GUILDERLAND — In what’s become a recent occurrence for the Guilderland Conservation Advisory Council, residents showed up at a meeting on Monday to voice their concerns about issues outside the council’s narrow jurisdiction. 
 Last month, neighbors showed up to the council’s meeting to raise traffic-related concerns over a 66-unit development proposed off of routes 20 and 146. 

This month, the council, which deals with environmental matters like stormwater management, heard a lot more on-point public commentary, but also had to deal with repeated questions about notification and project approval — on more than one occasion, council members had to remind speakers they don’t approve anything project-related; the council’s function is purely advisory. 

The council will walk the property on Saturday and a report will be prepared for the town planning board to examine at a later date. 

Prime Capital Development is proposing a 41-lot conservation subdivision on 159 acres largely off of Route 146 but mostly accessible from Gun Club Road with 36 of the homes accessible from Gun Club Road and the remaining five accessed from Armstrong Drive, which would see a now-dead end between 19 and 21 Armstrong turned into a five-home cul-de-sac. 

When the project was brought before the Guilderland Development Planning Committee in February, town staff noted that getting water and sewer service to the site would be difficult tasks. 

Jason Zappia of Prime Capital Development told council members on Dec. 12 that the village of Altamont would be providing sewer to the development, and that he’d already received village approval to do so.

“The sewer treatment plant is my neighbor,” he said later.

Zappia said he’d be extending a town of Guilderland water main from the intersection of routes 158 and 146 to Armstrong Drive — where a village of Altamont water line currently terminates. The extension, Zappia said, would be “a very large undertaking on my part; we’re looking at about a million dollars in infrastructure just to make this interconnect, which is the only interconnect left between municipalities that border Guilderland.”

Chairman John Wemple asked Zappia about the possibility of sidewalks in the development. Zappia said he didn’t “have any issue with that within the site,” nor did he have an issue extending sidewalks beyond the development, to Bozenkill Park and along Gun Club Road to achieve a density bonus — additional housing — for the project.

Neighbors speak

Adam Edwards of Armstrong Drive said what was really not talked about and what “we are totally opposed to” is Zappia breaking through the end of Armstrong Circle to extend it so he can add five homes to the neighborhood. 

 Zappia said earlier in the meeting he would be keeping those five homes for himself.

“Can you imagine … the construction equipment driving through here, the dump trucks, the construction trucks, all the heavy equipment coming through our private little circle here? That would be terrible for us; it would be unsafe for the people that walk their babies, walk their dogs, and just taking walks. It would ruin every reason why we decided to build a house on the circle,” Edwards said. 

The second issue Edwards touched on — and one that was brought up by a number of residents who spoke — was water and area wetlands. 

“There’s a ton of water back there. This development is going to make that water have to go somewhere. Where’s it going to go?” Edwards asked. “It’s going to come and flood us out.”

Edwards also said the project would decrease property values “amazingly.”

Later in the meeting, responding to a similar criticism from another Armstrong Drive resident, Zappia asked how building multiple million-dollar homes would drop area property values.

Zappia was apparently unaware how a hot mic works, because he could be heard muttering what could be considered snide or sarcastic responses under his breath to residents’ concerns on more than one occasion during the Dec. 12 meeting. 

Ellen Root said that, when her home was built in 1991, she was told by her builder that the area where Zappia is proposing to build his five Armstrong Drive homes could never be developed because it’s too wet, and the area has a federal designation saying as much.

Dennis Blackman of Gun Club Road wondered why he never received any notification from the planning board that the development was going to be happening — a common complaint heard by members of the Conservation Advisory Council. 

Blackman said Altamont already had issues with its water and sewer systems, and added, “I just can’t see how putting 41 more houses up is going to solve that problem.”

The planning board has yet to take up Zappia’s application. 

Town Planner Kenneth Kovalchik told The Enterprise on Tuesday that the only time the town is legally required to notify residents is when a public hearing is going to be held. 

“Whether it’s site-plan reviews or subdivision reviews, you know, we might have three or four meetings for that particular application,”  Kovalchik said. “But we’re only legally required to notify adjoining property owners for the public hearing.”

However, Kovalchik did say there are other notices that get sent out — citing the town’s e-subscribe service as an example — and he encouraged residents to sign up, noting that earlier in the day he had walked someone through the sign-up process who was concerned about the current proposal. 

Bill Root noted the point of the meeting and tried to gear some of his comments toward the council’s area of expertise.  “I know that your group is really more predicated toward conservation, so I want to address at least that tonight,” Root said.

He said that the homes of Armstrong Drive and Circle are located on an aquifer. “None of them probably should have been built where they are,” said Root. “Now there’s fair warning … You’re going to have beyond wet basements.”

Root said he spoke to Altamont’s superintendent of public works, Jeff Moller, and said Moller “would be shocked to find out that the engineering has been done to hook up the Altamont water supply with the Guilderland water supply when the divergence in pressure is massive.”

Root also said Moller would be “shocked to learn that the mayor apparently has given approval for hooking up the sewer system when none of that engineering has been done either.”

“It’s not true. He hasn’t got approval for this,” Root said. “There is no approval for this.”

Later in the meeting, Zappia read into the record an email from Altamont Mayor Kerry Dineen effectively confirming that he had the village’s OK to tap into its sewer system; Altamont’s treatment facility is located adjacent to the proposed development. 

Moller told The Enterprise on Dec. 13 that the village’s engineers in a recent letter to Dineen had confirmed Altamont’s wastewater treatment facility’s ability to take the added capacity. He also added that the village made it known from the very beginning that it had no ability to provide water to the project.