What's on the Webster Town Board agenda Thursday: a zoning-rewrite grant, two cell towers, and a change on the Zoning Board of Appeals

The Webster Town Board meets Thursday, June 18, with a workshop at 6:30 p.m. and the regular meeting at 7:30 p.m. in the Town Board Room, the blue-roof building behind the main Town Hall at 1002 Ridge Road, near the Justice Courts. Here is what is on the agenda and why it matters.

The headline item is not a vote. At the 6:30 workshop, the board is set to hear a presentation on applying for a 2026 state grant to pay for rewriting Webster's zoning code so it lines up with the town's coming Comprehensive Plan update. It is the concrete next step after the development moratorium the Ledger has reported on.

The grant that would pay to rewrite the zoning code

The moratorium was a pause. This is what the pause is meant to lead to.

In a piece published earlier, the Ledger walked through Local Law No. 2 of 2026, the six-month development pause the Town Board adopted June 4. The law's stated purpose is to hold the status quo while the town finishes an updated Comprehensive Plan. Thursday's workshop takes the obvious next question, once the plan is done, how do you change the rules to match it, and puts a funding plan in front of the board.

The presentation, titled "Smart Growth Community Planning Program, Town of Webster, NY, 2026 CFA Grant Application," proposes that the town apply through New York's 2026 Consolidated Funding Application for a Smart Growth Community Planning Program grant to fund new or updated community-wide zoning regulations. The slides say those regulations would be written "to align with the recommendations set forth in the comprehensive plan update, expected to be completed later this year." The deck lists the program's stated purposes as supporting "climate resilience, housing availability and affordability, accessible and livable communities, and waterfront development."

This is a presentation, not a vote. There is no grant-authorizing resolution among Thursday's regular-meeting items. The deck's own "next steps" slide makes that explicit: a future Town Board resolution authorizing the grant application and the local match still has to come, the application would be developed with grant consultant Jean O'Connell and Associates, and it would be submitted through the CFA portal by July 30. In other words, Thursday is the board hearing the pitch and weighing whether to authorize an application later.

On the dollars, the deck presents these figures: a grant request of $150,000, grant funds covering up to 75 percent of the project, and a 25 percent local match stated as $37,500. That $37,500 share would come from the town, meaning local taxpayer dollars. The program's minimum request is $75,000, and the slides note $4.8 million is available statewide. To be eligible, a municipality must have a Comprehensive Plan update under development through the program, which Webster does.

The presentation also lays out the history. Webster received $100,000 from the same state source in 2023 to fund the Comprehensive Plan update now underway, and the slides note the program has previously helped fund Sandbar Park and Salt Barn construction. The deck pegs the zoning code rewrite itself at an estimated 12 to 18 months of work.

Even if the board likes what it hears Thursday, the public process continues well past this presentation. Beyond that authorizing resolution, the milestones ahead include adoption of the updated Comprehensive Plan and a request for proposals to hire the consultant who would carry out the zoning rewrite. Each of those is a later point where residents can weigh in.

Two Verizon cell towers back on the agenda

Item 14 on the regular-meeting agenda would authorize Town Supervisor Scialdone to sign an engagement letter with William P. Johnson, an RF engineering consultant, for an independent third-party review of two proposed Verizon cell tower sites. Under the arrangement described in the resolution, the cost of that review is to be reimbursed by Verizon Wireless. The same independent-review arrangement also appeared on the board's June 4 agenda.

Both sites are ones the Ledger has reported on before. One is at 1222 Wildflower Drive (parcel 065.05-1-48), zoned R-3 Single Family Residential, where a roughly 135-foot wireless facility has been proposed. The other sits on a 7.8-acre parcel at the southwest corner of Lake Road and the Monroe-Wayne County Line Road (parcel 037.03-1-44), zoned Large-Lot Residential, where a roughly 125-foot tower has been proposed; an area variance for that site was tabled at the Zoning Board of Appeals in April. The applicant in both cases is Verizon Wireless. Hiring an outside engineer lets the town's boards have Verizon's own engineering vetted by an independent expert, at Verizon's expense, before they vote.

The consultant, Johnson, is described in his service proposal as a Rochester Institute of Technology professor emeritus in telecommunications engineering who is also admitted to the New York bar and who has worked on prior Webster wireless matters.

A seat opens on the Zoning Board of Appeals

Two related items, 10 and 11, would change the makeup of the Zoning Board of Appeals, the panel that rules on variance requests, including the height variances that come with cell tower proposals.

Item 10 would accept the resignation of Adam Prescott from the ZBA, effective June 8. Item 11 would appoint John Accorso to fill the unexpired term, which runs through December 31, 2028.

Also on Thursday's agenda

A run of other items rounds out the regular meeting.

• Westwood Estates road dedication (item 9). The board is set to accept the permanent dedication of Alyssa Way, a 0.32-mile stretch running from Allison Lane to Schlegel Road, by a deed of dedication from Combat Construction LLC. The action follows the board's June 4 acceptance of three park-district parcels in the same Westwood Estates Section 3 subdivision.
• New wastewater plant chief (item 8). The agenda calls for appointing Dwayne Hilfiker as Chief Wastewater Treatment Plant Operator, effective July 4, serving alongside current chief Rick Kenealy for cross-training before the handoff.
• Treatment-plant polymer bid (item 13). The board is set to award the polymer solution bid for the Wastewater Treatment Plant on Phillips Road to Polydyne Inc. of Riceboro, Georgia, at $1.775 per pound, on a one-year term with two optional one-year extensions. Polydyne was the only responsive bidder.
• fairlife monument sign (item 12). A license agreement would allow a six-foot-tall monument sign within town sewer and snowplow-turnaround easements at the fairlife property at 1886 Tebor Road (parcel 066.03-1-28.001).
• Shared-services and cybersecurity agreements (items 5 and 6). The agenda includes an intermunicipal agreement between the Town and the Village of Webster for shared equipment and services, and an intergovernmental agreement for endpoint-protection cybersecurity services with New York State agencies.
• Easement licenses (item 7). A license would permit a split-rail fence within a town stormwater drainage easement at 1072 Shoemaker Road (parcel 064.08-2-43), with a letter of support from the Highway Superintendent confirming the drainage is unaffected.
• Surplus property (items 15 through 19). Several town departments, including Highway, Sewer, Parks and Recreation, and Police, are set to declare equipment surplus for recycling, trade-in, or auction.

The agenda also opens with item 1, approval of the minutes from the June 4 workshop and June 4 meeting. Once approved, those minutes become the official record of the June 4 actions, including the moratorium vote.

The workshop also hears from the economic development alliance

Alongside the grant presentation, the 6:30 workshop is set to include a presentation on FAST NY, the state's program for readying shovel-ready development sites, by Leigh Anne Kimber of the Webster Economic Development Alliance.

How to weigh in

The meetings are open to the public in the Town Board Room behind the main Town Hall at 1002 Ridge Road. Public comment is open to the floor by signing up at the meeting before 7:30pm. There is a typical limit of five minutes per speaker (sometimes reduced if there are many sign ups). Residents who want to follow along but cannot attend can find the agendas and, once posted, the minutes through the town's meeting records.

AI tools were used in drafting and research.