Although an old agreement is still in place and would remain so indefinitely, the town of Berne is considering signing a new contract with the cable company, Spectrum, that would keep the franchise fee the town receives from the company the same but would remove an obligation for Spectrum to build new infrastructure in areas that meet a household-density threshold. 

The Berne-Knox-Westerlo Board of Education unanimously adopted Superintendent Bonnie Kane’s $24.7 million budget for the 2025-26 school year, which will go to a public vote on May 20. 

The adopted $116.6 million budget for Bethlehem Central School District’s 2025-26 school year would, if passed by voters on May 20, impose a 1.12-percent property tax increase. 

Following a water-quality crisis in January, Albany County placed a 90-day moratorium on the use of biosolid fertilizers to assess the need for regulations on the toxic substance, and extended it on April 16 for an additional 180 days.

Joe Giebelhaus, 55, was appointed to the Berne Town Board as its fourth member, and will run for the supervisor position in the fall. A recently-retired city of Albany official, he brings with him three decades of municipal experience. 

The Berne-Knox-Westerlo school district has invested heavily in the concept of social-emotional learning — in other words, attending to children's interpersonal needs in order to increase educational success — but as a parents’ recent complaints about bullying in the district reveal, addressing these needs can be a messy process. 

The three-member Berne Town Board unanimously appointed Joseph Giebelhaus, who is the Deputy Commissioner of General Services for the city of Albany, to one of its open seats. The board also scheduled a public hearing in May for a proposed 12-month moratorium on solar projects as the town processes two existing ones. 

The town executed a lease agreement at its March meeting that would charge Michael Stanton, of Stanton Farms, LLC,  $45 per acre for 216 tillable acres at the historic Heath Farm property. Stanton Farm, which had already farmed the land under an agreement with the previous property owner, was the only applicant for the lease.

Using a grant from the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, the town of Bethlehem purchased 68 acres from town residents Marilyn Stangle and Betty Nolan, who wanted to protect the land from solar developers. The town had previously approved around $50,000 of its own funds to cover extra expenses, but ended up using just half that. 

Erik Carman, a doctor of physical therapy and founder of Altamont Physical Therapy, has received certification for a program that trains Parkinson’s patients in the kinds of bigger movements that the neurological disease makes difficult.