Despite first appearances, Westerlo’s “new” zoning law is not an overhaul of the original 1989 document, but a necessary update that keeps the town in favor with New York State.

Soon after Westerlo authorized the use of NYCLASS as an investment vehicle, the Berne-Knox-Westerlo Board of Education followed suit, and the towns of Knox and Berne have expressed interest in the mutual fund. So what is it? 

At a special meeting held Feb. 21, members of the Knox Town Board and Amy Pokorny discussed details of a solar farm they hope to build with grant money as the deadline by which to use that money looms. “Let’s keep moving forward,” Supervisor Vasilios Lefkaditis said at the meeting. “That’s the goal.”

Just two weeks past his controversial appointment as Berne’s dog control officer, Jody Jansen allegedly threatened to call the police on a woman who had found a dog and was attempting to locate its owners through social media. 

The Knox Town Board authorized the purchase of new lights for the town’s baseball field, which will be the first improvement to come out of grant money from New York State Energy Research and Development Authority’s Clean Energy Communities program.

Chantelle Nobis, a Hilltown native who now lives near Rome, New York, is fighting to develop better treatments for neurofibromatosis, a rare and vaguely understood genetic disorder that afflicts both her husband and daughter.

Outrage and partisanship may have left their high-water mark in Berne, where dozens of residents attended the latest town board meeting to hammer the new council with questions and comments about the illegal removal of town employees from their positions, among other issues. Many of the residents’ remarks were met with eye rolls from the mostly GOP-backed board who, for the first time in decades, can steam ahead unimpeded by Democrats’ desires. 

At its abbreviated Feb. 11 town meeting, the Knox Town Board passed a law that will allow hog farming in the town’s agricultural districts and nearly passed an update to its home occupation laws, but had to table the matter on account of technical difficulties. 

Westerlo is in the process of developing a comprehensive land-use plan and its Comprehensive Plan Committee hopes to make the process as transparent and as open to the public as possible, said chairman David Lendrum.

With the U.S. Census Bureau requesting that citizens complete the 2020 census online, small towns and villages are preparing to help residents who don’t have easy access to computers or don’t have the necessary skills to complete a form online so that every town can be counted as accurately as possible, assuring that each gets the federal, state and county aid it needs.