Dunkirk Mayor Wilfred Rosas, the city’s top two financial officers, and the lone Common Council member to vote against the 2022 budget criticized the council’s changes to the spending plan Tuesday night.

The mayor, Treasurer Mark Woods, Chief Financial Officer Marsha Beach and Councilman Marty Bamonto (D-2nd Ward) held an impromptu press conference after the council met Wednesday and approved its proposed changes by a 3-1 vote. Rosas announced he was vetoing the budget and passed around copies of his veto message.

Bamonto said that he even though he is chairman of the council’s finance committee, he was never informed of all of the changes.

“We had a good budget week a couple of weeks ago. We sat down, looked at the mayor’s budget, made a couple moves on this and that,” he said. “I think, the council, at those five meetings that we had, those were good amendments they wanted to have. The mayor had a great budget, Mark and Marsha did great on the budget, then all of a sudden (the budget) comes to my house two weeks later and I’m the chairman of the finance committee and I didn’t know these amendments were made.

“As usual, I’m always voted out of these things because I’m the odd man out, but I should have been brought in on these (budget amendments),” he added. “As you can see from talking to our fiscal people, this is a dangerous, dangerous budget for the city of Dunkirk going forward, and that’s why I would like to table this tonight and go over some things, and they disagree with that.”

Rosas said council members made the amendments without consulting with him, Bamonto, Beach or Woods.

“This was done, obviously, behind closed doors. It’s something they planned on doing,” the mayor said. “It’s unfortunate, because these numbers that they’ve changed … these numbers don’t add up.

They have not accounted for the total cost of these services that the city currently provides the way we do.

“The ultimate result to taxpayers is very negative,” Rosas continued. “This was wrong, the process in which it was done was wrong. It was not transparent — when they talk about transparency. There was no formal meeting had, open to the public, where these changes were discussed. That, in my opinion, is wrong, but it’s very telling of this council and what I’ve been having to deal with for the last two years.”

Bamonto, Rosas and Woods are Democrats. The other council members are Republicans Nancy Nichols, James Stoyle and Paul VanDenVouver. Don Williams was elected as a Democrat, but usually aligns himself with Republican council members.

All of that means, as Rosas acknowledged, that his veto stands little to no chance of getting upheld. The council is almost certain to vote 4-1 to override his veto, with Bamonto the “no” vote.

Bamonto, Nichols and Stoyle won re-election and VanDenVouver did not run again, with Republican David Damico winning his seat. Williams lost a Democrat primary to Natalie Luczkowiak in June. He ran against her in the November election on his own People Over Politics line, and joined the Republicans to watch voting results come in on Election Night. Luczkowiak defeated him again.

Woods and Beach appeared before the media together Wednesday to criticize the budget from a fiscal standpoint.

“The big drawback that we see is creating a separate fund for the garbage collection,” Woods said. “Basically, there is no revenue, no cash to fund that Jan. 1st, so we’d be operating with no revenue. It’s not gonna work.”

“The billings won’t actually, for 2022, start until March. Because we bill in arrears,” Beach said. Woods said that meant the 2022 budget actually won’t get funded until March 31.

“There’s also a lot of expenses they’re not addressing” in the garbage fund, Beach said. “Benefits for the employees, the retirement fund, FICA.”

Woods said, “We’re talking about 75 to 180 thousand dollars not addressed.”

Beach also criticized the reduction of an arterial road maintenance fund by $225,000. “That pretty much is going to force the city to maintain the state roads at our own expense,” she said. Woods said the budget does not count on federal stimulus funds to make up the difference. “It’s a straight cut,” he said.