Guilderland Town Supervisor Peter Barber delivered his State of the Town address this morning at Town Hall.
Barber, a Democrat in office since 2015, gave an accounting of the Albany County town's accomplishments over the last year, beginning Thursday’s address with an update of its Comprehensive Plan, which builds on an existing plan from 2001.
“This is a snapshot of what the town does, there's a lot more than this going on behind the scenes, and I don't want to be slighting anybody," Barber said. "The goal of this speech is to show how the town I think is really trying every day to improve the quality of life of town residents. I can say that I have some guarded optimism. Guarded in that a lot of the problems we face are outside our control. We have what's happening in the Middle East, we have issues around the world that can impact the economy, filter into debate, you know, people getting worried about buying things sales, tax and whatnot. But I'm also very optimistic because I think with the support of the town board, I think we have a very progressive and very aggressive agenda to again, try to improve the quality of life of residents.”
The population of the town of Guilderland stands at nearly 39,000.
“We have a very diverse population," Barber noted. "But we also have a very aging population. And it's very important, I think, for us to make sure we meet the needs of both those population groups. We also have a demand for parks and open space, we also pedestrian public safety issues are cropping up.”
Issues Barber highlighted include the town budget and simplified property tax bills. He pointed out that town court is back to its pre-pandemic caseload. A new town website went live in December with a full-year calendar for all meetings of boards and committees along with expanded access to town news, while allowing residents to submit forms and applications online.
"Our whole goal here is to make sure we're transparent and we're giving as much opportunity for people to be heard," said Barber. "The new website has a 'report a concern,' which has become very popular there. Whether you have a concern about a zoning violation or concern about a lost cat or lost dog, it will refer you to the right people in our town staff to address those concerns. It's a work in progress."
Barber added the town has made strides in public safety: six ambulances are now operating and vehicle repairs are done in-house. Guilderland's first new EMS ambulance station in 40 years is set to open in late spring. A new fire training facility has been built. An expanded police force now includes 43 uniformed officers, the highest in Guilderland's history. Two new police vehicles and an animal control van have been deployed and all police body and car cameras have been replaced with new models. In 2016 Guilderland was the first area police department to roll them out. He says dispatch equipment has also been updated. The town is also moving toward imposing a 25-mile-an hour speed limit.
“The legislature passed a bill that allowed towns to lower their speeds from 30 to 25 miles per hour," Barber said. "But with a huge caveat: you had to have a traffic engineer certify that the 25 mile per hour speed was warranted. And that’s a very difficult standard. A lot of times you just spent a lot of money, and that person will come back and say ‘no, you got to keep your speed at 30 miles per hour.’ The state legislature is now considering a proposed law that would further reduce the speed, severely cut down to 20 mph, not likely to happen in our town be honest with you, but anything out there as a possibility. But the more important thing was to eliminate the need for a traffic study. It doesn't mean by the way that we're going to do it, it's going to be studied by our police department, it's going to be a very expensive undertaking.”
You can hear the full address by clicking the link below.
