GUILDERLAND — Lanny Ladouceur would have turned 70 this year. Instead, he was killed in 1970 in Vietnam, when the Army helicopter he was piloting was shot down.

He left behind a young widow, now named Elaine Falzano, and his mother; both women still mourn him and are pleased to know that the town of Guilderland will honor him on Thursday, Jan. 19 with a road renaming ceremony at Town Hall scheduled for 3 p.m. and open to the public.

Part of Lydius Street, near Falzano’s home, will bear a sign renaming the road the First Lieutenant Lanny G. Ladouceur Memorial Highway.

His mother, Marie Ladouceur, is 94; she is the oldest Gold Star Mother in the organization’s Albany chapter, according to Steve Oliver, the town’s highway superintendent and president of the American Legion Riders, a group that provides a motorcycle escort at patriotic events.

Ladouceur was the president of the Albany chapter of the American Gold Star Mothers for many years, she says. She still lives in Rensselaer, where she and her late husband, Guy Ladouceur, raised three children, of whom Lanny was the oldest.

“It was just a useless loss of lives, to me,” Ladouceur’s mother said recently at her apartment in the Franciscan Heights Senior Community. “The boys that went over there, they thought they were fighting for something. To tell you the truth, I still don’t know what it was all about,” his mother said.

Lanny Ladouceur had been in Vietnam just two months, with the 135th Assault Helicopter Company of the 214th Aviation Battalion of the 164th Aviation Combat Group of the 1st Aviation Brigade of the Bearcat base. He was 23 years old when he and his crew of three were shot down.

He had gotten married a year earlier and left behind a 21-year-old widow.

After meeting and courting for about a year, the couple had gone first to Texas and then to Georgia, while he trained for a year as a helicopter pilot.

Neither Falzano — who would remarry, have two children, and work for the Town of Guilderland until her retirement — or his mother, Marie Ladouceur, ever entertained the idea that he would be killed, even though, Falzano said, the Army “schooled the wives in what they expected,” which was that not all of the men would return.

“It was bright and early in the morning; my mother came to wake me up,” recalled Falzano, now 67. “She said there’s an Army man at the door. I knew what that meant. I said, ‘I don’t want to talk to him.’” The memory of it still makes Falzano start to cry, almost half a century later.

“It was the worst day of my life,” she said.

Both women are proud that Ladouceur will be honored, all these years later.

“The way the military was treated at the time, they were treated terrible,” said Falzano this week. She said of the returning Vietnam veterans, “When the boys came back, they weren’t respected. That’s why I’m so happy to see this happen. He’ll get some of the respect he should have gotten back then.”

Falzano got the idea for a sign after seeing the one that stands on Carman Road and memorializes Lieutenant Colonel Todd Clark, who was killed in Afghanistan in June 2013.  

She asked Oliver how to go about having someone remembered with a sign. “I can’t believe that was in November,” she said. “And now the signs are going to be installed in January. How much faster could it have gone?”

The signs will be placed, Falzano said, on West Lydius Street, one at the intersection of Carman Road and the other at Church Road.

Falzano said of the signs honoring Ladouceur, “He’s going to be right around the corner here, where I can see it when I come and go.”

The man to whom Falzano has been married for about 45 years, Bob Falzano, a retired bricklayer and masonry superintendent, is currently in a nursing home with severe dementia.

The two women take comfort in their friendship, which they rekindled a year or so ago.

Sitting on the couch in her one-bedroom apartment, clasping the hand of her former daughter-in-law, whom she sees three or four times a week when the younger woman comes by to take her to dinner or out shopping, Ladouceur said, “I’m just so thrilled that I can be with his wife here.”

“I’m just as thrilled,” said Falzano. “We help each other.”

“A lot, I’ll tell you,” said Ladouceur.

Corrected on Jan. 9, 2017. The correct number of children of Elaine Falzano is two.

GUILDERLAND — “It was a good stop and a great save.” That’s what Fort Hunter Fire Department Chief William Fleming said Thursday morning about the fire Wednesday night at 3538 Carman Rd.

It was also a good location and great timing — 3538 Carman Rd. is across the street and a few houses down from the firehouse.

And when the fire in the single-family home’s detached garage was called in at 9:03 p.m. on Wednesday night, firefighters had just finished a company meeting at the firehouse.

“A typical response to a fire scene is between seven and eight minutes,” Fleming said. “We got there in two.”

With the usual response time, the fire would have tripled, he estimated.

The home, which he said was about 25 or 30 yards from the garage was never in any danger, he said, adding, “But we pulled the appropriate fire lines off, in case we had that situation.”

Guilderland Police sent out an alert at 9:36, saying that Carman Road was closed between Lone Pine and Coons roads due to a fire. One lane was open as of 10:59, and the road was fully open at 11:30 p.m.

The reason for the road closure was that firefighters had to bring water over from the nearest fire hydrant, which was across the street, and “for safety reasons,” said Fire Inspector Ted Raymond.

Fleming said that other fire departments responding were Westmere, Guilderland, and Guilderland Center.

The cause is still under investigation, said both Fleming and Raymond.

Albany County assessment rolls say that the property is owned by Lee Keirstead and Shaune Kelly and has a full market value of $151,477.

Reached by phone, Keirstead said, “I want to thank the Fort Hunter Fire Department and the other firefighters for their quick response time. We don’t have that much damage, thanks to their quick response and the way they fought the fire. They were very methodical.”

He added, “They did a hell of a job.”

GUILDERLAND — Cumberland Farms is trying again to set up shop in western Guilderland. This would be the company’s second shop in Guilderland; there is already one in Westmere, at Witte Road.

A representative of the company with a chain of 600 convenience stores and gas stations appeared before the planning board on Jan. 11, seeking concept approval of a revised plan for a site at the corner of routes 20 and 146 in Guilderland. Cumberland Farms first proposed building a convenience store and gas station there more than two years ago.

The plan would include tearing down the abandoned bank building near the corner that is almost completely covered with vines.

The current site, comprising two parcels instead of just the corner lot, is now 2.35 acres, instead of the 1.35 acres proposed in 2014.

It extends all the way, on the east, to the edge of the Western Turnpike Golf Course.

The new plan also incorporates a car wash, although this, presenter Stefanie DiLallo Bitter of the law firm Bartlett, Pontiff, Stewart & Rhodes told The Enterprise, would be an optional “phased development” that could be added at a later date if town officials and residents were amenable.

In 2014, the state’s Department of Transportation had expressed concern about access — specifically about cars turning left into the site from Route 20 westbound, as well as cars turning left out of the site onto Route 20 westbound, according to a Nov. 2014 letter from the DOT to then-Town Supervisor Kenneth Runion.

DiLallo Bitter noted at the Jan. 11 meeting that the applicant hopes that the driveway on Route 20 has now been moved far enough east to mitigate these concerns.

The project’s traffic engineer, Wendy Holzberger of Creighton Manning, said at the meeting that the driveway is 100 feet further east than it was previously. “Now we’re at the end of the left-turn lane storage,” she said, “and we have a recommendation in [our] report to increase that left-turn storage just a little bit.”

Feeney suggested at the meeting that the applicant must, first of all, work out with the Department of Transportation any issues related to access, to see if the DOT wants to change the conditions that it placed on the project in 2014.

DiLallo Bitter told The Enterprise that a new traffic study has now been done for the larger parcel and that she hopes that the Department of Transportation will agree to look at the new data. If it does, she said, she hopes that it may grant the applicant’s request for full-access entrances and exits on both Route 20 and Route 146, with no restrictions on left turns.

Once the board receives a letter saying that the department is satisfied with the plan for access, it will put the project back on the agenda, Feeney said.

The board did not make any decisions on the matter.

Other business

In other business, the board:

— Held a public hearing, and gave final approval, 7 to 0, to the final plat of a proposal to cut a three-acre parcel from a 73-acre one at 5891 Depot Rd. owned by Rocsanna Rivers;

— Heard a concept presentation for a proposed two-lot subdivision of 88 acres at 6732 Dunnsville Rd. owned by Scott Carroll; the concept was approved 7-0, but the board expressed concerns about the length of the driveway and its 12-percent grade.

Feeney said that that was “very steep for a driveway”; he added that, in many cases when driveways are especially long, people put off paving them because of the cost and said that unpaved gravel driveways can be “hard to clean.” His concern was that the grade would make it dangerous, especially in bad weather. He recommended that the applicant request a letter from the fire department, stating that it is comfortable with the applicant’s plans for the site;

— Approved, 7-0, a revised site plan by Ryan Jankow for his properties at 1206-1210 Western Ave., where he plans to turn a one-family home in disrepair into a retail space with several different tenants. Since his last appearance before the Planning Board, Jankow had moved parking from the front of the building to the back, created more green spaces, and flipped the building around to bring the driveway over to the traffic light. Following a question from McKownville resident Martha Harausz, the board suggested that Jankow sign a formal, written easement between his property and the City Line, a nearby property that he also owns, in case one of them should be sold to a different owner in the future. Jankow was set to appear before the zoning board Wednesday night;

— Approved, 7-0, a request from The Meadow at Mill Hill, Luke Michaels presenting, to remove from the plat a stone walking path that was to link the nearby Stewart’s Shop to the housing community for people aged 55 and older; Michaels said that residents have now started to live in the community, and that “over 75 percent of people in the community are against the path, and asked me to come here and ask to remove it from the final plat.” He said that they considered it a safety concern, since Stewart’s was open late at night;

— Approved, 7-0, a request from Janice Hesler, Donald Cropsey presenting, to have the single-family home on an approximately half-acre lot that she owns at 6508 Vosburgh Rd. changed from R-20, or residential, with a minimum lot size of 20,000 square feet, to multi-residential; Cropsey said at the meeting that her property is “sandwiched in” among properties belonging to Carpenter Village and zoned multi-residential. Hesler plans at some point in the future, Cropsey said, to build a three-family home behind her home; and

— Heard from Ron DeVito, who seeks to build a facility to be known as Concordia Senior Housing Residences at 2298-2316 Western Ave., a site created by combining several vacant properties including the former Master Cleaners and a number of other nearby buildings. The lot would stretch about 800 feet to the east, starting from Foundry Road. Feeney recommended that the applicant reconsider the design to avoid building near the steep slopes at the back of the property and being forced to put in huge retaining walls that Feeney said would, in some places, be “as tall as 30 feet.”

DeVito previously told The Enterprise that he has told town officials he would be willing to donate land along the top of Foundry Road to the town, to make it possible to widen the road. At the meeting, Feeney spoke with DeVito about the possible need in the future for a turn lane from Western Avenue onto Foundry Road. DeVito at first suggested that he might be willing to create a turn lane there, but Feeney warned him that the cost would be “a heavy lift,” and suggested that it would probably be necessary to create a left-turn lane onto Willow Street at the same time.

Feeney told The Enterprise Wednesday that he does not believe the DOT will require left-turn lanes on Route 20 for this project, but said that the lanes might be needed at some point in the future, and did not want to do anything now to preclude that in the future. So, Feeney said on Wednesday, DeVito will need to figure out a way to avoid the cost and the environmental impact of building into the ravines; in order to do that, Feeney said, DeVito will need to get a clearer sense of where the facility can be in relation to Western Avenue and Foundry Road.

GUILDERLAND — The 88,000-square-foot assisted-living facility proposed for the southeast corner of Western Avenue and Foundry Road moved a step closer to being built last Tuesday, when the town board unanimously approved the project’s intensity of use and density, and returned it to the planning board for site review.

The project’s developer, The Genitor Organization in Melville, New York, is seeking a rezone to a planned unit development, or PUD. The site is currently zoned for local business.

The town board had received a positive recommendation from the planning board, said Supervisor Peter Barber. The planning board’s recommendation had come, Barber noted, with several conditions: that the building be moved as far as possible from the slopes at the back of the site that head down to the Hunger Kill; that any right-of-way needs for possible future turn lanes on Western Avenue be identified; and that any need to realign Foundry Road also be identified.

In keeping with a suggestion from the planning board, the project’s engineers flipped the site’s design, to move the building further away from the angle of repose and to eliminate all or most of the retaining walls that had been planned, said Ronald J. DeVito, managing member of Genitor, at the meeting. As a result, he will no longer need to go before the zoning board of appeals.

The town board asked DeVito to get a “sign-off” letter from the Department of Transportation, stating that the department is satisfied with DeVito’s plan for using some of the site’s land to widen the top part of Foundry Road, to make it possible for large trucks to make the turn off Western, onto Foundry. The letter would also need to outline the understanding that the department had reached with the developer about the state’s right of way, so that, in the future, if dedicated turn lanes on Western Avenue were to become necessary, the state would have access to sufficient land.

DeVito will still need to return to the planning board and then the town board once more. The process of the PUD rezone requires, as its final step, the passage of a local law.

Asked when he expects the facility to be up and running, DeVito said it would take 14 to 18 months to complete the construction, once he receives all the required municipal approvals. DeVito expects it would then take another 18 months of ramping up, before the facility reached 95 percent occupancy.

Just one town resident spoke at the public hearing: Sarah Van Leer, who lives on Foundry Road opposite the site’s proposed entrance and who was accompanied at the microphone by her husband. She said that she was generally in favor of the project and thought it was a good use for the site, but was concerned about the possibility of additional water flowing down the site onto her property. Barber assured her that the project would be subject to stringent stormwater management regulations during design and construction.

None of the three assisted-living facilities that are proposed or already approved for Guilderland — Concordia; Pine Bush Senior Living, at routes 155 and 20; or Promenade, in the site of the former Best Western across from the University at Albany — will offer skilled nursing care. The owners of all three talk about aging-in-place, but in fact all three residences would require, for patients that eventually come to need around-the-clock care, transfer to a different facility offering skilled nursing care.

Asked about this on Wednesday, DeVito said enhanced assisted living, which does provide skilled-nursing care, would meet the needs of most residents, and that the number of elderly who come to need 24/7 skilled-nursing care is small. He also said that an assisted-living facility cannot offer a nursing-home wing; the two types of facilities require not only different licensing, but also completely separate personnel, he said.

Tax exemption removed

The board passed a local law to remove the real-property tax exemption for solar, wind, and farm-waste energy systems.

“The tax exemption was introduced back in 1977; it was not meant to be perpetual,” said Barber. “Back in 1977, these alternative energy systems needed some support, and among that support were tax and other incentives.” Barber also noted that other tax preferences will continue to apply, including income tax credit, solar incentives, and a sales tax exemption.

“If you’re going to exempt certain properties, certain income-producing uses, from being taxed,” Barber said, “all that does is shift that tax to other properties.” He said he was in favor of the law “out of fairness.”

Lee Carman, the board’s only Republican, cast the sole dissenting vote. He indicated that he saw “individual residences as being different from commercial use,” and that he was uncomfortable with not knowing how solar arrays installed on residential properties would be assessed.

Barber said at the meeting that town assessor Karen Van Wagenen would be contacting other towns in the state that had already established rules for valuing these structures “to figure out the best way to make sure you’re being fair.”

Board member Paul Pastore voted in favor of removing the exemption, while noting that even if the exemption is removed, a municipality has the option of reinstating it later. “If there are some questions down the road that this board wants to consider,” he said, “we certainly have the option.”

Van Wagenen said Wednesday that exemptions already filed with the town would be honored.

Going forward, Van Wagenen said, homeowners would need to provide additional information about alternative-energy systems, including ownership, leasing, size, and how much energy they produce.

Barber said Wednesday that assessment would take into account depreciation over time, adding that any assessment is “a snapshot of the value in time.”

Other business:

In other business, the board:

— Held a public hearing on the application to rezone property owned by Janice Hessler at 6508 Vosburgh Rd., from R-20, or residential with a minimum lot size of 20,000 square feet, to multiple residence. The board heard that Hessler’s property is surrounded by property owned by Carpenter Village. Presenter Donald Cropsey said that Hessler planned at some point in the future to build a separate multi-family dwelling behind the single-family home where she lives. Barber said that her property, which is the only one in the area zoned residential, “seems like it should have been MR from day one.” The board unanimously passed the rezone;

— Voted unanimously to make amendments to the zoning code’s sections 22 on “industrial district” and 23 on “industrial park district.” This matter had been heard in December and then continued, said Barber, to allow the Albany County Planning Board to provide the town board with a recommendation, which it did, deferring to local consideration of the uses allowed in an industrial zone. Barber said on Tuesday that the changes were all related to replacing “manufacturing” as an allowed activity; it had been removed inadvertently, he said;

— Learned that a proposal for changes in 2017 water charge rates that had been recommended by the superintendent of water and wastewater management, Timothy McIntyre, had been withdrawn for the time being. Barber said that McIntyre would check the proposal to ensure that it is consistent with his department’s needs over the next year, and that it would be back before the board again;

— Authorized, with a unanimous vote, amending the water department’s budget by transferring $23,362.70 from the department’s fund balance to reimburse Sprint Wireless for overpayment of rent for telecommunication facilities on the Wiley Street water tower;

— Voted unanimously to waive the building permit for installing a gasoline tank at the Western Turnpike Rescue Squad’s facility at 200 Center Ave.;

— Noted that a request for a public hearing planned for the town board’s March 7 meeting had been withdrawn for the time being; the hearing was to have been a joint one with the village of Altamont, on the annexation into the village of land on Bozenkill Road. The issue is not dead, Barber said. He added, “They need to get a better map” and said the village would be back before the board.

Meanwhile, in place of the joint hearing with Altamont, the board voted to schedule a different public hearing for that same time slot, March 7 at 7 p.m., regarding the submission of an application to the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation and a State Environmental Quality Review form for a proposed water district extension that would create an interconnect between Guilderland and Rotterdam;

— Voted unanimously to authorize the release of $49,746 in escrowed funds to State Farm Utility Corporation for the operation and administration of the State Farm sewer area. Barber noted at the meeting, “Every year we do this, and it’s pretty much the same”;  

— Voted unanimously to authorize 12 monthly payments totaling $92,799.84 for fixed annual principal and interest to NBT Bank for the annual debt service on NBT Bank’s loan to the State Farm Utility Corporation;

— Voted unanimously to make adjustments to the wages of several temporary seasonal employees, to bring their wages in line with the new state minimum wage; in parallel, the board also approved a slight salary adjustment for laborers who are not temporary, “so they’re not being paid the same as the temporary people”;

— Voted unanimously to authorize the purchase and delivery, for $41,500, of a used push-out trailer as a bid item received from Kissimmee Auction Company. The bid is for $39,500 for the trailer, and $2,000 to get the trailer from Spartanburg, South Carolina, said Barber at the meeting; and

— Agreed that the next meeting will be March 7, with an earlier-than-usual start time, of 7 p.m.

GUILDERLAND — Joseph A. Glazer — a private-practice attorney who also works part-time for a State Senator — has been appointed a member and the chairman of the town’s ethics committee, Supervisor Peter Barber announced last week.

In the late 1980s, Glazer said, he was counsel to the New York State Association of Counties when the state passed its first local-government ethics law. He drafted the original model ethics law for county governments that they could use to comply with the new law requiring all counties to have their own ethics laws.

The ethics committee, Glazer said, is an opportunity to give back to the community. The work of an ethics committee can be a bit complicated, he said, and he thought that, with his experience, he would be a good fit.

The committee’s former chairwoman, Brigitte Fortune, left the post in order to concentrate on other professional responsibilities, and the town’s attorney, James Melita, was briefly appointed interim chairman.

At the town board meeting Feb. 7 at which Glazer’s appointment was approved, Lee Carman, who is the board’s only Republican member, expressed some reservations about putting “political appointees” on the ethics board, but said that he would vote in favor, since the law does not prohibit this.

Glazer, 56, said he has been in Albany County for over 35 years, and in Guilderland for 14 or 15. He said that he originally came from Kingston to go to school and “basically never went back.” He came first for undergraduate studies at UAlbany after attending a community college, and then went on to Albany Law School.

Glazer and his wife have three children, he said. The youngest is a sophomore in college and the two older are in graduate school.

Glazer said that in his private practice he does a lot of family law and criminal law and has years of experience in areas related to mental health and substance abuse. He often works with treatment and diversion courts, he said.

He also works part-time as director of communications for Democratic State Senator George Latimer of Westchester, he said. Since 2001, he has also been an adjunct professor in the graduate school of Russell Sage, where he teaches in the health services administration master’s degree program.

In 1992 he ran for the State Assembly against Republican John J. Faso.  

From 2013 to 2014 he was chief of staff and counsel for State Senator Cecilia Tkaczyk.

Members of the ethics committee are not compensated, Barber said.

GUILDERLAND — Retired math teacher Stuart Reese is a new alternate on the town’s zoning board of appeals, while David Payton, retired from the State Education Department, has gone from being an alternate to a regular member of the board of assessment review. Both men are registered Democrats, and both were approved with unanimous votes.

Reese has been a member of the Guilderland Environmental Conservation Advisory Council for over 10 years. He said of the ECAC, “That’s a good board for getting to know the town. We go out and walk properties when somebody wants to subdivide. We get to go around the town and see various places where people want to subdivide their property for development or to sell to a family member.”

Reese taught high-school math, working first for about 25 years with “juvenile delinquents,” he said, mostly at the Tryon School for Boys in Johnstown, which has since closed. He then taught for several years at Schalmont.

He and his wife have lived in Guilderland for 37 years, after moving from California in 1979 and buying a house, “strangely enough, with redwood siding on it.” Their daughter, son-in-law, and 3-year-old grandson live there with them.

Reese will serve for one year. His stipend will be $5,250 for the year.

David Payton was an alternate on the assessment review board last year. He went through the initial training and observed last year’s process, he said. The board handles Grievance Day in the spring, when town residents can challenge their assessments.

“I had expected to be appointed as an alternate again this year, only to find to my surprise that the town board had met and someone had moved on, and I was no longer an alternate, but a permanent member.”

Payton has been appointed to the board to serve out the unexpired term of William Meehan, who moved on to the town’s planning board; the term runs through 2021. Meehan recently replaced Bruce Sherwin, who had been filling an unexpired term and did not seek reappointment.

According to assessor Karen Van Wagenen, grievance board members receive a $500 stipend for participating in the grievance process. A stipend of $50 per member is available for any follow-up meetings that may be required later. The chairperson receives an additional $100 stipend, Van Wagenen said.

Payton has lived in Guilderland since 1975. He is retired from working for the state. He spent the majority of his time, he says, working in the State Education Department, where he was supervisor of the middle-level education program. He retired in 2006.

He is “happily married,” Payton says, to his wife of 48 years. “We have one daughter who is grown, and a grandson who isn’t,” he added.

After a year of no snow, kids of all ages returned to the hill at Tawasentha Park winter recreation area in Guilderland for some laughs and fun last Saturday, Feb 18.

Showing off their team spirit, the Bulldogs of Berne-Knox-Westerlo and the Dutchmen of Guilderland smile, tumble and fly high during the Section 2 winter cheer championships last Saturday at Colonie High School in efforts to head to Syracuse for the state competition. 

Last year, Guilderland won in the co-ed division; this year, the all-female team competed in the division one, small division competition and won. The Dutch will compete in this Saturday’s state competition in Syracuse on the campus of Onondaga Community College.

GUILDERLAND — Ann Wemple-Person, Guilderland Public Library’s local history librarian, was approved Tuesday night as Guilderland’s new town historian.

Wemple-Person succeeds Alice Begley, who started as historian more than two decades ago. The post has been empty since Begley’s retirement, which took effect at the end of 2016.

“You probably couldn’t design a better candidate,” said Supervisor Peter Barber of Wemple-Person. “She has a wonderful, outgoing personality.” He said that Begley is “very excited” about the choice of Wemple-Person too.

“Alice has been doing it for so long that it’s a little daunting, filling her shoes,” Wemple-Person said.

She said that her work at the library and her role as town historian will complement one another, although she was quick to point out that she will be careful not to blur the lines between the time she devotes to each. She said, “I’m not going to be working on town historian projects while I’m here [at the library], and vice versa.”

Wemple-Person knows her way around the resources available to help her answer library patrons’ questions about history, whether that means consulting a book or calling Begley or Mary Ellen Johnson, vice president of the town’s historical society.

In the past, she said, Begley, Johnson, and others such as Carol Hamblin, Anita Collins, and the Altamont Museum and Archives have been very helpful with questions that have left her “stumped,” and she hopes that she can continue to call on them in her new role as well.

She showed The Enterprise an example of a book in the library’s local history collection in the Tawasentha Room. “Maybe I’m morbid,” she said, “but I think this is interesting.” It was a record of burials at the Prospect Hill Cemetery in Guilderland between 1858 and 1902, and what was remarkable about the book is that it gives the cause of death: consumption, drowned, shot “accidently.”

Other resources she sometimes uses include Bible records put together by the state’s Daughters of the American Revolution Old Hellebergh Chapter, marriage records of the Helderberg Reformed Church, and a fat volume on the history of Albany County.

Barber said that, when Begley informally announced her resignation, a few months before she left, he asked her to look around for people who might replace her. She came up with a few names, and Barber then encouraged those people to apply.

At one point, he checked with library Director Timothy Wiles to make sure that he would not mind Wemple-Person taking on the extra work, and Wiles was fine with it, he said.

Wiles told The Enterprise that he was “delighted for all parties — for Ann, and for the town, and for the library.”

Her appointment, Wiles said, is “indicative of the vastly improved relationship between the library and the town.”

Wiles said that both Wemple-Person and Barber had a lot to do with that improved relationship.

Wemple-Person worked together with Mary Ann Kelley, the town’s coordinator for senior services, and put in a “leave-one, take-one” free-books bookshelf at the town’s new senior center. And the town’s senior van, Wiles continued, now makes a trip to the library twice a month, so that town residents who no longer drive can still visit. “Under the town’s previous administration, that was deemed too expensive,” Wiles said.

Library work complementary

At the library, Wemple-Person also serves as a reference librarian and as an outreach librarian.

As an outreach librarian, she creates programs, “usually on topics I’ve just recently learned about, that I think are interesting,” she said. She also goes out into the community “to let people know that we exist,” she said, to publicize the many free services and programs the library offers, and to let people know ”we welcome everyone; it doesn’t matter what your family looks like or your background is.”

This past weekend, she and other librarians set up a table at which they helped children make crafts at Hannaford Kidz Expo at the Empire State Plaza; this spring they will attend the Tulip Festival in Albany’s Washington Park and the Lupine Fest at the Pine Bush Discovery Center.

“You can come to the library without coming through the physical doors,” she said, noting that, on the library’s website, people can “download books and magazines, and learn languages.”

There are several reasons why the library conducts outreach beyond the borders of Guilderland, Wemple-Person said. It gives the Guilderland librarians a chance to partner with other local libraries that are also members of the Upper Hudson Library System to which Guilderland belongs.

“It reminds people that they’re not restricted, and that there are 29 libraries that they can use,” she said.

Barber said that he hopes Wemple-Person will “continue the success that Alice had” —  looking to advance the completion of the renovations of the Schoolcraft House (located at Route 20 and Willow Street) and also working with the Mynderse-Frederick House (on Route 146 in Guilderland Center). He added, “There’s a number of other historic structures in town too.”

Barber will look to Wemple-Person for new ways to promote, “particularly to a new generation,” the historic structures in town; he also plans to ask her, he said, to look into “different programs or activities that we might want to start hosting at those buildings.”

Wemple-Person said she has some ideas that she has not yet had a chance to discuss with Barber. For instance, she said, she would like to use Alice Begley’s book about Guilderland’s historical markers as a springboard for creating an interactive social-media platform that people could use either on-site or at home to learn about those areas or properties.

Wemple-Person views history, she said, as “not just a celebration of what has been, but what is now.” The town is “so diverse now” as compared to when she grew up here, “and I just love it,” she said.

She is interested in charting not only the past, but also the present. “History is a constant; it just happened. It’s right there,” she said.

Family

Wemple-Person grew up in Guilderland, and her parents still live in town. Her father, John Wemple, retired as executive director of medical assistance for Albany County and is a member of Guilderland’s Environmental Conservation Advisory Council. Her mother, Rebecca Wilma Wemple, is a retired registered nurse who is originally from England.

“Both of my parents are very service-oriented,” she said, “and taught me to take care of people.”

She hopes that “being able to bring everybody’s story together as part of the history of the town is very important. I don’t necessarily mean sitting down and taking someone’s family history, but including everybody in the town — all the families, all the backgrounds — into the narrative of the town.”

Wiles told The Enterprise that the Wemple family history has been traced back, in the area, to the 1600s. Wemple-Person said that it had, to 1642, and that her father and her aunt, Joan W. Burns, are the main family historians.

Wemple-Person, 43, is married to Alex Person, a farmer who until several years ago operated Full Circle Farm and Forestry in Middleburgh. She would help him after work, which was “meditative,” she said. She now knows how to wrangle chickens and drive a tractor. The couple had started a community-supported agriculture, or CSA, program, selling vegetables, herbs, and meat birds, and had a few customers.

They were in the process of trying to buy the land that they were farming, but the deal fell through, Wemple-Person said, which was “surprising and devastating” to them. Now Alex Person lives four hours away, farming land downstate in Allegany County that he was able to get from a relative. They travel back and forth often. They have a dog but no children, she said.

Wemple-Person fully supports her husband’s desire to keep working as a farmer, which she says is “his profession.” She said that the couple is trying to find affordable land closer to home, although farmable land “is not cheap” here.

Under the name Full Circle farm and Forestry, her husband continues to sell farm products, like the maple syrup he is producing “right now, like literally right now,” Wemple-Person said this week.

Wemple-Person wasn’t able to attend the town board meeting at which she was approved as historian. She had already arranged to attend a workshop that evening for librarians and others interested in finding out more about the archives at the Museum of Innovation and Science and the Dudley Observatory in Schenectady.

The position of town historian is stipended. In 2016, it paid $2,327, said Stacia Brigadier, the town’s personnel administrator. 

GUILDERLAND — The corner of Western Avenue and Hague Drive may be the site of a two-story, mixed-use apartment and office building. The site at 2500 Western Ave. is at the entrance to a subdivision called Windmill Estates.

The application by Rick Rapp for a special-use permit calls for combining three parcels, located directly across Western Avenue from Governors Motor Inn, into one 1.42-acre property.

The building would be 11,625 square feet, with 11 apartments including two on the first floor and nine on the second, and 8,720 square feet of office or retail space. The building would have 44 parking spaces.

Engineer Luigi Palleschi of ABD Engineers presented the project to the planning board on March 8. Palleschi did not return several calls.

Palleschi said that in 2009 the owner had planned to build a 9,000-square-foot medical office building on the site.

The owner demolished a house that stood on the site, and the town issued a building permit, said Jacqueline Coons, the town’s acting chief building and zoning inspector. But the building never went up.

The owner could not locate any tenants interested in moving into that earlier project and hopes that this new concept will be more successful, said Palleschi.

The site now has one building on it, at 3 Hague Dr., that is home to the nursery school Twinkling Stars; that building would be demolished, Planning Board Chairman Stephen Feeney told The Enterprise.

At the meeting, Feeney asked Palleschi if the nursery school might be a potential tenant; Palleschi said that it might, although he thought that the office space would be larger than the nursery school would need.

Palleschi said that the applicant had considered asking for a rezone to multifamily residential, in case that might be a better fit with the surrounding residences. “But our application before you tonight is for a mixed-use building,” he said.

The board unanimously voted to recommend concept approval to the town board, with several conditions, including that the applicant plant deciduous trees along Western Avenue and, ideally, also on Hague Drive.

The board also recommended that the applicant reduce the number of parking spaces planned, from 45 to 44, since 44 is the number required, and having more in the plan triggers an area variance. Palleschi immediately agreed to remove one space. Parking would be behind the building, on the south side.

A stormwater-management system would involve “some sort of filtration,” Palleschi said. There are some federally designated wetlands along the back of the property that would remain undisturbed, he said.

Lighting would be kept to a minimum, with some light poles for safety, and some building-mounted lights.

GUILDERLAND — Town officials are considering a proposal for what would be Guilderland’s first large-scale solar farm.

Applicant Vetto Vaitulis owns the 47.9-acre property at 2825 Curry Rd. that lies between Hembold Drive and Prout Lane.

Solar arrays would be placed on about 20 acres of already-cleared land on the property.

The property is “very well buffered” and solar arrays should not have any visual impact on neighbors, said attorney Andrew F. Brick of Donald Zee, P. C., representing Vaitulis before the planning board on March 8. A satellite photo on Google Earth shows the edges of the property to be wooded, although the area with the least vegetation is along Curry Road itself.

Vaitulis told The Enterprise last week that the project was like a traditional farm. “The only difference,” he said, “is I’m growing sunshine.” He added that traditional farms are limited to a three- or four-month growing season, but that a solar farm is productive throughout the year.

Vaitulis would continue to live in the single-family home located on the property.  

Planning board Chairman Stephen Feeney asked if the solar arrays would be placed only on the large area at the center of the property that is already cleared of trees. Brick said that he believed so.

Vaitulis said that this land was cleared decades ago. He said that he has a back and a front field; the back field is about 20 acres and the front about seven. A strip of woods that currently separates the two fields could easily be removed, he said.

The town’s zoning and land-use law says that existing on-site vegetation should be preserved as much as possible and that forested sites are not to be deforested to allow for construction of solar farms. It also says that solar arrays should not cover more than 60 percent of a property.

Feeney asked the applicant to produce a sketch plan that would show the size and location of the proposed array, including any electrical components, poles, or fences. Feeney said that he thought the only fences in a solar farm need to be placed around potentially hazardous components, and not around the arrays themselves.

In response to a question, Brick said that he thought the project would involve tying into the electrical poles on the street.

Brick was not sure just how large the cleared area was. Feeney estimated it at about 20 acres.

Feeney suggested that the applicant consider applying for F-5 zoning rather than agricultural, “to limit the potential for development in the future.” This zoning district has a minimum of five-acre lots, while an agricultural district allows for two-acre lots.

The planning board will recommend to the town board that a conditional restriction be placed on the deed, that mining not be allowed. Mining is permitted as a special use in all agricultural districts, whether A, RA-5, or RA-3.

Brick told the board that Vaitullis plans, eventually, to bequeath the land to charitable organizations.

Asked if he had spoken with Vaitulis about the possibility of selling it to the Pine Bush and taking out a life estate or subdividing out a parcel for the house, Brick told Feeney that he had not, but that he would.

Christopher Hawver, the executive director of the Albany Pine Bush Preserve Commission, told The Enterprise that the Pine Bush is looking for more land, and that the land at 2825 Curry Rd. is recommended for full protection. He said that the Pine Bush currently manages 3,300 acres and hopes to continue to raise that number to 5,400 acres and to “fill in that jigsaw puzzle” and “build contiguity, not just for species movement but also for recreational purposes like trails.”

The Pine Bush currently has some lands that are across the street from the Vaitulis property, Hawver said.

Asked about the idea of selling to the Pine Bush, Vaitulis told The Enterprise that he preferred to leave the land to a charitable organization such as St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, “where it can do some good,” rather than sell or donate it for “somebody to just walk through and look at birds.”

Vaitulis said he expected that, if the charitable organizations did not want the land, they could sell it and benefit from the proceeds.

Referring to solar farms, Vaitulis said, “It’s probably the only business where there won’t be any in-and-out traffic. Like a cemetery, except with no one coming to bring flowers.”

A solar farm was proposed in Guilderland last fall for property on Route 156, next to the former Peter Young Center, near the border with Altamont. But U. S. Solar Solutions withdrew its proposal after neighbors expressed opposition and the Altamont village board voted unanimously to recommend that the Guilderland Zoning Board of Appeals disapprove the project.

A law empowers Altamont to make recommendations about projects on its periphery. The village’s recommendation against the project would have meant that the measure could only pass the town board with a supermajority.

U. S. Solar Solutions then went ahead with a proposal it had originally intended to be part of a two-solar farm idea. That proposal is near the rejected one, a little further up Route 156, on land owned by the Peter Young Center that is located not in Guilderland but in Knox, which currently has several solar-farm proposals in the works.

ALBANY — Bail was set at $20,000 Friday morning for Justin Hope, the Guilderland man charged with bringing to his apartment and sexually abusing a resident of Vanderheyden Hall in Rensselaer County, where he had worked.

It emerged at a bail hearing on Friday in Albany County Court that central to the evidence is a recording of a statement that Hope made.

“You could say that he made an admission, yes,” the Justice Center’s Rachel Dunn, who is prosecuting the case, told The Enterprise after the proceeding.

The case documents are sealed.

The Justice Center has stated that bystanders reported seeing Hope drinking alcohol with the Vanderheyden resident in public, and that Vanderheyden Hall had been contacted with that information, setting off the investigation. It had not previously been known how the Justice Center learned about the alleged sexual contact.

Dunn noted in court that Hope would face up to eight years in state prison on the two felony and two misdemeanor charges.

Dunn had asked for $15,000 bail, but Judge William Carter set bail at $20,000 cash or bond.

Carter said that he was setting the bail at $20,000 because of “the nature of the allegations and the People’s likelihoood of success at trial.”

Hope was represented by defense attorney Lee Kindlon.

Asked about his plan for defending Hope, Kindlon said that he had just been retained; the first thing he wants to do is get Hope out of jail. Carter had agreed to allow Hope to be held in the courthouse while Kindlon contacted his family in hopes that they would post bail.

“Then we’re going to sit down, look at the proof, conference the case, and go from there,” he said.

“My plan is to make a plan,” he said.

GUILDERLAND — The hotel that Pyramid Management hopes to build next to Crossgates Mall on Western Avenue is applying for $2.4 million in tax exemptions from Guilderland’s Industrial Development Agency. This includes 1.4 million in real-property tax exemption, a form of tax exemption the Guilderland IDA has never approved before.

Michael Shanley, a partner with Pyramid Management, said that the hotel would have a positive impact on Western Avenue and “clean it up for everyone in the town.”

Republican Albany County Legislator Mark Grimm said, “In my district, I have a single mother of four kids who is struggling to pay her taxes, and she wants to know why Pyramid would be getting a $2.4 million tax break.”

A score of people turned out Wednesday night for an IDA hearing on the tax break. Some expressed hope that local labor would be used to build the hotel. Most were there to gather information and gave cautious support. Grimm alone was skeptical. He asked the crowd, “Who pays — Crossgates or you?”

Pyramid is in the process of seeking to have 6.5 acres of land that it owns on Western Avenue, immediately west of the main entrance to Crossgates, rezoned general business in order to build a 192-unit hotel there. The hotel would be “dual-brand” — with one full-service wing, one extended-stay wing, and a common lobby between.

If tax exemptions are approved, this sale/leaseback agreement would make the IDA the “paper owner,” which would then lease the hotel back to the developer.

Industrial Development Agencies, part of a program New York State started nearly half a century ago, are meant to spur economic development and job creation through tax exemptions and bond financing.

In addition to the $1.4 million in real-property tax exemption — which would be phased back in over the course of 10 years — the hotel developer has also applied for $800,000 in sales-tax exemption and $230,000 in mortgage-recording tax exemption.

The $800,000 represents 8 percent of $10 million in qualifying purchases that the developer anticipates making in the course of constructing the hotel — not only construction costs but everything needed for the furnishing and operation of the hotel, said Donald Csaposs, chief executive officer of the Guilderland IDA.

The $230,000 represents the tax that would ordinarily be due at closing; it is equivalent to 1.25 percent of the $18 million in mortgages that the developer has stated it intends to use to finance the project. Csaposs said this is broken down among the state, the county, and the Capital District Transportation Authority.

Csaposs said the phase-in model is “absolutely par for the course” for an entity that gets property-tax abatement from an IDA, anywhere in New York State. Phase-ins of 10, 15, and 20 years have been granted at a variety of jurisdictions throughout the state, he said.

At the hearing, Csaposs said he had received 14 letters, “overwhelmingly positive.”

The application

The developer intends to take out a total of $18 million in mortgages to fund the project; its total equity investment in the project is $9.5 million, according to the application.

Funds expended on the project in the last three years are $1.25 million, of which $1.1 million was used to acquire land, the application says, and the rest was real-estate tax costs.

The developer bought the project site, the application says, in 1988, 1993, and 2014, spending a total of $3.5 million.

The project would be completed in about the summer of 2018, the application says.

In deciding whether to approve the real-property tax exemption, Csaposs said, the IDA will assess how many jobs — particularly permanent jobs — the project would bring, as well as what other benefits it would have for the community.

“Construction jobs do factor into the equation, but not to the extent, obviously, that permanent jobs would,” said Csaposs. “We have an obvious interest, as a community, in ongoing employment for our residents.”

According to the application, the Crossgates hotel project is slated to create about 55 construction jobs and about 50 permanent jobs. The 50 anticipated permanent positions include 14 for room attendants and eight for front-desk agents.

“Most of the permanent jobs aren’t going to be real high paying, but it is still going to be 50 jobs,” Csaposs said.

The application says that salaries will vary based on job description and responsibility, ranging between $45,000 and $95,000 per year. Hourly rates, it says, will vary between $11 and $16 per hour. Benefits will be available to qualifying employees and will include options for medical, dental and life insurance; vacation and holiday pay; bereavement; and 401K. Employees may also qualify, it says, for discounted rates at other hotels.

Csaposs noted that the IDA has the option of approving certain elements of the application, and denying others, if it chooses.

Applications are considered on the basis of qualification, not need, Csaposs said, adding, “Need is a very subjective thing.”

IDA’s role

Csaposs said he believes that the state laws outlining the work of an IDA were intended to “at least try to keep subjectivity to a minimum, by setting standards and saying that any project that meets those standards and involves a benefit to the community and the creation or retention of jobs qualifies.”

The Guilderland IDA was established in 1973. It has approved projects, said Csaposs, for the Guilderland YMCA, the Western Turnpike Rescue Squad, the Wildwood School, and for refurbishing Hamilton Square Mall at routes 20 and 155.

Its bylaws call for the board to have seven members but, because of a vacancy, it currently has six: William N. Young Jr., chairman: James Shahda; Christopher Bombardier; Walter Pacholczak; Vera Dordick; and Kevin Hicks.

Board members are unpaid, said Stacia Brigadier, the town’s payroll administrator.

Csaposs is not a voting member. Despite his title as chief executive officer of the IDA his position is unpaid. He does hold a salaried post with the town, as a grant writer. None of the IDA members have offices in town hall, and a decision was made in 2008, he said, that a point-of-contact was needed there.

The IDA is separate from the town, although its members are appointed by the town board, Csaposs said. It is a public-benefit corporation, according to its section of the town website.

IDA agreements generally contain a “clawback provision,” which gives the IDA the opportunity to recoup a prorated amount of the money if, for instance, a company pulls out, or if actual job levels fall far short of the anticipated.

“This, if approved, would almost definitely have a clawback provision in it,” said Csaposs.

The project’s employment numbers would be routinely checked on by the IDA, said Csaposs, adding, “I guess by me.”

Guilderland has never put a clawback provision into effect — has never “clawed” funds back — said Csaposs.

An audit of IDAs released by the State Comptroller’s Office in 2011 said that the employment levels at three Guilderland IDA-sponsored projects had fallen short of the anticipated numbers. These projects were the construction of a facility for the Western Turnpike Rescue Squad, an update and expansion of the Guilderland YMCA, and an update and expansion of a building for the Wildwood Program. They were being financed for a total of $21 million and should have created 40 jobs and retained 209; Guilderland, as of 2009, had seen a loss of eight jobs, rather than any gain.

Csaposs said this week that employment levels at public-benefit projects like the Rescue Squad or Wildwood routinely vary from year to year. He added that a system-wide consolidation of operations throughout the Capital District YMCA resulted in the elimination of a number of positions at the Guilderland facility.  

A report from the state’s Authorities Budget Office from 2014 showed that a project sponsored by the Guilderland IDA — the renovation and expansion of Hamilton Square, formerly known as 20 Mall — had not created any new jobs. Csaposs told The Enterprise at the time that the data was misleading because the renovation of Vent Fitness and the construction of the new Starbucks and the M&T Bank were ongoing and not reflected in the data.

In August 2016 the IDA became the “paper owner” of Buck Construction’s building project, an 84-unit apartment complex just off French’s Mill Road in western Guilderland. Mill Hollow was originally slated to be senior condominiums, but the developer changed its plan to apartments and sought and was granted relief from the town on the age requirement of 55-plus, because, Steven Buck of Buck Construction said at the time, banks were unwilling to finance either for-purchase units or senior-housing projects.

The Mill Hollow project, Csaposs said, created only a few permanent jobs. The developer in that case did not apply for real-estate property tax, Csaposs told The Enterprise at the time, adding that the developer had chosen to concentrate on applying for the types of exemptions that were more likely to be approved.

Things that tipped the scales in Mill Hollow’s favor, Csaposs said, were that the development housed the town’s senior center and that the developer agreed to put in sidewalks. Sidewalks are expensive, he said, at about $950,000 per mile; the developer is set to put in about two-thirds of a mile in sidewalks.

Mill Hollow received sales-tax exemption on construction-related costs estimated at the time at about $3.8 million and a waiver of mortgage-recording taxes estimated at about $181,000.

As to the potential benefit to the community of a hotel on Western Avenue near Crossgates Mall, Csaposs said that an argument could be made that there is a need for another hotel in Guilderland. He listed the hotels in town — noting that he was not counting smaller establishments — and said, “At the moment we have Best Western, the Days Inn, and the Hampton Inn.”

He added, “The Best Western is going offline, and the Days Inn is kind of sketchy. So you’ve got one decent hotel in a community of 36,000.” The Best Western — at 1228 Western Ave., across from the entrance to the University at Albany — is being bought by Promenade Senior Living, a company that converts hotels into facilities for elderly residents.

Pyramid’s view

The Pyramid project is intended to attract visitors to Albany County for longer stays, the application says. A letter contained in the file from market and feasibility advisor Dan Martin says that guests at the hotel are likely to include visitors to SUNY Poly and people in town for job interviews or school visits.

Asked if the company will try to hire people who live in the town, Shanley said, “It’s difficult, as you can imagine, to limit it in any way to Guilderland residents, but we’ve learned from our past activities as developers and employers that, generally speaking, the closer you are to the mall, or the closer you are to this particular development, the hotel, you’re more apt to want to work there. So we would expect a good number of Guilderland residents to be involved in the hotel construction and, ultimately, management and employment.”

Shanley was noncommittal when asked if the project would still go through if the exemptions were denied. “We would certainly look at it,” he said. “But at this point we’re hoping to get some tax relief. Once we get a decision on that, we’ll evaluate where the project stands.”

After the public hearing, the next step, said Csaposs, would be a vote by the IDA. He said that he did not think the agency would set a date for a vote “until after the project is rezoned, assuming that it is.”

GUILDERLAND — Smoke billowed through a gaping hole in the slate roof of a small brick home at 2973 Curry Rd. early Tuesday morning.

The man who lived in the home got out safely, but he kept trying to go back in to save his cats, said Chief Paul Miller of the Altamont Fire Department.

Efforts to put out the blaze were hampered by lack of water.

“There are no hydrants out here,” said Fort Hunter Assistant Chief Greg Comparetta, who was in charge.

When crews arrived, Comparetta said, there was “heavy fire” on the second floor of the wood-framed house.

Firefighters started trying to knock down the flames using water from a tanker truck, but ran out of water and needed to wait until they could hook into the nearest hydrant, at Morris Road, almost a mile away.

The call had come in at 5:30 a.m., and two hours later firefighters brought in a ladder truck to shoot water down onto the second floor.

“There are still hot spots. It’s not safe to have crews in there,” said Comparetta.

Among the other fire departments on the scene were Stanford Heights, Rotterdam, South Schenectady, Westmere, Guilderland, and McKownville.

Albany County tax assessment rolls show the one-family home as owned by Barbara A. Vink, with a full-market value of $160,227.

Firefighters were unsure how many cats may have died in the fire. Comparetta said a number of cats had survived and were taken away by Animal Control for treatment, but that not all had made it out.

“I heard there were 12 cats,” said Miller. “There was a couple still missing.”

GUILDERLAND — Euni Yang taught herself to sew as a child, when she wanted clothes for her Barbie dolls; she would look at pictures in magazines and copy them, she said.

A few years after arriving in the United States in 1994 with her husband, who came to study theology, she began sewing professionally.

She worked as a tailor for 10 years at Men’s Wearhouse in Colonie, working her way up to head tailor, before opening her own shop this month in Guilderland.

She had just three days off between resigning from Men’s Wearhouse and opening her new shop, Urban Tailor.

In the shop located at the side of Star Plaza at 2050 Western Ave., Yang works on everything from suits and casual clothes to prom dresses and wedding gowns.

She can take clothes in or let them out to fit an individual wearer’s body shape or make something old fashionable again, as when she removes the pleats from the front of a decades-old pair of slacks.

One of Yang’s customers, she said, was a young woman who wanted a suit jacket that had belonged to her late father cut down to fit her. Another customer, who stopped by this week, brought a scarf that was too bulky for her taste and asked Yang to make it narrower and finish the edges.

Over the years that she was with Men’s Wearhouse, Yang picked up some well-known repeat customers: She made a number of custom suits for Captain Richard Phillips, for his meetings with President Barack Obama and various dignitaries after an incident in which his ship was hijacked and he was kidnapped by Somali pirates. She has also done many alterations for former Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders.

Yang’s husband, Charlie Yang, stopped by at the beginning of a recent interview to lend his wife support, he said. He wanted to stress that Euni Yang had studied art in college and had a wonderful eye for color balance.

Charlie Yang is pastor at McKownville United Methodist Church, which he joined recently after five years at the Voorheesville United Methodist Church. The couple lives in Guilderland has two children, one still in college and the other a recent graduate.

The younger, a daughter, is named Grace, which Yang says is the meaning of her own given name, Euni.

ALTAMONT — The transformation is now complete. On Sunday, a new sign went up at 186 Main Street: Mio Vino is now Veronica’s.

“I wanted to rebrand,” said Peter Blackman who became owner of the village’s only fine-dining restaurant last June.

Blackman designed the sign himself. It is projected from the restaurant’s front porch, overlooking the village green, and says, “Veronica’s Culinary Tavern.” The design evokes a mid-century diner and has a fork and knife at the top in the shape of a “V.”

The clapboard building, at the corner of Main and Maple, was once an A&P.  Michael Giorgio  reworked the building, inside and out, making it into a wine bar and bistro.

Blackman said it had a reputation for being “pompous and expensive.”  He made both the prices and the fare more accessible.

“I want to be versatile,” he said. “You can come here with coworkers after work for drinks and appetizers.” Small plates include edamame-truffle hummus for $9 and grilled asparagus for $8.

“Or,” Blackman went on, “you can celebrate an anniversary here with fine dining.” Entrées include chicken saltimbocca for $24 and New York strip for $35. There are also pasta selections that range from $19 to $24 with sides.

“If you come home and find there’s nothing in the fridge, you can come in for a burger or pizza,” he said. Wood-fired pizza and burgers cost from $14 to $17.

Blackman described his restaurant as “casual fine-dining” with a nod to Italian cuisine. Since taking over in June, he said business has been “OK.” He went on, “I want to be honest. Weekends are good.”

The restaurant is open from Tuesday through Saturday. And “happy hours” every day from 4 to 6 p.m. are lively, he said.

The location, Blackman said, is “a double-edge sword.” Altamont is “remote” from large population centers, he noted, but “part of the beauty of the place” is the rural remoteness, the quaint village setting.

Veronica’s has a tavern with polished bar, small dining rooms, and alfresco dining on its porch and patio.

Blackman, who grew up in Bethlehem, likes being close to his roots. His roots in the restaurant business are deep. A graduate of Babson College, near Boston, he became manager of Mangia in  Slingerlands when he was just 23, having waited tables previously at Butcher Block.

He then spent 18 years managing multiple locations before he partnered with Angelo Mazzone, owning and running the  Aperitivo Bistro & Wine Bar on State Street near Proctors in Schenectady.

After eight years as a co-owner, Blackman said, he was in search of a “normal job.” “I sold my half back to him in the fall of 2015.”

Blackman went from a bistro with 250 seats in a busy theater district to Veronica’s with 75 seats in quiet Altamont.

“I love it,” he said. “The community’s been great. I enjoy the people I work with and the people in the community.”

He also said, “We used a lot of local produce last fall. We’re blessed to have farmers five or 10 miles away. I try to give them credit,” he said, noting that the pig for the village’s Victorian Holiday pig roast came from Crosby Farm in Berne.

Asked how he came up with his restaurant’s new name, Blackman said, “There are ‘V’s everywhere in the restaurant. I wanted something more versatile, a female name. I went through the family tree,” he said, hoping some nearly-forgotten great-grandmother might have had a name that started with “V.”

No such luck.

Blackman concluded with a smile, “Maybe it will be the future love of my life.”

GUILDERLAND — A State Comptroller’s audit found that the amounts reported by the  director of the Western Turnpike Golf Course, professional golfer Herb Moreland, and the portions paid to the town, which owns the course, were correct for 2015 and 2016.

But the state recommended that, in the future, the golf course director should remit driving-range fees to the town comptroller more frequently and should include daily sales logs with its annual report, so that an independent reconciliation of the amounts can be performed.

Currently, the comptroller’s report said, no one is independently checking the daily sales logs against the golf course director’s annual report of driving-range fees.

“We’re happy that the state found that everything was reported accurately.,” Moreland told The Enterprise. “When you’re dealing with the kinds of monies that we are, it’s always nice to have the state come in and say that everything is being done properly and concisely and accurately.”

Asked about the supporting documentation that the state said was not currently being sent in, Moreland said, “They mentioned they wanted those in a more timely fashion.”

The Western Turnpike Golf Course is owned by the town and administered by the Parks and Recreation Department. Its day-to-day operations are overseen by Moreland.

A state audit a year ago had turned up more serious problems.

This time, the state comptroller’s office examined the collections received at the town’s golf course between Jan. 1, 2015 through Oct. 31, 2016.

Total golf course revenues for 2015 were $970,000, according to the report. This includes annual membership dues, greens fees, charges for private or corporate parties, and fees for leagues, golf-cart rentals, and driving-range use.

The director has established various fees for the different rounds of golf and cart rentals, including specials and leagues, according to the report. The director operates the driving range, and the town receives a portion of the fees; the director also operates the pro shop, but the town does not receive a portion of those sales, the report says.

Collections at the golf course were “properly accounted for and deposited timely and intact,” according to the report, except for driving-range fees, which were “not remitted to the comptroller’s office timely.”

In addition, the report says, “No one independent of the Director reconciled the daily sales logs to his annual report of driving range fees.” Finally, the director did not provide the comptroller’s office with the daily sales logs or other documentation that would have made it possible for the comptroller’s office to perform a reconciliation of the two records.

Driving range fees were $44,000 in 2015 and $36,000 in 2016; the director paid the town $3,300 in 2015 and $2,700 in 2016 for range fees, at the end of the golf season, handing in an annual report on collections for driving range sales; however, the director did not hand in any sales logs, the report says, which means that the comptroller’s office was unable to perform a reconciliation to check the amounts.

“Without routine and timely fee remittances and a reconciliation between the daily sales logs and the annual report, there is a risk that errors could occur and go undetected with the accounting for driving range fees,” the report concluded.

The state comptroller’s office made this recommendation: “The Director should remit driving range fees to the Comptroller’s office on a timelier basis (e.g., weekly or monthly) and include the daily sales logs with the annual report so that a reconciliation can be performed between the two records.

“I think the audit went well,” said Guilderland’s comptroller, Jean Sterling. “It seemed to all be good; they didn’t really have any criticisms. They leave us with a couple of suggestions, which we always try to follow.”

Town Supervisor Peter Barber wrote in an email, responding to Enterprise questions, “As recommended in the report, the Town will increase the frequency of the Director’s accounting of driving range fees to a bi-weekly basis.”

A year ago, two town golf-course employees resigned and their supervisor was demoted, in the wake of a state comptroller’s audit of town employee compensation and benefits. That comptroller’s report, issued in February of 2016, covered the period from Jan. 1, 2014 to Jan. 31, 2015. The discrepancies occurred, the report said, because the employees’ supervisor certified the hours that they submitted without checking time cards or ensuring that leave time was used when employees were absent.

As a result of that 2016 finding, Parks and Recreation Maintenance Supervisor Colin Gallup was demoted to the position of Town Park Foreman, said Barber at the time. Gallup’s demotion was accompanied by a reduction in salary, from approximately $82,000 to $73,000, Barber said.

Gallup’s former duties were taken over by two employees, Barber said, with the majority taken over by Gregory Wier, superintendent of the transfer station, and others being handled by Linda Cure of the Parks and Recreation Department.

GUILDERLAND — Most of the town’s officials who are up for re-election — all Democrats — are running again. Town board members Patricia Slavick and Paul Pastore said that they are considering a run.

The other incumbents are Peter Barber, town supervisor, elected in a close race two years ago; Jean Cataldo, town clerk, who ran unopposed for her second term two years ago; Patricia Slavick, a town board member first elected in 2000; Lynne Buchanan, receiver of taxes since 2013; and town justices Denise Randall, first elected in 2005, and Richard Sherwood, first elected in 2013.

The Republicans put up a full slate in the last town elections two years ago and got one candidate elected to the board. Asked who will be running this time, Douglas Breakell, chairman of the Guilderland Republican Committee, said, “We are still in our selection process.”

Jacob Crawford, 30, who is currently the first vice chairman of the Guilderland Democratic Committee, will step into the acting chairman position, following the death last week of longtime chairman David Bosworth. Crawford will serve as acting chairman until the next election, in the fall of 2018, he said; elections are held every two years. Crawford works as a higher-education analyst with New York State United Teachers, where he does policy, data, contractual, and financial and budgetary analysis.

In 2015, Barber edged out then-board member and fellow Democrat Brian Forte— who was running on the Republican ticket — in a race that was too close to call without counting the absentee ballot. The supervisor post pays $113,099 in 2017, according to Stacia Smith-Brigadier, the town’s personnel administrator.

Lynne Buchanan was deputy receiver of taxes when she ran for her current post in 2013 against Republican Bryan Best. The full-time job of receiver of taxes is currently paid $59,495.

The town clerk receives $59,495.

Justices each receive $51,170.

Town board members are paid $24,197.

Party enrollment in Guilderland breaks down this way: 40 percent of the town’s voters are enrolled Democrats; 25 percent are Republicans; 26 percent are unaffiliated; and the remainder are enrolled in other parties.

Got drugs? Get rid of them, no questions asked!

On Saturday, April 29, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., you can get rid of all your unused or expired medications at a National Drug Take-Back Day drop-off point in the Guilderland Library’s parking lot … no questions asked.

The library and the Guilderland Police Department have teamed up for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration's nationwide Drug Take-Back Day, a one-day collaborative effort between the DEA and state and local law enforcement agencies that focuses on removing potentially dangerous controlled substances from your home.

Previous Drug Take-Back Days at GPL have brought in record amounts of unwanted, expired and unused medications, showing how necessary this program is.  Please don’t let this opportunity to rid your home of these hazards pass you by.

All surrendered pharmaceuticals/controlled substances are destroyed by law enforcement officers. Not only does this program provide an opportunity for community agencies to collaborate and establish a safe collection site, it also brings national attention to the issue of pharmaceuticals and controlled substance abuse.

What can be disposed:

— Controlled, non-controlled, and all over-the-counter substances;

— Medication in its original container or removed from its container can be disposed of directly into the disposal boxes. (If an original container is submitted, be sure to remove any identifying information from the prescription label.);

What cannot be disposed:

— No sharps and syringes;

Drug Take-Back Day officials will not ask questions of nor request identification from anyone. It’s your best opportunity to rid yourself of hazardous medications that can bring harm to you and others in your household.

The Albany Pine Bush Preserve Commission will host its 11th Lupine Fest on Saturday, May 20, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Discovery Center. This year, the festival honors the diverse wildlife of the Albany Pine Bush as well as the wild blue lupine flower and its importance to the conservation of several rare butterflies.

Visitors will experience a celebration of our local wildlife through live animal shows, wildlife workshops, and nature walks. All are invited to come discover the animals that call the Albany Pine Bush home through hands-on activities with community partners, music with the Whipper Snappers and B95.5, games, crafts, vendors, and more.

“This free event offers visitors a chance to connect with us and enjoy many different activities,” said Erin Kinal, Education Program director, in a release from the commission. “The day will feature something for all ages, including a fun day of music, games, craft vendors, face painting, a make-your-own tie-dye party, live local wildlife programs, nature walks, food and much more.

“We’re celebrating Lupine Fest this year with the second running of the Karner Kontraption. Come watch our Pine Bush Rube Goldberg-inspired machine designed by volunteer Jane Tatlock as it demonstrates the process of restoring the Pine Bush. With multiple moving parts, our machine will show the various strategies we use to restore and manage this globally rare, nationally significant and locally distinct ecosystem.”

Guests can meet many of the Preserve’s friends and partners like representatives from Friends of the Pine Bush Community, L.L. Bean’s Outdoor Discovery School, US Fish and Wildlife Service, Mohawk Hudson Land Conservancy, ECOS: The Environmental Clearing House, Into the Wild, the Boy Scouts, the Guilderland Public Library, Guilderland Chamber of Commerce and others.

The festival will be held at the Albany Pine Bush Discovery Center at 195 New Karner Road in Albany. Parking for Lupine Fest is at 302 Washington Avenue Ext. with shuttle rides to and from the parking area. On-site handicap parking available.