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Opinion

City’s Actions On 2026 Budget Speaks Volumes

In Our Opinion

It’s obvious from the way the City Council split $786,450 in changes to the 2026 budget that council members are more concerned about the city’s fund balance than they are the city’s tax rate. Sales tax trends convinced city officials that increasing the sales tax budget by $348,857 was achievable. While we are typically wary of increasing the sales tax, both Mayor Kim Ecklund and Comptroller Ericka Thomas have shown themselves to be conservative when it comes to the sales tax in the past. At the same time, new information allowed the city to decrease its health insurance fund ...

JCC’s Business Decision Has Impact On Community

In Our Opinion

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that Jamestown Community College will close JCC Total Fitness to the public on Feb. 1. Many city residents likely have no idea that the little marketed service is available on the Jamestown campus. It hasn’t been well advertised, and public habits changed after a lengthy state-mandated closure during the COVID-19 pandemic. College officials say they spent three years trying to rebuild membership, but participation remains too low to pay the costs to keep JCC Total Fitness open to the public. While Total Fitness had increased membership by 50 ...

Federal Rural Hospital Funding Is Far From Restored

Local Commentaries

You have to hand it to Nick Langworthy. Not everyone would be willing to go out in the rain and stand in front of a microphone to tell us temporary funding for rural hospitals that offsets only one-third of permanent funding cuts is a win. Langworthy called the $50 Billion Rural Health Transformation Program (RHTP) “one of the largest federal investments in our history to support rural healthcare.” Why was this bill necessary? Because the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, a bill Langworthy voted for, made drastic cuts to Medicaid, an important funding source for hospitals and nursing ...

Can You Complete These Oxymorons?

Local Commentaries

Having taught all Core Elementary and Middle School Subjects (including Grammar, Spelling, and Writing, as part of our Language Arts Curriculum) in the Jamestown Public Schools in my career, one day at home when Chasy was about 6 years old, a Campbell Soup commercial came on TV and finished with their slogan of that time, “Soup is Good Food.” When she saw the words and heard the slogan, she asked why “good” and “food” didn’t rhyme. In my classroom, many times, I had students who wanted to know the same about words like rough, cough, through, and though, and other words like ...

Labor Shortages And Career Choices

Local Commentaries

According to summer 2025 statistics from the United States Department of Labor’s Labor Market briefing, Western New York currently enjoys a pretty low unemployment rate of 4.1%. That’s lower than the overall 4.6% rate in the United States. However, over the past year, initial unemployment claims in New York State increased the most in Chautauqua County. Compared to NYS’s increase of 3.6%, our county’s rate increased by 175.0%. That leaves many worried about what is causing this and what the future will bring to those of us living and working here. Plenty of employment ...

Tis The Season: Make It A Good One

Local Commentaries

I hope you had a happy Thanksgiving. I’m always shocked in November, usually when I’m dressing my turkey, that another year has passed so quickly. It’s a universal truth for those over the age of fifty that time becomes a sort of quantum equation we haven’t quite figured out. The days stretch, the years collapse, and suddenly we’re pulling holiday decorations out of closets again, wondering how it can possibly be time already. As our families are scattered across the country, and sometimes the world, holidays become more important. The holiday season isn’t the busiest ...