Chautauqua County Legislature holds their monthly meeting on February 25, 2026
The Chautauqua County Legislature has increased the income level for those who may qualify for the Senior Real Property Tax Exemption.
Legislators unanimously passed an amended resolution that raised the current income for the exemption from $30,000 to $32,000. The resolution, as proposed by Democrats had originally sought to raise the income level to $38,000.
Republican Legislator Dan Pavlock said committee members came to the conclusion that the $38,000 income limit would result in not so much a tax break as a “tax shift,” “It would burden the rest of the taxpayers, and since, and so we had a discussion around what that burden looked like. A comment made is that there’s quite a few seniors that fall maybe just above this proposed adjustment that then would be burdened even more. They don’t meet the requirements now, but now they would be burdened on top of this, and it would actually negatively affect them even more.”
Pavlock said legislators decided to increase the limit to $32,000 based on inflation over the last couple of years. The Legislature last raised the senior citizen property tax exemption income limit in March 2024 from $25,000 to $30,000.
In 2023, Jamestown City Council approved a local law raising the maximum income for property tax relief for senior citizens from a total household income of $19,000 to $22,000.
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