City of Dunkirk officials emphasized Tuesday that water rates are not going up for city residential consumers.

With residents staring at an 84% tax increase and State Sen. George Borrello proposing a financial control board, the atmosphere was grim at Tuesday’s Common Council Finance Committee meeting. The OBSERVER came under pressure to correct “misinformation,” much of it apparently propagated on social media, about various Dunkirk issues.

One of the key misconceptions going around Dunkirk, city officials said Tuesday, is that its residential consumers are about to have their water rates raised. Councilwoman Nancy Nichols asked Department of Public Works Director Randy Woodbury to clearly state that that is not the case.

“City residential rates will not be increasing,” he said.

The confusion may stem from the fact that Dunkirk did recently raise its water rate to a large consumer, the North County Water District. The NCWD subsequently raised rates for its own consumers. The district acquires all of its water from the city under a contract. However, city of Dunkirk residents have their rates governed by City Hall, not the water district.

There’s also the fact that, as previously reported here, city officials are looking at changing the rate structure for large, industrial customers. They’re eying a declining block rate that would charge lower prices for water usage above certain levels of volume.

Woodbury noted Tuesday that city officials “are still working on” that change. Even if that happened, it’s not likely to affect residential users.

Woodbury offered a comment about the city’s rate hike to the NCWD after the meeting.

“The 2% hike to out-of-city NCWD is based on plugging annual cost numbers into (SUNY Fredonia economics professor) Dr. (Peter) Reinelt’s formula embedded indelibly in the 40-year contract agreed by all parties,” he said. “Nothing (is) arbitrary or capricious about it.”

City residents pay $4.33 per 1,000 gallons used, Woodbury said at Tuesday’s meeting, while Dunkirk’s charge to the NCWD is $5.27 per 1,000 gallons.

The DPW director mentioned he’d like to do a study of water rates in nearby areas, as a way to show a comparison with Dunkirk’s.

Strongly advocating for his water system as always, Woodbury declared that only the city of Jamestown’s water can compare in quality to Dunkirk’s within Chautauqua County.