A controversial public hearing in Berne over a proposal to expand the town Planning Board from five to seven people and to allow convicted felon and ex-judge Thomas Spargo to serve on the Planning Board, devolved into an acrimonious shouting match filled with technological glitches, unmuted microphones, and Zoom-bombing before adjourned to another date.

The raucous and unruly video-conference debate featured insults between board members, confusion over who was speaking and ultimately a foreign language being typed on the screen

The meeting was largely unmuted, which meant that anyone who wanted to speak at any time could do so. Eventually, town attorney Javid Afzali muted everyone’s microphones except Town Board members.

After realizing there were clear difficulties in ensuring everyone could be heard during the hearing, the Town Board voted to adjourn the public hearing and reopen it next month during an in-person meeting so they could discuss the proposal.

The rest of the article discusses the background of the controversy.

The COVID 19 pandemic has thwarted the Town of Balston’s newly elected official’s efforts to fulfill their most popular election promise - a yearlong moratorium on large building projects. Supervisor Connolly said the proposed moratorium would have halted the construction of major subdivisions, commercial and industrial developments, senior living facilities, and planned unit development districts. Nevertheless, while moving deftly toward a moratorium, the supervisor noted that the Town is in a holding pattern because our attorneys are arguing that due to the Town’s inability to assure everyone can join a teleconference to let their opinions be heard, Town attorneys are arguing that teleconference public hearings may not hold up in a court of law if someone argued ‘I could not get connected to the teleconference through a Zoom call’. Therefore, public hearings are being delayed until the Town "can do it right”.

During the COVID 19 imposed moratorium delay, the Balston Town Board has directed MJ Engineering and Land Surveying to complete an updated comprehensive plan and will also commission a generic environmental impact study and traffic study to professionally set up the Town to deal with growth

The Altamont Enterprise has been and continues to be a very important resource for Guilderland and adjacent Towns. As the Guilderland Coalition for Responsible Growth has grown from a grassroots group with a growing number of active and supporting members focused on a few issues at its initiation, to a not for profit with a structured governance able to focus on a broad array of development proposals before the Town of Guilderland’s boards to developing fora for residents to maximize their voice and influence over land use and procedural issues, the Altamont Enterprise’s unbiased and well researched reporting on issues of importance to the Guilderland Coalition for Responsible Growth has been very important to the Guilderland Coalitions for Responsible Growth’s ability to grow and inform residents of Guilderland and adjacent Towns to focus on mutually important events and development proposals and for members and supporters to express their personal opinions through Letters to the Editor and Columns.

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