The backlash over Dunkirk’s 84% property tax increase continued this week at a Common Council meeting.

Members of the public criticized city officials for the hike, contained in the 2025 budget. Patricia Schanzlin said the city should have had a property reassessment years ago. She wondered if residents were about to be hit with a double whammy of reassessment and tax increase.

“How much of this 84% could have been avoided had people listened to (Assessor) Erica (Munson) many, many moons ago, when she brought this to people’s attention then?” Schanzlin wondered.

Councilperson Nancy Nichols later responded to Schanzlin. “Right now, a reassessment in the city of Dunkirk would be between $1 and $2 million. We do not have that kind of surplus to even think about it,” Nichols said.

“It could be future plans down the road,” she continued. “I’ve worked with Erica on this as well, we’ve been discussing this for a couple years now. But until we can generate some revenue to do that, it’s not going to happen. So please rest assured, you’re not going to be reassessed and slammed with an 84% tax increase.”

Brodie Loftus sarcastically asked elected officials, “Is this a campaign for a lot of you to not be re-elected?” If so, “Please indicate in your minutes and to the public so we can be reminded when the next election is for mayor and all other positions.”

Loftus also complained the 2025 budget is not on the city’s website, though older spending plans are present. “It needs attention if you’re willing to communicate with the public as to where all of this money is going,” he said.

Nichols took offense to Loftus’ comments.

As a council, “We’re not responsible for creating this,” said the five-year elected official — a reference to her stance that former Mayor Wilfred Rosas’ improper budgeting caused the city’s financial problems.

“To be threatened, which I take it as an insult, that they’re not going to vote for us if we choose to run again — we worked our tails off to get it down to where it is a manageable amount of money to be paid,” Nichols continued. “I’m a senior, I have to come up with it as well. There’s business owners that have to come up with it, otherwise they’ll have to close. We’re working on alternate solutions. … We’ve lost numerous amounts of sleep over this and how we can disappoint the people that elected us, that we’re supposed to be helping them, to work for them. We did not create it, we have to dig ourselves out of a hole.”

Mayor Kate Wdowiasz commented, “Obviously, an 84% tax increase is not what any of us were hoping for. It is clearly down from the 108% I presented. … We did work very long and tirelessly on this. These decisions were not made lightly, they are going to affect every single one of us that are on this council and myself including members of our administration. This is a compilation of decades of mismanagement of funds.”

Wdowiasz said the city should have raised taxes incrementally over previous years. “Unfortunately, it didn’t. 2025 is going to be a rebuilding, restructuring year for the city of Dunkirk. We will be looking at consolidating services and merging together with the village of Fredonia, which should give us some cost relief as far as our police and fire departments go. But that’s going to take more than a year. We need at least a solid year to start looking at those mergers and a potential outcome from that.”

Councilperson Natalie Luczkowiak and Councilperson-at-large Nick Weiser reiterated during their own statement times that councilors will continue to look at ways to lower the tax rate.

Munson closed Tuesday’s meeting with a statement to residents fearful about the coming tax hike.

“First and foremost to our residents: I see you, I hear you, I appreciate the calls, I appreciate the emails, social media… Please reach out,” she said. “I can’t stress enough how much I don’t want our residents to have to live in fear. There’s a lot of misunderstanding and there’s a lot of misinformation. Our percentage is such a high number that it’s automatically torturing a lot of our residents. I want to help alleviate some of that.”

Munson said if city residents have questions about assessments or ramifications of the tax raise they can call her at 716-366-9836, or email her at emunson@cityofdunkirk.com.

The assessor didn’t want to talk during the meeting about the numbers of the tax hike. “There are a lot of numbers, I don’t want to confuse this anymore,” she said. However, she Invited anyone at the meeting with questions about that to meet in her office afterward.