While some understandably say that the county’s economic decline has been slow over the past 50 years, the statistical evidence proves that our economic collapse is much more recent.
Anecdotally, it is true that Chautauqua County began losing manufacturing, often to the non-union South, 50 years ago in the 1970s. However, these losses were greatly offset by the arrival of Cummins Engine in 1974, with Joe Gerace as chairman of the county legislature and the first time in Chautauqua County history that Democrats controlled the county legislature. The arrival of Cummins has resulted in at least 1,000 jobs to date.
The 1970s and early 1980s saw further significant advances in economic development. The district leaders have volunteered to do very hard things. County government pioneered the creation of sewage districts around Lake Chautauqua (when the lakefront towns were not building sewers beyond Lakewood and Celoron), which ultimately led to tremendous appreciation of lakefront real estate and the construction of million-dollar homes led where humble seasonal cottages once stood.
District leaders during this period also volunteered to take on district responsibility for waste management for the entire district. Up to this point, almost every town, village and town maintained its own open landfills, which among other things was very bad for the environment.
In fact, the county’s economy was remarkably stable through the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s through 2008. For example, the New York State Department of Labor reported that our workforce has remained constant at approximately 68,000 people throughout these decades. Since 2008, our workforce has declined by 18% to around 56,000 people. Today, a staggering 12,000 fewer people work or seek jobs in Chautauqua County than in 2008.
The county’s population declined only from 147,000 in 1970 to 140,000 in 2000, or 4.8% over 30 years.
In contrast, the county’s population fell from 140,000 in 2000 to just 128,000 in 2020, or by 8.6% in just 20 years. To put the loss of 12,000 people in just 20 years into perspective, that equates to losing the entire population of the city of Dunkirk, or 2,400 people more than the 9,600 people of Fredonia, our largest village by far.
The election of a Republican district executive in 2005, defeating an eight-year Democratic incumbent, proved to be the beginning of the return of one-party rule in Mayville.
In recent weeks, the Post-Journal and the OBSERVER have raised concerns about this “listless” District legislators, 15 of 19 are Republicans who “sitting on their hands at monthly meetings and settling for a status quo that does absolutely nothing to move the county forward.” For example, in August 2016, the county used $200,000 in state funds to repurchase 66 acres of land from Bush Industries in the South County Industrial Park. This was a wise decision. At the time, county officials said they would develop the property by creating an access road and establishing utility lines, along with other work they said would shovel-ready the site. However, as of January 2023, the 66 acres look like the same blank field as in August 2016.
All 19 members of the state parliament are up for election in November 2023.
A combination of “listless” Legislators and a lack of “Vision” have banded together to create what the newspapers called a “sustained fall” for Chautauqua County.
The local newspapers called for action: “But Mayville – and the elected officials of villages, cities and towns – need to wake up. There are 60 other counties that are better off than us in this state. That’s not Albany’s problem. It’s ours.”
The last thing this declining county needs is to allow the county board to use at least $100,000 in taxpayer dollars to hire a public relations person (euphemistically called a public relations person). “Media Information Officer”) to tell us every day what a great job the Chautauqua County Board of Directors is doing and how great things are in Chautauqua County. We don’t need a paid PR person, we need the truth from Mayville. We’ve had district boards for 49 years that have never used our money for a public relations mouthpiece. We shouldn’t start now.
In general, Americans have always believed that competition is a good thing. Federal antitrust laws ensure that there is competition in American business and industry. The competition gives us better quality at lower prices.
The lack of competition in the county’s electoral politics since 2005 seems to give us “listless” Lawmakers are content with our county’s population decline and economic collapse and a lack of “Vision” by our elected county officers.
Chautauqua County does it better. Sixty of the state’s 62 counties already are.
Fred Larson is a resident of Jamestown, a former Chautauqua County legislator, a former municipal court judge, and a former Chautauqua County attorney.
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