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In Our Opinion

Mini Bikes Are Really A State Problem

We can understand the concern and irritation some city residents have regarding mini bikes or e-bikes that sometimes feel like they’ve overtaken city streets. For some people the e-bikes are a vital means of transportation. They’re inexpensive to operate, relatively cheap to purchase compared to gas-powered vehicles and require no visits to the DMV to renew a driver’s license or to register the vehicle. While much of the discussion of e-bikes at the state level has focused on battery charging fires caused by early models of the e-bikes, legislation to create a safer riding ...

Impact Of Uncertainty At Chautauqua Institution Extends Beyond Gates

For many who live and work in Chautauqua County, the Chautauqua Institution might as well be another world. Many county residents are so busy earning a living that the thought of taking a trip to Chautauqua for daytime lectures or exposure to the fine arts is rarely given a second thought. In many cases, despite the institution’s efforts reach out to the surrounding community through performances outside the institution’s gates or programs involving area schoolchildren, Chautauqua Institution feels to many county residents as a venue for others. The December discussion at a ...

DEC’s Testing Of Mayville Soils Is Needed, Welcomed

Uncertainty over how the state DEC will administer its legislatively required work under the state’s Freshwater Wetlands Act can sometimes color area residents’ perception of the DEC. But the agency’s work in Mayville underscores the agency’s importance on less controversial, but no less important, areas that affect county residents. DEC officials have begun testing soil in the Mayville area to determine the extent of previous PFNA acid in the wake of the December 2020 discovery of PFNA chemicals in a village drinking water well. A new well was put on line about three weeks ...

Safety, Like Beauty, Is In The Eye Of The Beholder

Is Jamestown a safe place to live? It’s a question that pops up periodically in the city depending on what pops up in the police reports in a given month or which stage of union negotiations we happen to be in at any given time. Safety is a topic now after the union representing Jamestown’s police officers published their concerns in a guest essay recently in The Post-Journal that prompted a response from a couple of City Council members this week - including from councilman Bill Reynolds, a former Jamestown Police Department detective. If we’re going to have this talk - ...

President’s Two Takes On Nation’s Tax Policy

The story of Republican tax policy in the Trump era is the contest between pro-growth ideas and anti-growth income redistribution. An example of both was on display in President Trump’s recent speech to Congress. The good idea was Trump’s proposal to let companies deduct the full cost of capital expenditures in the year they are made. Trump’s 2017 tax reform provided such “bonus depreciation,” which began to phase out in 2023 and is set to expire at the end of next year. Trump on Tuesday pitched extending full expensing retroactively to this January. “It was one of the ...

Another Thread Between Prison Strikes, Local Policing

There are very real threads between the recently ended strike of state corrections officers and local policing that we’re seeing on our streets every day. We noted recently that one thread that local mayors, county executives and town supervisors have to be watching carefully is what the wildcat strikes in prisons around the state mean for the state’s Taylor Act, which is supposed to prevent strikes by public employees like the wildcat actions that spread like wildfire in late February. The state’s unwillingness to simply invoke the Taylor Law quickly could, in our opinion, ...