Carol Waterman, Guilderland

Blanca Gonzalez-Parker, Guilderland

Laura Shore, President Altamont Community Tradition

Steve Wickham, Delmar

For decades, at the start of a new year, we’ve always gotten a thrill covering what many may consider routine — the swearing in of new leaders for the towns we cover and the appointments that follow, an annual and reassuring ritual in a democracy.

The use variance request was made by John Polk and and his wife, Rebecca Stumpf, to allow for up to six chickens on their nearly 20-acre Bozenkill Road property. 

Albany County has just directed schools to change from a 10-day period of isolation for infected students to a five-day period, so Guilderland is following suit, said Superintendent Marie Wiles.

GUILDERLAND — Daniel Darves-Bornoz, the owner of Provence, a French restaurant which closed during the pandemic, has opened a farm-to-table restaurant in the same Stuyvesant Plaza location.

Mayor Kerry Dineen noted that the Altamont Zoning Board of Appeals rarely meets, its last meeting — prior to the one on Jan. 11 — having been in September 2020; it met six times that year. The zoning board met twice in 2019. 

ALTAMONT — Due to recent icing on roads, parking lots, and sidewalks and the renewed concerns regarding surges in cases of the latest COVID-19 variant, organizers have suspended the Altamont Seniors Tuesday lunch program for the remaining weeks of January.