Thumbs up to the Jamestown Chamber of Commerce for taking time to honor Lee Harkness during the annual Downtown Jamestown Cruise-in recently. Harkness has spent the past two decades working to make Jamestown a better place in which to live, work and play in his roles as the Downtown Jamestown Development Corp. executive director, Jamestown Gateway Train Station manager and now in his role with the chamber. Harkness has proven himself to be an invaluable piece of Jamestown, whether it’s planning events, working long hours to help other organizations get their events off the ground or in shepherding the renovation of the former Erie-Lackawanna Railroad Station. Jamestown has been lucky to have Harkness working on its behalf for these many years.

Thumbs down to party politics crossing a line. Days before Thursday’s Democratic primary between Gov. Andrew Cuomo and actress and activist Cynthia Nixon, thousands of people received a mailer from the state Democratic Party, controlled by Cuomo, questioning Nixon’s support for Jewish people even though two of Nixon’s children are being raised in the Jewish faith. Geoff Berman, party chairman, said after the fact that the mailer was wrong and inappropriate while offering to pay for Nixon to send out its own mailing. Nixon stood little chance of beating Cuomo despite running a heated campaign, but that is beside the point. There are stark enough policy differences between Cuomo and Nixon that it was unnecessary to drag religion into the race. The governor says he knew nothing of the mailer. Whoever approved the mailer should be reprimanded and apologize to Nixon.

Thumbs up, at long last, to the cleanup of two properties destroyed by fire in March 2017 on Main Street, Falconer, now that the final procedural hurdles have finally been dealt with. On Monday, the Falconer Village Board was told the village has finally assumed ownership of the properties from the previous owners, which means the Chautauqua County Land Bank will release funding to help remove the debris. The city of Jamestown will coordinate with the land bank to finally clean up the site.