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The DEC directive became controversial in Guilderland in 2020 when Pyramid, owner of Crossgates Mall, cut trees to make way for a Costco, citing the need to do so to beat the deadline meant to protect the northern long-eared bats while advocates from Save the Pine Bush said the land had not been properly surveyed for the bats.

BERNE — Peggy Filkins Warner says she learned to be independent from her grandfather.

“That’s where I got my attitude,” she said of her father and his father.

She was born in the Filkins farmhouse on Joslyn School Road in 1930, in an era when not a lot of women were involved in politics.

The new redistricting plan will follow the Albany County Legislature’s recommendation that the county concentrate minority voting power in five dense majority-minority districts rather than up to seven, which is what the original plan, rejected by the legislature, would have done. 

ALBANY COUNTY — Numbers for Albany County are headed in the right direction this week — with infection and hospitalizations rates going down and sales-tax revenues and jobs going up.

Berne is the only one of the four Hilltowns whose tax rate was unchanged, with the others increasing between 1 and 2 percent, but not always for all residents.

Guilderland Conservation Advisory Council members appeared surprised by the turnout and content of the attendees’ public comments because its jurisdiction is environmental and the concerns raised by those at the meeting were largely traffic-related. 

HILLTOWNS — Penny Shaw Bartley has always loved to sing and entertain people.

It started when she was a kid growing up on a farm in Michigan. She and her siblings worked in the fields, “hoeing out weeds and driving the tractor and feeding the animals,” says Shaw in this week’s Enterprise podcast.