KNOX — In Knox, 2007 began and ended with Town Hall.

At its first meeting of the year, the town board revisited renovation plans and, at its last meeting, adopted a conceptual plan.

In the town’s elections, Michael Hammond, Knox’s supervisor since 1974, was re-elected to another two-year term. In a four-way race for two town board seats, Patricia Gage, the town’s Republican Party chairperson, kept her seat, retaining a Republican presence on the Knox Town Board which, until four years ago, had been dominated by Democrats for decades.

As Knox officials are concerned about the safety of the town’s residents, Robert Price and Daniel Driscoll, long-time planning-board members, drafted a law regulating cellular towers in the town. In December, officials discussed possible sites.

The year also brought the deaths of two Knox farmers who were also community leaders — Robert Whipple and Mary Ellen Gordon.

Town Hall renovations

Knox now has a plan to renovate Town Hall.

In January, the town board revisited plans that had been drawn up by architect Charles Sacco in April of 2005. The town has long considered renovations. Residents and officials have said the federal Americans With Disabilities Act is the driving force of the project and that elderly and disabled citizens currently have difficulty accessing the hall. At the January meeting, the town board created the Knox Town Hall Renovation Committee, and Councilman Nicholas Viscio, with resident Helene O’Clair, outlined the committee’s role.

The committee worked with Sacco, and later recommended a $1.2 million concept plan in November. In December, the four town board members in attendance voted for the plan.

Renovation plans would add a multi-use public space, which would serve as a meeting place for the town’s boards and for the town court; a fireproof storage area for town records; judges chambers; a new roof; and an elevator. Offices would be added to the lower level for the assessor and the receiver of taxes.

Hammond said the plan also includes a conference room and a much larger office for the building department with storage space for plans. Renovation plans also include a room divider for the multi-purpose room, which could be used if two events are occurring simultaneously, and an entrance to the lower level.

Windmills and cell towers

The town’s planning board has created laws regulating residential and commercial wind turbines and the placement of cellular towers. In 2006, Russell and Amy Pokorny, who live on Beebe Road, erected a 5-kilowatt Bergey windmill on their property to power their home.

The Pokornys also own land on Middle Road, where a meteorological tower was erected in October of 2006 to take wind and temperature readings for the Helderberg Wind Project, led by Kathleen Moore of Integrated Environmental Data, Daniel Capuano of Hudson Valley Community College, and Loren Pruskowski of Sustainable Energy Developments.

The goal of the project is to produce a prospectus to determine a community-owned windmill’s feasibility and to create an ownership model.
Moore called wind power "so dynamic" and cited larger players, such as General Electric, giving the industry more credibility.

In 2007, James Devine applied for a residential windmill to be erected at his home in Helderberg Estates. The windmill was approved by the planning board.

Regarding cellular towers, officials have discussed two sites, both located on town property. One is along Street Road, near the town’s transfer station. The other is near the town park in the hamlet.
Robert Price, Knox’s long-time planning board chairman, called the town "kind of a hotbed of activity" at the town’s December meeting. Three companies, he said, have shown interest in placing a tower in the town.

Historic barn burns

In May, a historic barn along the Berne-Altamont Road went up in flames during a lightning storm.

Firefighters battled the blaze from 3 to 6 p.m. When they arrived at 3 p.m., all that remained were the beams, said Bill Vinson, chief of the Knox Volunteer Fire Department. Before leaving the scene around 6 p.m., firefighters covered the remnants of the barn with foam. There wasn’t a puff of smoke showing, Vinson said. But they had to return because the fire had rekindled. Rain, Vinson said, had washed away the foam.
The Knox firefighters arrived back at the firehouse and were cleaning their hoses and equipment, but were called to the barn about 8 p.m. They were at the scene for about one-and-a-half hours "hitting the hot spots" and were back in service around 10 p.m., Vinson said.

Though the barn and the house are approximately 150 feet apart, the intense heat of the fire melted the vinyl siding of the house. Firefighters inspected the interior of the house, and determined the damage was entirely exterior, he said.

It would be difficult to say whether a tall pine tree next to the barn or the barn itself was first struck by lightning, said Vinson. The cause of the fire, he said, was either the debris from the tree that had been struck or the lightning traveling through roots underneath the barn, Vinson said.

Whipple Road

Since August, controversy has surrounded a local roadway in a residential neighborhood.

In August, residents petitioned the town board to take ownership of an unpaved portion of Whipple Road, which they say allows them to access state land and is an escape route for many homes.

A large portion of Whipple Road has been maintained by the town for years and is therefore defined as a highway by use; the maintained portion was chip-sealed this year. Where the paving ends, a rock wall was erected by resident Charles B. Tanner Jr., who owns property nearby.
Tanner said he didn’t erect the wall to impede his neighbors’ use of the property and cited a number of incidents near and on his property — Jeeps and four-wheelers speeding by at 2 a.m., and people partying, dumping garbage, and shooting rifles. Tanner called the road "a racetrack."

The land on which the road lies belongs to a dissolved corporation, John Dorfman, the attorney to the town, said in September. The following month, Dorfman said the owner of the property will donate the land to the town. He recommended the town take ownership of the land on which the road sits, not the road itself.
Since then, the rock wall was taken down and, afterward, the town placed a barrier of rock and four posts at the end of Whipple Road. Petitioner Grace Cunningham attended the town’s December meeting and questioned the town’s erecting another wall, which she called "illegal."

Elections

Democrats returned to a position of dominance in November.

Mary Ellen Nagengast, a Democrat who made her first run for the town board, was the top vote-getter in a four-way race for two seats. Nagengast garnered 543 votes.

Gage retained her seat with 487 votes. Gage will be the only Republican council member on the board through 2010.

The town’s highway superintendent, Gary Salisbury, ran unopposed and was endorsed by all parties.

Police respond to Francis’s call

On May 12, four dozen police officers responded to the Lewis Road home of Jonathan P. Francis after he had called a suicide hotline around 11 a.m., threatening to kill himself and police, according to Albany County Sheriff James Campbell.

Francis, 38, a lawyer who ran unsuccessfully for town judge in 2003, has since been arrested several times and had been drinking and taking drugs the night before, Campbell said.

When police made contact with Francis, he requested to speak with the sheriff’s son, J.T. Campbell Jr., an investigator with the sheriff’s department, who had dealt with Francis before.

Francis’s father, Jay T. Francis, is the longtime pastor of the Rock Road Chapel in Knox.
"I can’t justify his actions," Pastor Francis said. "Yet, I can say that Saturday doesn’t define who he is."

Francis had a history of run-ins with the law.

In 1991, when he was 23, he was, according to papers from the Knox Town Court, arrested for falsely reporting an incident after he called a secretary at the Berne-Knox-Westerlo school to report that he shot himself in the head.
Campbell said this May, "J.T. was able to get him to come out with his hands above his head," said Campbell. He added that negotiators were at the scene.

Francis was taken to a psychiatric center and there were no charges.
The previous month, Francis’s license to practice law was suspended indefinitely for failure to complete a drug-treatment program and comply with a subpoena regarding "several complaints of professional misconduct," according to an Appellate Court decision.

State Troopers were also at the scene in May and officers from the sheriff’s department, the Guilderland Police Department, the Altamont Police Department, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Francis had entered into a treatment program in February or March, but he didn’t finish, said Francis’s lawyer, James E. Long. Long wasn’t sure what triggered Francis to call the hotline, he said. "As I understood it, he came home and found boxes, which indicated that she had moved out and that precipitated his depression," he said of Francis’s wife.

At the beginning of May, Francis was arrested on a felony charge for harassing his wife, which violated an order of protection she had against him. He served about 10 days for the assault, Campbell said.

In January of 2006, Francis was arrested on charges of assaulting his wife, after he allegedly choked her, threatened her with a kitchen knife, and broke a telephone to prevent her from calling the police, according to a sheriff’s arrest report.

The couple had been living together with their three young boys before the weekend and their relationship was on-and-off, said Long.

Francis’s father said his son needed help and that he hoped his son would get help.

He was a good kid, he said, and people can redeem themselves.
"Forgiveness can be instant," said Pastor Francis. "It takes a little while to build up trust."