Council Member at Large Kim Ecklund presents budget amendments at City Council voting session (November 28, 2022)

There will be no tax increase and no parking meter increase in the 2023 City Budget passed by Jamestown City Council.

There were 27 amendments voted on by Council.

Finance Chair and Council member at Large Kim Ecklund said some of those amendments were to deal with $400,000 in issues she found while analyzing the budget, “As many people know, I’m a numbers person and I asked for the nitty gritty, down to every line item in the budget. And going through each line item and each detailed item in that budget instead of just the book you have seen, I analyzed every line, every expense from expenses to salaries and found some things that were missed, some things that were doubled, and some whatever the case may be. And to that tune, it was roughly around $400,000.”

Ecklund said the amendment to cut $157,500 from the Bond Principal line is an example of an issue she found, saying that amount shouldn’t have been included in the budget.

Jamestown City Council amendments to 2023 City Budget

One of the amendments approved reduced parking meter revenue by $127,000. That amendment was directly correlated with cutting a proposed increase in downtown meter rates from 25-cents to 50-cents a half hour.

Council member at Large Jeff Russell said you often see higher parking fees in other larger cities, “You know, I don’t think we’re always like other major cities. We’re hopefully in the tail end of the Pandemic and we’re out of that. I don’t think it’s fair to be pumping this money into our businesses, through ARPA funding, and then turn around and raise meter rates and discourage people from coming downtown.”

Council also approved an amendment increasing the Jamestown Police Department‘s budget by $40,000 to allow them to purchase a new car. Council member Marie Carrubba, who introduced the amendment, said this was to help get the department on a rotation with replacing vehicles.

Other notable increases to department budgets through amendments included adding $46,926 to the Police Department’s salaries line to address concerns by the Police Chief that the SWAT Team, training and education, an K9 Handler lines were underfunded. Council also added a total of $54,000 to the Fire Department‘s equipment lines to aide them in purchasing new turn-out gear for 10 firefighters and to replace ropes for bail-out gear.

Council also added a total of $20,000 back into the Parks Department‘s Flags and Banners and Horticulture supplies lines. Both had been totally cut in Mayor Eddie Sundquist‘s proposed budget. Parks Manager Dan Stone had said in his budget presentation that without the horticulture funds, he couldn’t purchase flowers, shrubs, or mulch for flower beds or flower pots in the city.

Council approved raising the projected sales tax revenue line by $75,000.

Ecklund said increasing that line is a gamble, “I have concerns and I’ve made that clear to every council member in this process that although I’m willing to accept it and move forward that you don’t know what the economy to do next week, much less next month. I have concerns because inflation is still high, gas prices are high, the sales tax (holiday) is coming off at the end of the year, discretionary funds could change. Will gas prices, taxes go up? What’s that balancing act?”

Council did have to approve allocating $54,879.20 from the General Fund Balance in order to have a budget with no tax increase. With that allocation, that leaves the fund balance total at $5,828,590 dollars.

Council President Tony Dolce said while American Rescue Plan funds helped purchase a lot of equipment earlier this year, there were still items council wanted to include in this budget “So it just took some jockeying around a few different lines. And again, there were some mistakes that were found in the budget that had to be rectified, so it took time to rectify those mistakes and adjustments and different things, particularly in Public Safety, that we felt the turn-out gear for the Fire Department, the vehicles for the Police Department, those type of things that are important to the community.”

Mayor Sundquist now has five business days to submit any vetoes of those amendments. By City Charter, Council then has until December 15 to vote to override any of those vetoes.

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 Deputy Fire Chief Matt Coon and Jamestown Police Chief Tim Jackson present their budgets to City Council (November 7, 2022)

The Jamestown Police Chief has concerns over cuts or under-funding of several areas of the department’s budget.

Chief Tim Jackson, presenting to City Council, said training and instruction was only funded with $30,000 when $60,000 was requested. He said as of October 28, the department was $25,205 over budget for that line and he anticipated similar numbers for 2023.

Jackson said funding for special operations, or the SWAT team, was only funded with $16,500 when $35,000 was requested, “As I’m sure everybody knows, we used the SWAT team a lot more this year. And we continually use our SWAT team. This past weekend we used them again. And we’ve definitely have shown an increased need to use the team. As of October 28 of this year, we are over our allocated amount by $10,022.41.”

Jackson said the K9 Handler compensation, which New York State mandates a minimum wage rate, was under-budgeted with only $10,000 allocated. He said with minimum wage rising to $14.20 in 2023, he estimates the actual compensation cost will be $15,549.

Jackson said he and City Fleet Manager Pat Monaghan put together a police vehicle and equipment replacement schedule spreadsheet, including vehicles that were recommended to be replaced for 2023.

He said none of those requested vehicle replacements were included in the proposed budget, “And we created that spreadsheet so we wouldn’t end up in the situation we ended up in last year. Some of our vehicles, to be frank, I don’t know if one or two of them are going to pass inspection.”

Monaghan said while he was grateful for the funding previously approved by Council to replace some patrol cars this year, there needs to be a regular replacement schedule so that they can avoid having to replace major components on the vehicles, “I can tell you that on four-year old vehicles, we’ve replaced the engine and transmission on them. And that’s in spite of regular, aggressive preventative maintenance programs. It’s just, those vehicles are subjected to everything they tell you should never do to a vehicle. Consider that they run 365 days a year, 24-7, under extreme conditions. And it’s just something that, by the time the third year of these vehicles is up it’s time to replace them.”

Finance Chair and Council Member at Large Kim Ecklund asked why the cuts were made with City Comptroller John Sellstrom replying that he would get back to her with that information.

Council Member at Large Jeff Russell expressed concern that the cuts to the SWAT team could result in team losing its state certification, which Chief Jackson said is possible.

Deputy Fire Chief Matt Coon also presented his budget, with few concerns. Russell asked if grant funding could be used to replace turn-out gear, but Coon said they rarely meet requirements as one of the grants requires gear to be 14 years old and the department goes through equipment at a much faster rate than that.

The last budget presentations to Council will be by the City Department of Development and the Fenton History Center on Monday, November 14.

However, council members can begin to pre-file budget amendments as soon as Wednesday, November 9.

A public hearing on the budget is scheduled for 6:00 p.m., Wednesday, November 16 and is anticipated to be voted on at the November 28th voting session.

Jamestown Police Chief Tim Jackson and members of JPD SWAT team present to Jamestown City Council (October 17, 2022)

City Council members voiced support for the purchase of a new SWAT vehicle for the Jamestown Police Department.

Council heard a presentation by Police Chief Tim Jackson as well as members of the SWAT team about the need for vehicle. The cost would be $247,516 and be funded using American Rescue Plan monies.
Jackson said since 2016, the SWAT team has been deployed 199 times.

He said the vehicle is multi-purpose, “It can be used for rescue, search and rescue; evacuating people, and a trauma center, so it has multiple uses. It’s not just for SWAT raids.”

Council member at large and retired Jamestown Police officer, Jeff Russell, addressed concerns about the appearance of the bearcat, “This vehicle, if you look at it, if you see photographs of it, it looks somewhat like a Brinks truck. No one seems to be afraid of a Brinks truck when it’s going down the road and it’s collecting cash at various locations. We need to get over the appearance that this is scary looking and that it’s out hunting people or it’s too militaristic looking. This isn’t only to protect the men and women of the Jamestown Police Department, but it’s also to protect citizens.”

Council member Bill Reynolds, who also is retired from the Police Department, voiced his support for the resolution as well.

Chief Jackson estimated that if the purchase is approved it will take one year for delivery. He said Erie County and then State Police in Batavia have the next closest available SWAT vehicles in New York State.

In other business, Council Finance Chair Kim Ecklund requested input from the Information Technology Director on the proposed purchase of new accounting and payroll software. $91,683 in American Rescue Plan funds would be used for the purchase with the annual maintenance cost of $19,405 being part of the regular budget. Ecklund said her concern is that the software operates in the cloud and wants to know what security issues there may be.