The idea of automatic cost-of-living-adjustments for Chautauqua County legislators is, and frankly always was, a bad idea. We weren’t in favor of legislators receiving a 64% increase in pay in 2024. While that was the first raise in county lawmakers’ pay in about 20 years. A $5,700 raise ...

Over the last week, more than 600 observertoday.com website viewers gave us their opinion regarding “Do you favor a control board for the city of Dunkirk?” Along the lines that have been written on social media and in several discussions, the poll found an overwhelming 89.66% in favor while ...

Too many senior citizens in New York state don’t have access to affordable dental care. That fact makes it hard to disagree with legislation (A.11235/S.7594) introduced by Assemblywoman Rebecca Seawright and Sen. Cordell Cleare that would require the NY State of Health Marketplace to ...

Fredonia’s follies just will not go away. Last week, after a contentious Village Board meeting marred by a minor scuffle after the public comment session, trustees went into executive session and created even more chaos. When they came out of it, the board terminated its Department of Public ...

Viewing from a distance, there seems to be little doubt that the village of Westfield is one of the most organized and aggressive communities when it comes to funding. Last week, state Gov. Kathy Hochul announced projects planned by recipients of the NY Forward grant. Westfield had an ...

We have complained for years about more than $30 million in reserves for Chautauqua County. Pine Valley Central Schools is even more guilty. In recent years, Pine Valley built its unassigned fund balance to roughly 30% of the succeeding year’s budget — dramatically higher than surrounding ...