Ellen Luczkowiak

Dunkirk residents hammered by an 84% property tax increase this year might expect some better news for 2026. Although there was talk Monday at a Common Council Finance Committee meeting of holding the line on taxes, there was also renewed interest in changes to water and sewer rates.

Councilwoman Nancy Nichols said several times that the city should keep its 2026 tax rate the same, or even lower it. Oddly enough, despite a long recent list of financial troubles at City Hall, Nichols also made a side comment criticizing newspaper writers for allegedly frightening residents about city affairs.

Councilman-at-large Nick Weiser, the Finance Committee chairman, said he wanted to revisit changes in water and wastewater rates for commercial customers.

“That should happen before budget time so we can factor in the (new) rates,” Nichols replied. “If we can lower the tax rates for residents, that will reassure them we are working for them.”

A little later in the meeting, Fiscal Affairs Officer Ellen Luczkowiak offered some positive news about current city finances.

“Revenues are still at this point exceeding expenses,” she said. “We’re still up around $700,000, which is good.”

Luczkowiak credited city departments for managing their expenses. Her biggest current source of concern is overtime for police and fire department employees. The overtime budget lines “were slashed quite a bit” this year, she said.

The city’s “cash flow is doing well,” Luczkowiak continued. She clarified, at the urging of Councilman James Stoyle, that there are funds available to purchase two new trucks for the fire department.

As for the city’s 2024 audit, “everything that the auditors need, they have,” Luczkowiak said. That includes information from the Dunkirk Housing Authority and the Dunkirk Local Development Corporation. One of the holdups on the audit was that those organizations’ financial information wasn’t available yet.

“Right now it’s in the hands of the auditors (Drescher and Malecki),” Luczkowiak said. She’s hoping they will have the audit finished in September.

Luzckowiak was a little defensive on one item: “It was mentioned we weren’t giving things to the Office of the State Comptroller (OSC). We have.”

She admitted that Dunkirk was not properly offering the information earlier in the year, blaming it on a change in OSC’s reporting system. That situation has been rectified and the information is now flowing properly, she asserted.

“We’re trying to be as transparent as possible here,” she said.