The Berne Town Board ousted Emily Vincent, a Berne farmer, before she completed her term on the town’s planning board, breaking the law, to appoint Thomas Spargo as chairman. Vincent should be reinstated.

WESTERLO — Thelma Virginia Werner Watson of Westerlo took care of those she loved — she dropped out of high school to tend to her ill mother and raised her own children to abide by the Golden Rule.

She died on Wednesday, Jan. 1, 2020, at the Evergreen Commons Nursing Home. She was 98.

EAST BERNE — Eleonore Puzulis was a hardworking restaurant manager who loved her family deeply. She died on Monday, Dec. 30, 2019, at St. Peter’s Hospice. She was 84.

“She taught me the values of life,” said her only child, Michael G. Puzulis. “No one gives you anything. If you want something, you have to work for it.”

TJA Clean Energy, which was planning to propose a solar farm in Berne that spans up to approximately 25 acres near the intersection of Switzkill and Canaday Hill roads, says that the town’s newly adopted industrial-scale solar-energy facility regulations “throw a wrench” in the development process. The town’s law restricts the size of solar facilities to 10 acres. ​

Former Rensselaerville supervisor, Steven Pfleging, pleaded guilty to petit larceny the same day he restored the $13,000 he stole from the town. He was sentenced to 50 hours of community service.

The same day he set a hearing for a law that would make Berne a firearm sanctuary, Town Supervisor Sean Lyons posted a photo of himself displaying the hand-signs of a far-right militia group that has been described as “anti-government” and is connected to a failed 2017 bomb plot in Oklahoma.