Jun 16, 2026
OBSERVER Photo by M.J. Stafford Dunkirk Mayor Kate Wdowiasz, left, chats Friday with Assessor Erica Munson after a city government meeting called by Wdowiasz. City Planning and Development Director Vince DeJoy sits at right.
Dunkirk’s Fiscal Recovery Act is dead, Mayor Kate Wdowiasz said Friday.
Wdowiasz made the pronouncement near the start of a city government meeting she called. Wdowiasz invited city department heads and all five members of the Common Council. All the department heads showed up – she’s their boss.
However, Wdowiasz is clearly not the boss of the Common Council. Just one member, Michael Civiletto, showed up.
The mayor opened her meeting by calling it a “department head workshop meeting,” stating that there are “issues that seem to be bypassing council and the scope of whatever they’re doing.”
Wdowiasz then declared that the deadline for reinstating the city’s New York State-backed Fiscal Recovery Act “has come and gone.” State Sen. George Borrello and Assemblyman Andrew Molitor had offered a new version of the act after the previous one expired Dec. 31 with Dunkirk failing to access the millions in funding.
However, council balked at some of the terms of the Borrello-Molitor initiative, and Wdowiasz accused the group of offering no input back to the state politicians on their plan. “There were some things the council didn’t like that they didn’t properly communicate,” she said.
Because of that, “that will not be happening this year,” Wdowaisz concluded.
The mayor later hounded Department of Public Works officials about their use of part-time summer workers.
Wdowiasz said she had heard from the public that “it seems your summer help has been tasked with doing the normal jobs of full-time employees.” She reminded that there have been grievances filed against the city in the past over that kind of thing.
“I don’t think that’s a fair statement that they are doing what’s not allowed,” replied Michael Przybycien, deputy DPW director. “They work side by side with (full-timers)… That’s what summer help does. They work potholes and patches.”
The implication that part-timers do most of DPW’s work while the full-timers dawdle is “100% false,” he said.
Wdowiasz pushed department heads to start “wish lists” and first drafts for their sections of the 2027 city budget. “We know that any wish list items will come with tax increases. Please be mindful” of the taxpayers’ burden, she said.
Wdowiasz wants a formal budget calendar in the hopes of getting it passed earlier than its traditional early December date. Fiscal Affairs Officer Ellen Luczkowiak commented that an audit of the city’s 2025 finances should be available by September.
The mayor sought to turn the meeting towards “positive things,” handing the floor to Planning and Development Director Vince DeJoy so he could talk about various projects.
DeJoy went on for about 20 minutes. The first three things he mentioned were the Battery Energy Storage System planned in the woods near Brigham Road, Wells Enterprises’ ongoing expansion project, and the apartment complex under construction at one site near the Save-a-Lot Plaza on Fourth Street and another on Washington Avenue.
DeJoy mentioned other things such as the Wright Park beachfront preservation and. development initiative, planned dredging of the harbor, and workforce development projects.
He added an interesting tidbit about Brooks Memorial Hospital. Its parent companies are building a new hospital in Fredonia, and there has been much concern in Dunkirk about what will happen to the current hospital building in the city.
DeJoy said Brooks-TLC brass “wants further discussions” about redeveloping the site. He said he would be joining a group of Brooks-TLC officials in Pittsburgh for a tour of a former hospital, of similar size and age as the one in Dunkirk, that was successfully redeveloped.
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