Over the last five years, Chautauqua County has seen the number of farms decrease from 1,515 to 1,228. That’s right, 19 percent of the farms in an area proud of its agriculture have disappeared. It could be worse. According to Cornell Cooperative Extension of Chautauqua County, the total ...

Thumbs up to the preliminary steps taken to return baseball to Russell E. Diethrick Park next summer. Earlier this week, it was announced that all of the necessary steps have been taken to transition the Jamestown Jammers from the ROC Ventures ownership group from Milwaukee to a local ownership ...

State legislators are a bit disingenuous when they propose legislation that they say will have “no cost to the state.” The phrasing pops up regularly on legislation being considered by the Senate and Assembly. Take, for instance, legislation passed earlier this week to ban toys containing ...

There is no good reason why the Jamestown City Council should seriously consider increasing the salary for the mayor and the City Council right now. Three mayoral candidates have stepped forward despite the supposedly subpar wage the city pays its mayor. There are many contested races for ...

It is about time that Burtis Bay is cleaned up. Nearly 3,000 feet of shoreline in the Ellicott bay will finally have rotting weeds removed after several stops and starts to the process over the last six months. A cleanup was to have begun in November, but the onset of winter weather made the ...

Much of what governments keep secret from their people should be revealed. It is in the nature of public officials to keep knowledge that may threaten them quiet. But there is a difference between that and information that jeopardizes the security of an entire people. There are good reasons, ...

If only Jamestown’s 2018 year-end surplus of $416,222 was a real surplus. The surplus doesn’t show real fiscal strength. It doesn’t show that the city has restored any semblance of sanity to its budget or that it can consistently provide the services people need for a price people can ...

To The Reader’s Forum: America’s population is aging, and with it a little-known problem is growing: roughly one in five older Americans has a mental health challenge. AARP thanks Representative Tom Reed for trying to attack this problem by co-sponsoring the bipartisan Mental Health ...

Thumbs up to Alexis Barron of Lakewood for earning the Girl Scouts of Western New York’s 2019 Gold Award. Barron’s project, the Dock Project, was to build a floating dock for community use in Jamestown. The six-section dock, with a ramp and a concrete footer, is anchored at the Chautauqua ...

Quietly, a major step has been taken to decrease the amount of phosphorus making its way into Chautauqua Lake. Last October, improvements were completed at the North Chautauqua Lake Sewer District’s wastewater treatment plant. The improvements were called for in the 2012 Total Maximum ...

Yesterday, we referred to a claim by Deborah Glick, D-Manhattan, that a scholarship for children whose parents were killed serving in the military shouldn’t be expanded because the costs were unclear and the legislation came up after the state’s 2019-20 budget had already been finalized. ...

It’s disappointing, though certainly not surprising, that members of the state Assembly balked at expanding the number of students who qualify for tuition and other assistance to family members of military personnel killed or disabled while engaged in or training for hostilities. Assembly ...

A lot of people weren’t happy with the Memorandum of Agreement that will govern Chautauqua Lake improvement efforts for the next two years — but all but one of the affected agencies have signed the legislation. A couple of groups had to swallow hard to sign on to the agreement due to the ...

Most of the more than 400-page report special counsel Robert Mueller submitted to the Justice Department falls into the “tell us something we didn’t know” category. From various sources, Americans already had been made aware of nearly all the conclusions Mueller’s team reached in its ...

There was alleged “fake news” two millennia ago, too. Jesus Christ was no more than a political troublemaker, a social revolutionary, claimed those in power. He was not the Messiah in whom some had faith, they insisted. So they put an end to the revolution - or so they thought. They ...

Thumbs up to several Good Samaritans who helped save a woman from a fire at 34 Regent St., Jamestown, recently. Two neighbors saw the fire and ran to the home to alert the building’s occupants of the fire. Carlos Echevarria, another neighbor, was alerted of the fire by his daughter. ...

All that stands between New York raising its legal smoking age from 18 years of age to 21 years of age is Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s approval. Chautauqua and Cattaraugus counties have already increased the smoking age in an effort to keep tobacco products out of high schools. Officials reasoned ...

Committed Christians believe in an all-powerful God whose majesty and beauty cannot be comprehended, much less matched. Yet on rare occasions, humans are moved to incredible feats of creation as testaments of the depth of their faith. More than 850 years ago, on an island in the Seine ...

It comes as little surprise that Jamestown Area YMCA officials have been taking the first steps toward finding a new home. The rumor mill was quickly in high gear after phone calls were made to gather information from area residents about consolidating the Lakewood and Jamestown YMCAs into a ...

We can’t think of many people who will get a 40 percent raise this year. Part of the reason most businesses can’t afford to give their workers such pay raises is because of state policies that can make running a business in New York state a real hassle — policies espoused by Gov. ...