The city of Jamestown spends $2,608 per person and each citizen carries more than $1,300 worth of debt.

That’s according to SeeThroughNY.net, a government watchdog Web site that recently put together benchmark comparisons for every city, town, village and county across the state.

But while city officials applaud the effort made by the site to compare cities with one another in areas such as expenditures per capita, debt per capita and taxes per capita, they say the numbers used to calculate Jamestown’s standings show an inaccurate picture.

”When you’re doing a study like this, a one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t work and doesn’t always paint an accurate picture,” said Mayor Sam Teresi. ”Some of these numbers were taken out of context.”

To come up with its calculations, SeeThroughNY used municipal reports sent to the Office of the State Comptroller, something every local government entity is required to do annually. They used 2007 numbers – the most recent year for which such reports are available – and used mid-decade federal census estimates for each entity’s population figure.

And therein lies part of the problem, Teresi said.

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