A casual observer might not have called it triumphal or even worthy of comment, but for governmental observers and watchdogs several important things took place Monday at Wheatfield’s town board meeting.

Department heads: Paul Siegmann of the Highway Department, Rich Donner of Water & Sewer, Mike Klock (above photo) from inspection, Assessor Bridget Grawe. Nearly all of them were present Monday.

But that’s not the new part. For some time now, Wheatfield has been leading the county’s major municipalities in having department heads speak regularly at council meetings.

This time, though, instead of remaining [...]

“When the North Tonawanda History Museum bought the building at 54 Webster Street, it was scoffed at for paying $675,000,” says N.T. History Museum member Audrey Monkiewicz. “Some of the original board members immediately walked away, expecting it to fail. But the Museum survived, thanks to the support of those who believed in its mission.”

“The Museum still owes $289,275 on the building. That sounds daunting, but a vacant structure about a block away from the Museum has an asking price of $900,000. That building was under consideration as a possible relocation site, but its price and its condition made the Museum’s current [...]

There’s no delicate way to put this …

The website that serves the City of North Tonawanda is the worst in Niagara County.

It looks bad. The navigation is awkward. It’s rarely updated with new content. And because it’s so old and poorly designed, nothing is innovative.

It also lacks an acceptable level of transparency, according to the Buffalo Niagara Open Government report card. It recently awarded the NT website an ‘F,’ citing the failure to provide video recordings of meetings, outdated common council information, lacking a “Notify Me” option as well as other areas to improve.

The good [...]

Lately, we’ve heard a lot about “fake news” and “alternative facts.”

But there’s another type of dubious journalism that’s not even in the vernacular yet.

I’m talking about “junk news,” and we get too much of it in Niagara County, served to us by the corporate media at the expense of issues that are being kept in the dark — stories that might actually advance the status quo in Niagara Falls, North Tonawanda, Lockport, Wheatfield and everywhere else in Niagara County.

So instead of news coverage the establishment media doesn’t want you to see, we get served up plate after plate of arrests, house fires, DWIs, [...]