Berne’s election this year will be reformative, since every town board seat is up for grabs along with other high-profile positions like town clerk and highway superintendent.
The Rensselaerville Water and Sewer Advisory Committee is holding a community meeting on Thursday, May 15, from 6 to 8 p.m. at the Hilltown Commons Guggenheim Theater to get input on preferred well sites for a new public water system.
Berne Councilwoman Melanie laCour voiced her concerns at the board’s May meeting about the fact that the town’s ambulance expense was left out of the 2025 budget, making it unclear how the town will pay for a $225,000 expense at the end of the year when all revenue is already attached to other expenses and there’s little left in savings.
The Knox candidates are in, with town Clerk Traci Delaney (formerly Schanz) running for town supervisor on the Republican line, and former Berne-Knox-Westerlo Board of Education member Chasity McGivern challenging her on the Democratic line.
Albany County, in one of its first acts as owner of the property, has fixed up the road leading up to Switzkill Farm as it prepares for more improvements down the line.
Although an old agreement is still in place and would remain so indefinitely, the town of Berne is considering signing a new contract with the cable company, Spectrum, that would keep the franchise fee the town receives from the company the same but would remove an obligation for Spectrum to build new infrastructure in areas that meet a household-density threshold.
The Berne-Knox-Westerlo Board of Education unanimously adopted Superintendent Bonnie Kane’s $24.7 million budget for the 2025-26 school year, which will go to a public vote on May 20.
Joe Giebelhaus, 55, was appointed to the Berne Town Board as its fourth member, and will run for the supervisor position in the fall. A recently-retired city of Albany official, he brings with him three decades of municipal experience.
The Berne-Knox-Westerlo school district has invested heavily in the concept of social-emotional learning — in other words, attending to children's interpersonal needs in order to increase educational success — but as a parents’ recent complaints about bullying in the district reveal, addressing these needs can be a messy process.
RENSSELAERVILLE — Seven students who conducted summer research projects at the Huyck Preserve — on earthworms, beavers, and ferns — presented their findings at the Northeast Natural History Conference on April 5 and 6 in Springfield, Massachusetts.
The three-member Berne Town Board unanimously appointed Joseph Giebelhaus, who is the Deputy Commissioner of General Services for the city of Albany, to one of its open seats. The board also scheduled a public hearing in May for a proposed 12-month moratorium on solar projects as the town processes two existing ones.
