GUILDERLAND — At a town board meeting on Tuesday night, Living Resources Executive Director Fred Erlich made a presentation about a proposed group home in a residential neighborhood.

The home, at 3272 East Lydius St., is a raised ranch, and Erlich said the not-for-profit organization, which helps promote independence for people with mental and physical disabilities, would do some minor interior renovations to make it suitable to house four men.

“We provide homes when family members can’t,” said Erlich. “These homes actually build families out of the residents who occupy them.”

Living Resources has 41 group homes serving 236 adults across the Capital Region.

The proposed home is a 2,200-square-foot house, with three bedrooms, a two-car garage, and a spacious backyard.

The interior changes would include turning a family room into a fourth bedroom and making a half bathroom into a full bathroom. Erlich said the only changes planned outside of the home would be adding more sidewalks from the driveway to the door and fencing in the backyard.

Adrienne Kleiber, who lives at 3275 Marilyn St., and would be a backyard neighbor to the group home, spoke after the presentation, and voiced some concerns she had about the proposed home.

She has lived in the neighborhood for two-and-a-half years with her husband and her two young children, who are in elementary school.

“We moved here for a quiet neighborhood,” said Kleiber, on Tuesday.

Her primary concern was the potential for increased traffic, she said. Living Resources owns two group homes in other areas of Guilderland, and Kleiber said she drove past them in the last week, and observed between three and four cars in the driveways.

“I would say that’s a bit of an increase over what a normal residential home would have,” she said.

The house on East Lydius Street has a driveway that faces her porch and her living room, and she said the glare from the headlights of cars coming up the drive would be a nuisance.

She also noted that she and her family like to hold parties and can be loud, “within the limits of the law,” but, she said, she felt it was only fair to make Living Resources aware of that.

Kleiber also cited the New York State Padavan Law, which states that a municipality has 40 days after it has first been notified of the specific address of a proposed site to suggest one or more other suitable sites within its jurisdiction.

She encouraged the town board to take the 40 days to research other sites, and provided board members, along with Living Resources staff, with a list of properties she had come up with that she felt would meet the organization’s criteria.

“There needs to be more research,” said Kleiber.

Erlich responded to Kleiber’s concerns by offering to build a fence that would be tall enough to shield the headlights and eliminate glare. He also said most of the residents of the group homes do not drive, so the only cars in the driveway would belong to staff members. There are two staff members assigned to a four-person home, he said.

Councilman Paul Pastore told Kleiber that she might actually benefit from having the group home as her neighbor.

“If you had a single family in there, I’m not sure they would be as accommodating to your concerns,” said Pastore.

John Tashjian, a former Guilderland Police officer and the husband of Guilderland Police Chief Carol Lawlor, spoke in favor of the new group home.

“I can speak about Living Resources on three fronts — as a police officer, as a neighbor, and as a parent of a special-needs child,” said Tashjian.

Tashjian lives in Altamont next to a Living Resources group home, which houses 10 residents, and has been his neighbor for more than 25 years.

“Honestly, there’s a house going up for sale on the other side of me, and I wish they’d buy that one,” said Tashjian. “I’d love to have them on both sides of me.”

He said there were never any problems stemming from the group homes, in terms of criminal activity, during his tenure as a police officer, and he never had any problems with the residents as neighbors, either.

Tashjian said he considered the residents of the neighboring group home friends, and that they regularly helped him with yard work and came to say hello to him when he got home from work, but were never loud or disruptive.

Michael Connelly, who lives on Marilyn Street near Kleiber and the proposed group home, spoke at the meeting and said he had known Erlich for many years, and knows that he runs a “great organization.”

“Welcome to the neighborhood,” he told Erlich.

At the conclusion of the public information session, Supervisor Kenneth Runion told Erlich that, once the 40 days from notification were up, the project could go forward.

Runion told The Enterprise, on Wednesday, that the board did not plan to look into any of the alternative properties Kleiber had provided.

“I think the agency does a good job of researching homes that fit their needs,” said Runion. “The board doesn’t have that expertise.”

He also said the 40 days were almost up, since the board had been notified of the site in mid-December.

“For us, it really is about being a good neighbor,” said Erlich, at the end of the meeting on Tuesday. “There is a lot of love in our houses.”