Bill Sliwa was one of the Fredonia residents who slammed the village Board of Trustees Wednesday over a proposed budget with an approximately 65% tax increase.

Fredonia’s Board of Trustees heard a slew of complaints from the public about the proposed village budget Wednesday — and offered more bad news about a spending plan that could raise taxes by around 65%.

Trustee Jon Espersen announced that the state Comptroller’s Office stopped a plan to cut the stipends of trustees and Mayor Michael Ferguson. The office informed village officials that elected officials’ salaries can only get cut through a local law that demands a public referendum.

Since the village needs a budget by June 1 and Election Day isn’t until November, the salaries can’t be cut this year. That adds $13,000 back to the spending plan that trustees settled on after more than two hours of talks Monday.

The news adds a fraction of a percentage point back to a proposed tax hike that has clearly upset village residents. Some of them spewed their rage and frustration Wednesday during a pair of hearings on the budget. One was on the budget itself and the other was required if Fredonia is to blow past the state-imposed tax cap — but both hearings offered an opportunity to vent anger at Village Hall.

A speaker that Espersen identified only as “Bill” said, “The area is circling the drain; everyone knows it. And you’re trying to treat the disease with the poison that caused the disease in the first place. It’s just irresponsible… As far as union employees and salaries, I don’t know what the legalities are, but you’re going to have to cut at some point. I don’t care if it results in lawsuits or whatever. That’s how I see it — it’s an existentialist crisis, and it’s not going to get any better without consolidation, dissolution or receivership.”

Kathy Furness called the proposed tax hike “ridiculous” and “undoable. And the thing is too, our services are getting less and less every year. I don’t even bother raking my leaves out to the front anymore because every year I call and say, ‘My leaves have been out for two weeks,’ and they say ‘The truck is broken.’ Then in the spring they come and pull the leaves up and the grass is dead.” Now she rakes, bags and disposes of the leaves herself.

Bill Sliwa is a native of the area who lived elsewhere for 40 years but moved back to be closer to family. “This village needs to understand that you’re crumbling,” he said.

“You have 469 students in your high school. Forty years ago that number was way higher than that. It’s time to start some serious conversations, and some serious looking at yourselves and each other, and realizing this is not the Western New York that it was,” Sliwa said. “As a Dunkirk native, I would have never stepped foot inside this building (Fredonia Village Hall) because of the rivalry that existed. Those days are gone, those days are over. It’s time to start planning on consolidation, it’s time to start planning for the future — if you plan on having a future.”

He suggested taxing anyone who works in the village but does not live there. “That’s not unprecedented in other parts of the country,” he said.

Former Trustee James Lynden said of the budget, “It almost seems like it’s an intentional degrading of our community.”

He complained that he told the board during last year’s budget talks that its financial practices were not sustainable, but was ignored.

“You don’t overspend first and then tell your public that you have to raise this surprising, massive amount of funds,” Lynden said. “If need be, you have to lay off people.”

He later added, “For the last year and a half you’ve been spending money on studies of studies, and going nowhere, instead of investing that money. Not one grant was looked into to repair of our own water system. Of course nothing got fixed, it’s intentional dismantling of our community.”

Former Village Attorney Samuel Drayo and former Village Treasurer James Sedota also criticized the proposed budget.

As the hearings ended, Espersen stated that Trustee Michelle Twichell wanted the board to get together next week to look at the budget some more. “Let’s look at our schedules and see when we can get together to do that,” he said.