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Village’s water future: Treading lightly with new study

I attended Tuesday’s meeting and have just completed reading Thursday’s OBSERVER article on the LaBella Associates Fredonia water system presentation and felt that a clarification and some important points that were made at the meeting were overlooked. (1) Yes, LaBella Associates are Fredonia’s engineers but this study was funded by Chautauqua County and not the Village of Fredonia unlike the November 2023 LaBella study. Why is that distinction important? I know that some in the community have continually stated that the county is trying to force Fredonia to join the North ...

Much to consider in $120M jail proposal

Like most Legislators, I have not been given the $120,000,000 report on the Jail. In 2004 and 2005 when this Legislature approved of the last Jail project, however, I was your County Attorney. From 2014 to 2022 I was a criminal court judge in the busiest City Court per Judge in WNY. It is from that background that I have some initial questions and concerns about asking the approximately 120,000 people of Chautauqua County to foot the bill for a $120,000,000 Jail project First, in 2005, a divided Legislature approved a $16,000,000 Bond issue that, among many other things, would ...

On the road to budget ruin

Given its immediacy, it is understandable that much of the economic debate has focused on President Trump’s highly unorthodox import tariff policy. However, that should not divert our attention from the reckless budget proposal being put forward by the Trump administration. By threatening to put our public finances on an unsustainable path, this policy risks our long-term economic prosperity by potentially triggering a full-blown dollar and bond market crisis. Economic commentators have been right to focus attention on the dark cloud that Trump’s trade policy is casting over the ...

Ripley schools praise ‘accomplishment’ of designation

The Ripley Central School District Board of Education learned that the district has been named a National Showcase School by Capturing Kids’ Hearts at their regular meeting this month. District Superintendent William Caldwell said he had been contacted by the organization with the news. “The top 3% to 5% of schools doing CKH receive this designation,” he said. “For most schools, it takes three to five years. Doing it in two years is a big accomplishment.” In September, 2023, the district initiated the Capturing Kids’ Hearts program. The program, founded by Flip Flippen, ...

Another Memorial Day remembrance

Memorial Day was always a special day for me, even as a child. It was a particularly important day of remembrance for my mother. Every year, she made sure we wore the commemorative red poppies to honor her youngest brother, the family hero. Kenneth Arthur MacMillan was the youngest of four children. When their mother dies, my mother, Alberta, was 6 and the siblings were 4, 2 and baby Kenny was 14 months. He never knew his mother who spent the last months of her life in a tuberculosis sanitorium. Alberta remembered the four children gathering below their mummy’s window to wave and ...

A warming Earth in a chilling May

Well, the weather forecast for the rest of May doesn’t look too cheery with intermittent rain punctuated by daytime temperatures in the 50s and low 60s until the end of the month. I do hope that Memorial Day was better than the weather bureau predicted. If it wasn’t certain, the national corporate media would blame it on DOGE inspired cuts or on those old and slightly tired words “climate change.” There used to be a day when you could have a friendly conversation about the weather but today writing or talking about the weather may open you up to attacks on your intelligence, ...