As the number of coronavirus cases and hospitalizations continue to plummet from the mid-January Omicron peak, both statewide and in Albany County, Governor Kathy Hochul announced that all hospitals across the state can now perform elective procedures. The state had kept a list of hospitals, which Albany Medical Center was initially on, where staffed bed capacity was less than 10 percent, meaning elective procedures couldn’t be performed.

BERNE — Beth Davis has fulfilled a lifetime dream.

She was one of just eight school librarians from across the United States to serve on the William C. Morris Young Adult Debut Award Committee for 2022.

Albany County Executive Daniel McCoy opened his Feb. 21 Black History Month forum by saying he was proud that the county had brought COVID-19 testing into minority communities and also partnered with an ambulance company to bring vaccines to residents. According to the county’s records, a disproportionate number of white, rather than Black or Hispanic, residents died of COVID-19.

“At least 5.4 million children live in a home with at least one unlocked and loaded weapon and at least 80 percent of school shooters under the age of 18 aquire their weapons from the home, including the recent Oxford, Michigan shooter, who killed four,” said Conor Webb, president of the Guilderland chapter of March For Our Lives.

The new multi-pronged state plan includes $27.5 million a year for in-patient psychiatric beds, $9 million annually to recruit psychiatrists and psychiatric nurse practitioners; and $12.5 million a year for 500 more beds to house homeless people in their communities.

Erick McCandless is returning to the place where he started. 

He grew up in Slingerlands, was trained in forestry, and now — after a sometimes far-flung career in environmentalism — he is the new project manager for the Bender Melon Farm Preserve.

In talking to Guilderland’s school administrators and to the district’s Recovery Task Force, Superintendent Marie Wiles said they felt that, when there is no longer a mandate from “a higher authority,” Guilderland would change its requirement to this: “We highly recommend masks but we don’t require them.”

Part of President Joe Biden’s climate-change agenda is protecting 30 percent of United States lands and ocean territories by 2030, known as “30 by 30.” Currently, about 26 percent of the United States’ ocean territories are protected but only about 12 percent of the nation’s land area is protected.

The new station, which supervisor Peter Barber says will be equal distance between the two locations, is to be built near the town-owned golf course, with access to both routes 20 and 146.

A few households are using five or six times the water a typical home would use, Supervisor Peter Barber told the town board at its Feb. 15 meeting. “Everybody else is subsidizing these overages,” he said.