RENSSELAERVILLE — Recognized as an historic district, the Rensselaerville hamlet looks architecturally frozen in time, but it is bisected partly by a freshly paved state route where people habitually park cars recently targeted as illegal and hazardous.

The 600-foot stretch of Route 85 that is part of Main Street borders homes from the 18th and 19th centuries without driveways, an art gallery with apartments above, and an historic inn. The route ends at a bridge next to the offices of the Edmund Niles Huyck Preserve. Residents have been parking their cars in the preserve’s parking lot since they were visited by police, knocking on their doors a week before Thanksgiving, warning that they could later face parking tickets for leaving cars on the pavement.

Some residents of the hamlet were chilled by the police visit, which seemed abrupt, and by episodes several nights afterward with a driver leaning on his horn.

“If you’re walking in the street and somebody comes up and punches you, first you wonder, ‘Why? What did I do?’” said Alberto Caputo, who for 15 years has owned a building on the route that houses the Way Out Gallery and apartments.

Some of those visited by police had the impression that enforcing long-ignored parking violations had been a directive from the town, or that the board was considering legal action, which wasn’t true.

“We took absolutely no action. I want everybody to know that,” Supervisor Valerie Lounsbury said, opening a meeting Tuesday with a gallery of more than 40 residents, which is unusual.

“We asked the attorney to look into what the town could do legally and I said I wanted to look into alternatives to the parking,” she said.

Susan Arbit, who lives in a red house across the street from the art gallery, said the officer who knocked on her door told her someone from the town board had called police. “I thought, ‘Good,’” she said, noting her own difficulties with parking, but the officer was there to warn her that parking on the road was illegal.

Councilman Robert Bolte, who raised the issue during the November town board meeting, told the crowd Tuesday night that he called the police as a private citizen, to complain about the parked cars in the hamlet, which he said regularly create a liability for motorists passing through and a danger for emergency responders. Parking on the pavement and crossing double-yellow lines are in violation of the state’s Vehicle and Traffic Law, he noted.

Resident Colin Abele called for an investigation into whether or not Bolte acted ethically with his phone call.

Many speakers Tuesday night noted that, since the road was repaved this summer, drivers are more likely to travel at unsafe speeds. Highway Superintendent Randall Bates said people were hopeful the smooth pavement with its new double-yellow lines would help resolve the parking issue. Though the town doesn’t plow the state route, he said, its large trucks have trouble maneuvering as they travel through.

“Now that it’s marked properly, we’re receiving numerous calls asking us to enforce,” Albany County Sheriff Craig Apple said last week. “One call came from a town board member but he was also calling as much as a civilian as a town board member.” Before the paving, Apple said, complaints were made periodically. At the meeting Tuesday, held on Dec. 16 to air concerns, Investigator Tracy Mance said officers knocked on doors because one complaint was made.

“It was a legitimate complaint, and, being that it was a legitimate complaint, the sheriff’s office went and looked at it,” Mance said Tuesday night.

She passed out copies of the relevant sections of state law: sections 1200 and 1201. Some of the language in the law is a “gray area,” she explained, leaving police with discretion and defendants with the option to fight a charge in court.

“If there’s no complaint, then we might drive with a little bit of blinders on,” said Mance.

Mance would not say Tuesday whether the sheriff’s office would hold off writing tickets in the near future.

Most residents who spoke Tuesday suggested that lowering the speed limit on Main Street would make the whole hamlet — with its narrow sections, pets, children, and pedestrians — safer. Dawn O’Neal, executive director of the Huyck Preserve, said the preserve’s parking lot is not a long-term solution, especially not in the busy summer season.

“I just hope the town doesn’t turn into a nitpicky little town like I just got out of,” said J. R. Delia, who said he moved to Rensselaerville from Brooklyn.

Concluding Tuesday night’s meeting, Supervisor Valerie Lounsbury said the town board would consider two initiatives — a lower speed limit, which is controlled by the state and can be only requested by a town board, and creating a citizens’ committee to investigate alternatives. She asked that people use common sense and courtesy to navigate the parking issue through the holiday season.

The town board would need to pass a resolution before the state could install “No Parking” signs, Bates reported to the board at the November meeting.

On his own preference as a councilman, Bolte said the town board should stay out of it and let the police handle parking issues. He condemned the behavior of the nighttime horn blowers.

The sheriff’s office and the town have received numerous emails from residents who have called on one another to speak out in what Apple termed “a small uproar.”

Safety, residents contend, isn’t in dire risk from congested parking, as they try to get their cars off the road during snowy weather so plows can get through.

Charles Burgess, who chairs the steering committee for the Rensselaerville Historic District Association, said speeding is a more pressing issue on the hamlet’s main street.

“It’s the one place where you’re sure to get a ‘Hello’ wave from an oncoming motorist because one car or the other is going to have to stop and let the other through, generally,” said Burgess. “And so it actually sort of contributes a bit of personal connection in a small town in a fast-paced world.”

Christopher Schiralli, a volunteer with the Rensselaerville Fire Company, lives above the gallery and said he has driven through the hamlet in an emergency. He believes the parked cars are not a hazard and suggested lowering the speed limit or posting a sign about the narrowed road.

“As a community, we can understand the road is narrow there,” said Schiralli. “People have to live there.”

Others stressed that courteous neighbors and shoveling parking spaces can overcome any issues parking on the road may cause. But, on at least one occasion, cars blocked a firetruck going to a non-emergency drill, Rensselaerville Fire Chief Robert Tanner said during the meeting. He said the specific problem areas are near the Grist Mill, which houses the historical society, at the end of the state route, and near Pond Hill Road, a side street.

Of the time during an emergency that it takes to move a car out of the way, Investigator Mance told the crowd, “Two minutes feels like a lifetime.”