The Altamont Enterprise & Albany County Post

12/23/2025

A Voorheesville Quiet Zone — where train engineers won't have to blow their whistles over county roads — should be in place by the end of summer. Read the article at https://altamontenterprise.com/12222025/all-aboard-voorheesville-quiet-zone-go

12/19/2025

💨 Winds gusting over 40 miles per hour on Friday morning took down half of a venerable tree — and a power line with it — on Altamont Boulevard in the village of Altamont. National Grid was on the scene. As a storm system crossed the state, Albany County was under a “wind advisory” from 7 p.m. Thursday evening through 1 a.m. Saturday, according to the National Weather Service (U.S. National Weather Service (NWS))

As of 3 p.m. Friday, National Grid had restored service to more than 54,000 of the nearly 66,000 customers affected by the windstorm, it said. Many upstate areas had wind gusts over 50 miles per hour, the company said, including a 76-mile-per-hour gust that felled trees, broke utility poles, and downed power lines.

Friday’s temperatures in the 50s are expected to return to the 30s on Saturday for a cloudy weekend with sun forecast on Monday.

[Enterprise photo by Melissa Hale-Spencer]

12/19/2025

Construction of Norfolk Southern’s Voorheesville crew-change facility will move forward after a federal judge granted Norfolk Southern’s request for a preliminary injunction, ruling that the village is in no position to stop the work.

Chief Judge Brenda K. Sannes signed the order Dec. 3

The judge further ordered that the village was “immediately enjoined and restrained from enforcing the stop work order and underlying zoning requirements preventing Norfolk Southern from constructing the crew-change facility.”

“It’s the railroad,” Mayor Rich Straut told The Enterprise on Tuesday, “and we knew it was going to be a long shot.”

Straut went on to say, “I felt good about it,” referring to the village’s chance to stop construction, “but the laws and everything around railroads definitely have the favor, which is very discouraging.”

He continued, “So, what I read into it is the judge basically said, ‘Listen, the railroad can do whatever they want.’ And I know it’s more complex than that, but yeah.”

Straut said there are still issues to be decided, “so [Judge Sannes] didn’t rule on everything. She just said you can’t enforce the stop-work order.” Norfolk Southern in a Dec. 4 court filing moved to have the remainder of the case tossed.

[Photo from the village of Voorheesville’s lawsuit against Norfolk Southern]

12/19/2025

It takes a village to feed 100 veterans a holiday meal.

Just before Thanksgiving, Steve Savino drove into Albany and stood in a long line of veterans to get a free turkey.

“They had 300 turkeys … I got there half-an-hour early and I was about the 200th person in line, so that got the wheels spinning,” Savino, pictured above, told The Enterprise this week.

In the month and a half that followed, Savino organized a drive that has led to 100 holiday meals being boxed to hand out, for free, to Hilltown veterans on Sunday at the school in Berne.

The giveaway will be held at the Berne-Knox-Westerlo campus at 1738 Helderberg Trail in Berne from noon to 2 p.m. on Sunday, Dec. 21. [Photo from Steve Savino]

12/14/2025

Crossgates Mall’s parent company, Pyramid Management Group, announced in November that it had secured new financing totaling more than $200 million for the mall in Guilderland and Crossgates Commons in the city of Albany. Read the article: https://altamontenterprise.com/12052025/crossgates-owner-nets-new-loans-rating-agencies-wary

12/13/2025

In his overview of Guilderland’s athletic programs, Athletic Director David Austin was accommodating about the bottom line: While he advocates to meet the needs of burgeoning teams, he said, he understands budget constraints don’t always make his requests obtainable. While the district’s 83 teams are nearly equally divided between boys and girls, a slightly higher percentage of boys participate in interscholastic sports and more is budgeted for their programs, largely because of the cost of football, Austin said. Read more at: https://altamontenterprise.com/12032025/parity-sports-gcsd-football-accounts-higher-boys-funding

12/13/2025

The two town races that were too close to call on Election Night have now been officially decided: Incumbent Councilwoman Melanie laCour has kept her seat and Stephanie Audino will be Berne’s tax collector. Read the article: https://altamontenterprise.com/11252025/its-official-lacour-audino-victorious-berne

12/12/2025

The Voorheesville Central School District is planning a major overhaul of its grading system. The policy was presented to the board of education for a first look on Dec. 1. Read the article at https://altamontenterprise.com/12112025/voorheesville-looks-change-way-it-grades

[Photo by Erica Miller/ Capital Region BOCES ]

12/11/2025

The town of Guilderland had its first-ever Christmas parade and tree-lighting ceremony on Saturday as a large crowd watched fire trucks festooned with lights drive to the town’s clubhouse at the Western Turnpike Golf Course. The rows of trees were illuminated after a crowd countdown, cuing the Farnsworth Middle School Band playing "Joy to the World."

11/24/2025

Guilderland’s updated comprehensive plan recommends a Conservation Overlay District to shield the steep slopes of the Helderberg Escarpment and Settles Hill, effectively disallowing non-farm construction in these visually important areas.

The town began to update its two-decade-old plan just before the pandemic, but decided not to proceed until November 2022 because public participation was at the core of the process.

11/22/2025

Town of Berne Supervisor Dennis Palow used the November town board meeting to skewer longtime critic Joel Willsey, a Democrat who had served on the board.

Willsey, a former town board member, had raised concerns about this year’s budget process since, by law, a town board member is not supposed to draft a town budget, and about the suspension and firing of Shawn Duncan, who had worked at the town’s transfer station for six years.

The Enterprise learned this week that Berne had never entered Duncan into the Civil Service system as it should have; the county has no record of his employment.

Two emails that Willsey had sent to board members Melanie laCour and Joseph Giebelhaus were printed out for the public to read and then read out loud at the meeting.

“We’re really tired of it and getting attacked by him,” said Palow, who did not seek re-election. He called Willsey’s emails “totally disrespectful” and said, “It needs to stop.”

Willsey, a former town board member, had raised concerns about this year’s budget process and about the suspension and firing of Shawn Duncan, who had worked at the town’s transfer station for six years.

11/22/2025

New firehouse: Lifting golden shovels while wearing matching sweatshirts, McKownville’s volunteer firefighters, above, ceremoniously break ground on Nov. 21 for their new firehouse.

“Duty to community” is how Jim White described the work of McKownville’s volunteer firefighters.

White, who chairs the board for the McKownville Fire District, spoke on Friday morning at a groundbreaking ceremony for the new firehouse.

The $10 million firehouse will be built in the footprint of the old station at 1250 Western Ave. Residents had supported the project in April 2024 with 80 percent of the vote.

White recalled being grateful, when he joined the company, to those who had built the 58-year-old station that was recently demolished as he anticipated the latest generation of volunteers appreciating the new station for the next half-century. [Enterprise photo by Melissa Hale-Spencer]