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In Our Opinion

City’s high grass message got lost in its tone

Jamestown’s Development Department isn’t wrong to use social media to warn city residents about quality of life tickets for those who let their grass get too high. High grass is the top complaint the department hears once we hit the spring and summer months. Some lawns can look more like a hayfield than a city lawn, and Crystal Surdyk, city development director, makes a good point about grass and shrubs at some intersections being tall enough near curbs and intersections to make it difficult to see traffic. But the department’s May 31 message posted on the Development ...

What will our future hold in another 200 years?

This weekend The Post-Journal celebrates 200 years of bringing readers the news. We’ve all changed a lot over two centuries. We started publishing when our nation was 50 years old - which means our pages have been through the Civil War, two World Wars. We’ve chronicled the rise of a sitting New York governor from Jamestown and a city attorney ascend all the way to the highest court in the nation. Our pages have chronicled the careers of noteworthy city residents who’ve gone on to achieve fame and fortune in their respective fields. We’ve covered massive fires and ...

New officer is a first step in fight against animal cruelty

Over the past eight years, there have been only 20 entries in the Chautauqua County Animal Abuse registry - though five have been added since December. All came from the city of Jamestown. Perhaps the creation of a new deputy position in the Chautauqua County Sheriff’s Office to focus on animal abuse cases will increase that number. The Chautauqua County Legislature approved funding as part of the 2026 county budget. That deputy - Jim Andin - was introduced recently by Sheriff Jim Quattrone. Quattrone said most of the Sheriff’s Office deputies have a brief overview of animal ...

City will need new ways to pay for demolitions

Jamestown is on track to spend all of the American Rescue Plan Act funding it allocated for housing demolitions by the end of the year. That means the city will meet the federal deadline for the use of that pot of money - though that should be the least of the city’s concerns, in our opinion, when it comes to housing demolitions. The city usually budgets between $100,000 and $130,000 for emergency demolitions - or enough for between three to four demolitions. City officials also include funding for housing demolitions in the annual Community Development Block Grant program. In ...

CLP study has opportunity to influence lake actions quickly

The announcement of a $42,000 DEC grant to the Chautauqua Lake Partnership was easy to miss earlier this year, coming as it did only a couple of days before a judge announced Freshwater Wetland Act regulations the CLP and Chautauqua Lake Property Owners Association had been fighting in state Supreme Court had been annulled. But the grant, which is paying for a study by North Carolina State University researchers that has now begun, could end up having as big an impact on the lake as the temporary nullification of the Part 664 regulations. Part of the study assesses the three ...

Eighth, Fulton street residents show how to be neighbors

We noted last week that it is up to city residents - not city government - to rebuild the cohesive nature of Jamestown’s neighborhoods. A couple of days later, residents of Eighth and Fulton streets proved our point by becoming the first neighborhood to take the city and the Jamestown Police Department up on the offer to reinvigorate neighborhood watch groups in the city. The neighbors - many of whom have become familiar names through their advocacy over the course of the past couple of years at City Council meetings - are mobilizing in an attempt to help improve the conditions in ...