A local law approving an override of the two percent tax levy was discussed at Monday’s city council. P-J photo by Sara Holthouse

While budget season for the city of Jamestown remains months away, the City Council is looking to approve a local law allowing for a tax cap levy override of the federally required two percent tax cap.

At Monday’s work session, a local law approving the tax cap override was up for discussion and Corporation Counsel Elliot Raimondo explained why this was something better to do before budget season arrived. Specifically, he said the two percent tax cap is required by the state for cities and municipalities each year, and that can be overridden by a municipality passing a local law.

“The base reasoning for this happening right now is that we’d like to have this law done prior to when budget season starts for council to have the flexibility to go above the two percent if necessary,” Raimondo said. “It’s most likely going to be necessary to go above two percent, unfortunately. Fuel costs have gone up for all of our departments in a way that we did not foresee happening due to the price of oil — and I’m not going to comment why it’s going up, but it’s going up.”

Gas is a big expense for multiple city departments, including the police, fire and the Department of Public Works. Another big increase in costs that the city is seeing is in retirement, due to increases from the state.

“We anticipate to maintain our current level of services, we will have to have a more than two percent tax increase,” Raimondo said. “We are already at 85% of our constitutional limit. In the past Jamestown has been at 99% of that constitutional limit, so I will say we are doing better than we have in the past, but once again costs continue to increase.”

Councilman Tony Dolce, R-Ward 2, noted that the passing of this local law does not lock in the council to be required to do anything. If budget season comes around without the need to go over the two percent tax levy limit, the council does not need to. Dolce added that if the need to go over does come up, this local law needs to be enacted enough in advance of budget season for city council to be able to do that.

“I think we’re all seeing it in our personal lives, and are concerned about it going forward,” Mayor Kim Ecklund said. “I will say Elliot (Raimondo) and Erika (Thomas, comptroller) and I have talked extensively and this is something we’ve done in the past few years where we know some expenses are on the horizon and have the potential to swing us, but that doesn’t mean it will. It does take the pressure off to have it done at a timely rate while you’re not voting on the budget as well and gets it done ahead of time.”

Ecklund added she asked Raimondo that this local law be passed around January or February each year going forward just to protect the city as part of the standard process. Ideally, she said the city would like the tax cap to not have to be over two percent, but they also have to be prepared. Raimondo said that other municipalities such as Buffalo and Olean are having very public debates about their taxes right now, and that Fredonia and Dunkirk probably will as well.

“I’d rather we handle this now in a transparent manner, and try to avoid that ugliness as those cities are going through that,” Raimondo said.

The local law will be tabled for the April voting session and officially approved during the voting session at the end of May.