Village drowned in water issues, seniors move in, Krajewski pleads



VOORHEESVILLE — Water reigned supreme in the village this year, serving as a bargaining chip with development and a sign of intermunicipal cooperation.

With housing at the Colonie Country Club looming, residents of the nearby Scotch Pine development asked the village board to use water to leverage a deal for a buffer zone between the new houses and the decades-old Scotch Pine.

The part of New Scotland that the Amedore Homes subdivision is slated for, just outside of the village limits, is famously dry, so the houses to be built there would need to be on a municipal system. Village officials said that there is plenty of water to accommodate the new houses — 33 houses, starting at $500,000 are planned — and the higher water rate that the new residents would pay would generate income for the village, but Scotch Pine residents asked that the village withhold its water until developers agreed to a 50-foot buffer zone between Scotch Pine houses and any new construction.

In June, the village signed a contract agreeing to sell water to the town of New Scotland for use in the new development, providing that the buffer zone is maintained.

Also this year, the Village of Voorheesville and the Town of Guilderland built a water interconnect so that the two municipalities could share water, should the need arise.

Senior housing

New development at the center of the village carried on without controversy, as local developer Troy Miller took down the Severson House to make way for a senior housing complex.

The house, which had been home to the farmland that has become the Salem Hills development, stood on Maple Avenue for more than a century and drew a crowd when it was knocked down in May. By the time the leaves were falling, Miller had erected a residential complex with nine apartments.

Miller bought another piece of land in the village, 1.4 acres on Voorheesville Avenue, with the idea of building more senior housing. That land, which had been owned by the village, was assessed at $14,000 by the Town of New Scotland, but Miller’s company, CM Fox Living Solutions, bid $171,000 for the property.

Krajewski pleads

Voorheesville native and one-time basketball coach, John Krajewski, pleaded guilty in September to endangering the welfare of a child. He was arrested and originally charged with three counts of second-degree rape, a felony; two counts of committing a second-degree criminal act, also a felony; and one count of endangering the welfare of a child, a misdemeanor, but ended up taking a plea deal that didn’t include jail time. He will have three years of probation.

On Jan. 23, 2006, State Police arrested Krajewski and the Voorheesville School District fired him from his job as a teacher’s aide in the elementary school. Linda Langevin, the school’s superintendent, said at the time that it was a coincidence that Krajewski was fired from his job on the same night that he was arrested; he didn’t have the proper certification to be a teaching assistant, she said.
"Obviously this conviction and this offense is going to preclude certain occupations, teaching is one of them," Krajewski’s lawyer, Christopher Rutnik, said when asked if Krajewski would pursue a career in elementary education. He also said that Krajewski has no plans to coach basketball with minors in the future. Krajewski is working at a local bar and grill while he gets his life back on track, Rutnik said in September.

Elections

Two village board seats were up for grabs in 2007 and both incumbents stayed on, following an uncontested election.

William Hotaling, who serves as deputy mayor, was elected to his third four-year term with 50 votes and Trustee David Cardona started his second term after garnering 48 votes.

Both Hotaling and Cardona said after the election that, overall, they were pleased with the outcome and attributed the low voter turnout to the uncontested election and lack of controversial issues in the village.
"You’ve got to have an issue," said Hotaling of bringing more of the village’s 2,705 residents out to the polls.