Dunkirk Mayor Kate Wdowiasz

DUNKIRK — Dunkirk Mayor Kate Wdowiasz stated the city should not have to raise taxes next year, as she defended a recent New York state loan to the city and suggested State Sen. George Borrello has not been very communicative with her.

All of it came in her response to queries by Councilwoman Nancy Nichols at a Common Council meeting Tuesday.

Noting a Revenue Anticipation Note is due later this month, Nichols wondered, “if we did not have this law put in by the governor giving the city $13 point whatever million, how were we anticipating paying for (it)? … Second of all, what revenue are we going to come up with to generate the money to pay back that money from the governor? She’s given money free of charge with no strings attached to other locations in our state.”

Nichols added, “I don’t have a money tree in my backyard. I don’t know if you do, mayor, I don’t know if (City Attorney) Elliott (Raimondo) has. I don’t know who’s got it, but how are we going to make payments on the Revenue Anticipation Note?”

Wdowiasz responded that as Borrello and Assemblyman Andrew Molitor previously stated, “they are going to take our AIM (Aid and Incentives for Municipalities) funding from us. This council passed a budget last year that allowed for $1 million in interest on the July 2024 Revenue Anticipation Note to be paid. So the amount of money that’s going to be taken from our AIM interest has already been built into this year’s budget — and we should not need to raise taxes again next year.”

Nichols said, “For the record, I hope everybody’s listening to that so anything…”

She was drowned out as Wdowiasz interjected, “With all due respect, councilwoman, Sen. Borrello’s proposal for a control board would add an extra million dollars to our budget that we would have to figure, because they would have skimmed that off of our AIM as well. So that would have been $2.5 million instead of $1.5 million.”

“Maybe you should take a phone call from Sen. Borrello,” Nichols said.

“Maybe if Sen. Borrello knew how to pick up the phone and call me or email me or have his office reach out to me, because I did try to reach out to him,” Wdowiasz shot back.

“I have the text messages,” the mayor added. “I’ll be happy to show everybody the text messages. There’s no denying this on my end.”

“Thank you. I’m done,” Nichols said, concluding the testy exchange. “I’m not going to get in a peeing match over something …. Just wait until budget time, we’ll see what happens.”

Wdowiasz’s comments about Borrello came in the wake of a Saturday OBSERVER commentary where the senator strongly criticized the mayor, alleging a lack of communication and honesty about her efforts to seek the loan.