Cindy Capestrani, village of Falconer Clerk, was named 2025 Chautauqua County Municipal Clerks Association Clerk of the Year. Capestrani was nominated by her peers and fellow CCMCA members. Comments submitted described her as one who is active in her community outside of her Village Clerk ...

Editor’s note: This concludes a three-part series. Images are courtesy of Jack Woodbury, the Barker Museum, and the early Fredonia Baptist records. Many of those documents reside in the SUNY Fredonia Archives and Special Collections, and are transcribed and posted with Chautauqua ...

More than half of the city of Dunkirk’s American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funding was spent on police and fire salaries, data shared with the OBSERVER revealed this week. The city spent $10,619,589 in ARPA funds from 2021-23. ARPA was approved by Congress as a massive, one-time shot of ...

The number of private million-dollar residences sold locally has skyrocketed over the past few years. Since 2022, The Post-Journal and OBSERVER have been analyzing real estate sales in Chautauqua County. The county does not provide this information, but it is available by manually reviewing ...

The village of South Dayton is considering dissolution, in another example of the local consolidation of services campaign. South Dayton’s Village Board plans a public hearing on dissolution Wednesday at 7 p.m. in the South Dayton Fire Hall, 34 Maple St. The hearing is supposed to focus ...

Jessica Crooks knows all too well what it’s like to battle addiction issues. Now, Crooks is helping others in their own battles with addiction as a peer adviser at the Chautauqua County Mental Health Association. Crooks’ journey began long ago with addictions that had begun to spiral ...