KNOX — Having pleaded guilty to violating the town’s zoning ordinance, Kristen Reynders said she got what she wanted: avoiding a criminal record that could have plagued the 26-year-old mother and owner of Hitmans Towing on Route 146.

Last week, she officially stopped pursuing the town in Albany County Supreme Court, a suit started shortly before her plea in town court on Jan. 21

“The reason we had filed it was because they were threatening a misdemeanor and obviously they didn’t charge the misdemeanor, so we decided to pull out,” Reynders said Wednesday.

Her attorney, Nicole Strippoli of Young, Fenton, Kelsey & Brown, wrote the notice of discontinuing action on Feb. 12, essentially withdrawing her petition. The proceeding it asked for is an appeal of a government action allowed under Civil Practice Law, Article 78.

Knox’s attorney, John Dorfman, told The Enterprise he took no position in town court on the level of the charge — operating a business in an area zoned for residential uses — though he believes it could have been a misdemeanor.

Reynders said the towing business is continuing to operate, with three trucks and three employees, one of them her husband. The trucks — responding to over 30 calls a day, from “sun up to sun down” all over the Capital Region — are kept at various locations, often with employees, that frequently change, Reynders said Wednesday.

“Honestly, I don’t want to get any bigger,” said Reynders. “If anything, I want to get smaller and provide our valuable service to the local community.”

Her hopes of opening a garage for minor repairs and inspections, which led to the town’s issuing the ticket more than a year ago, will go unfulfilled, she said.

Reynders said she is now trying to sell equipment and machinery that was purchased for close to $20,000 to set up the garage; she estimated the same amount went to legal fees. On the Hitmans Towing Facebook page, posts from early January advertise a plasma cutter and a repair diagnostic computer for sale.

“To my knowledge, as to the allegations that gave rise to the tickets that were issued, we have answered those allegations and proceed from there,” said Dorfman, asked what he knew of what the business is doing since the plea. “I have not taken any steps, or extensive steps, to determine what if anything is occurring at the Hitmans property, nor to my knowledge has the town received any complaints relative to any business activity since.”

Asked whether Hitmans Towing is based at the Knox address, where Reynders also lives with her family, she said “Not really. We looked into it. The only thing I’m doing, I’m on the phone.”

Over the summer of 2013, Reynders appeared before the town’s zoning board to get approval to expand her business by taking some cars into her garage for vehicle inspections. The board suggested she go to the planning board, since the use wasn’t covered by the zoning ordinance.

In July that year, the planning board recommended that the town board create a business district encompassing Hitmans and a handful of other businesses in a stretch along Route 146 near Lewis Road, later reversing itself in October of that year.

In the petition filed in Albany County Supreme Court, Reynders’s attorney wrote that the businesswoman felt targeted by the town.

“We do have a part-time building department, as you know. Whether or not they go out looking for violations as opposed to waiting to have reports,” Dorfman said, asked whether the town’s zoning enforcement could be considered reactive. “I don’t have an answer for you on that, one way or the other, both could be a way of doing it.”

After Reynders was ticketed and dozens of residents attended a town board meeting in support of the business, the planning board in February voted again to create a business district in the area of Hitmans, in what was deemed the least objectionable option for addressing Reynders’s petition asking the town board to amend the zoning law.

Having enacted no laws allowing business uses since business districts were anticipated in the town’s comprehensive plan two decades ago, the town board in March designated the first such area — for the hamlet. It held off on creating the second one, awaiting a revision to the comprehensive plan.

Meanwhile, throughout 2014, the case in town court was headed for a jury trial.

Reynders had started her towing company while living with her family in Altamont, where she received a letter in October of 2009 from then-building inspector Donald Cropsey. He described complaints neighbors made about commercial vehicles parked in a residential area of the small village and directed her to cease and desist. She said she has been in Knox since 2009.

If Reynders does open a garage, she said it might not be in the same area.

“It’s got me kind of bitter, but I would definitely like to keep my towing here,” she said. “We’d just have to work a lot to save up to do [a garage] again.”

Though her attorney, in weighing the risks, advised her to take the guilty plea, Reynders said she still does not believe she is guilty. She wants to see a Route 146 business district result from a revision to the town’s comprehensive plan.

Although an anticipated addendum to the plan has not yet been written, public response has favored economic development.