BERNE — The town of Berne is hitting the gas on government, but pumping the brakes on solar. 

At its April 9 meeting — the second meeting after a seven-month hiatus — the Berne Town Board unanimously appointed a new member to one of its vacancies, and also proposed a local law that would halt commercial solar and all battery-storage projects for one year as the town reviews its zoning. 

The new board member, Joseph Giebelhaus, a Democrat, recently retired as deputy commissioner of General Services for the city of Albany.

Berne Supervisor Dennis Palow, a Republican, told the audience at the meeting that after a "lengthy chat” with Giebelhaus earlier that day, he came away feeling that Giebelhaus was “definitely the right person, in my opinion, to be on the town board.” 

Deputy Supervisor Tom Doolin, also a Republican, added that Giebelhaus is running for supervisor in the fall — he’s endorsed so far by the Democrats and Conservatives, and he’s seeking the Republican endorsement as well — and felt that it would be good to give Giebelhaus a chance to familiarize himself with the board. 

“He can kind of get to know us, have a little bit of background from one administration to another because, starting next year, you’ll have five new town board members with no previous experience — maybe four,” Doolin said, acknowledging at the last minute that Democratic board member Melanie laCour, who herself was recently appointed to the board by Governor Kathy Hochul, is running for her first full term. 

The Berne Town Board is rebuilding itself after three of its members — all of whom ran on the Republican line — resigned suddenly last year over a lack of confidence in Palow’s leadership. 

It took Governor Kathy Hochul several months to appoint laCour, which prevented the board from meeting in the meantime. LaCour’s appointment gave the board only a bare quorum, so Giebelhaus’s appointment gives the board room to breathe on future votes. 

By circumstance, the two members who hadn’t resigned — Doolin and Palow — are up for election this year but neither is running. And, because any appointed positions only last the remainder of the year, all five seats need to be filled by an election this year. The terms for some of the seats are truncated, however, so the town will be back on a normal election schedule after this year. 

The Enterprise previously reported on another town board candidate, Kirsten Mahler, a Conservative who at the time was the only candidate for appointment to the board. She told The Enterprise she was interested in serving the town in some capacity but did not have much political awareness, beyond being unhappy with how she saw local Democrats behave at meetings. 

The town board instead appointed Mahler as a planning board alternate, which Palow suggested would be a low-pressure way to get her involved with the town.

Importantly for the town, Giebelhaus is intimately familiar with municipal waste through his role with the city of Albany’s General Services department, which oversees the Rapp Road landfill. He was the city’s solid-waste coordinator for 18 years before that, his LinkedIn profile says. 

The landfill is expected to close within the next few years, putting Berne and all the other towns in Albany County that send their trash there in a difficult position since there are no obvious alternatives. In the meantime, tipping fees at the landfill jumped significantly and unexpectedly this year, putting early pressure on the municipalities to figure out how to cut back on what they send to the landfill. 

Moratorium

In addition to the appointment, the board also proposed its first local law of 2025, which would put a 12-month moratorium on commercial solar and all battery-storage projects, so that the town can create new regulations and adjust existing ones.

A public hearing was scheduled for May 6 at 6:30 p.m. at the senior center, the former Foxenkill Grange Hall, at 1656 Helderberg Trail.

The town is already processing two commercial solar applications for projects that, if approved, would each be located about a half-mile from the Berne-Knox-Westerlo school campus. 

The first is a 4.25-megawatt facility proposed by TJA Energy that would be located at the intersection of Switzkill and Canaday Hill roads. It was first proposed in January of 2024, but the company had requested a pause on the application later that year so it could make some tweaks, and resumed it earlier this month. 

The second project is a 3.8-megawatt facility proposed by RIC Energy that would be at 28 Jansen Lane. It was proposed in January of this year.

Whichever might be approved first would be the first commercial solar facility in the town. 

Solar moratoriums have been common in the Hilltowns, which, because of their plentiful open spaces, are highly attractive to solar developers, who in turn are highly unattractive to many locals who hope to retain that open space. 

Berne, however, is unique in that it not only already has a robust solar law, but had significantly revised the law just a few years ago. The relatively strict original had been passed by a Democrat-majority board in 2019, and Republicans took the opportunity to make it more favorable to solar developers after gaining control of the board in 2020. 

Neither version of the law, however, included regulations for battery storage, which appears to be the focus of this law. Town attorney George McHugh explained to the town board last month that lithium battery systems associated with commercial solar facilities present a significant fire risk. 

The neighboring town of New Scotland drafted a similar law last year, regulating battery energy storage systems.

This is the town’s second moratorium on solar. The first was passed in early 2019 as the Berne Town Board worked on the original solar law. Palow, who was deputy supervisor at the time, had voted against it, along with Republican Supervisor Sean Lyons.  

Other business

In other business the town board:

— Acknowledged the resignation of Tom Spargo as chairman of the zoning board of appeals. Palow suggested the resignation was related to the recent death of Spargo’s wife and said he hoped that one of the three remaining members of the zoning board would be willing to step up as chair. Spargo, a former State Supreme Court Justice who was convicted of bribery, had been a controversial figure in the town, but did not make waves during his time on the zoning board;

— Announced a new contract for Albany County ambulance service valued at $250,000. Palow said the town will pay $225,000 (more than the $200,000 he cited in December) while Helderberg Ambulance will pay $25,000. LaCour questioned where the town would get this money since the 2025 budget, which does not include ambulance costs, already allocates all its revenue to other expenses. She agreed to have the question addressed outside of the meeting; and

— Discussed the need to renew a franchise contract with Spectrum that had ended in 2001 unbeknownst to anyone, including the company. Palow said that Spectrum had recently figured this out and alerted the town. Upon investigation, Palow said, he and Town Clerk Kristin de Oliveira learned that in 2001 a town board member at the time had been tasked with renewing the contract, but apparently never did. The town has been receiving around $18,000 annually in revenue from Spectrum all the while, and, under the circumstances, Palow says the town has an opportunity to negotiate a higher return. He said he would be reviewing other franchise contracts as well. To renew the Spectrum contract requires a public hearing, which was scheduled for May 6 at 6:30 p.m., running concurrently with the moratorium hearing.