BERNE — When Joe Giebelhaus turned 55, he decided it was time to retire from a nearly three-decade career with the city of Albany and move to Berne, which he’d fallen in love with on motorcycle rides through the area. From his backyard on Warners Lake, he snapped a photo of a sunset that he says explains why he moved there.

So he was surprised when, in the process of getting settled into his new home, he turned on the television and learned that the tiny, picturesque town was suing Governor Kathy Hochul. 

“I’m embarrassed to say that I had no idea why,” Giebelhaus told The Enterprise this week. “I listened to the news broadcast and I was shocked.” 

The reason, of course, is that the governor was dragging her feet on making an appointment to the Berne Town Board, which had been frozen by the sudden resignations of three of the five all-Republican members in August over concerns with Supervisor Dennis Palow’s leadership and handling of town finances, leaving the board without a quorum, and fragmenting the political order in the Republican-dominated town. 

On hearing the news, Giebelhaus, a registered Democrat, decided to reach out to Conservative Albany County Legislator Chris Smith. Smith’s district includes Berne, and Smith filled him in on the many controversies the town has gone through in the last several years, and suggested that Kiebelhaus’s background with the city would be of use to the town as it works to rebuild itself. 

Giebelhaus had logged 28 years with the city of Albany, including 18 years as solid-waste manager and seven years as deputy commissioner of the city’s general services department, where he oversaw a $34 million budget and managed 300 employees. 

“I read the articles, I’m hearing the stories, and I’m as concerned as everyone else is,” Giebelhaus said. “I’d just like to lend my personal experience to the problems.” 

In February, Hochul appointed Democrat Melanie laCour, an attorney, to the board, joining Supervisor Dennis Palow and Deputy Supervisor Tom Doolin, who are both Republicans. Together, the three appointed Giebelhaus as the fourth member at a town board meeting on April 9, with Doolin and Palow both singing Giebelhaus’s praises. 

It was a rare bipartisan moment in a town that has been gripped by grievance politics for the past decade — especially considering the weight that an appointment to the board carries in an unprecedented election year where voters will submit ballots for all five seats, and neither Palow nor Doolin are seeking re-election. 

Not that Giebelhaus, who’s running for supervisor, needs the help. He’s already nabbed both the Democratic and Conservative endorsements, and Palow suggested at the board meeting that he’s on track to get the Republican endorsement as well.

Juxtapose that with the inordinately vicious 2021 election, where partisanship was so high and the Republican party so dominant that Democratic candidates put up with false allegations of identity theft and animal abuse during the campaign, only to get such bad returns that, in 2023, they decided it wasn’t worth the hassle and didn’t endorse anyone. 

Republican Chairman Joe Martin — who was elected to the town board in 2023 and is one of the members who resigned — declined to comment on Palow’s remarks this week, explaining that the party caucus has yet to be held, on April 17.

“It would be premature for me to make any endorsements at this time but I do look forward to the changes coming,” Martin said. “I believe the residents deserve a government for the people.”

Democratic spokesperson Jeff Marden, meanwhile, shared a statement from the committee that Giebelhaus’s “character, background, and career-long dedication to public service clearly stood out” to them.

“We’re excited to support his campaign and are confident that he will serve Berne well and play a key role in helping to restore our town’s finances and courteous governance,” the statement said. 

For his part, Giebelhaus isn’t interested in who’s to blame or the price to be paid, and will approach the town board role agnostically. 

“I’ve just retired so I have some time to dig in and take it from a bit of an educated standpoint,” he told The Enterprise, explaining that the administration of cities and towns is the “same but different.” 

“I’m going to spend the rest of the summer and into the fall studying the difference between city ordinances and town ordinances, educating myself on it,” he said. “That’s job one for me.” 

Giebelhaus said he’s already looked over the town budget and acknowledged the many questions — “I don’t want to say ‘issues,’” he said — that residents (as well as Councilwoman laCour) have had over the deficit and whether the town can meet its financial obligations. 

The Enterprise has written extensively about the town’s routinely unpaid utility bills and other financial red-flags, and it’s a standing question how it will cover its $225,000 ambulance bill from Albany County, which was not included in the 2025 budget but is nevertheless due at the end of the year. Palow and Town Clerk Kristin de Oliveira could not be reached this week for clarity on the latter. 

When asked about handling conflict, Giebelhaus told The Enterprise that handling conflict had been part-and-parcel of managing a 300-person workforce. 

“There’s always going to be clashes of personality …,” he said, adding that negotiation is key in these cases. “I am data-driven. I am big on data-modeling and decision-making. Numbers don’t lie, and that’s the best way to solve a conflict.” 

In his role, Giebelhaus was directly responsible for the administration of the Rapp Road landfill, where Berne — and every other town in The Enterprise coverage area besides Guilderland — sends its trash. The landfill is scheduled to reach capacity in 2028, though, and there’s no immediate alternative once it closes, making this one of the more pressing issues that these towns will face in the next four years. 

This puts Giebelhaus in a position where he will not only lead the town of Berne through that situation, but may provide the model for neighboring towns. 

He said this week that, “The city of Albany, when I retired, was working on a plan to develop a transfer station for long-hauling … I left them with a plan in their hands to execute for a larger transfer facility at Rapp Road. That was the plan they were working on when I left, and there should be something in place to accept the waste.” 

Besides all that, Giebelhaus told The Enterprise he spends a lot of time in his garage working on motorcycles and was, at the time of the conversation, on his way to the gym. 

“What else can I tell you?” he said. “Just a regular guy.”