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. 

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. 

The town executed a lease agreement at its March meeting that would charge Michael Stanton, of Stanton Farms, LLC,  $45 per acre for 216 tillable acres at the historic Heath Farm property. Stanton Farm, which had already farmed the land under an agreement with the previous property owner, was the only applicant for the lease.

Using a grant from the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, the town of Bethlehem purchased 68 acres from town residents Marilyn Stangle and Betty Nolan, who wanted to protect the land from solar developers. The town had previously approved around $50,000 of its own funds to cover extra expenses, but ended up using just half that. 

Erik Carman, a doctor of physical therapy and founder of Altamont Physical Therapy, has received certification for a program that trains Parkinson’s patients in the kinds of bigger movements that the neurological disease makes difficult.  

Berne-Knox-Westerlo is looking at a roughly $700,000 shortfall in its 2025-26 budget despite a 3.3 percent property-tax hike, due to widespread cost increases and decreases in state aid. The gap will have to be closed through “creative” reductions, Superintendent Bonnie Kane said. 

The town of Knox has hired attorney Daniel Rubin to represent it against Albany County, which has accused the town of misappropriating a shared salt supply and is demanding $18,000 in compensation.

The town of Rensselaerville appointed Jason Wood as deputy highway superintendent after the previous one, Warren Bashwinger, was let go for undisclosed reasons. 

This year, Hilltown residents will vote in a majority-number of town board members in each town, including Berne, where all five seats will be open due to the number of vacancies that need to be filled.