The Dunkirk Common Council has indefinitely postponed Mayor Kate Wdowiasz’s attempt to change the rules on benefits for elected officials.

Councilwoman Natalie Luczkowiak motioned at last week’s meeting to indefinitely postpone a local law enacting the changes. The council voted unanimously, and without comment, to accept her motion.

The council tabled the law at its previous meeting in February. Wdowiasz said then that the law was intended to rescind and replace a 1992 law concerning the benefits. She stated the state Comptroller’s Office recommended a legal clarification of elected city officials’ insurance benefit packages.

“It does not reduce the compensation package. It clarifies what was expected. … We are not changing the compensation. The compensation will remain the same, the option is, you take the insurance or you don’t. I, myself, choose to take the insurance. It’s a personal choice,” the mayor said.

The law would have covered just two people: Wdowiasz and City Assessor Erica Munson. Munson was one of a trio who criticized the proposed law during a public hearing before the council tabled the measure in February.

Ex-Councilwoman Abigail Zatorski said the proposed change was both improper and illegal because it fails to follow the city charter. Christine Pinkoski, briefly the city fiscal affairs officer, echoed Zatorski in saying the benefits law didn’t follow the charter.

Just prior to council’s tabling of the law, Councilman-at-Large and Finance Committee chairman Nick Weiser clarified that it “does not apply to city employees generally and it does not attempt to amend or override any collective bargaining agreements.”