You can fool some of the people some of the time, but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.

Last month, Chautauqua County Executive PJ Wendel visited the Dunkirk Common Council to offer remarks about consolidation. In his usual form, he used fear mongering to put Fredonia in a bad light by saying the village has one of, if not the, highest tax rates in the state of New York.

While addressing how the county has concerns for paying unpaid property taxes, he said that to settle an unpaid tax bill on a Fredonia home assessed at $100,000 the county would have to pay $6,100. These statements are not true. Wendel has been the county executive long enough where he should know that because Fredonia has an assigned tax equalization rate of 11%. When calculated — $6.73 per $1,000 of assessed valuation — it puts Fredonia’s tax rate at a low-moderate amount, ranking solidly in the lower third of state villages. His exaggerated concerns are unfounded.

When combining the village of Fredonia tax with the corresponding Town of Pomfret tax applied to village properties, the total tax on a home would be less than half of the city tax on a home of an equal value in Dunkirk.

If the village ever does a property assessment revaluation then the taxation would begin at a 100% of value but then the village tax rate would be accordingly reduced.

Right now because of the equalization rate the village properties are taxed at a very small portion of the value. What’s more important is that Dunkirk’s budget is about $30 million plus a massive debt burden and Fredonia’s budget is about $12 million for providing nearly the same services making it unreasonable to believe that consolidation could provide any benefit to the village.

According to the executive the legislature has gone outside the norm and has chosen by resolution to pay unpaid taxes. This is a big deal because now it puts all the county taxpayers on the hook for chasing down those funds due, when the norm is that cities in the county have always been responsible for managing their own taxation recovery.

The county has been taking more of our tax dollars than necessary, holding a bloated fund balance — they now call a slush fund — that can be easily reduced by $10 million, while their spending over a number of recent years has increased by about $2 million annually.

The state comptroller has admonished the county’s North County Water District for not doing a proper financial analysis and borrowing more than $5 million from the county general fund that had not been paid back as required according to law. This puts a financial burden on the taxpayers who do not benefit from the district.

With that being said the village of Fredonia is in fact an intermunicipal government providing services to other municipalities outside its boundaries, fire safety and rescue to the town of Pomfret, water districts in the town of Pomfret and water emergency backup to the water district for Sheridan and Brocton and the city of Dunkirk, and sewage processing for districts in the town of Portland and town of Pomfret and town of Dunkirk.

Financial management of any level of municipal government is not an easy task and our local governing officials need to be better decision makers.

James Lynden is a former trustee and Fredonia resident.