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Our opinion: Restoring boat launch is a win-win

For years the area behind the Dairy Delite at Routes 6 and 59 has been used to launch kayaks and canoes into Brown Run, which provides easy access to the Allegheny River. But over the years the streambank had eroded, making it more difficult to use the area as a launch site. That problem has been corrected thanks to the Warren County Conservation District and the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy - with a lot of help from Mark Keyes, who purchased Dairy Delite in 2020. It was a match made in kayaking heaven. Access to state funding and the expertise of the Warren County Conservation ...

Our opinion: Future now for consolidation

Now that a judge has ruled the Warren County School District acted legally when it closed the Youngsville and Sheffield high schools, it’s time to stop looking toward the past and start looking toward the future. The judge’s decision should be more than a legal formality that concludes a case on a judicial docket. It needs to be the end of the debate over whether or not to close Sheffield and Youngsville and the start of a public realization that the Warren County School District is changing - and now is the time to make sure those changes work as well as possible for the students ...

Our opinion: Our nation is more than its politics

On this Independence Day, America’s politicians on both sides of the political aisle ought to be thinking more about this country as a whole - what is best for this wonderful free land - than mostly about their party, their party’s agenda or the friction they might harbor and encourage against those with whom they disagree. But can they muster such a spirit of patriotism - what in a different time might seem inevitable? This year, probably not, amid the rampant divisiveness that haunts the halls of their governmental responsibilities. The nation’s founders, if they today were ...

Our opinion: Bill undermines accountability

We are concerned legislation sponsored by state Sen. Doug Mastriano, R-Fayetteville, erodes our state’s commitment to transparency and accountability. “Resurrected from stalled legislative efforts in previous sessions, the bill would allow public notices to go on municipal, school district and county websites” as an alternative to newspapers, an email from the Pennsylvania Newsmedia Association warns its members. We agree with our industry’s trade association that allowing government bodies to police their own transparency lacks the independent oversight necessary for ...

Our opinion: Need new plan for orphaned wells

Pennsylvania is losing ground in its efforts to cap abandoned oil and gas wells. According to a recent state legislative hearing, the state has seen 1,154 more oil and gas wells abandoned since 2020 while, over the past two and a half years, plugging only 308 abandoned wells. This comes after the state received $76 million from the federal government to speed up the process of capping abandoned wells. The 1,154 abandoned in that time represent just a fraction of the total unplugged wells across the state. Reports from the Department of Environmental Protection estimate there are up ...

Our opinion: Thumbs up to Ukraine backers

How many of us are thinking regularly about the roughly three-year-old conflict in the Ukraine. It may not be that high on the list given the state of things inside the United States. DOGE, the Big Beautiful Bill, federal spending cuts, the mess in Iran and Israel, increasing levels of mental illness and homelessness, energy independence, immigration, tariffs and higher costs for just about everything we buy all compete with Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine for our attention. That’s why it’s worth singling out the commitment to a group of local residents who are not only ...