Council Member Bill Keal told a sitting Planning Commissioner in writing that he would support abolishing the commission because “a new administration wants people who share its vision.” Commissioner James Rath read that email aloud at the July 11, 2024 public hearing, while Keal sat at the dais.
Planning commissions exist to be independent. Troy’s was built that way: seven members, staggered three-year terms, no single administration able to replace the entire board at once. Commissioners did not answer to the mayor. That was the design.
Mayor Carmella Mantello proposed abolishing the commission six months into her first term. On July 25, 2024, the council’s four Republican members voted with her. Three Democrats voted no. Every speaker at both public hearings opposed the change.
What replaced the commission was a five-member planning board with no stagger. Mantello filled all five seats herself.
What the City Lost
Troy’s Planning Commission had reviewed 118 projects in three years and rejected none. It approved the former Troy High School renovation, the YWCA, Kings Landing, City Station 2, 118 Fifth Street senior housing, and more than a thousand housing units citywide in various stages. It handled 20 Type 1 environmental actions, the most demanding reviews the process requires.
The commissioners were not bureaucrats. Suzanne Spellen was an architectural historian. James Rath was a transportation planner. Stephen Maples had spent his career at the Capital Region Transportation Council. Sarah Wingert was a registered architect who presented projects to planning bodies across the Capital District. Roddy Yagan had chaired the commission for years. Bill Kaminsky was an attorney with 30 years of public service. None of them answered to Carmella Mantello, and none of them were going to.
They caught things planning staff missed. At the Troy Savings Bank Music Hall, Rath noticed ADA-compliant curb ramps were missing from a renovation site plan and asked the applicant to add them. The applicant agreed. “They’ll have people who can come and enjoy a night at the Music Hall safely and with dignity,” Rath said at the July 25 hearing. Then he asked who would catch those things once the commission was gone.
Nobody answered.
Planning Director Eric Ferraro was already stretched thin. The commission absorbed a significant volume of review work without a budget line, without staff, and without any support from the administration. Wingert said it plainly: “If nothing else, keep the Planning Commission for Eric Ferraro.” That workload did not disappear when the commission did. It moved to a department that had never been given the resources to carry it.
The city lost something structural, too. An independent commission between developers and elected officials is a check on who gets to call in a favor. Once every seat on the planning board answers to the mayor, that check is gone.
Former chair Yagan said after the vote that he was personally thinking about leaving the city. “I’ve been here for 16 years. I’m an RPI graduate. I fell in love with the city. It’s why I joined the Planning Commission.” He had given years of unpaid expertise to Troy’s public life. The administration called the commission he led dysfunctional. He left.
Six Months of No Contact
Mantello took office in January 2024. She proposed abolishing the commission in July 2024. In between, she had no substantive contact with the commission at all.
Rath had reached out to the administration four times over six months, by phone, email, and in person, and been promised a follow-up meeting that never happened. The day before the July 11 hearing, the mayor’s confidential assistant emailed to say the administration was always available. Rath replied that he had also been available. He had not heard back.
Wingert told the council the administration had offered neither onboarding nor feedback of any kind in its first six months in office. The commission had trained itself, through outside resources and former commissioners. As an architect who presents projects to planning bodies across the Capital District, she said Troy’s commission was faster and more efficient than most. The administration did not try to work with the commission. It built a case against it.
The Case Built Against Them
Corporation Counsel Dana Salazar submitted a memo arguing the commission’s authority was limited to confirming code compliance and did not extend to aesthetic or design judgments. She described the planning process as “a check the box job when it comes to site plan approval.” She said the city had received calls from attorneys threatening Article 78 litigation against commission decisions.
Every commissioner who testified cited Chapter 285, Troy’s own zoning ordinance, which explicitly authorizes the commission to evaluate neighborhood impact, aesthetics, transportation infrastructure, landscaping, and special use effects on neighborhood character. What Salazar called overreach was what the statute required.
David Banks, a geography and planning professor at UAlbany who trains municipal planners, identified where the Article 78 exposure actually sat. Stating on the record, repeatedly, that the commission was dysfunctional or politically motivated, while commissioners testified those characterizations were factually wrong, was the kind of documented misrepresentation that invites Article 78 litigation. “Shut this down,” he said. “Stop.”
The administration’s own deputy corporation counsel had already undercut the case. Rick Mory told the Planning Commission at its most recent meeting, on the record, that the commission had operated within its purview. The administration cited Mory’s advice in proceeding with the dissolution. Rath asked the question from the podium: “Why aren’t we listening to him when he tells us directly that we’re operating within our purview?” No one on the dais answered.
The Developer Connection
Keal’s email was not the only evidence of outside pressure. Jessica Bennett named the source from the podium: Kevin Vandenberg, the developer behind the stalled 10-11 Second Avenue project, had lobbied council members to replace the commission. “Kevin Vandenberg threw his weight around,” said Rachel Carter of Lansingburgh. Bennett had filed a FOIL request that morning for all correspondence between the mayor’s office and any developer regarding the Planning Commission since January 1, 2024.
Former commission chair Yagan disputed the administration’s account of the 10-11 Second Avenue project directly. The one Planning Commission meeting that addressed it was held to discuss street infrastructure, not to block the development. Mickey Dobbin, who attended that meeting, confirmed it: the commission asked whether the applicant had considered balconies. It never required them.
No results from Bennett’s FOIL request have been made public.
What Three Environmental Groups Said
Rebecca Martin of Riverkeeper read a joint letter into the record co-signed by Scenic Hudson and Hudson River Sloop Clearwater. The three organizations urged a no vote on a single principle: planning bodies should operate free from elected officials’ influence. If individual commissioners were acting improperly, the appropriate remedy was a conversation with the chair, not a wholesale structural replacement that handed all appointments to the mayor.
It was the only multi-organization environmental statement submitted on a Troy city council agenda item in the 2024 term.
The Procedural Gap
Council member Vera identified a legal exposure in the companion legislation.
On July 11, the council voted 4 to 3 to pass Ordinance 39, which created the new Planning Board under Chapter 72. That vote happened at the same meeting where Ord. 39 was introduced. Under the Troy City Charter, an ordinance cannot be adopted at the same meeting where it is introduced unless two-thirds of council members vote in favor. That threshold is five votes out of seven. Ord. 39 passed on four.
If Ord. 39 was invalidly adopted for lack of votes, the new Planning Board had no legal foundation. After Local Law 3 repealed Chapter 71, Troy would have no functioning planning body at all.
Corporation Counsel Salazar said she disagreed with that reading. No written legal analysis was ever produced.
Before the vote on Local Law 3, Council President Steele moved to table it pending written legal review of the Ord. 39 question. The motion failed 3 to 4. Keal, Brosnan, Sorriento, and Casey voted no.
The Vote
Local Law 3 passed 4 to 3 at the Finance Committee and 4 to 3 again at the Special Meeting. The alignment was the same both times: Keal, Brosnan, Sorriento, and Casey in favor; Steele, Vera, and Spain-McLaren opposed.
Vera pressed the mayor directly: was the assurance that pending Planning Commission applications would carry over to the new board in writing? Mantello acknowledged it was verbal. Salazar said a council member could sponsor a written amendment. None did.
Attorney Kaminsky had said from the floor what he believed was at stake for whoever served on the new board: “A planning board that doesn’t have discretion to do exactly what you told them to do and evaluate the characteristics of the property isn’t a planning board. They’re not there at all.” He did not oppose creating a new board. He urged the council to give whoever served on it the independence to do the job.
Steele spoke last before the roll call. She addressed the commissioners directly: “I’m sorry that you have had to go through this. You have worked so hard as citizens of Troy to make your community better. There was no need to impugn your reputations. This is political, pure and simple. It could have been done differently.”
What Mantello Got
Seven independent commissioners with staggered terms became five mayoral appointees with no stagger. Mantello announced all five herself after Labor Day 2024.
The commission had a documented record: 118 projects reviewed, zero rejected, including 20 of the most complex environmental actions the process requires. The administration never produced that record in either hearing. Instead, it produced a legal memo redefining the commission’s role as ministerial, a new ordinance giving the mayor immediate and total control over board composition, and a public hearing record in which every speaker, including former commissioners, environmental groups, and planning professionals, urged the council to vote no.
The council’s majority voted yes.
Sources: Troy City Council meetings, July 11, 2024 and July 25, 2024 (transcripts and clerk’s minutes); WAMC, “Troy’s Planning Commission in Limbo After Mayor’s Move,” July 12, 2024; WAMC, “Troy Planning Commission Abolished,” July 26, 2024; CBS6 Albany, “Opposition Cries Foul as Troy Replaces Planning Commission with Mayor-Appointed Board,” July 26, 2024; Spectrum News, “Troy City Council Repeals Planning Commission,” July 26, 2024