We still struggle to justify automatic pay raises each year for Chautauqua County lawmakers — though judging from last week’s vote Republican lawmakers have no such struggle. In 2024, the county legislature voted to increase the base salary of individual legislators from $9,000 to ...

On its own, it’s not the biggest news that the towns of Ellington and Charlotte are looking to merge courts and share one judge. In 2021, the towns of Sherman, Mina, French Creek and Clymer merged their courts to a single operation. That was followed by the towns of Harmony and North ...

Nick Weiser, councilman at-large, is the sharpest on Dunkirk’s legislative board. After coming aboard in 2024 — right as the fiscal crisis was beginning — he was the first council leader to scrutinize the budget, even helping other council members who had served numerous terms understand ...

Take a drive through Brocton-Portland and there are signs of discontent. It stems from the announcement earlier this spring that a possible data center was looking at the former Sugar Hill golf course on Route 5. That opposition also is evident in last week’s observertoday.com poll: Are you ...

As has been well documented for more than two years, the city of Dunkirk is facing real troubles. Finances are in shambles. Morale, of course, is at all time lows in City Hall. How is the Common Council responding to the big problems through the first five months of the year? It does ...

A five-year delay in the state’s electric school bus mandate is a reasonable compromise in the state budget. The electric bus mandate was always far too optimistic that technology would be ready quickly. Early adopters of electric buses have found the technology isn’t ready for New ...