OBSERVER Photo by M.J. Stafford Dunkirk officials returned to City Hall Tuesday after the long weekend and resumed wrangling with the city’s challenging financial situation.

The city of Dunkirk should have a relatively healthy cash flow of about $6.6 million by December “if everything goes as planned,” Fiscal Affairs Officer Ellen Luczkowiak said Tuesday. However, repayment of a Revenue Anticipation Note is one potential roadblock.

Luczkowiak spoke to a Common Council Finance Committee meeting that none of the ward representatives bothered attending. The only council member there was Councilman-at-Large Nick Weiser, who chairs the committee.

She said the city is currently running about $1.5 million ahead in revenue compared to expenses. That number was “close to $2 million” at the previous Finance Committee meeting two weeks prior.

Those numbers are small, however, in comparison to the $12 million that the city must pay on a Revenue Anticipation Note it took out last year. The payment is due in July and “we’re getting scarily close to that date,” Luczkowiak said.

The fiscal affairs officer said that she, Mayor Kate Wdowiasz, Treasurer Mark Woods, and consultants Municipal Solutions are working on a repayment plan.

Luczkowiak also reported that an audit of the city’s 2024 finances will not be ready until August.

City officials had hoped to have it in July. They want it as soon as possible because New York State will not certify its debt without it. Minus that certification, the city cannot access the millions in state funds it’s supposed to get as part of the Fiscal Recovery Act passed by the state Legislature last year.

Weiser wondered if anyone could do the audit faster. “It’s hard to say,” Luczkowiak said. “We’re pushing them (current auditors Drescher and Malecki) as best we can.”

“We are looking at several different potential scenarios” for repayment of the Revenue Anticipation Note, Woods confirmed. He promised a further, more detailed update “down the road.”