The ill-considered city decision to convert a former new car dealership property into a DPW garage on Jamestown’s most valuable commercial corridor, Washington Street, devolved into a financial disaster for City taxpayers as well.

Why write about a done deal?

It is valuable to determine how such a foolish decision happened, in the hope that future decision making will be less disastrous for the taxpayers of Jamestown.

In the big picture, even our best, brightest and most dedicated mayors of Jamestown, from Stan Lundine to Steve Carlson to Sam Teresi, worked tirelessly to help Jamestown survive in the face of forces way beyond their control.

City government rose and fell like ocean swells, based upon policy decisions made in Washington and Albany.

For example, for 14 years, from Nixon in 1973 to Reagan in 1987, Federal Revenue Sharing used the progressive Federal Income Tax to raise revenue to send to cities across America and help reduce regressive property taxes.

Jamestown for those years used Federal Revenue Sharing to pay for its Fire Department and other City-supported functions, thereby keeping a lid on City property taxes. That all ended in 1987.

The state also created a formula for aiding its cities, including Jamestown, stuck and strangled by New York state law in their 19th Century horse and buggy era borders.

When financial shocks happened to New York State, such as the 9-11 attack on the World Trade Center, the state significantly reduced its aid to all its cities, including Jamestown

Losing Federal Revenue Sharing, losing promised state financial assistance was not the fault of Jamestown’s mayors or city councils.

What a struggling City of Jamestown could never afford, however, were self-inflicted wounds.

The decision by the Mayor of Jamestown and the City Council to abandon a plan by the Teresi Administration to build a DPW garage on reclaimed and abandoned former industrial land on Crescent Street (already owned by the City and already off the tax rolls with no commercial market value) and instead build on a most valuable commercial lot on Washington Street was a self-inflicted wound.

An early City government claim for this ill-fated move was that the reuse of a former new car dealership would save Jamestown taxpayers money. Apparently that allegation went largely unchallenged in City Hall.

The Mayor and Council told the public and the press that the Crescent St. location for a brand new DPW garage designed for the purpose, would be about $4,000,000, whereas the Washington Street location, including the $400,000 purchase price of the parcel, would be cheaper. Not quite. .

While a few City Council members may have had doubts about the decision to abandon the industrial-like Crescent Street site for a valuable commercial property on Washington Street, no one voted “No.”

Why do elected representatives sometimes have private doubts but go along with a bad choice in public? Some experts, including Adam Grant, an organizational psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, point to a fear of not being part of the “team.” There is also fear of the futility of being in the unsuccessful minority.

Mr. Grant in a New York Times Essay on July 14 concluded: “In dysfunctional groups, people favor loyalty over honesty. In healthy groups, honesty is an act of loyalty. There’s a reason Americans pledge allegiance not to people or power, but to principles. When we express unconditional support for a leader, we compromise our integrity.”

Mr. Grant’s point applies in City Hall, in county government in Mayville, in the state Capitol in Albany and in our nation’s government in Washington, D.C.

Elected officials with sincere questions and doubts about a matter should have the courage to speak out and vote “No.”

As the project went forward and rumors of problems with the project spread, City Hall was strangely silent about how much the project was really costing.

By July 2022 the public learned that the City Council received a “final quote” of around $5,000,000 for the renovation of the former new car dealership property into a DPW garage. Apparently City Hall blamed “inflation” for the huge cost overrun.

On March 16, 2024, the newspaper reported the DPW garage project was out of money and the City Comptroller said the city would have to borrow an additional $1,700,000 to finish work on the building.

The newspaper reported on May 2, 2024, that a $2,850,000 Bond Anticipation Note had been approved in 2023 to pay for the DPW garage but that $4,890,000 had already been spent and another $700,000 would be needed, bringing the latest estimated total cost of this mistake to $5,590,000.

Driving by the unfinished DPW garage on Washington Street raises the question as to what will be the final cost of this mistake. Will future city leaders learn from this debacle? We taxpayers can only hope so.

Fred Larson served as a Jamestown City Councilman-at-Large from 1979-1981 and Chautauqua County Attorney from 1998-2005. He is also a retired City Court judge and a current Chautauqua County legislator.