KNOX — On New Year’s Day at 9 a.m., Councilman Dennis Barber pointed out how nice the newly painted Saddlemire Homestead looked in front of Town Hall with its green shutters installed.

WESTERLO — Clifton J. Dutton always spoke his mind. A truck driver, he volunteered as a firefighter for half a century and, his son said, was a strict but fair father.

“My father taught me that honest is the best way,” said Eric Dutton, “so I come right out, and people know where I’m shooting from. That’s what he did.”

Berne can look forward to having a roof over its salt and sand, Supervisor Kevin Crosier said during the town’s reorganizational meeting on Jan. 1 as he described projects for Berne in 2015.

MEDUSA — Edith Fancher Ormsbee, a wife and mother who lived in Medusa for more than half of a century, died on Sunday, Jan. 4, 2015 at Cobleskill Regional Hospital. She was 70.

KNOX — Adel R. Agnew, who, with her husband, raised six children on their Craven Road dairy farm, died peacefully on Friday, Jan. 2, 2015, at Our Lady of Mercy Life Center. She was 94.

BERNE — In 2014, the town was shaped in several ways by the hand of government, which was itself shaped in a close election for highway superintendent.

The town lost an exuberant 12-year-old, Emmit Stannard, to brain cancer as well as long-time leader Myra Dorman, but life hummed with a new cycling festival and a gala to mark the fire department's 75th anniversary.

KNOX — In its beginning, middle, and end, 2014 brought headline-grabbing events to Knox, while it was marked in public by a drawn-out exchange toward revising the town’s vision to center on commercial zoning.

WESTERLO —  The town had a winding road of indecision in 2014 as it grappled with what to do about high-volume hydraulic fracturing for natural gas and hesitated to approve bids for badly needed repairs to the highway garage.