The Town of Guilderland is seeking public input on its comprehensive plan update. An open house is planned for next week.
The town is inviting residents, business owners and other stakeholders to participate in a "Public Open House and Visioning Workshop" as part of Guilderland’s Comprehensive Plan Update.
Supervisor Peter Barber says participants will be able to get a firsthand look at possible directions toward the town's future, and to learn about needs and opportunities from community members.
"We want community involvement, we want a robust participation, so it's going to be a very simple very open process," Barber said. "It's over two hours, but you can come for 10 minutes or spend the entire two hours. There's gonna be interactive stations. If you could have a full opportunity to at your own pace, you know, to take a look at issues, express your views and whatnot. So we want to make this open and transparent as possible."
Town Planner Kenneth Kovalchik says information gathered during the open house will help the Comprehensive Plan Update Committee to better understand long-term community vision and goals for the future of the Albany County suburb. He identifies immediate issues of concern as housing affordability, providing adequate water supply, maintaining town infrastructure and supporting development while preserving open space.
“I'm hoping our comprehensive plan Advisory Committee will take a hard look at options to town will have moving forward for providing more affordable housing choices," Kovalchik said. "When it comes to our ability to provide our infrastructure needs, particularly water, we have an issue now primarily in the summertime related to people sprinkling their lawns. So typically, this time of year, the average usage per day is about 3 million gallons to three and a half million gallons. But in the summertime, that could go up to maybe 7 million gallons a day. And then third, obviously, with you know, Guilderland, it's a very appealing community, very good school district. I think that's really what drives people wanting to move here is you have easy access to highways, 87 and 90, Route 20 bisecting the town. So you have really good infrastructure when it comes to your ability to be able to move throughout the community, from the eastern end of town, which is more of an urban suburban, to the western part of town, which you get into the more rural area, the Helderberg escarpment.”
Barber says it will likely take several months to parse all of the data gathered at the open house.
"The Comprehensive Plan process is basically an opportunity for the current residents to gather and basically try to come up with common core principles and goals and recommendations for how they want their town to look, it's not simply just on housing, it'll be on transportation, parks, open space, first responders," Barber said. "So it's a very comprehensive as the word states. So it's intended to basically be a guiding document, that the town would use in terms of looking at zoning code, maybe looking at rezoning properties, trying to encourage certain types of developments. So it's a very key document for planning."
The open house runs Monday, March 20th, from 7 to 9 p.m. at Guilderland Town Hall.
