There was a time when the passage of Chautauqua County’s yearly budget was so hotly contested, with so many debates amongst legislators, that it took two meetings for the legislature to conduct its October meeting, a public hearing on the budget at 2 p.m. and then a second meeting later in the evening to conduct the legislature’s regular business.

Those days are a memory. So, too, is a second November meeting.

Quietly, the Chautauqua County Legislature passed a local law at its November meeting reducing the number of meetings back to one meeting, conducted in the evening, to adopt the budget.

Such a move was outside the realm of imagination as few as 10 years ago. Passage of the county budget meant dozens of speakers at the public hearing followed by a lengthy meeting as legislators made statements and amendments on the floor of the legislature before a spending plan was finally approved. A single meeting back then would have taken hours.

The fact that only one meeting is necessary is due to the hard work of County Executives Vince Horrigan and George Borrello; Horrigan for securing additional sales tax revenue and finalizing the sale of the Chautauqua County Home, items which provided some cushion for county finances and led to a decrease in the county tax rate. Borrello has kept that momentum moving in the right direction. The attitude on the floor of the legislature seems more convivial and conducive to compromise than it once did.

Of course, it’s easier to conduct public business when times are good. We’ll see what happens when the dollars get tighter to come by. The day is coming — good times never last forever.