OLEAN — City officials contend the second round of tax bills are correct, regardless of what is posted on social media.

Claims raised over the weekend on social media posts — such as one shared widely from the Facebook page representing the mayoral campaign of Amy Sherburne, Mayor Bill Aiello’s opponent in the Republican primary for mayor later this month — indicated the city made a mistake in calculating property taxes as increasing 5.45% instead of 6.2% as publicized by the city in late May. Some posts also voiced concerns that the city would be forced to mail out tax bills for a third time.

“Third time a charm? This time the bill amount is correct, but the percentage change is not,” Sherburne said in the post with a frowning face emoji, later commenting “The bottom line, no accountability or consequences for these egregious errors. These kind of mistakes can’t continue. There have been many.”

Aiello countered Monday that there was no error, and the issue was a misunderstanding of the different figures used for tax bills after an issue caused the bills to be reissued.

“City of Olean personnel worked quickly and diligently to correct the situation and issue new corrected tax bills and refunds, to indicate otherwise, on social media without gathering facts, is imprudent,” Aiello said in a statement, referring to the social media posts as “misinformation.”

Aiello said the concern comes from confusing the percentage changes of the tax levy and tax rate, which are related but not identical. The new bills call for a tax rate increase of 6.2%. However, a line on the bills indicates the tax levy — the total to be raised by taxes — was increasing 5.45%, which Aiello said was correct but led to confusion. State law requires the city to list the levy and levy increase percentage on tax bills.

The new bills were sent out this year after a late adjustment to the city budget being approved after the first bills were mailed but before the budget year began June 1.

As passed in April, the 2025-26 city budget called for a 6.38% increase to the tax levy — the amount to be raised by property taxes on city property. That was above the 6.2% increase reported by the city’s administration to the Common Council, which was attributed to the city auditor’s office using incorrect figures in the calculations. In addition, a $3.3 million net loss in taxable assessed value, the tax rate  — the ratio of the tax levy to the assessed value, reported in terms of dollars of tax to be levied per $1,000 of assessed value — increased 7.13% with the budget to $17.90 per $1,000 of value.

While many residential and commercial properties increased in value between the two budget years due to construction and inflation, $6 million in value was removed as the Cimolai-HY steel fabrication plant in North Olean went under a Payment in Lieu of Taxes agreement with the Cattaraugus County Industrial Development Agency. The city of Olean has limited control over PILOTs granted by the IDA, short of lobbying the IDA or lawsuits challenging the agreements.

Common Council members voiced concerns in May after tax bills were mailed, calling for the tax rate increase to be dropped to 6.2% after being informed the new rate was set too high due to a computational error in the city assessor’s office. To make the lower tax rate increase go into effect without creating a budget gap, the tax levy was cut to a 5.45% increase, and around $71,000 in cuts were made in a budget amendment approved by the council on May 27. Officials reported the cost to mail roughly 6,900 new tax bills was around $5,600.