2360 Western Ave., according to the state’s sex-offender registry. Two other sex offenders are listed on the registry as living in apartments at that same Guilderland address, an old motel.

Harvey Vlahos, Altamont

Robyn Gray, Guilderland Coalition for Responsible Growth

Paul W. Wolf, Esq., President New York Coalition for Open Government

A memorandum from town attorney James Melita to Guilderland Supervisor Peter Barber and the town board members says the property is being used illegally “as a commercial entertainment location” in violation of the town’s zoning code.

Jill Franken Dugan, who teaches Spanish at Farnsworth Middle School in Guilderland, recently learned something by chance about her late father’s service in the United States Army. Her father, Hellmut Frankenberg, was a Ritchie Boy — a graduate of the the Army’s elite military intelligence training program at Camp Ritchie, Maryland. The Ritchie Boys were instrumental in helping the Allies win World War II.

Ronnie D’Alauro, Altamont Community Tradition

On Tuesday evening, a Lake Placid athlete, Maxwell Menkel, ran to the hardware store on the edge of Altamont carrying a torch.