The number of overdose deaths in Albany County dropped at a similar rate that overdose deaths have decreased nationwide last year. However, unlike the national trend, which saw fewer deaths from fentanyl and other opiates, Albany County saw a higher density of fentanyl-involved deaths in 2023.

Rensselaerville’s plans to administer grant money to 16 different local organizations from its Kuhar Endowment Fund — an $860,000 pot of money left to the town by the late Jeffrey Bogue — have been put on hold as they await state approval. 

Wayne D. Miller, 24, was charged with third-degree criminal possession of a weapon and second-degree menacing after he had allegedly threatened a person with a handgun in a dispute. 

State police concluded after an investigation that Anthony Moretti, a 35-year-old Albany man found dead in a wooded area in Knox, had died of cardiac arrhythmia caused by fentanyl and methamphetamine.

Authored by a newly-formed Farmland Protection Committee, the plan will identify threats to the town’s farms and farmers, as well as lay out possible solutions. 

Although the governor’s office hasn’t confirmed that appointments will be made, Governor Kathy Hochul already made appointments this year to another town board that, like Berne, lost its quorum after a majority of members resigned. 

Berne-Knox-Westerlo’s contingency budget cut the school resource officer, whom the board of education had initially refused to cut from its tax-cap-busting 2024-25 budget, playing a key role in that budget’s failure in two separate votes, leading to a contingency budget. 

An anonymous donation of $3.85 left by a child for the Westerlo Volunteer Fire Company’s new-building fund was matched 110 times by others, with some larger donations helping the surge reach a total of $523.85.

Emily Constance Rauch, an artist and former educator who lives in Rensselaerville, was awarded a grant from the Puffin Foundation that she will use to create a collage made up of trash, highlighting the reusability of commonly tossed items.

The Rensselaerville Water and Sewer Advisory Committee, which is actively working to upgrade the town’s water system, has received an administrative order from the United States Environmental Protection Agency for the water district’s repeated violations over the years around certain disinfection-byproduct contaminants.