Disagreement over the future direction of Dunkirk’s financial governance marked this week’s Common Council Finance Committee meeting.

Councilman-at-large Nick Weiser convened a two-headed discussion on local state legislators’ plan for a Fiscal Recovery Act renewal and a proposal to add a comptroller position. Weiser said he wanted a clear comparison of the terms of the new act with the old one.

“I’ll be reaching out to the assemblyman (Andrew Molitor) to clarify,” Weiser said. “It feels like it’s entangling a couple things not germane to the city’s actual fiscal recovery or status.”

Fiscal Affairs Officer Ellen Luczkowiak agreed that Molitor and State Sen. George Borrello should “kind of explain to us what’s different” in this edition of the act.

Councilman Frank Torain commented that a clause seeking a city recommitment to union contracts “was kind of unusual,” as was asking the mayor’s office to draft all updates. “That should be done by someone in the finance department. If and when we have a comptroller, it would be handled by the comptroller,” he said.

Torain said the city had a “simple ask” to extend the terms of the previous Fiscal Recovery Act, without additional conditions. He declared in a side note to the OBSERVER that he is working hard on getting an understanding of union contract negotiations.

Weiser said he wanted to have a conversation about the long-term implications of adding a comptroller. That soured the mostly convivial atmosphere of the meeting as several disagreements broke out over the issue.

Weiser spoke of “drafting inconsistencies and typographical issues” in the proposed law to add the comptroller. He noted the draft still refers to a city treasurer — a position eliminated earlier this year in favor of a “clerk/treasurer.”

“A recurring question is the long term funding of the position.” He said it would be funded through a grant for its first two years, but funding after that was unclear, and the council needed clarity on the issue.

He also questioned accountability safeguards and where duties might overlap with that of the clerk/treasurer. The councilman-at-large lamented that neither Mayor Kate Wdowiasz nor city contracted attorney Elliot Raimondo were at the meeting to answer questions about the comptroller proposal.

“One of the key things for council is to know what this costs on an annual basis, after the grant,” Weiser repeated.

Vince DeJoy, city planning and development director, said there was a “projection,” but he didn’t reveal it. DeJoy and Assessor Erica Munson soon got into a sharp disagreement as to whether a comptroller “model” for city finances similar to other municipalities — including Jamestown, where DeJoy used to work — was right for Dunkirk.

Responding to Munson’s claims of a lack of transparency in city financial dealings, Torain said adding a comptroller would provide more transparency and provide checks and balances to control of Dunkirk’s finances.

“Doing something is better than sitting back and doing nothing,” he said.

Luczkowiak said it was her understanding that the proposed six-year term of the comptroller was provided “because it takes a year to understand everything.” She said the comptroller would be overseer of Dunkirk’s financial offices, including her Fiscal Affairs Office and the Clerk/Treasurer’s Office.

Munson commented the position sounds more like a city manager and not a comptroller. She said the city ought to handle what is currently happening with its finances “before we add more chaos and confusion” into the mix with a comptroller.

“Why can’t we take care of what’s wrong now, and fix things simultaneously?” Torain soon said in response. He stated that “people who finance bonds want to see that the city is trying to move in a positive direction. We don’t want them to look at us as high-risk…so we can’t sit around and wait.”

Chris Pinkoski, a former city fiscal affairs officer and state Comptroller’s Office employee who has become an unofficial watchdog of Dunkirk’s finances, fired off her own series of questions.

She wondered if the city was scapegoating former Treasurer Mark Woods, a statement which brought its own tense back-and-forth exchange. City officials do occasionally comment on the alleged record-keeping shortcomings of Woods, and did so again in response to Pinkoski. Woods is also criminally accused of stealing money from Dunkirk.

Acknowledging a “difficult” discussion “in service of different avenues and pathways,” Weiser gaveled out the meeting after about an hour.

“I want to find the most effective and efficient system for the city — regardless of this label or that label for this position,” he said.

Torain told the OBSERVER before the meeting that he has more faith in Dunkirk working through its financial problems than the newspaper does. The first-term councilman said he is an optimist, driven by his faith in God.