Today, Governor Andrew Cuomo called his June 12 executive order — the New York State Police Reform and Reinvention Collaborative — ambitious, and urged addressing the crisis. “Very little has been done. Today I’m sending a letter to 500 jurisdictions in New York State that have a police department and the letter is explaining that it is imperative that we address this urgent crisis,” said Cuomo.

The Guilderland School board set tax rates and approved putting about $1.2 million into reserves.

One of the state’s new initiatives is a pilot program — including Albany — to detect the presence of COVID-19 in wastewater, which is designed to set up an early indicator system to forecast the virus spread in communities. “Believe it or not, you can find the presence of COVID-19 in wastewater,” said the governor during a conference call with the press on Friday.

The announcement that New York would reopen schools came against a backdrop in which a research team at the University of Florida isolated live virus from aerosols collected at a distance of seven to 16 feet from patients hospitalized with COVID-19, which is further than the six feet recommended in social-distancing guidelines. Although not yet vetted by peer review, the findings have raised concern about school reopenings.

The federal judge that dismissed a suit from Guilderland residents concluded that, at worst, the town allowed Pyramid to clear-cut part of its property and, she wrote, “While this certainly could be seen as vexatious given that the property was undergoing a SEQRA review, it is not the sort of conduct that shocks the conscience or is ‘truly brutal and offensive to human dignity.’”

“While we cannot say this is a completely risk-free environment, we’re in a pretty good place,” said Albany County Health Commissioner Elizabeth Whalen of schools reopening in the county. “We’re probably in the best place possible.”

About 140 people gathered for a peaceful, home-grown Black Lives Matter rally in Berne on Sunday. Most of them listened to speeches in the park pavilion while two dozen stayed near their motorcycles and pickup trucks on the edge of the parking lot — several saying they saw themselves as protectors since they view the BLM movement as destructive.

Guilderland has joined neighboring municipalities in approving the burying of a cable to bring electricity from Canada to the New York City area. Several citizens and a dissenting town board member raised environmental and human-rights concerns about the megadams producing the hydropower.

“The homeless tend to be very vulnerable to COVID and that’s because there’s a good percentage of them that are older and also have pre-existing conditions — diabetes, heart problems as well as issues with substance abuse and mental health and behavioral issues,” said Albany County Department of Social Services Commissioner Michele McClave.

The statewide school boards association as well as the state’s largest teachers’ union supported the reopening of in-person learning but with caveats.