GUILDERLAND — The chamber of commerce here is kicking off its 50th anniversary celebration on Feb. 9, the day it was incorporated a half-century earlier, in 1972.

The celebration will last all year with new branding, events, programs, and a 50 New Member Challenge.

Transportation Supervisor Inho Suh is proposing spending just under a million dollars to purchase eight new 66-passenger school buses next year, three of them with chains. The projected cost of $976,000 is about $10,000 lower than last year for the same number of buses. 

“First of all, Eid is like Christmas for us,” wrote Arisha Ahmed, one of the Muslim students lobbying the Guilderland School Board to have the day off from classes. “Imagine having to go to school on Christmas. It is as simple as that.”

Two boards — for planning and for zoning — best serve the public. Whatever small, undetermined savings there would be by abolishing the planning board would be far outweighed by the loss of its perspective.

Viscusi Builders is seeking approval from the Guilderland Planning Board to construct the four-story apartment residence at 2 Crossgates Mall Road. 

ALTAMONT — Harold “Hal” Grant, a longtime resident of Altamont, was a World War II veteran and the glue of his family. He died on Monday, Jan. 24, 2022, at the age of 95.

Son of the late Chester and Evelyn DuMond-Grant, he was the beloved husband of Beryl N. Grant.

Last month, Altamont Mayor Kerry Dineen presented a bill that would do away with Altamont’s planning and zoning boards and replace them with a single zoning board of appeals whose “powers and duties” would comprise both bodies. During a Tuesday public hearing on the proposal, Dean Whalen, who’d been a trustee for 16 years, took issue with what could be considered a rather large change to the proposed law.