NEW SCOTLAND — Residents here worked to preserve their history and their natural surroundings this year, while also preparing for future expansion and addressing current needs.

History and nature

Citizens and the town board worked year-round to preserve and relocate the historic Hilton LeVie barn from its original site on land owned by Country Club Parters near the Colonie Country Club. The proposed relocation of the barn is still in flux, but the Albany County Legislature voted in November to accept requests for proposals to move the barn.

“They need to be ready,” said Mark King, the director of the Mohawk Hudson Land Conservancy about the legislature.

The conservancy has been negotiating to purchase land from two out-of-state Hilton heirs, who still own 13 acres across the road from the barn’s current location on Route 85A, King said. The heirs may sell one acre near the existing county rail trail to the conservancy for the placement of the barn, he said. 

The previous barn owner, Country Club Partners, was in the process of selling the land to a developer last summer; a 16-lot housing development has already received town approvals. The town has been scrambling since last winter to find funds and land to move the barn before it is torn down for the housing development.

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In April, the land conservancy announced an acquisitions of conservation easements to create a 3,000-acre corridor of preserved land from New Scotland into John Boyd Thacher State Park, according to King.

“We are trying to build a corridor of protected land,” he said. The conservancy acquired an 87-acre easement off Picard Road from Margaret Craven Snowden in December 2014, and negotiated with Chris Lehman, who runs the Albany Therapeutic Riding Center Inc. on her farm at the end of Martin Road Extension.

Craven Snowden called the easement “a miracle,” allowing her to fulfill her decade-long dream of preserving the land she loves.

King hoped to link Craven Snowden’s and Lehman’s lands to a village-owned lot up the hill from Lehman’s dead end and to lands owned by Heldeberg Workshop, eventually reaching directly up the ridge to John Boyd Thacher State Park. On the other side of the corridor, Craven Snowden’s property touches Indian Ladder Farms, for which the conservancy also holds a preservation easement.

In June, state park and local officials attended a ceremonial groundbreaking for a proposed $3.8 million visitors' center at John Boyd Thacher State Park. The proposed Thacher Park Center will include displays on local geology, fossils, and history, and provide restrooms and trail information to visitors. New playground equipment is also proposed for the upcoming Thacher Park Center.

Also in June, Maureen Curry was named to replace Christopher Fallon as John Boyd Thacher State Park manager. 

In October, the Five Rivers Environmental Education Center that lies in both New Scotland and Bethlehem hosted a groundbreaking for a new $7 million visitor center.

The new center will allow hands-on exhibits to stay open all year; designers hope to expand the diversity of people who use the park and continue to offer Braille, large print, and audio guides for trails. Staff estimated that 3.6 million people have visited Five Rivers since it opened in 1972.

Envision Architects designed “a living green building,” said Marc Gerstman, the acting commissioner of the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation. The building will incorporate features like a vegetative roof and the use of gray water systems similar to the ones in the Wendy Repass Suozzo Guided School Program education building, built in 2012, which sits nearby.

The new building will replace the older building onsite that houses the center’s hands-on exhibits and displays.

 

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Town business

In July, the town board appointed Democrat Adam Greenberg to fill the seat left vacant by the mid-term resignation of Daniel Mackay.

"We still have five months left in the year, and there's a lot of work to be done, especially budget," said board member William C. Hennessy. "I prefer to fill that seat."

In the November election, Greenberg was challenged by Republican Craig A. Shufelt for Mackay’s seat; both men garnered over 1,100 votes, with Greenberg besting Shufelt by 54 votes.

Supervisor Thomas Dolin announced in May that he would not seek re-election, and the New Scotland Democratic Party committee voted to back Councilman Douglas LaGrange, a member of the Independence Party. LaGrange currently serves as deputy supervisor. LaGrange switched from the Republican Party to the Independence Party during the townwide political upheaval that occurred when a large “big-box” development was proposed for the rural hamlet of New Scotland in 2009.

Dolin served as supervisor for eight years; during that time, he worked with zoning to cap the maximum size of a retail store at 50,000 square feet; increased the town’s reserves during the “worst economic collapse since the Great Depression,” and improved water supply in the hamlet of New Salem, he wrote in a letter to The Enterprise, announcing his resignation.

“Tom has done such a tremendous job as supervisor,” New Scotland Democratic Party Chairman L. Michael Mackey told The Enterprise.

Dolin took office during difficult times, Mackey said, including during the recession of 2008, and during the “significant development concerns of the big-box” proposal.

“We’re lucky we had him in charge of the town these past few years,” Mackey said of Dolin.

The town set its $7.8 million budget for 2016 to include a 1-percent raise for all employees, according to Dolin, the board’s budget officer. The total proposed budget is $7,798,153, up almost $600,000 from 2015.

“We’re still under the cap,” he told The Enterprise, referring to the state-set tax-levy cap of .73 percent.

Lisa Boehlke, the clerk to the supervisor, told The Enterprise that the tax rate for general fund A, for which both town and Voorheesville village residents pay, is $1.38 per $1,000 of assessed value for 2016. The rate decreased slightly, by less than 1 percent, she said.

“The levy has remained the same,” she said.

In the second general fund, B, for residents outside the village, the tax rate is an additional $0.18 per $1,000, and covers services like garbage pick-up, Boehlke said.

Also, residents outside the village pay into an additional highway fund at a rate of $0.313 per $1,000; together the two B funds have a rate of $0.493 per $1,000, she said.

 

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Local Arts

Laura Ten Eyck and her husband, Dietrich Gehring, have taken their fascination with growing hops and turned it into a book by Chelsea Green Publishing, “The Hop Grower's Handbook: The Essential Guide for Sustainable, Small-Scale Production for Home and Market,” which came out this fall.

“We were approached by Chelsea Green to write the book,” Gehring told The Enterprise. “They found us on social media.”

A century ago, hops was a big market in New York State, but disease destroyed both crops and sales, and the market moved to the Pacific Northwest on a smaller scale.

Gehring, a beer hobbiest, started a small hops crop that grew to 60 acres at Indian Ladder Farms, which is owned by his wife’s father, Peter Ten Eyck.

“It’s a beautiful plant,” he said. “You kind of get the hop bug. It’s an incredible plant. You can hear them growing. They’ll grow six to eight inches a day.”

Voorheesville resident Alana Fiero created a video about the dangers of crude oil trains to combine her passions for the environment with her belief in the power of the media to “promote environmental sustainability,” she told The Enterprise.

“Videos are a great way…for people to really learn about an issue,” she said.

Fiero is a sophomore at Pennsylvania State University majoring in media studies in the College of Communications, and minoring in environmental inquiry. She made the video as part of an internship this summer with the not-for-profit group Environmental Advocates of New York in Albany.

“Environmental Advocates was great,” Fiero said. “They pushed me outside of my comfort zone. I was happy to take on a project that was big.”

Proposed developments

Water rates and access made headlines in 2015.

A 22-lot subdivision at the former Camp Shelley is closer to town approval; the planning board in August continued an application to give owner Jameson Phillips time to further develop slope calculations; complete a wetland delineation report, and create an ownership and maintenance plan for the property’s pond.

Phillips proposed the subdivision on 62 acres off Route 85. Engineer Nicholas Costa, of Advance Engineering and Surveying, of Latham, said that the water system will run up-slope and through the woods from the Swift Road pump station to the roadway at Route 85. The proposed project would use a sanitary sewer, he said.

Costa plans to use a 6-inch pipe to come off Swift Road, and to install hydrants, he said.

The water source, from the Swift Road pump, is from the town of Bethlehem.

Heldervale water district residents this summer expressed concern with a lag time by the town in setting a meeting to discuss water rates they say are too expensive; New Scotland users in this area pay twice the rate of Bethlehem town users.

The subject came to the fore this year when the Creekside housing development outside the hamlet of New Scotland neared completion of its application to put in up to 20 water and sewer taps off the Heldervale system in Slingerlands.

In September, the New Scotland Town Board discussed its water-rate agreement with Bethlehem, with a consensus that the contract between the towns allows Bethlehem to charge up to two times the in-district rate.

“The rate arrangement is the same for 50 years,” Dolin told The Enterprise. He said that the town has the same agreement with the village of Voorheesville for water in the Country Club Estates subdivision.

In December, the town met with Heldervale residents to discuss the reasons for the high water rates, which run about $14 per 1,000 gallons, including maintenance and operational costs.

Also in December, Bethlehem officials announced the creation of a comprehensive water agreement between New Scotland and Bethlehem to be created before changes to rates or new taps are evaluated.

New Scotland also explored working with Guilderland to extend water to homes along the towns’ border. Calling a potential Weatherfield development water extension a supervisors’ joint project, Dolin said he discussed with then-Guilderland Supervisor Kenneth Runion the possibility of having water provided to homes on Wormer and Johnston roads, in New Scotland, during the project.

“There’s a hydrology study that’s being conducted to determine what would be needed in that area,” Runion told The Enterprise. The study is being paid for by the Albany Country Club subdivision, and the towns of New Scotland and Guilderland, he said.

“The current system that serves Weatherfield is maxed out,” Runion said. “There is water and sewer there. The sewer is fine. It’s the water system that is maxed out.”

Runion said that the water system is not expiring, rather, “We’ve hit the maximum number of customers that can go on the system. For the future, it should be upgraded.”

The original water system was put in when the development was built in the 1980s, he said.

This year, he said, “was a good time for the three entities to look to enhance that system.”

The proposed water district expansion would include the construction of a water tower, Dolin said.

Utility expansions

Verizon may no longer drop signals in Clarksville, if the company receives a variance for a tower almost 80 feet taller than town code allows.

The zoning board heard a variance request by Nixon Peabody representing Cellco Partnership, a subsidiary of Verizon Wireless, to construct a 124-foot tower with up to 12 antennas at 116 feet. Under town standards, commercial towers can be only 45 feet high.

“Usage is doubling year over year,” said Rick Andras, a radio frequency engineer for Verizon Wireless. Andras said that Verizon is unable to keep up.

In February, Tennessee Gas Pipeline representatives ringed the packed hall at the Colonie Country Club Thursday during an information session for the proposed pipeline expansion that would cross Albany County to bring more energy downstate.

Union members of Laborers’ Local 190 attended in orange, waving a large union flag and parking a neon orange electrical display outside the posh country club’s front door. Residents, local and county politicians, construction workers, quiet protesters, and Tennessee Gas employees mingled while munching on catered hors d'oeuvres and perusing maps of the proposed pipeline expansion.

The information session was scheduled after the Albany County Legislature passed a resolution in December calling for local public input on the proposed expansion. New Scotland passed a similar resolution in November 2014.

In May, Mackey, who also serves as a county legislator, drafted an anti-blasting bill later signed into law to protect New Scotland residents from water troubles related to the pipeline expansion.

Under the law, the costs for fixing problems with wells caused by blasting will shift from the homeowner to the blaster, Mackey said.

“It buys a great deal of protection for people,” he said. “It encourages the company to consider other methods than blasting. The best thing would be to have no blasting affecting water in the first place.”

Mackey called the unanimous, 39-0, vote “very unusual.” He said that few issues have pulled the legislature together like the drinking-water law.

Town improvements

The town continued ongoing projects and improvements, including:

— A New Salem water district project. The $3 million water project, planned for the last 10 years, was separated into three segments. Casale Construction Services received the bulk of the funds, at $2,277,269 for site plumbing.

The project was decades in the making, and required a contract between Bethlehem, which supplied many New Salem residences for years, and New Scotland, which is taking over billing for the water still supplied by Bethlehem for each connection to New Scotland’s newly-installed water pipes.

Construction began last fall, and is expected to be complete this winter; and

— The creation of a hamlet center in New Scotland. In August, the town received a $70,000 grant — of which $58,000 was federal money and $12,000 was from the town budget — to be administered by the Capital District Transportation Committee. The funds were to be used to hire a consultant to guide the town in codifying its planned residential-commercial district at the intersection of routes 85 and 85A.

About town

In crime, New Scotland resident Joshua Spratt, 35, pleaded guilty to one count of third-degree criminal sexual act, a felony, to Judge Thomas A. Breslin in Albany County Supreme Court on Oct. 8.

In July, Spratt, a Watervliet police officer, was charged with four counts of a third-degree criminal sexual act, all felonies; two counts of official misconduct, and endangering the welfare of a minor, all misdemeanors.

The guilty plea was in full satisfaction of several criminal sexual acts, and a charge of official misconduct, according to a statement from the Albany County District Attorney’s office.
His arrest came two months after Watervliet’s school superintendent called the Watervliet Police with concerns about Spratt, who was stationed at the high school; he was charged with criminal sexual acts against female students.
Between Feb. 14 and April 10, Spratt engaged in four separate sexual acts with a 16-year-old girl in Watervliet and in Menands, the district attorney’s office said.

Also, a drunk driver caused a head-on crash on Oct. 24 before striking a pole in Feura Bush, police said; the driver, Donald H. Hojnicki, 25, nearly collided with a police car as he recklessly passed cars near the Bethlehem athletic compound on Route 32.

Bethlehem Police Department Officer Timothy Travis was on patrol northbound on Route 32 just past the athletic compound facility when Hojnicki, of Albany, drove “straight at him in the wrong lane,” said Commander Adam Hornick.

“The defendant was passing three other vehicles,” Hornick said. Travis turned around and tried to catch up to Hojnicki, who kept driving on Route 32 into Feura Bush.

Hojnicki continued to pass multiple vehicles in a no-passing zone for another half-mile before hitting a Ford head-on, the police report said, then veered into a telephone pole by Mauro’s Menu in Feura Bush.

“The officer came over the bridge [on Route 32] — he was still on the bridge when the defendant ended up near Mauro’s market,” Hornick said. “The whole incident took place over seven-tenths of a mile.”

Travis immediately rendered aid to the driver of the Ford, whose right leg was fractured, police say.

“A lot of neighbors were outside,” Hornick said. “People came over to help.”

Hojnicki suffered no injuries, he said.

In August, retired CSX engineer Steven Kalow, 65, of Glenmont, committed suicide by train on Sunday night on tracks not far from Town Hall, according to Albany County Sheriff Craig Apple.

“The accident was on Game Farm Road in the town of New Scotland,” Apple wrote in an email to The Enterprise. “We don’t believe this was an accident.  This is an apparent suicide.”

Kalow was killed by an overnight train that crossed Game Farm Road; his body was “observed” by an 8 a.m. CSX train, Apple wrote.

Kalow left a letter describing where his family could find money he left behind for his burial, Apple wrote.

Kalow retired from CSX as an engineer, according to the sheriff.

New businesses

In March, Vicki Dollard held a ribbon-cutting ceremony for Vic’s Town Barber Shop in Stonewell Plaza.

“I do men’s and boys’ haircuts,” Dollard said. Her modern shop features old-fashioned options combined with the latest in men’s hair-care fashions.

Dollard offers hot-towel shaves, she said. In between haircuts, Dollard also does “edge-ups,” shaving down around the neck, she said, “for proms, or for going out for the evening.”

Beard trims are popular with her customers, she said. Many men now grow beards, thanks to “No-Shave November” events, she said.

“Hunters like to grow their beards in the winter,” Dollard said. Construction workers also tend to grow them, she said.

Experienced restaurateurs Dan Bailey and Paul Salvino want to add onto and renovate Pixie’s restaurant and tavern on Route 32, surveyor Cynthia Elliott told the town’s planning and zoning boards as their applications moved through the required motions this fall and winter.

Bailey and Salvino are major shareholders in Hudson Valley Italian Restaurant Inc., a family firm that owns Pomodoro’s Italian Eatery in Catskill and Paul’s Pizza and Pasta in West Coxsackie, both in Greene County, and previously owned Joey’s Pizza in Catskill and Ravena.

Local resident Charles Shufelt tried to open a truck-repair garage on his North Road property, but was given a stop-order by the town after purchasing, renovating, and being given a certificate of occupancy for the former Kleen Resources commercial site that is now zoned residential.

Shufelt went before the zoning and planning boards this fall to appeal the denial by the town’s building inspector of his application to run an auto-repair garage. The building — a 60-foot-by-60-foot commercial garage — was previously used the same way with no break of more than a year in use, his attorney argued, and Shufelt requested a second variance for the same use. A decision is still pending.

In November, Elliott told the planning board that she wants to replant her mother’s tree farm on property she now owns in Feura Bush. She and her family applied, as Triple S Farm, for a special-use permit to allow her to sell wreaths, boughs, and trees at the farm’s existing pavilion in the winter.

“I hope to rebuild the trees my mother had had for 37 years,” Elliott said about the previous Scotch Hill Acres, off Route 308.

Elliott wants to use the enclosed pavilion, which has kitchen and bathroom facilities and water, as an outdoor banquet facility during the tree farm’s off season. She said that she got the idea after hosting family weddings there.

The area can accommodate 100 cars, she said.