Fredonia village Trustee James Lynden voiced his displeasure with the 17% tax increase Mayor Doug Essek is proposing during Monday’s Board of Trustees meeting.

“I find his proposal to be misguided when compared to the trustee’s approved budget of just a year ago that had healthy fund balance, no tax increase and then had the general water and sewer funds all operating at a gain,” Lynden stated during his report at the meeting. “The mayor is by law the budget officer. He is responsible for proposing a budget and although he has no vote on that matter he is responsible for overseeing the implementation of the adopted budget in cooperation with the treasurer and department heads.”

Lynden is confused as to why Essek never mentioned that the village was in such constraints until now.

“How is it that he did not notice what was going on so as to warn the board against further overspending when there was still time?” Lynden questioned. “We can’t go from no tax increase to 17% in one year unless something extraordinary has happened and please don’t even go to the COVID excuse unless you have evidence that every village in New York state will suffer the same tax increase.”

At Monday’s meeting, Essek proposed a property tax increase of 17% which would raise the tax rate to $41.29 — or $6.10 per $1,000 of total assessed valuation — to bring additional revenues of $479,909 to the village.

“This year’s budget was challenging due to increased expenses, a decrease in revenues, proposed increased expenses and a tax cap that was less than 2%, which only equated to $56,459.90,” Essek had said. “The limited tax cap along with other factors and a tax levy that has not been increased since 2015 did not leave many options to produce a fiscally responsible balanced budget.”

The mayor’s proposed budget for 2021-22 totals $10,845,632, a $454,707 increase over last year’s budget of $10,390,945 — or roughly a 4.3% increase.