By RICK MILLER
Olean Star
OLEAN — You won’t find the Revised Olean City Charter on the ballot this November.
The charter commission presented its final draft charter in September 2025, which was to be the subject of a city-wide referendum Nov. 3, 2026, according to a press release from then-Mayor Bill Aiello. The vote was unanimous.
The former mayor had appointed the Olean Charter Review Commission Jan 9, 2024 at the urging of some members of the Common Council.
Its chairman was James Griffin, himself a former mayor. The commission included two aldermen, Sonya McCall, D-Ward 4, and Vernon Robinson Jr., I-Ward 6. Robinson has since resigned from the council.
Besides updating the charter’s language, it continued the strong mayor form of government and left it to a bipartisan group to decide on a salary, which has remained unchanged at $50,000 since 1994.
On Tuesday, Griffin told the Olean Star he had contacted the Mayor’s Office in January to offer Mayor Amy B. Sherburne help with the charter. He said he got a call back on Monday.
Sherburne said that was not true, that she “reached out to remind everyone if there are dates or whatever needs to be done with that (charter), to please do it. From what I understand, this is not for the mayor to do. This is the Charter Commission along with the legislative body of the Council.”
Sherburne asked, “Who is it that overseas that to push it through? I don’t believe it would be from the Mayor’s Office. But if nothing else,someone from that charter commission should have known there were dates involved.”
The mayor said her office discovered “a lot of information we were finding was going to (former city attorney) Jack Hart’s office at one point. We tried to crack that, so I have to assume that all parties involved prior to me should have seen this through, but I couldn’t tell you where the ball dropped.”
City officials checked with the Cattaraugus County Board of Elections this summer to find out what date the charter had to be submitted to get it on the November ballot. The date is Aug. 3.
According to state Election Law, the city clerk is charged with providing the Board of Elections with a certified text copy of any city referendum, proposition, or proposal at least three months before the General Election.
The city has had two city clerks this year, Frank Caputo and Lens Martial. The common council approved Sherburne’s nomination of Martial to be city clerk in April.
It’s not clear who should have referred the charter commission’s revised charter and recommendations to the City Clerk’s Office.
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