GUILDERLAND — Enrolled Conservative Kathy Burbank, who led the Guilderland Chamber of Commerce for seven years, is running as a challenger for one of two open seats on the Guilderland Town Board.

Burbank was also a five-year member of the Zoning Review Committee, which revised the town’s zoning code. She is currently a Realtor with C.M. Fox. For a year, she was the director of Community Caregivers, which she says opened her eyes to issues affecting older town residents.

Burbank said she still has more questions than answers about revaluation and the equalization rate. She said that she doesn’t think the town did a very good job of communicating or explaining the problem to residents.

“Why hadn’t we been doing regular evaluations and assessments? And then the equalization rate, who’s managing this, so that this doesn’t happen?” she asked.

She said that, as a Realtor, she is familiar with the assessment of area properties, and doesn’t think that Guilderland properties, on the whole, are over-assessed or under-assessed; she thinks that the bulk of them are at the right value, although some may be low or high.

Burbank thinks more needs to be done about blight. She said that, while going door-to-door during her campaign, she has learned blight is one of the biggest issues on voters’ minds.

“Nothing is being done with these properties, and people are mad,” she said.

She said that the town needs to have a more rigorous process of locating zombie buildings and sending letters to the owners and then following through with fines.

Sidewalks should go anywhere on busy roads that could connect people to the places they need to go, whether it’s shopping, or the corner store, or a strip mall that has a post office and a bank, Burbank said. The town should start with the main roads, she said.

She is not sure how much grant money or federal funds goes toward paved sidewalks, or whether that money could be put toward blacktopping as a way of getting more areas done. “I’d say whatever we can do to not pay with our own money would be good and, if it means stretching our money, then the blacktop isn’t a bad idea, for some areas.”

Burbank mentioned cul-de-sacs off major roads like Route 146 that can be accessed only by car, since the main roads near them are so dangerous and lack sidewalks, calling these “somewhat cut off” and noting that there are a lot of areas where sidewalks would make residents safer. She mentioned the Schoolhouse Road area, McKown Road, East Old State Road, East Lydius Street, and Lone Pine Road.

“People live on those roads, but they’re busy,” she said. “Wouldn’t it be nicer if there was a sidewalk, even just on one side? Even if there’s not really any place to go, just to be able to go out and walk or ride your bike.”

Burbank said that Guilderland doesn’t need to declare itself a sanctuary city, because it is already doing what it should be doing. “It’s redundant,” she said.

She called the town “one of the more diverse communities in the Capital Region and said, “We have had a lot of races, ethnicities here for a long time.”

She trusts that the Guilderland Police are not going to ask someone who is not doing anything wrong to show their papers.

She said that she believes that the police should simply continue to do their job, which she said includes “not going into the door of somebody’s house and saying, ‘Can I see your papers?’ when they’re the victim of a burglary.”

Guilderland should not become a sanctuary city, and problems should be addressed on a case-by-case basis, Burbank said.

Increased regulation on recycling would be “impossible, basically,” Burbank said. “There are always going to be some people who don’t want to separate their bottles.”

There are many recycling programs already in place, she said, “which is good.” She mentioned that the schools recycle and teach students about the importance of doing it.

But she is in favor of “anything that has to do with innovative ways of dealing with garbage,” she said, and would be open to exploring composting.

She asked what happens to the compost that the town makes. Do residents get to use it on their gardens?

In the neighboring town of Bethlehem, which collects organic wastes, recycling coordinator Dan Lilkas-Rain, said that residents can shovel compost for free; if they want larger quantities, they can buy it by the cubic yard. Nonresidents can also shovel, if they get a season permit for $20, and they can buy large quantities too, for a higher rate.

But as to regulations, Burbank said, “People’s garbage is private; there’s no way to regulate that.” She suggested incentives rather than regulations, “to get people excited about reducing their garbage.”

Burbank has been married for 12 years. Between them, she and her husband have five children, ages 15 to 23, in their blended family; two of them still living at home.

As a surprising fact about herself, Burbank said that, if she won the lottery, she would buy a farm and rescue dogs.