KNOX — The Albany County Legislature on Monday approved the plans for a new county highway garage in Knox, as well as one in Coeymans. 

The Knox garage will replace the county garage that’s on Township Road and will cost no more than $4.3 million to build, county legislature Jeff Perlee told The Enterprise this week. 

Perlee said that the current four-bay garage is wooden and dilapidated, which is a detriment to safety, functionality, and the community aesthetic. 

The new 14,580-square-foot garage, meanwhile, will feature six drive-through bays — four that are heated and two that are unheated — while also being far more energy-efficient, and easier on the eyes, Perlee said.

 “I stressed the point that that [garage] occupies a pretty prominent location right there on one of the main thoroughfares in the town of Knox, so I stressed the need to make sure that, not only is the building safe and functional, but that it is an improvement for the neighborhood as well,” he said. 

Perlee said that it’s not clear how much savings will be generated by the green modifications — which, according to a press release, include solar panels, a rainwater catch, and air-source heat pumps — but that the county’s Department of Public Works told him the solar panels will completely cover electricity needs, and possibly exceed them. 

A National Grid document on renewable energy billing states that the company applies an energy credit whenever users generate more energy than they consume, and that, after a year, excess credits are converted to a monetary value at the market rate. 

The Albany County Legislature had voted in 2021 to embark on a new garage project, starting with the design. At that time, the town was in discussions with the county about shared services, The Enterprise reported. Discussions had occurred over a number of years, county spokeswoman Mary Rozak told The Enterprise this week, but they’ve never resulted in an agreement. 

Knox’s current supervisor, Russ Pokorny, told The Enterprise this week that the town is not currently in talks with the county about shared services but that he would bring the matter up with the board and the town’s highway superintendent, Matthew Schanz. 

Albany County Executive Daniel McCoy said in 2017 that a consolidation would save money for the town, and Knox’s supervisor at that time, Vasilios Lefkaditis, was in favor, but there was skepticism about how beneficial an agreement would actually be. 

The town’s planning board chairman at that time, Robert Price, said that there’s no way to know whether there’s a savings until a hard figure is provided. Price had meanwhile calculated the cost of a new town garage at around $877,500, based on a hypothetical six-bay building taking up 6,500 square feet. 

The current town garage, built in 1963, is a steel-framed 40- by 90-foot building, which Price, an engineer, said was structurally solid and would cost $60,000 to upgrade and insulate.

Price in 2017 had advocated paying for the upgrade with money the town got from a New York State Energy Research and Development grant spearheaded by then-Councilwoman Amy Pokorny. However, the town ultimately decided to spend that money on solar panels.

Shared services proposals were roundly criticized in Berne and Rensselaerville that year, with residents and officials from both towns stating that the operations and equipment are too different to consolidate effectively, and that the quality of road maintenance would suffer, among other things.

Pokorny — who said this week that he was theorizing off the top of his head — said that an agreement might “achieve economies of scale,” but that, as is the case when a local business is replaced by a chain, the convenience or savings comes at the price of “the personal touch.”

Amy Pokorny, the former councilwoman and wife of Russ Pokorny, shared with The Enterprise this week notes from a 2014 study on a possible agreement with the town and county, annotated with comments from town employees. 

According to those notes, several of the potential benefits, such as use of the county inventory system and waste processing, were considered unnecessary or redundant in light of what the town can already provide for itself. 

Russ Pokorny said this week that he doesn’t consider shared services a bad idea, but is “anticipating some resistance.”