NEW SCOTLAND — Albany County is looking to lower the speed limit on three roads in town, and one of them is an effort to limit disruptions for a proposed contractor yard on Frederick Road in Guilderland.

County Route 202, or Meadowdale Road, between Altamont Road and the Guilderland line, currently has a speed limit of 55 miles per hour, while the speed limit on the Guilderland side of the town line is 30 miles per hour.

Bernard Radtke has a special-use permit application under review with the Guilderland Zoning Board of Appeals and the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation seeking to store roll-off containers, trucks, and heavy equipment at 4304 Frederick Road.

Radtke’s submitted site plan proposes a 36,100-square-foot storage area on the property, hours of operation from 6 a.m to 6 p.m., with several trucks entering and exiting the site each day, and the screening of topsoil on site. 

The project received a lot of pushback from neighbors in the largely rural Meadowdale neighborhood. 

In addition to dropping the speed limit, trucks over 25 feet in length are barred — unless they are making a local delivery — from using Meadowdale Road between Route 156 and Frederick Road, county spokeswoman Mary Rozak told The Enterprise in April. 

Rozak told The Enterprise this week the signs barring trucks on Meadowdale Road have been up for about a month.

Councilman Adam Greenberg, sitting in for Supervisor Douglas LaGrange at the July 13 town board meeting, said it was his understanding that, when the county makes a request to the state to lower the speed limit on a road it owns, the town also has to support the request.  

“So that’s basically what they’re doing,” Greenberg said.

Highway Superintendent Ken Guyer said, “We learned that … [when] the county wants to change, when they’re requesting from the state, the speed limit change, they have to go to the municipality where the road lies, and the board or the trustees or whoever the governing body is, has to agree to this as well, which I did not know.”

The county already has the requests in with the state and it just needs New Scotland to pass resolutions supporting the speed reductions.

The other two spots where the county is looking to reduce the speed limit are:

— County Route 102, or Old Quarry Road, between the Bethlehem Line and Route 32. The current speed limit is 55 miles per hour, while the speed limit on the Bethlehem side of the town line is 45 miles per hour.

The 55 mile-per-hour limit is too high “considering the grade dropping into the reverse curve at Route 32,” according to the July 13 town board agenda; and

— County Route 201, or North Main Street, between the Voorheesville and Guilderland lines. 

“This is an amendment of a 2006 order matching the 45 mph in Guilderland. This stretch has since been developed, and in our opinion, a lower speed limit is now appropriate,” the town board agenda states.