Mohawk Hudson Humane Society said last month that it would not renew contracts with local towns like Westerlo because of the increase in stray intakes this year from certain city clients, who will still be offered service.

The Holiday Hunt is a week-long extension of the regular deer season over the winter holidays that was implemented by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation last year, frustrating snowmobilers who have to shorten their recreational season as a result. The state legislature has passed a bill allowing counties to opt out of the additional hunting week.

Paul Scilipoti, Knox

Helen Marie Lounsbury, Berne

Zenie Gladieux, Hilltowns Clothing Project Kiwanis Club of the Helderbergs

The Helderberg Lake Association, which owns the high-hazard and disrepaired Helderberg Lake Dam, is in need of funds to bring the dam up to code after the town of Berne voted not to front the money earlier this year, despite the town-wide impacts that dam failure would cause. 

The homeschooling rate at Berne-Knox-Westerlo doubled during the pandemic and has yet to come down, leaving district officials to figure out how to attract students back into a formal school setting. 

BERNE — Peggy Filkins Warner says she learned to be independent from her grandfather.

“That’s where I got my attitude,” she said of her father and his father.

She was born in the Filkins farmhouse on Joslyn School Road in 1930, in an era when not a lot of women were involved in politics.

Maryellen Gillis, President Helderberg Family and Community Organization

Berne is the only one of the four Hilltowns whose tax rate was unchanged, with the others increasing between 1 and 2 percent, but not always for all residents.