Jamestown City Council voting session (November 28, 2022)

Jamestown City Council has approved using $3.75 million in American Rescue Plan funds for several programs, including funding the Chautauqua County Land Bank.

The proposals that had been on Council members’ desks for several months included funding a Non-Profit Assistance Program with $1.5 million, the Chautauqua County Land Bank with $1 million, the Business Expansion and Building Acquisition program with $750,000, and the 19A Homeownership program with $500,000.

The 19A Homeownership program was initially proposed to be funded with $750,000, but was reduced, with the intention that the other $250,000 would go toward the Senior Citizen Home Improvement Incentive program. With Council’s approval of last night’s resolutions, the Senior Citizen program is now fully funded for those who had qualified for the program, but not funded due to monies being exhausted.

Council tabled two local laws that need to now sit on their desks for 30 days. One is a local law to authorize the use of video conferencing for meetings of public bodies. Council President Tony Dolce said the law will just reinforce what the city had been doing for the past two years.

The other local law is for the reapportionment of Ward boundary lines. Both local laws will be voted on at Council’s voting session in December.

Jamestown City Council

Mayor Eddie Sundquist‘s $38.68 million Executive Budget proposal included no tax increase. The tax levy is proposed to remain at $23.69 per $1,000 of assessed property value, which it has been since 2020. It has a 0.06% increase in the overall levy.

Council members have raised concerns over a proposed parking meter rate increase. The budget has on-street meters rates rising from 25-cents to 50-cents a half hour, for a total of $1 an hour. The parking revenue budgeted for 2023 is $245,000 versus $127,000 for 2022, a 31% increase.

Police Chief Tim Jackson also raised concerns over the SWAT Team, training, and K9 handler being underfunded.

There are also have been concerns over the need for additional staff for Information Technology Services. Information Technology Director Mark Dean informed Council that his request for an IT Specialist was not funded in the Executive Budget. He said the $42,634 for the additional position is needed to handle cyber security needs and network hardware-software needs.

Finance Chair and Council member at Large Kim Ecklund had expressed concern over departments doing their own tech work when there are staff assigned to handle that already.

Council must vote on a budget by December 1 or the mayor’s proposed budget goes into effect.
Council also will vote on several American Rescue Plan funded projects that have been languishing on their agenda for months.

Resolutions to be approved include $1.5 million for a Non-Profit Assistance Program program, $1 million for the Chautauqua County Land Bank Post-Pandemic Housing Initiative, $750,000 for a Business Expansion & Building Acquisition program, and $500,000 for the 19A Homeownership Program.

The proposed amount for the 19A Homeownership program has been reduced by $250,000 with another resolution re-appropriating that amount to the very popular Senior Citizen Home Improvement Incentive Program.

Council also will vote to approve a local law on the Reapportionment of Ward Boundary lines.

City Council will hold a work session at 7:00 p.m. in the 4th Floor Police Training Room with the full voting session taking place at 7:30 p.m in the Council Chambers on the second floor of the Municipal Building. The meetings are open to the public with the voting session being livestreamed on jamestownny.gov.

Jamestown Reapportionment Commission meeting (August 9, 2022)

The Jamestown Reapportionment Commission has unanimously approved new ward lines for election districts in the City.

City Council President and Reapportionment Commission member Tony Dolce said the commission chose to go with the plan with the least changes to ward boundaries, “There weren’t a lot to begin with. Most of the wards were very close to compliance, so it was just moving a neighborhood here or there. And Ward One had the biggest change because they were significantly under (population), so they grabbed a portion of Ward Two and a couple of areas in Ward Six. Other than that, there were a couple areas of Ward Six that went over to Ward Five as well.”

Dolce said the new map didn’t change any major neighborhoods along with maintaining the integrity of current wards, “Nothing changed. There weren’t huge chunks. We didn’t even look at registration numbers. We don’t believe that we’re supposed to do that. There was no concerted effort by anybody to try to reinvent anything or try to draw a whole new map that would favor one side over the other.”

The six-ward map will now go as a recommendation to City Council to approve. Council has until the end of 2022 to approve the map.

City of Jamestown Ward Map

Jamestown’s Reapportionment Commission will continue the process of redrawing ward boundary lines Tuesday, May 24.

Reapportionment takes place every 10 years following the results of the U.S. Census, and the city’s reapportionment commission is tasked with proposing new ward boundaries to get the average number of people within each ward to be as equal as possible.

Each of the current six wards would need to have 4785 residents apiece in order to have 100% equal population, but the commission agrees that is not possible. State law allows the population numbers to be within 5% of each other, but the commission is hoping to get them within 1% or less.

Based on the 2020 census numbers, all but one of the city’s wards saw population shifts of 130 residents or more. The ward with the largest swing in population was Ward 1, which lost 254 residents. Ward 6 also lost 197 residents. Meanwhile, Wards 2, 4 and 5 each gained 136, 161, and 151 residents, respectively. Ward 3 saw little-to-no change, with an increase of just 5 residents.

Because of the changes in population, the commission will likely have to adjust boundaries for all six wards in order to meet its goal of populations that are within 1% or less.

During its last meeting on May 10, the commission actually voted to move forward with drawing two different versions of the updated city ward maps – one with the current number of six wards and another with only five wards. When it meets on Tuesday, it will review those draft maps and then consider any further adjustments as requested by its 11 voting members.

Once the maps are finalized, the commission will make a final vote on what to recommend to the city council, which has final approval on the reapportionment process. The deadline for that recommendation is September 1.

Jamestown Reapportionment Commission holds organizational meeting (April 27, 2022)

The City of Jamestown Reapportionment Commission held its organizational meeting Wednesday evening.

Commission member and City Council President Tony Dolce said the Commission is waiting on the Census Tract data to start their work, “Each ward has to be within a certain percentage of the ‘One Man, One Vote’ policy that we have in the Constitution. And so our job is really to even out the wards. And every ten years we have to go through this process after the national census is taken, it trickles down, it goes through the states, and then the counties, and down to the cities, towns, and villages. So our job, we have six wards in the city of Jamestown and we have to look at the population in each ward and even them out.”

Dolce doesn’t anticipate the redrawing of the lines to be too difficult.

The Commission did elect Pete Johnson as its Chairperson and Mike Panebianco as its Vice-Chair.

It also set meeting dates for 5:00 p.m. the second and fourth Tuesday of the month. The next meeting is scheduled for Tuesday, May 10th. The Commission must submit a map to City Council to vote on by September 1.

The changes between wards are: 225 people will be moved from Ward 1 to Ward 2, 167 from Ward 2 to Ward 3, 71 from Ward 5 to Ward 3 and 77 from Ward 6 to Ward 1.  The ward boundaries wont go into effect until the 2013 election.

According to a report in the Post-Journal, committee members met on Monday and began making plans to tackle the reapportionment. The commission elected Marie Carrubba to serve as its chair. It is charged with making minimal changes to city ward lines to bring them into compliance with data from the 2010 census. Ward 3 reportedly shows the biggest disparity in population, as its population is 524 below the ward average of 5,183. The wards populations need to be within 2 percent of that number.

Officials say the process shouldn’t take much time because minimal changes need to be made to even out the numbers. The commission will discuss possible reapportionment scenarios when it meets again next Monday, May 6.

Ten years ago, the reapportionment process became embroiled in partisan politics after a plan that was barely approved by the commission was challenged by the city republican party. It was then defeated in a public referendum, and a second commission was created the following year to finalize city lines.

Councilman Tony Dolce, who was part of that process ten years ago, said he’s hoping the process will be less political this time around.

“As you know reapportionment is what it is. It is a political process and the party in power obviously has the votes and they will do what they feel is best. I cautiously look forward to working on it and hopefully it works out.” explained Dolce. “I haven’t seen any of the data yet. Now that this has been passed the city clerk will send us out the maps, the numbers and how far we’re off and what has to be done. And that will give us a better indication of whether this will be a major overhaul or just some tweaking of some street lines.”

The city reapportionment commission will be comprised of an attorney recommended by the Jamestown Bar Association, a citizen recommended by each of the three political parties receiving the largest votes in the last gubernatorial election, two councilpersons designated by the council president, the city attorney, the city clerk and three citizens nominated by the mayor. Officials say the first meeting is tentatively set for the end of April.