The City Council has approved an override of the state’s 2% tax cap – though council members hope not to have to use it.

During Monday’s voting session, which followed a public hearing, the City Council officially approved the override. Before the approval, Councilman Tony Dolce, R-Ward 2, emphasized that this override does not necessarily mean that the city will have to raise taxes over the 2% limit.

“This does not lock us into an automatic tax increase,” Dolce said. “It gives us the opportunity to do it if we have to. We’ve done this for the past few years, and I can assure you once we get to the budget season, we will scrutinize every inch of that budget as the mayor puts together her budget, along with her staff.”

Dolce said if it is in the council’s power to do so they will do their best to bring the community a no tax increase budget. All the tax cap override local law does is give the council the ability to go over the set tax cap if they have to.

“It’s a procedural move,” Dolce said. “Other communities have done it, we have done it. I assure the public, and I assure everyone out here that we’re all tax payers. There’s not one person up here that wants to raise their own taxes.”

Additionally, Dolce said the council has worked very hard over the years to reduce the amount of spending done by the city. He noted that people have come up to them and said the city needs to tighten their belts, but people also do not want their services cut, and departments such as police, fire and public works still need funding.

“It’s a difficult process, and nobody wants to raise taxes,” Dolce said. “We’ll do the best job we can, and I think I can speak for everybody up here, that we don’t want to have to raise taxes.”

The tax cap levy limit itself, Dolce said, is “kind of a gimmick basically,” as in New York City and municipalities near it have needed to use billions of dollars to balance their budgets, and other communities have raised their taxes around 10 or 20%. He noted that Jamestown has not had to do that, looking back at the history of the tax increases over the past few years.

“In the last decade or so we’ve had no tax increase budgets, we’ve had very minimal tax increase budgets,” Dolce said. “We will do everything we can so we don’t have to do it. This is a procedural move so that in the event that there is no other way around it without completely gutting the services that we need and want in the community, that we would have the ability to do that.”