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In Our Opinion

Easter Can Be Time Of Reflection For All

This weekend is the culmination of the holiest of weeks in the Christian calendar, with Easter Sunday and the resurrection of Christ it celebrates the most pivotal or defining moment of the liturgical year. We understand and respect that not everyone in our region is a practicing Christian - we hope everyone can understand that the lessons of this season go beyond the chronology of the scriptures or the doctrines of churches. The Easter message calls upon the world to be more compassionate, as Jesus Christ, on the cross, asked God the Father to forgive His persecutors. The message ...

Increasing Timber Production A Responsible Decision

A recent executive order by President Donald Trump to streamline regulations and allow more timber to be harvested from U.S. Forest Service lands invites what possibly could be a trivia question: Under which U.S. department’s jurisdiction does the U.S. Forest Service fall? If you answered the U.S. Department of the Interior, which supervises national parks and fulfills a mission of preserving natural areas and sites of note, you would be wrong. If you answered the Environmental Protection Agency, which enforces environmental regulations to curtail pollution and limit environmental ...

Slow Cleanups After Fires Can Be Frustrating

It was a cause for celebration when Sen. Charles Schumer announced in November 2023 that the U.S. EPA was going to take the lead cleaning up the rubble left behind when the former Crawford Furniture building burned to the ground. City officials and Schumer pushed for the EPA to demolish what was left of the building, clean up the rubble and dispose of toxic asbestos. Now, the site is ready for a new future. For house fires, unfortunately, there is no EPA cleanup. We’re seeing it now on Forest Avenue. A pile of bricks and rubble is all that’s left after fire destroyed a home in ...

Rising Property Values Give Longtime Busti Property Owners Sticker Shock

We’ve all seen what’s happened to home prices throughout the area over the past several years. Now, Busti residents are getting a look at what that housing market has done to their home values - and they’re not happy. Town residents spoke their minds for more than an hour at a Busti Town Board meeting last week. There’s not much the board can do. It’s unlikely the town will stop the process - though such a decision isn’t unprecedented. The next step for property owners is to argue their case in May when the town holds its Grievance Day. But regardless of what happens on ...

It’s Time To Recognize Panama’s Championship Athletes

Panama Village Board members are discussing the best way to honor a boatload of Panama athletes who have won state championships over the past several years. It’s good to see that board members are pushing to bring on-again, off-again discussions to a close in the wake of the Panama boys basketball team’s 2025 state championship and the Clymer/Sherman/Panama football team’s 2024 state championship. It’s the football team’s third championship after back-to-back wins in 2018 and 2019 to go along with the Panama volleyball team’s 2016 state championship and state champion ...

Residency Requirement Can Be Changed, Within Limits

For more than a century Jamestown has required that its department heads live in the city. For decades the residency requirement wasn’t a problem. That has changed over the past 20 or so years, as it has gotten more and more difficult to find department head candidates who either already live in the city or are willing to move into the city. So it wasn’t a surprise that Bill Reynolds, R-Ward 5, proposed changing the city’s residency requirement to more closely resemble language included in the state’s Civil Service that would require department heads live in either ...