Lewis reflects on Niagara County’s budget
Jill Terreri:
Sunday, October 03, 2026

Editor’s Note: County Manager Gregory Lewis released his proposed budget last week, calling for some major changes — the elimination of the county golf course as well as the auditor and clerk of the Legislature positions — to name a few, as well as a 9 percent property tax increase. Reporter Jill Terreri sat down with Lewis, who was installed in May 2003 as the county’s first manager, before the budget was released to talk about the process and his adjustment to the job.



Jill Terreri: The county is facing this $10 million deficit. How is the county going to fill it?

Gregory Lewis: All the county budgets will be submitted in draft form to us. We will go over all the numbers that are submitted. ... We will take the numbers that have been presented and we’ll discuss options with the groups in the offices and departments and we’ll go through and we’ll look at what outcomes are being produced and whether some of those outcomes we won’t be able to produce anymore. ... And then we will also discuss what revenues that we have or don’t have. And we’re looking to see if the state does anything that’s favorable to us. ... And so by paring down what outcomes we do and by looking to see if we have any increased revenues, that will eventually come into some reconciliation about what we propose for a recommendation to the county board. ... I’ll be recommending to continue the sales tax because the sales tax needs to be renewed next year, so I’ll be recommending renewal of the sales tax. We’ll look at what we’re receiving in local dollars in non-property tax, non-sales tax. We’ll also look at federal reimbursement to see if our federal reimbursement, how those rates are going in terms of what we’re recouping and seeing where that stands.

JT: Are there big changes on the horizon?

GL: I think there are going to be big changes.

JT: Selling Mount View is a big change.

GL: I think Mount View’s a big change. I think looking at the outcomes of what you do or don’t do is a real big change, because everyone keeps funding things and this is kind of forcing us to take a hard look at ourselves, on what we do for outcomes. What are we here for? What is really being produced? What is the price we’re paying for doing it? That question will continue throughout. We need to learn more about what are the solutions?

When we started to do a financial plan ... we asked where are the other counties’ financial plans? We didn’t want to reinvent the wheel. Nobody that we contacted had financial plans. … Like one that would last three years.

JT: So they’re all going year to year?

GL: Year to year. Strictly year to year.

JT: The Legislature had some growing pains (when you were hired) a little bit, I would say. Do you feel like your hands are tied sometimes?

GL: No I really don’t feel that way. No one has ever asked me since I have been here to not give what my opinion has been. You’re hands would be tied if you couldn’t speak your mind.

JT: And you don’t feel that way?

GL: No, I speak my mind all the time. So, I’m always engaged in communicating my ideas and recommendations and what my best thoughts are. ... So I don’t feel that has been anything but good, because that’s part of the dialogue. ... But you have to have experience and it takes time to mature and after, you have to have a lot of patience and recognize the system. It’s really a systems issue and not a people issue. It’s really getting the systems aligned so that they become a county management system that focuses on performance, competition and fact-based analysis.

JT: Was this job worth taking for you?

GL: It’s been very good, in terms of growth experience. ... It has not been an easy year, because these aren’t easy years to go through, because nobody wants to be the first county manager of a county. Nobody. Nobody that I know of would like to do that, very often. Only a few of us have done it more than once, and I’m one of them now, I’ve done it twice. So it’s not an easy thing to do, because people have different expectations …

The real reason you do have a county manager government is you want to have a professional organization, and a professional organization means things like focus on the customer. ... Treat people — be friendly toward them. Try to be flexible with them. You want to create all throughout the organization that there’s high work performance expectations. You want everyone to know and think that ‘I’m here to really feel that I’m going to do good work based on my performance, producing concrete results and having good relationships with others, and liking and feeling good about coming to work.’ ... I mean you do it for yourself, because it’s more fun to live that way. ... And organizations like this that have that kind of feel for it, are pretty successful, are very successful. It takes you a while here, and that builds kind of a culture.

JT: The county manager system is by nature non-political, and you moved to New York State, where everything is political.

GL: Everything is political.

JT: It’s like you’re taking some piece of some good government from the Midwest and bringing it here.

GL: There are county managers in the state of New York, so we’re not the first one. There’s not that many of them, compared to other states. ….I’m working on trying to reform inside, and that will eventually improve the performance outside. The most impatient persons would like to say you should be doing the outside right now, and why don’t you make a big change. Because you’ve really got to do the inside before you do the outside.
View Printable Story

Add a comment