The Altamont Enterprise & Albany County Post

19/06/2025

The Voorheesville Central School District has waded into the cellphone-in-the-classroom debate just weeks before it’s due to become law.

A new state policy mandates that each school district adopt its own policy concerning students’ use of personal electronic devices by Aug. 1.

19/06/2025

Berne farmer Emily Vincent hopes to draw attention to the beauty of New York state and its food systems, as well as the declining number of lamb farms in the region, by throwing a “Lamb Jam” that will bring together musicians, chefs, and the community at large.

The event will be held at Two Rock Ranch at 78 Turner Rd. Berne, NY 12023 this Saturday, June 21, from 3 to 7 p.m.

“I just want to get people out of town to the country to see how beautiful [New York state] is and how their food is produced,” Vincent told The Enterprise this week, adding that she hopes to also showcase that local and ethically-raised livestock are a better purchase than foreign-raised livestock.

The event will be held at Two Rock Ranch in Berne on June 21 from 3 until 7 p.m., featuring music, food, and an appearance from New York State Ag Commissioner Richard Ball.

18/06/2025

The New Scotland Historical Association dedicated two markers this week — each one a first. On Friday, June 13, New Scotland got its only historic marker honoring a woman, Winifred Goldring. She was the first female state paleontologist in the nation and in the world. On Saturday, a marker was unveiled in New Salem, recognizing its legendary name of Punkintown.
While both markers were funded — at a cost of about $2,500 each — by the Pomeroy Foundation, the one in New Salem is the town’s first in the Legend & Lore program.
In addition to history buffs, volunteers from the New Salem fire department were on hand. The company holds its annual fundraiser, the Punkintown Fair, on the property along Route 85A across from the firehouse where the marker now stands.
Alan Kowlowitz, the association’s president, told the crowd that this is the second marker the association has placed in New Salem with the goal of increasing awareness of its history.
The area, settled around 1770, was referred to on early maps as Salem Church or Salem until the town of New Scotland was established in 1832 and a New Salem post office was opened.
In the first half of the 19th Century, Kowlowitz told the crowd, based on research by Chris Albright, the hamlet was called Punkintown, “derived from a legend that a sow and her litter were able to live inside a ‘punkin’ here because those grown in present day New Salem were so large.”
The first documented use of the name came from an 1851 letter in which Margaret Crawford Wands of New Scotland wrote to her father, Silas Wands, “​​Robert Taylor has taken another rib to his side he has married the widow Reid of pumkin town.”
Kowlowitz told the crowd, “Harold Lonnstrom in a 1984 article in The Altamont Enterprise on the founding of the Punkintown Fair, noted that the name Punkintown never completely faded from the collective memory of New Salem folks and was resurrected as a fitting name for a fair begun in 1942 to raise funds for men and women serving in the military during World War II.

The marker for Goldring was unveiled at John Boyd Thacher State Park.

Photo by Melissa Hale-Spencer

18/06/2025

Since the pandemic, the Guilderland town planner notes, there has been less demand for office space, and both requests for zoning changes are spurred by the applicants’ need for tenants.

Since the pandemic, the town planner notes, there has been less demand for office space, and both requests for zoning changes are spurred by the applicants’ need for tenants.

17/06/2025

Bethlehem and Guilderland brought home state and federation titles this weekend as local high school track teams competed in the New York State Public High School Athletic Association’s state track meet at Middletown High School.

Bethlehem's Charlotte O’Meara crossed the finish line and embraced her teammates — Kate Bannigan, Anna Chrapowitzky, and Logan Kuhn — after winning the state and federation title in the Class A 4x800 relay with a time of 9:02.18.

Guilderland’s Tatum Cramer won the Class A long jump and the Class A triple jump.

Guilderland’s Will Smitas won the state and federation titles in the 3200-meter race with a time of 8:55.04.

Voorheesville's relay team finished sixth in the state with a time of 9:50.10 in Class C.

Berne-Knox-Westerlo's Kole Irwin finished 2nd in the state for the 100-meter dash in Class C with a time of 11.15 seconds.

Photos by Michael Koff

10/06/2025

The Bethlehem Town Board last month approved funding for its Delaware Avenue Complete Streets project — moving forward with a project that once was controversial but, after some revisions following a permissive referendum defeat, now has the backing of business leaders.

06/06/2025

Discount retailer Dollar General is slated to open on the site of the former Westlawn Lane bowling alley.

“Dollar General will be occupying one of the tenant spaces in the building,” Town Planner Kenneth Kovalchik told Enterprise by email. “In 2024 the ZBA approved a Special Use Permit to convert the building to a Local Shopping Center use.”

The town’s zoning board of appeals in August 2024 unanimously approved a special-use permit to allow the long-closed bowling alley to become a strip mall.

Project applicant David Zhang was before the Guilderland Planning Board at its March 2024 meeting with a proposal to reconfigure 1975 Western Ave. into a 15,000-square-foot multi-tenant strip shopping center with storefronts running along both Alvina Boulevard, a residential street, and Western Avenue, Guilderland’s major thoroughfare.

The one-story brick building is on 1.5 acres, most of which is in a Local Business zone.

“An additional land use approval that may be necessary is for signs,” according to Kovalchick. “I do not believe any sign permit application has been submitted to the Building Department at this time.”

01/06/2025

A “tick awareness event” will take place from 6 to 8 p.m. on June 10 at the Guilderland Town Hall. “Ticks are almost a year-round problem now, and they’re in your backyard,” Supervisor Peter Barber said;

Twenty-one veterans who have banners posted at Tawasentha Park will be honored at the performing arts center stage at 10 a.m. on June 13.

On June 14, from 1 to 4 p.m., Guilderland will participate in the New York State Path Through History during which time the Schoolcraft House, on Western Avenue, and the Frederick-Mynderse House, in Guilderland Center, may be toured while the Cobbleston Schoolhouse, also in Guilderland Center, may be viewed from the outside — it won’t be open since renovation is starting;

Barber said that the American Revolution 250th Anniversary committee “is on steroids right now.”

“It’s been a lot of fun learning about our history,” he said, mentioning, among other efforts, that heritage apple varieties will be planted in town.

Also a reenactment of the Battle of the Normanskill is planned for Aug 11, 2027, which is 250 years to the day after the battle.

Barber said only a half-dozen or so tax certiorari cases remain carried over from Guilderland’s townwide revaluation six or seven years ago. “If the board approves them,” said Barber before the two unanimous votes, “then they can’t challenge the assessment for three years.”

01/06/2025

Two months after hitting pause on a $40 million expansion of its School Road manufacturing facility, Atlas Copco is once again moving forward with the project.

The decision to hold off on construction, according to Kevin O’Connor, Albany County’s economic development chief, had been in response to the Trump administration’s levying of heavy tariffs on goods manufactured outside the United States.

The decision to hold off on construction, at least according to Kevin O’Connor, Albany County’s economic development chief, was in response to the Trump administration’s levying of heavy tariffs on goods manufactured outside the United States.

31/05/2025

On Aug. 11, 1777, an army of British loyalists, American Tories, had assembled on the banks of the Normans Kill, as the late town historian Arthur Gregg told it, so the Schenectady Regiment and a company of Continental Regulars from Rhode Island were sent to meet the Tory army.

Many of the Tories fled while a dozen or so Tory leaders hid in the hay mow of a nearby barn but were forced out when Patriot soldiers jabbed the hay with their bayonets, Gregg said. Their leader, David Springer, was shot and killed and the others were sent to an Albany prison.

Jeff Perlee, an Albany County legislator who chairs the county commission overseeing the celebration of the nation’s 250th anniversary in 2026, has done research that shows the battle was fought in what is now a suburban housing development on Vosburgh Road — with a 1700s barn still standing.

The barn where Tories hid in 1777 during the Battle of the Normanskill is still standing, according to research by Jeff Perlee.

29/05/2025

In an era when antisemitism is on the rise, two local legislators are sponsoring a bill to establish a permanent Holocaust Memorial on the Empire State Plaza.

ALBANY COUNTY — In an era when antisemitism is on the rise, two local legislators are sponsoring a bill to establish a permanent Holocaust Memorial on the Empire State Plaza.

26/05/2025

Smiles peppered Maple Avenue Saturday morning during the Voorheesville Memorial parade, followed by a ceremony to honor fallen soldiers, speeches, and a community-wide celebration. Grand Marshall Jack McClintock waved to the crowd from a vintage convertible.

[Photos by Michael Koff]