Back in November, we wrote in this space that the 2026 budget was going to be a painful one for city residents.

Monday’s City Council vote to override the state’s 2% tax cap for next year’s budget – coming months earlier than such votes are typically held – is, sadly, not unexpected. We knew this was coming when we used one-time shots of revenue to trim the city’s tax increase from 7.75% in 2025 to 3.61%.

The City Council’s use of an additional $125,000 from the city’s fund balance and exhausting the city’s remaining $500,000 in American Rescue Plan Act funding mean the city starts the 2026 budget needing to find $625,000 in new revenue to simply be revenue neutral from 2025 to 2026. As we all know from our household finances, costs aren’t going down, and the city will see increasing labor costs in 2026, too.

Monday’s vote is a subtle reminder that this year’s budget will come with an increase in city taxes months ahead of time. There should be no sticker shock for city residents when Mayor Kim Ecklund releases her 2026 executive budget in October.

But none of this is happening in a vacuum. Fredonia is looking at a 65.3% tax increase and paying some serious lip service to finding cost savings through mergers and consolidation with neighbors. The city of Dunkirk increased taxes 84% in 2025 and is having so much trouble balancing its budget that state Sen. George Borrello, R-Sunset Bay, introduced legislation this week to introduce a financial control board for the city.

No one is suggesting such a drastic step for Jamestown, but the struggles seen in Fredonia and Dunkirk are a reminder of a fact that we know Ecklund and the City Council know, too – city finances can’t stay on the path they’re on. Dunkirk found itself in its current mess because it never brought rising costs in line with decreasing revenues. It may not be long before Jamestown finds itself in a similar position.

As we said in November, City Council members gave taxpayers an aspirin for their 2025 budgetary headache. The early signs for the 2026 budget indicated taxpayers will need prescription-level medication to ease the pain caused by the 2026 budget unless something changes. The types of changes that will get rid of this headache permanently aren’t one-shot revenue gimmicks. They’re a true right-sizing of the city’s workforce costs, including the possibility of regionalizing the city’s police department and finding a way to save money on the provision of fire and EMS protection. . We admit that’s easier said than done when dealing with either imposed or negotiated minimum manning clauses, but if we don’t do the hard work now of right-sizing the city’s cost structure, we will be in Dunkirk’s shoes sooner than we care to admit.