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Opinion

County: Familiar story plays out at lake

The OBSERVER’s View

For more than a century Chautauqua Lake has been the goose that lays golden eggs. That was the case when lakefront hotels and amusement parks dotted the lake’s shores around the turn of the century. It was true as lakefront homes and summer cottages sprung up around the lake. The goose ...

Facing the Challenges of Local Government

Commentary

We tend to forget that it takes dedicated people to run our local government institutions. One of my earliest memories of politics was observing my Dad’s duties as Supervisor of the Town of Kiantone. It was not a job that he really wanted—he was plenty busy running the farm—but the ...

New York State: Assembly Dems put on rural reps

The OBSERVER’s View

When Assemblyman Andrew Goodell, R-Jamestown, debated a bill or spoke on a bill’s merits, he knew he wasn’t speaking to Democrats in the Assembly. The same is true for Goodell’s successor, Andrew Molitor. But, during the latter part of Goodell’s tenure in the Assembly the Jamestown ...

Finding clarity in protests over ICE

Commentary

By THE REV. MEL McGINNIS “We are seeing two movies on one screen,” the late Dilbert creator Scott Adams once said. Minneapolis is exhibit one. One side calls it murder, the other, self-defense. One side says, “ICE is causing chaos.” The other side says, “ICE is there because of the ...

Natural gas best option for facility

Commentary

In early 2013, New York’s then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo showed up in Dunkirk on a wintry day to announce with great fanfare that the NRG power plant in Dunkirk would be converted from a clean-coal facility to natural gas-fueled power production. I was a Chautauqua County Legislator at the time and I ...

FREDONIA District has time to fix finances

The OBSERVER’s View

Fredonia Central School district residents did not need to hear the news from state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli to know of the troubling fiscal plight. Since a meeting in December, the district has been well aware of its money problems that will become more apparent as the 2026-27 budget gets ...