Mayor Douglas Essek is pictured during Monday’s workshop meeting of the Fredonia Village Board.

FREDONIA — Fredonia Mayor Douglas Essek and Trustee EvaDawn Bashaw downplayed Fredonia’s loss in population in the 2020 Census on Monday.

“We lost, in the village of Fredonia, 1,645 people from 2010 to 2020. We were at 11,230, now we’re down to 9,585,” Essek said Monday during a village Board of Trustees workshop. “You know, a lot of that more than likely was through when Carriage House closed up.

“But, there is kind of a silver lining to this,” he continued. “Earlier on the year, I was in contact with Congressman (Tom) Reed’s office in regard to a number of grants for infrastructure issues. All these grants that they could have offered were for municipalities under 10,000 people. There was a lot of grants that could have helped us in a lot of different ways.”

Essek said, with the new population count, he will revisit the infrastructure grants and bring information on them to the trustees.

“I was a little disappointed in the census information,” Bashaw said. “I guess I didn’t really realize that the census does include the college enrollment as part of our citizens count and that, in the last 10 years, the village lost approximately 1,600 residents, the college lost 1,900 residents in its enrollment. So, I’d like to think that almost the entire drop in the village came from the college. … Now, I hope that’s not just wishful thinking, but the figures do play out.”

SUNY Fredonia’s enrollment figures have fallen over the last decade, but it is questionable that they have dropped as much as 1,900 people.

According to the college’s statistics, found in an online search, the school had 5,178 students enrolled in the 2009-10 school year. By fall 2016, that number was down to 4,612. In 2019-2020, the total was 4,446.

SUNY Fredonia’s president, Stephen Kolison, stated during a College Council in May that he wants to focus on raising enrollment. He hopes to have it up to 6,003 students by 2024-25.

“I want the village residents to feel a little more encouraged,” Bashaw said. “We’re sorry that the college enrollment is dropping, but it’s not necessarily the residential people who are living here and working here and been here and are invested here.”

Essek said he notices few vacant residences in the village and added that he thinks census participation was down. He defended Fredonia as a great place to live.

“When we were above 10,000 residents, we were No. 2 in Western New York in Buffalo Busineess First for the best places to live,” he said.

“When the story came out about the census in the paper, there were lots of comments about high taxes. Everybody had an opinion on why people are leaving here and so forth.

“It’s a great place to live. It was No. 1 for education, it was No. 1 for senior living in Western New York,” the mayor asserted. “If you look at taxes, our village taxes, are probably the least of the three that you receive. You receive village, you receive town and county which are more than the village and you receive your school taxes which are a lot more than those other two.

“All your taxes as a whole, yeah, we get taxed a lot, and it’s a lot of taxes,” Essek concluded.

“But your village taxes are not a lot, and what you pay in village taxes, you get a lot of really good services for them.”