Dunkirk’s top elected officials reacted with wariness this week to a move by state Sen. George Borrello and Assemblyman Andrew Molitor to update the city’s Fiscal Recovery Act.

Borrello and Molitor sent a letter to the Common Council April 30 outlining their proposed legislation. Mayor Kate Wdowiasz and Councilman-at-large Nick Weiser commented on it at a council meeting.

“First and foremost, there are a few questions that need to be communicated back to Mr. Molitor’s office regarding some of the demands he’s making,” Wdowiasz said.

“He’s making a demand that the city must approve a local law before it is sent any further in the state,” she continued. “He is also mandating that the city reaffirm its obligations under state law to honor all collective bargaining agreements it has entered into. As every union member knows, we are bound to honor those agreements.”

The mayor stated that “there is no precedent for this, and there has never been a precedent for extension of deficit financing where (a council) has had to take any kind of action. The request was to simply extend it through the end of this year so we could get into our deficit financing.”

Weiser said, “Council took all necessary legislative actions in 2025 to position the city to access the original Fiscal Recovery Act under an extremely tight timeline. Once the Office of the State Comptroller certified the city’s debt late last year, council acted promptly, holding special meetings and approving all required measures to ensure our eligibility for deficit financing under the act.”

The councilman-at-large continued, “As part of that process, the city was operating with interim state assistance — the $13.7 million loan — while the final financing arrangements were being pursued. Ultimately, the financing authorized under the act was not executed prior to its expiration and decisions at that stage extended beyond council’s legislative role.”

Weiser called “the current proposal, in many ways, a continuation of that effort. There are elements within the updated legislation, though, that require clarification. We are addressing those directly — I’ve scheduled a Finance Committee meeting for Monday, May 11 in the Stearns Building first floor conference room to review the proposal in more detail, and determine next steps.”

Both Borrello and Molitor said in their letter that the legislation was based on a request from Wdowiasz.

“Though we still maintain that the best path forward to long-term financial stability will require third-party financial oversight from an independent control board, we have assisted with this request knowing that the state comptroller will continue to have oversight,” the state officials said.

Along with the contract affirmations, their legislation also calls for a state-managed debt service fund to ensure timely payments to bondholders and improve the city’s ability to access capital at a lower cost.

The new Fiscal Recovery Act would authorize deficit bond financing of up to $17 million to address actual deficits in city budget funds from the close of the 2024 fiscal year, with bonds to be issued on or before Dec. 31.