Political control of Jamestown’s City Council likely comes down to the choices voters make for the three at-large positions on the council. Candidates still on the ballot are Democrats Tamu Graham-Reinhardt, Greg Rabb and Taylor Scott, Republicans Kim Ecklund and Jeff Russell and ...
To The Reader’s Forum: County government has made an effort to move the needle on the tax rate in Chautauqua County over the past several years. In 2015, the tax rate was $9.149 per thousand and moved down to a rate of $8.375 per thousand in 2019. We commend our county leaders and ...
Jamestown will see a change in the mayor’s office on Jan. 1. We hope it sees a change in the City Council as well — both in the names of some office holders and in the attitude with which council members approach their jobs. Today, we endorse in the three contested races in Wards 1, 4 ...
Conventional wisdom — even its more intuitive cousin, common sense — sometimes needs to be tested scientifically. This year’s winners of the Nobel Prize in economics are living proof of that. Michael Kremer of Harvard University and Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo of the ...
The James Prendergast Library needs a new plan. Trying to restore large amounts of city funding simply isn’t possible. The city’s $3.4 million surplus is, at best, a short-term solution as the likely costs associated with contracts for police officers and firefighters hit the books. ...
We’ve been cutting taxes on the wealthy for two generations, and the results have been dismal. Economists, who started as generally supportive of the tax cut experiment, have seen enough. By 2017, only 2 percent of the University of Chicago’s Economics Expert Panel agreed the Trump ...
Ever since I was a small kid, it has been engrained in me that of all our national parks, there is one that is our premier and most pristine park—Yellowstone. I visited it with my parents in my teens, we took our children there in the 1980s, and we just returned from visiting again in ...
Unfunded state mandates. Talk about a scary term for Halloween season. We hear about them every year. Albany passes laws that require local governments to administer often with a hefty price tag but no additional financial support from the state. Localities’ budgets are squeezed even ...
The Democrats running for president have demanded the government raise taxes on income, gasoline, energy, capital gains and your life savings at death. And your retirement savings will be hit by multiple taxes that they promise will only hurt “the rich” but will first and foremost reduce ...
A common refrain from those who have opposed Assemblyman Andrew Goodell, R-Jamestown, in races for Goodell’s Assembly seat or in the races for the state Senate is that Goodell is unable to get much done because he is mired in the Assembly’s minority. That is partially true. Goodell only ...
To The Reader’s Forum: Under Section 30121 of Title 52 of the U.S. Code, it is unlawful for a “person to solicit (from a foreign national a thing of value) . . . in connection with a Federal . . . election.” Whether President Trump violated this election law by imploring Ukrainian ...
A discussion in September raised two interesting, and contradictory, ways for the Chautauqua County Board of Health to involve itself in the ongoing controversy over the construction of wind turbines in Chautauqua County. John Tallet, Board of Health member, proposed a moratorium on ...
The Eighth Judicial District is a sprawling district that encompasses eight counties. To travel from Ripley in one corner of the district to Kendall in the other corner would take someone two hours and fifteen minutes on a good day — and we’re coming to the time of year when good days for ...
To The Reader’s Forum: The left cozies up to post-modernism on all fronts ranging from religion to science and all things in between. It smears, uproots and destroys practically everything associated with and founded upon western civilization, theism and the Bible. Nothing more than a ...
Mayor Sam Teresi’s proposed 2020 budget is much the same as his last two budgets. It spends what they city can spend to pay for services that have to be provided. There are no sexy new programs, unless one counts the Smart Cities Investment Plan the mayor unveiled a few weeks ago. There ...
Are leaders in Congress unable to walk and chew gum at the same time? That is, are they capable of multitasking on major issues? Some are speculating they are not. Recall that just a few weeks ago, in the wake of more mass murders, lawmakers vowed to debate steps to reduce the likelihood ...
There is no nice way to say it — parking at the county DMV office on Third Street, Jamestown, is a nightmare. It’s not just a matter of too few spaces. The parking lot’s layout is simply terrible. It’s difficult to swing a large vehicle into tight spaces without worrying about ...
While talking to voters the subject of property taxes has come up often. There also seems to be a growing trend of more people either keeping their jobs in NY and moving to nearby towns in Pennsylvania or Pennsylvania residents getting jobs in NY and staying in Pennsylvania. This is almost ...
Last year, our fire department alone responded to over 5,000 calls for service, of which approximately 4,000 of those calls were for emergency medical services. No matter the time or day, they came to save a life or get someone to the hospital. Regardless of the problems our City faces, they ...
I had predicted in an earlier article that the Democrats in the House would not bring impeachment proceedings against Donald Trump. I was wrong. After revelations of his conversation with the President of Ukraine, Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House, authorized an “inquiry” into ...