The James Prendergast Library needs a new plan. Trying to restore large amounts of city funding simply isn’t possible. The city’s $3.4 million surplus is, at best, a short-term solution as the likely costs associated with contracts for police officers and firefighters hit the books. ...
We’ve been cutting taxes on the wealthy for two generations, and the results have been dismal. Economists, who started as generally supportive of the tax cut experiment, have seen enough. By 2017, only 2 percent of the University of Chicago’s Economics Expert Panel agreed the Trump ...
Ever since I was a small kid, it has been engrained in me that of all our national parks, there is one that is our premier and most pristine park—Yellowstone. I visited it with my parents in my teens, we took our children there in the 1980s, and we just returned from visiting again in ...
Unfunded state mandates. Talk about a scary term for Halloween season. We hear about them every year. Albany passes laws that require local governments to administer often with a hefty price tag but no additional financial support from the state. Localities’ budgets are squeezed even ...
The Democrats running for president have demanded the government raise taxes on income, gasoline, energy, capital gains and your life savings at death. And your retirement savings will be hit by multiple taxes that they promise will only hurt “the rich” but will first and foremost reduce ...
A common refrain from those who have opposed Assemblyman Andrew Goodell, R-Jamestown, in races for Goodell’s Assembly seat or in the races for the state Senate is that Goodell is unable to get much done because he is mired in the Assembly’s minority. That is partially true. Goodell only ...
To The Reader’s Forum: Under Section 30121 of Title 52 of the U.S. Code, it is unlawful for a “person to solicit (from a foreign national a thing of value) . . . in connection with a Federal . . . election.” Whether President Trump violated this election law by imploring Ukrainian ...
A discussion in September raised two interesting, and contradictory, ways for the Chautauqua County Board of Health to involve itself in the ongoing controversy over the construction of wind turbines in Chautauqua County. John Tallet, Board of Health member, proposed a moratorium on ...
The Eighth Judicial District is a sprawling district that encompasses eight counties. To travel from Ripley in one corner of the district to Kendall in the other corner would take someone two hours and fifteen minutes on a good day — and we’re coming to the time of year when good days for ...
To The Reader’s Forum: The left cozies up to post-modernism on all fronts ranging from religion to science and all things in between. It smears, uproots and destroys practically everything associated with and founded upon western civilization, theism and the Bible. Nothing more than a ...
Mayor Sam Teresi’s proposed 2020 budget is much the same as his last two budgets. It spends what they city can spend to pay for services that have to be provided. There are no sexy new programs, unless one counts the Smart Cities Investment Plan the mayor unveiled a few weeks ago. There ...
Are leaders in Congress unable to walk and chew gum at the same time? That is, are they capable of multitasking on major issues? Some are speculating they are not. Recall that just a few weeks ago, in the wake of more mass murders, lawmakers vowed to debate steps to reduce the likelihood ...
There is no nice way to say it — parking at the county DMV office on Third Street, Jamestown, is a nightmare. It’s not just a matter of too few spaces. The parking lot’s layout is simply terrible. It’s difficult to swing a large vehicle into tight spaces without worrying about ...
While talking to voters the subject of property taxes has come up often. There also seems to be a growing trend of more people either keeping their jobs in NY and moving to nearby towns in Pennsylvania or Pennsylvania residents getting jobs in NY and staying in Pennsylvania. This is almost ...
Last year, our fire department alone responded to over 5,000 calls for service, of which approximately 4,000 of those calls were for emergency medical services. No matter the time or day, they came to save a life or get someone to the hospital. Regardless of the problems our City faces, they ...
I had predicted in an earlier article that the Democrats in the House would not bring impeachment proceedings against Donald Trump. I was wrong. After revelations of his conversation with the President of Ukraine, Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House, authorized an “inquiry” into ...
Attacks on President Trump from hardcore political partisans are nothing new. But from hardcore Republican partisans? This is uncharted territory in the Trump era. Sunday’s late-night announcement that Trump is withdrawing American troops from northern Syria and leaving U.S. Kurdish ...
The Chautauqua Lake & Watershed Management Alliance finds itself in an interesting position as 2019 comes to a close. In September, Erin Brickley, former Alliance executive director, resigned. Former County Executive Vince Horrigan has been named the organization’s interim executive ...
To The Reader’s Forum: On behalf of the Journey to Active Aging Workshop & Luncheon committee a sincere thank you for making our 11th annual event a huge success. We enjoyed a delicious lunch compliments of Meals on Wheels, received many door prizes from our valued vendors and ...
We are sometimes left shaking our head at the things people do. That was the situation last week when a Celoron man decided to use blue marker to deface two statues of Lucille Ball in Lucille Ball Memorial Park in Celoron and write graffiti on an outside wall of the bathroom in the park. ...