Jamestown City Council work session (April 21, 2026)
A local law to allow the City of Jamestown to exceed the state’s property tax cap will come before Jamestown City Council for approval.
City Corporation Counsel Elliot Raimondo said the State constitution requires municipalities’ budgets to adhere to a 2% tax cap per year. However, Raimondo said that tax cap can be overridden by local law, which the City of Jamestown has done in recent years and will likely need to again for the 2027 budget, “Unfortunately, fuel costs have gone up for all our departments in the way that we’ve not foreseen happening due to the price of oil. And, I’m not going to comment on why it’s going up, but it’s going up. And we have a police department, DPW department, a fire department, which all use gas. The other major expense that we’re seen is retirement costs coming from New York State, due to markets that are also going up. So we anticipate that to continue our current level of services, we’re going to have to have more than 2% tax increase.”
Raimondo said the City is at 85% its constitutional taxing limit.
Council member Tony Dolce reminded other council members that the law does not lock the city into increasing property taxes in excess of 2%, but that by passing it now, it doesn’t need to be approved at last minute during budget time.
Mayor Kim Ecklund said that increased expenses are something everyone is seeing right now and she’s had extensive discussions with Raimondo and Comptroller Ericka Thomas, “It takes, I will say, the pressure off to have it done in a timely and not right while you’re voting on the budget as well, and gets it done ahead of time. And in my opinion, I have asked Elliot that going forward, that it be part of the January, February yearly resolutions, just to protect the city going forward as part of a standard process.”
The local law will sit on the council members’ desks for 30 days and be voted on in May.
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