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Dr. Rev. Kevin M. Dougherty
Life22 Founder and Podcast Host. Father of 4 and Husband of 1.

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Day 13,781(1) - Olean is the NYC of the County.mp3
Transcript
00:00:12 Kevin
Hey gang, Kevin here, Life22.
00:00:15 Kevin
And I've got a multi-part series, kind of like our multi-part short series that we did on truth, honesty, lying, things like that.
00:00:26 Kevin
And that kind of was the precursor to this multi-part series where, you know, not quite spilling tea, just kind of
00:00:40 Kevin
getting you guys amped for 2026.
00:00:42 Kevin
Right.
00:00:43 Kevin
So this episode is how I see it and kind of giving you a brief insight into what I've learned was the what Olean is to me in comparison to the county.
00:01:06 Kevin
So we're in Cattaraugus County.
00:01:08 Kevin
It's a beautiful county.
00:01:10 Kevin
A lot of great townships and stuff.
00:01:12 Kevin
For those of you who don't know, maybe you're an outsider looking in, Olean is the economic hub of Cattaraugus County.
00:01:20 Kevin
And there's a lot of things that you can say about that.
00:01:24 Kevin
We're kind of like the new, and this is what I've said to a lot of people, we're the New York City of our county.
00:01:35 Kevin
But we are the not just New York City.
00:01:37 Kevin
We're the New York City that we want as just regular New Yorkers.
00:01:43 Kevin
We want New York City to be right.
00:01:46 Kevin
And so what I mean by that is, I'm not sure if a lot of you understand this, but New York City is
00:01:54 Kevin
like the tidal wave.
00:01:55 Kevin
Like if you win New York City, you win the governor's race.
00:01:57 Kevin
You'll win, like you'll win the Senate seats.
00:02:00 Kevin
You know what I mean?
00:02:01 Kevin
Like that's that New York City has a lot of clout in the fact that they're just a huge economic powerhouse.
00:02:08 Kevin
And the problem is that they always usually run on like stupid ideas.
00:02:12 Kevin
And so like while they're the economic hub of America and also New York State,
00:02:21 Kevin
because lots of jobs do business there.
00:02:23 Kevin
The problem is they also run at a deficit.
00:02:25 Kevin
So when, people in Cattaraugus County pay income tax and it goes to the state or goes to the federal government and then it gets distributed out to the state, the state gives a lot of that money to New York City because New York City is running as a whole in an extreme deficit.
00:02:43 Kevin
And then it kind of like just, you know, piece meals these little grants out to the rest of us.
00:02:47 Kevin
Like we're just, you know,
00:02:49 Kevin
second-class citizens, right?
00:02:50 Kevin
And that's a lot of us in other parts of New York have resented New York City for that very reason.
00:02:57 Kevin
Now, Olean, in comparison to Cattaraugus County, though, Olean is the economic hub and we are what we want New York City to be, right?
00:03:06 Kevin
The big, we're the big brother city that provides
00:03:10 Kevin
tons of tax base to the county.
00:03:13 Kevin
We're helping subsidize the sheriff's department, right?
00:03:16 Kevin
Like, because out of all of you, what you pay in your county taxes goes towards the county facilitating sheriffs and stuff like that.
00:03:24 Kevin
And for a lot of municipalities in Cattaraugus County, they don't have a police force.
00:03:29 Kevin
They have, they rely on the sheriffs and the state troopers.
00:03:33 Kevin
So we
00:03:37 Kevin
essentially subsidize other places having a police force and we have our own internal police force.
00:03:41 Kevin
Like for the most part, there's not too many sheriffs and not too many like state troopers, you know, enforcing this jurisdiction.
00:03:51 Kevin
You might get pulled over or something like that by a state trooper or sheriff or whatever because they're passing through and they see crime, you know, whatever, or they see an infraction.
00:03:59 Kevin
But for the most part, we're not relying on them for our crime, for our street crimes, for our domestic violence, for
00:04:07 Kevin
neighbor disputes for dogs running at large, whatever.
00:04:11 Kevin
Like we are not relying on the sheriffs and the state troopers for that.
00:04:15 Kevin
You see a lot of their cars passing through.
00:04:17 Kevin
We also have, you know, like a court in our area that, you know, so when they
00:04:26 Kevin
When you're in holding in Little Valley, a lot of times they'll ship them down for court in Olean.
00:04:31 Kevin
They'll ship them to Salamanca for court.
00:04:32 Kevin
They'll ship them to, they'll have, you know, felony courts hearings are held in Little Valley.
00:04:36 Kevin
So there's like a lot of just different, just our area is a big hub for, you know, court transactions.
00:04:44 Kevin
So that's why a lot of times you'll see the troopers coming through.
00:04:46 Kevin
You'll see the sheriffs because they're here either delivering prisoners, giving testimony to different things that they've had, hearing cases, whatever else.
00:04:54 Kevin
For the most part, we, so tangent on the law enforcement side of it, but I mean, that's for the most part, that's what, that's we are paying for that, right?
00:05:04 Kevin
Where like, when I pay my state income taxes, it gets subsidized back to New York City so they can help fund their police department, their fire departments, and all these other things.
00:05:11 Kevin
It's like, but, you know, and then my property taxes pay for my city.
00:05:15 Kevin
So it's like, we're, you know, that's why a lot of us resent New York City.
00:05:20 Kevin
the rest of our county should not resent us in the same way because we are actually giving back.
00:05:26 Kevin
We are the economic hub and we're providing like Big Brother to the rest of the county.
00:05:34 Kevin
And usually we try not to let that go to our head.
00:05:36 Kevin
If you've watched any of our Common Council meetings, so like you got to think that I was a county or a city attorney.
00:05:44 Kevin
I'm just stumbling over words tonight.
00:05:46 Kevin
I was a city alderman for five years
00:05:49 Kevin
And I've worked for the city for the last five.
00:05:51 Kevin
And I've been a resident of the city of Olean for just over 20 years now.
00:05:56 Kevin
So it's one of those like, I've seen it all, and it's one of those like, when you're on the city council, you see how the county reacts.
00:06:05 Kevin
And I know that like talks have gotten a little bit better than since, was it two years ago?
00:06:10 Kevin
There was a county legislator shakeup, right?
00:06:13 Kevin
Almost three years ago.
00:06:15 Kevin
So that race added a lot of new faces.
00:06:18 Kevin
and a lot more, there was a lot more gung-ho to Olean.
00:06:24 Kevin
But since I was on the council, and it may have changed, like I said, it may have changed in recent years, but there was a lot of people from other municipalities that just don't like Olean.
00:06:34 Kevin
Like we did something terrible to them, right?
00:06:36 Kevin
Like we, like, oh, it's Olean.
00:06:38 Kevin
They just think that they deserve everything.
00:06:39 Kevin
And it's like, if you look at what the county actually gives us, it's very little.
00:06:43 Kevin
And I don't know if it's that mentality shining through.
00:06:47 Kevin
And then they, we could have a whole separate video just on the fact that they placed the county building, instead of placing the county building and holding the county legislature meetings here, they picked Little Valley because it was not because it was some like great capital or whatever.
00:07:02 Kevin
It was equidistant to like all the other townships.
00:07:05 Kevin
So it was like the shortest drive for every, it was like the center of, driving or what have you, right?
00:07:11 Kevin
So it was like,
00:07:13 Kevin
And then, but there's a lot of transactions that happened only.
00:07:15 Kevin
And so they moved the county building down here.
00:07:18 Kevin
at least the DSS office, right?
00:07:20 Kevin
Because they always had a health department hub down here and they always had, DMVs and stuff, right?
00:07:26 Kevin
But then all of a sudden we've got their department of social services down here.
00:07:31 Kevin
And then next thing you know, it's just like, we can have a whole video on that.
00:07:34 Kevin
But we are taking
00:07:39 Kevin
we are providing a brunt of it and we get a ton of **** from people and we get a lot of blowback like we're some spoiled and like, older sibling that we're the favorite or something.
00:07:53 Kevin
And like we're the favorite because by a lot of people and we are the place that people go to.
00:07:58 Kevin
Like **** people from Coppersport come here to go grocery shopping.
00:08:01 Kevin
Like we are just like, we're the place to go in like
00:08:06 Kevin
if you're within 75 miles, like, 75 miles takes you to Buffalo, and it's like, you've got Jamestown, Olean, like Hornell, like you just, I mean, you start naming the places that people go, we're where it's at.
00:08:25 Kevin
I mean, Salamanca being a close second, you know, that's within the county anyways.
00:08:32 Kevin
And it just,
00:08:35 Kevin
It just boggles the mind how other municipalities treat Olean.
00:08:40 Kevin
And I just, as an Olean resident, like I've been talking about this for years.
00:08:45 Kevin
It's just, we never get any help from the county.
00:08:48 Kevin
Oh, we do.
00:08:49 Kevin
We have the Olean Airport, which runs at a deficit every year, which I'm a big supporter of the Olean Airport.
00:08:56 Kevin
The problem is that the county has their name on it, and for their name, they were giving us like
00:09:01 Kevin
10 grand a year, 20 grand a year.
00:09:03 Kevin
They were, they were giving us a pilot for the taxes, right?
00:09:06 Kevin
And since I, my tail end of me being on the Common Council to when I got off, I know that they've increased that amount.
00:09:13 Kevin
A lot of it was like legislator Frank Higgins helped out a lot with that.
00:09:20 Kevin
The now former mayor's relationship with
00:09:23 Kevin
the county higher ups, like at the time it was Mike Brisky, because I remember having conversations with these people and they were like, we're going to give you more money this year.
00:09:32 Kevin
We're going to give you more money this year.
00:09:35 Kevin
And then, the changeover where we had like a changing of the guard and we had a lot more, you know, you had Kelly Andriano and Rick Smith joining Frank Higgins and Steve Teachman.
00:09:44 Kevin
And you know what I mean?
00:09:44 Kevin
So these people are,
00:09:47 Kevin
are for Olean.
00:09:48 Kevin
And that's not to say that they're not representing Portville and parts of Hinsdale and the few like mailing addresses in Cuba that are for, that are in our county.
00:10:00 Kevin
But it's one of those like, we're starting to see it now.
00:10:04 Kevin
We're starting to see a little bit like, hey man, we're taking down this, like, oh, thank you for taking down four houses.
00:10:09 Kevin
But like, you know, you take down a lot more houses with the land.
00:10:12 Kevin
Sandbank for, South Dayton and Carlton than you do in Olean, which is, where there's a lot more houses per whatever, know what I mean?
00:10:22 Kevin
we have 6,000 houses.
00:10:25 Kevin
That might be an old number, but not too many houses.
00:10:29 Kevin
There's a there's houses that burn down, right?
00:10:30 Kevin
But and there's not too many houses that are built.
00:10:32 Kevin
But you got to think that the running average six years ago was 6,000.
00:10:37 Kevin
Like, is it, you know, is it, you know, 59
00:10:42 Kevin
80, did 20, did 20 houses fall off?
00:10:47 Kevin
So that was, so you have this mentality about the city of Olean, and you have this idea
00:11:01 Kevin
about Olean, just negative attitude and a lot of pushback from other county legislators that, and like I said, a lot of this may be changing towards our favor, but there's a lot of that resentment.
00:11:16 Kevin
And over the years, there has been a lot of power plays to take over Olean, where the county would have a stronger influence.
00:11:25 Kevin
And we've
00:11:29 Kevin
We've kind of fought that off.
00:11:33 Kevin
Linda Witt held a strong ground with that.
00:11:36 Kevin
You know, the most recent former mayor, Bill Aleo, was a big, because he was a county legislator.
00:11:45 Kevin
He knew the little parlor tricks in the games and the mentality of the county.
00:11:49 Kevin
And, you know, did that hurt us because they didn't want to, you know, they don't want to do a co-op with us?
00:11:54 Kevin
But no, but it's also a power struggle.
00:11:56 Kevin
You have all these people that are at a higher level.
00:12:00 Kevin
Because guess what?
00:12:01 Kevin
The most powerful political entity there is, the individual, right?
00:12:07 Kevin
It is the people, right?
00:12:10 Kevin
And then it's the local township, and then it's the county, and then it's the state, and then it's the federal government, right?
00:12:18 Kevin
That's
00:12:19 Kevin
how the power is supposed to be minimal here at the top, maximum here at the bottom.
00:12:23 Kevin
That's how it is.
00:12:24 Kevin
That's how America was structured, right?
00:12:27 Kevin
And then all of a sudden, you've got all these, well, I'm a state representative and I can bankrupt your city.
00:12:32 Kevin
And you get that attitude, right?
00:12:35 Kevin
Like nobody comes right out and says that quiet part that they all think.
00:12:38 Kevin
And you can tell that they're thinking when they come around, they start, well, I'm this big superior thing.
00:12:43 Kevin
And it's like, no.
00:12:44 Kevin
you were federal, whatever.
00:12:47 Kevin
federal means nothing because it's supposed to be the smallest minuscule amount of power that there is.
00:12:51 Kevin
Like you should have zero change in my life at the federal level, right?
00:12:54 Kevin
Like, and that's how America, like it's like, hey, this is how it's designed, right?
00:12:57 Kevin
Like that's, and so, but you get that like for some, like we design it one way, but the human mentality is that they want to take over.
00:13:09 Kevin
Like they just like, oh, well you're beneath me.
00:13:11 Kevin
It's like, no, you're not.
00:13:12 Kevin
No,
00:13:14 Kevin
maybe in a hierarchy stance, like if you're trying to like, pyramid it, like yes, but your power runs inverse.
00:13:21 Kevin
Like, so when you get to the top, the point, you might be above.
00:13:26 Kevin
The problem is that that's also where the, like, the least amount of power is, right?
00:13:32 Kevin
So that's,
00:13:34 Kevin
But you do have that mentality where there's a lot of people at the county level that think that like, I'm higher up in politics.
00:13:40 Kevin
It's like, well, you're representing us at a different level, but like you actually have less power.
00:13:46 Kevin
You should have less power.
00:13:47 Kevin
You need to remind people that, keep them in their place.
00:13:51 Kevin
But it's also how the power dynamics have changed over the years too, where like the mayor of a town used to, or a city used to be
00:14:01 Kevin
a really like strong position and used to be able to change laws that like state laws couldn't trump and couldn't knock out of place.
00:14:09 Kevin
And you're like, wow, that's, and it's really, it's all been undermined over the years, right?
00:14:17 Kevin
So like there's things that we can't do at the city level because the state's already preempted us.
00:14:22 Kevin
And it's like, well, that's the frustrating part, right?
00:14:26 Kevin
Like
00:14:27 Kevin
they preempted us, but like it's not supposed to be that way, right?
00:14:30 Kevin
Like you're, it's, you're not allowed to have more power than the local government, like, but then they, do like, and there are certain cutouts for that, right?
00:14:39 Kevin
Like we're not supposed to have like, local, local militias and, we can't, we can't run an army and things like that.
00:14:47 Kevin
And I, and I guess I get that, right?
00:14:49 Kevin
Like I can understand those cutouts.
00:14:53 Kevin
The downside is that they've undermined and eroded, and the states have done this to all the municipalities.
00:14:59 Kevin
So when all of a sudden, like, there was a huge hullabaloo about the, like, hey, there's a mayor's race, blah, blah, blah.
00:15:06 Kevin
And it's like, okay, yeah, Bill's been there for 12 years.
00:15:08 Kevin
He's made more enemies than friends.
00:15:10 Kevin
He lost the last election to Amy Sherburne.
00:15:14 Kevin
Okay, great.
00:15:15 Kevin
Switch the mayor up.
00:15:16 Kevin
That's not going to solve any of the problems.
00:15:17 Kevin
The state's screwing things up at the state level.
00:15:20 Kevin
And because they've undermined most of our local power, essentially like they're the ones calling the shots.
00:15:25 Kevin
And so the only people that you can really deal with a lot of this ******** with is the larger is the is the next tier of government up, which it's just it's one of those things.
00:15:41 Kevin
So
00:15:43 Kevin
That's why everyone's like, oh, we changed the mayor up.
00:15:45 Kevin
Oh, everything's going to change.
00:15:46 Kevin
It's like, no, because you're still, you still have all these overreaching laws that are up above us.
00:15:51 Kevin
And they've got your hands tied, which is depressing.
00:15:58 Kevin
But one thing that, you know, Linda Witt did and Bill did that I'm hoping for the future stays in place is that the county does not
00:16:11 Kevin
that we have a good working relationship with them, but at the same time, they don't think that they can just kind of control us behind the scenes and take power from, because we are a very powerful force.
00:16:24 Kevin
We are the economic hub of our county.
00:16:26 Kevin
We are a phenomenal thing.
00:16:27 Kevin
We are great.
00:16:28 Kevin
And people try to seize that power.
00:16:34 Kevin
They see it, they smell it, they just, they want to get their hands and their claws into it.
00:16:38 Kevin
And
00:16:40 Kevin
It just, that's one thing that I hope that Amy will be aware of moving forward.
00:16:48 Kevin
It's great to have, allies in the county government.
00:16:51 Kevin
It's great to have working relationships with them.
00:16:54 Kevin
But as long as everybody knows their place and understands that Olean is not the county.
00:16:59 Kevin
Olean is within the county.
00:17:00 Kevin
Olean is represented at the county level already.
00:17:06 Kevin
The county does not
00:17:07 Kevin
own Olean.
00:17:08 Kevin
The county does not run Olean.
00:17:10 Kevin
The county, the same way it doesn't run Salamanca or South Dayton or Carlton or Allegheny or Township, Weston Mills, Portville.
00:17:24 Kevin
They're all independent
00:17:26 Kevin
conglomerates, right?
00:17:28 Kevin
They're all just, they're made-up of all of us people within town and city lines.
00:17:32 Kevin
And then we are represented here as our local government.
00:17:35 Kevin
And then from there, we send representation to the county.
00:17:39 Kevin
And at no point, like, is the county more powerful than us and says, hey, you know, we're just, you know, we're taking over what you're, no, that's not it.
00:17:50 Kevin
Sorry, got to be put in your place.
00:17:52 Kevin
Like, that's elephant in the room.
00:17:54 Kevin
You think you can run us?
00:17:55 Kevin
No.
00:17:56 Kevin
And as long as the new mayor is moving forward, going through with that, I don't really have an issue.
00:18:01 Kevin
I don't have an issue.
00:18:04 Kevin
But there are some things, especially, just the mind games of politics.
00:18:13 Kevin
And I know Amy has a lot of experience in different things like business and stuff like that.
00:18:20 Kevin
And,
00:18:22 Kevin
just in Olean, right?
00:18:24 Kevin
But the political games that people play, it is, there are some unique chess moves that people use.
00:18:33 Kevin
And if you're not used to them, next thing you're learning about impassant, and someone just pulls a move that you thought was like a left-handed trick, but it's in the rules.
00:18:46 Kevin
And now all of a sudden, you're kind of handcuffed in certain areas.
00:18:51 Kevin
But
00:18:53 Kevin
It's one of those.
00:18:56 Kevin
I just wanted, I wanted this video to be about where Olean stands, what Olean is, how in the past, for at least the last,
00:19:09 Kevin
last decade that I've been in politics and before that, because I just, when you get into politics, they tell you, talk to county legislators who've been there for 20, 30 years, and they're just like, people who've been in politics for 20 or 30 years, and they tell you like, hey, this is how it's always been.
00:19:25 Kevin
It's always been this resentment.
00:19:26 Kevin
There's always been this.
00:19:27 Kevin
There's always been that.
00:19:29 Kevin
People think that Olean is trying to run the county.
00:19:31 Kevin
It's like, no, we don't want to run the county.
00:19:33 Kevin
And it's probably gonna be a power struggle to a degree because the county needs us because we're their economic hub.
00:19:39 Kevin
You know what I mean?
00:19:40 Kevin
Like that's just, but we're also within, we're within the county borders.
00:19:44 Kevin
So, we, need the county as much as they need us.
00:19:49 Kevin
And it's one of those, but we need to have distinct lines.
00:19:53 Kevin
We can't blur them because then we're just one government.
00:19:55 Kevin
And I'm a little government guy.
00:19:57 Kevin
So, but sometimes I get stuck on these rabbit holes of the minutia.
00:20:02 Kevin
the minutiae, the small details.
00:20:04 Kevin
So with that said, guys, I'm going to end this video.
00:20:09 Kevin
Stay tuned for the next video in this.
00:20:13 Kevin
Let's call it a series.
00:20:15 Kevin
In this series, we are going to see you on the next one.