Fredonia’s trustees set hearings for next week on a 2026-27 budget proposal that includes a 4% tax increase and a $10 hike in the mandatory “base rate” paid by all village water users.

A trio of hearings will begin at 4:30 p.m. Monday in the trustees’ Village Hall meeting room. The hearings are on the overall budget itself, the water rate change, and an override of the state-mandated 2% tax hike cap that would be necessary to pass the budget.

Two former trustees, Michelle Twichell and James Lynden, criticized village officials over the budget. They were especially critical that pay raises of 6% have been written in for department heads. The duo spoke as members of the public during the latest Board of Trustees meeting.

“I really think you didn’t take a close look at this,” Twichell said. “If we are in such dire straits, why are we handing out 6% increases in salary?”

Lynden stated that New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli made clear that he did not want municipalities to go over the tax cap this year. “There are tools to go over (the cap) in stress, of course,” he acknowledged.

Lynden referred to the 54% tax hike in the 2025-26 village budget. “I wonder why you are going over the tax cap when you said you had solved your problems with the massive increase. I looked through the budget… and I found pay raises somewhere in the neighborhood of 6%, and other expenses where you could have made the hard decisions you said you were going to make. I saw no hard decisions, there’s lots of spending.”

The budget also contains health and liability insurance increases of 5%, according to a copy available on the village website.

The raise in the basic fee that all Fredonia water users must pay, to $40, is intended to add more revenue without resorting to another usage rate hike.

Meanwhile, half of the 4% tax hike is intended to replenish Fredonia’s miserable fund balance. The budget on the village website quotes a projected negative fund balance of $401,966 on May 31, the end of the village’s 2025-26 fiscal year.

However, the fund balance is supposed to be back in positive territory, by $627,924, on May 31, 2027.