Government programs were announced this week to help small-business owners, manufacturers, child-care centers, farmers, and workers who lost wages — all due to the pandemic.

The spike of COVID-19 cases at UAlbany can be traced back to athletes and to off-campus housing in the Pine Hills neighborhood of Albany, said Albany County Executive Daniel McCoy.

Currently, some places in Guilderland’s five elementary schools, middle school, and high school have “dead spots” for communication, said Superintendent Marie Wiles. The award will be used to upgrade radio communication for all seven buildings.

“The focal issue for the legislature is we don’t want to become the dumping ground for New York State or for the Northeast,” says William Reinhardt, who chairs the county legislature’s Conservation, Sustainability and Green Initiatives Committee and who sponsored the Clean air Act.

With no federal bail-out on the horizon Wednesday, local Assembly members and the state’s largest teachers’ union called for New York to raise taxes on the wealthy to help poor school districts hurt by aid cuts in the wake of the pandemic.

Guilderland library trustees voted unanimously to reopen the library — as coronavirus restrictions allow — while construction is underway for an $8 million upgrade. The director will present a reopening plan at the board’s next meeting, on Sept. 17.

Volunteers are being asked to help out at schools that are laying off staff because of drastic, last-minute, pandemic-induced budget cuts. “We need volunteer organizations now more than ever,” said Albany County Executive Daniel McCoy on Friday. “We need parents to help out, teach.”

Chris VanPatten, whose family owned a Guilderland farmhouse for nearly a century, before selling it five years ago, was sad to see it burn on Friday.

“The president says he’s going to have a vaccine,” said Governor Andrew Cuomo on Thursday. “CDC is talking about a vaccine in early November. How convenient. It’s going to be an Election Day miracle drug. Some people are concerned that the vaccine may wind up being hydroxychloroquine.”