It was encouraging to see the city and the union representing Jamestown police officers come to a contract agreement last week.

The lawsuit challenging the city’s 22% health care premium increase made us wonder if the city was in for a lengthy arbitration with the police union, so seeing the communication between the city and union attorneys and then Monday’s contract approval was a welcome sight. Cities don’t tend to come out ahead when they take public safety contracts to the Public Employees Relations Board, so the city likely did well by taxpayers by coming to agreement at the negotiating table rather than an arbitration proceeding.

Still, we wonder how long taxpayers can continue to pay ever-escalating costs. We were already anticipating another sizeable tax increase when the city approves its 2026 budget seven months from now – nothing like what we’ve seen in Dunkirk or Fredonia, but sizeable for Jamestown. Even a fair contract is going to increase the city’s budget – though the city did well to postpone the budget hike for a couple of years.

It’s one reason we find it interesting that councilmen Jeff Russell and Bill Reynolds, both retired Jamestown police officers who won’t return to the council in 2026, voiced support for the city to reopen police consolidation talks with its municipal neighbors. We made a similar call in this space recently, in part because we recognize that if the city is to begin to provide tax relief to its residents – or at least hold the line on taxes – it has to find a way to provide needed public services at a lesser cost. We have seen how police protection can be provided less expensively. The issue was studied extensively a decade ago only to be shelved after neither police agencies nor rural county legislators supported the idea of consolidating the Jamestown Police Department into the Chautauqua County Sheriff’s Office. Perhaps that’s not the model that should be considered. Perhaps the sharing needs to begin with Jamestown, Ellicott and Lakewood-Busti at first. Perhaps the JPD-Sheriff consolidation needs to be taken off the shelf and dusted off. We don’t pretend to have all the answers, but the north county tells us the handwriting is on the wall. We may not be looking at 65-85% tax increases this year, but if we don’t take action to streamline government operations it won’t be long before we are in the sinking boat Dunkirk and Fredonia find themselves in this year.

Those who live in and around Jamestown often find themselves in the midst of five separate police jurisdictions within a 15 minute drive from the marinas near Lakewood to Falconer Central School – Lakewood-Busti, Jamestown, Ellicott, the Chautauqua County Sheriff’s Office and the New York State Police. Whether large or small, the four local governments with police departments struggle to attract new officers and to afford the officers they have. We echo Russell’s comments at last week’s council meeting – it’s time to seriously consider police consolidation in the south county.