MAYVILLE - After eight years at the front of the room, Keith Ahlstrom will take a new seat in the County Legislature come March.
With Republicans now the majority party in Mayville, the Dunkirk Democrat will resign from his position as chairman after eight years.
In that time, Ahlstrom said he has seen some significant changes in Chautauqua County from the chairman's seat.
"Since I've been chairman, there's been a complete restructuring of the legislative office and how that functions," Ahlstrom said. "We have downsized as far as personnel in the legislature office. We operate with one less full time person in that office. In the last couple of years, because of monetary constraints, we have gone from having our own legislature attorney to using the county attorney's office, at a savings of over $40,000 a year, I would guess."
Also in the last eight years, Ahlstrom said the county has gone from a $20 million surplus down to a $20,000 surplus and back up the "okay financial condition" the county is in today.
"Probably, as chairman, the thing that has been the most satisfying to me was my involvement in getting the Chautauqua Lake Management Commission off the ground, through the legislature and actually into a functioning body that is doing and has the opportunity to do great things in maintaining the ecology of the lake," Ahlstrom said. "I am proud of those things."
The main concern for many people following the District 7 court case in recent months was not who would win, but how much it would cost the county.
Of the four attorneys involved in the District 7 case, the county is only responsible for the two who represented the Republican and Democratic election commissioners - Andrew Goodell and Michael Cerrie, respectively.
"I would guess, based on the last numbers that I heard, that we will be between $30,000 and $40,000," Ahlstrom said of what the county will pay as a result of the case.
"It's too bad that there is a county cost to it," Ahlstrom continued. "But again, this is strictly operating within the process that is set forward by law. It wasn't an optional thing. It's something that had to be done and it isn't a political thing. Neither side is to blame that that's the way that we went. Both sides, through the course of this, appealed at different points along the line and, situations reversed, we would have been appealing the opposite points."