> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://websterledger.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Webster's town board said yes to the Xerox annexation. Here's what still has to happen. - URL: https://websterledger.com/2026-08-25-xerox-annexation-what-happens-next/ - Published: 2026-08-27T21:55:36.000Z - Updated: 2026-08-27T21:55:36.000Z - Description: The 5-0 vote Aug. 20 was one of two consents the annexation needs. What General Municipal Law Article 17 requires next, who decides, and what changes for the 28-acre parcel. - Author: Morgan VanDerLeest - Tags: Planning & development, Government, Explainer The Webster Town Board voted 5-0 on Aug. 20 to approve a petition moving roughly 28 acres of the Xerox campus out of the Town of Webster and into the Village of Webster. That vote is one of two consents the annexation needs. Under New York's General Municipal Law, a town board is one of two governing bodies that has to act on an annexation petition like this one. The village board has its own decision to make, on its own clock, under a rule most residents have never run into: if it says nothing at all, the annexation is approved anyway. The village board meets Thursday evening, its first regular meeting since the town's vote. Here is what the statute requires, who decides next, and what changes for the parcel if the municipal line moves. ## Get Webster news in your inbox Independent local journalism for Webster, NY. Subscribe free Email sent! Check your inbox to complete your signup. No spam. Unsubscribe anytime. ## What the vote did, and what it didn't The land would move from the town to the village, not the other way. The paperwork states that direction plainly. Xerox Corporation's filing, submitted under General Municipal Law Section 703, describes itself as a "petition for the annexation of territory known as Tax ID # 65.03-1-41 to the Village of Webster." The cover letter transmitting it to the town describes the request as one "for the Village to annex a portion of the Site currently under the jurisdiction of the Town." The parcel is 28.04 acres at 1345 Chiyoda Drive, owned by Xerox Corporation and assessed at $3,231,900\. The petition swears that the number of inhabitants of the territory is zero and that Xerox owns 100 percent of its assessed valuation, a statement certified by the town assessor. Nobody lives there. It is also not a trade. "It's not a swap," a board member said at the Aug. 20 meeting, adding that people had thought the town and village were exchanging land. Supervisor Alex Scialdone, Deputy Supervisor Nick Hunter, Councilmen John Cahill and Garrett Wagner, and Councilwoman Jennifer Wright all voted aye. The town has not yet posted minutes of the Aug. 20 meeting, so board members quoted here are identified by role rather than by name. A board member said the municipal line between town and village runs directly through the Xerox parcel, and that the split makes it less desirable for a developer to buy and revamp. The point of the move, the member said, is to put the West Campus inside the village so that a developer deals with a single municipality. The environmental determination was not on the posted agenda. The town attorney raised it from the floor, before the presiding officer took up the annexation, and the board then adopted a resolution classifying the annexation as an unlisted action under the State Environmental Quality Review Act and finding that it will have no adverse environmental impact. The petition package includes Part 1 of a short Environmental Assessment Form, prepared and certified by the applicant. That is how the state's form is designed to work: it assigns Part 1 to the applicant or project sponsor, and the answers are subject to public review and further verification. ## Two boundary proposals, running in opposite directions Some of the confusion has a real source: there have been two separate boundary proposals on the Xerox campus this year, and they run opposite ways. The first went to Village of Webster voters at a special election on June 16\. That one concerned two portions of a different parcel, 065.19-1-1.1: roughly 32 acres off Phillips Road, Mitcheldean Drive and Resende Road, plus about 1.3 acres along Ridge Road near Route 104\. It would have moved land the other direction, out of the village and into the town, under a different procedure entirely: a boundary diminishment under Village Law, decided at the ballot box rather than by the boards. The proposition failed 125 to 130, with 19 blank ballots out of 274 cast, according to the Monroe County Board of Canvassers. A board member pointed to that outcome on Aug. 20: "The village referendum did not pass the public, so it is now on us." That referendum concerned different land and a different procedure. The petition the town board acted on in August is a different parcel, a different direction and a different statute. It runs under General Municipal Law Article 17, where the two governing boards decide, not the voters. Both proposals trace back to the same underlying planning effort: the Reimagine Webster Brownfield Opportunity Area plan, or BOA plan, which the town and village jointly asked the New York State Department of State to designate in April 2025 and which received a certificate of designation that June. Xerox's petition calls the annexation "a key step to implementing the vision established in the BOA Plan." A Brownfield Opportunity Area is a state Department of State planning designation covering an area, not an approval covering a project. A BOA designation does not itself approve development or change zoning, and it does not by itself require or complete any cleanup. It is a plan, not a permit. On site conditions, the application states that the adjoining Xerox campus underwent completed remediation for hazardous waste. That characterization comes from the applicant's own filing and has not been independently verified by the Ledger. ## What Article 17 actually requires The statute lays out a sequence, and Webster is partway through it. **The petition.** Section 703 lets the owners of a territory petition for annexation. Xerox's was transmitted to the town on April 23, 2026. **Notice.** Section 704 requires notice to be published and mailed within 20 days after a petition is received, with the hearing set not less than 20 nor more than 40 days after that. **A joint hearing.** Section 705 makes the hearing a joint one. Both boards sit together, and the record has to address whether the petition is sufficient and whether the annexation is in the "over-all public interest" of the territory, the annexing municipality, the area left behind, and any affected school or fire districts. **The determination, within 90 days.** Section 711 gives each affected governing board 90 days after the hearing is concluded to determine by majority vote whether the annexation serves that over-all public interest, and to adopt a resolution with findings and file a signed written order. **And silence counts as yes.** A board that wants to reject the annexation has to say so in writing, on time. If the 90 days pass and no written order has been filed, Section 711 says the board "shall be deemed to have approved the proposed annexation." Approval happens by operation of law, without anyone taking a vote. That rule was on the town board's mind. "This is the last board meeting we have before the 90 day from the joint public hearing that we had with the village," a board member said Aug. 20\. "So if we do not vote tonight it will default to a yes automatically." ## The village board's turn The town has consented. The village board's determination is the remaining consent. The Ledger has not been able to establish from the village's posted record whether the board has acted on the petition, or when the 90 days expire. Three things can happen from here. **If the village board approves**, Section 711 makes the determination "final and conclusive." There is no appeal on the merits. A challenge would have to come as an Article 78 proceeding within 30 days of the order being filed. **If the village board does nothing**, the deemed-approval rule applies and the annexation is treated as approved when the 90 days run out. **If the village board refuses**, the case can go to the Appellate Division, but not at Xerox's initiative. Section 712 gives that right to "the governing board of any other affected local government," which here means the town board. The petitioner has no standing to appeal a village refusal. The application would be due within 30 days after the order is filed with the county clerk. The statute is asymmetrical. It builds a review route into a refusal, which another affected board can take to the Appellate Division. It builds none into an approval, or into a silence that becomes one. ## What changes for the parcel, and what doesn't **The village would become the land-use authority.** That is the largest practical change on this list. Going forward, village zoning and village boards would govern development on the parcel, and the town's boards would no longer have a role in approving what gets built there. Village officials are elected by village voters, so residents of the town outside the village would have no vote for the officials deciding what gets built on the parcel. The Ledger has not been able to establish from the village's posted record which zoning district the parcel would receive, or whether the village must act to assign one. **Schools do not change.** The parcel already sits in the Webster Central School District, which covers both the town and the village. As a general rule school district boundaries are independent of municipal boundaries and do not automatically follow an annexation, but here the question is moot in both directions. No student assignment changes and no one's school tax jurisdiction changes because of this. **Whether the town's moratorium reaches this parcel is not settled by the record.** Webster's development moratorium is Local Law No. 2 of 2026, adopted June 4, 2026\. It bars subdivisions producing more than four parcels, large-scale solar projects and data centers on real property in six named zoning districts: O-P, MC, HC, CO, LC-1 and LC-2, as identified on the town's zoning map last dated May 2021\. That map lists IN Industrial as a district distinct from those six, and the Ledger has not been able to establish which town zoning district covers this parcel. If the boundary moves, the moratorium stops applying either way, because the law by its own terms binds boards of the Town of Webster and property in the town's listed districts. **The tax roll shifts on a fiscal-year boundary, not on the day of the vote.** Once the approving orders are filed with the clerks of the affected local governments, Section 714 requires the annexing board to set an effective date by local law, with due regard to the taxable status dates and fiscal years of the governments involved. Section 710 handles the money: taxes already owed when annexation takes effect stay collectible as if the territory had never been annexed, and from the first fiscal year beginning after the effective date the annexing government collects. In plain terms, the village would gain the parcel on its roll and the town would lose it from the town-wide levy, while county and school jurisdiction are unaffected. "Town taxpayers have no negative impact on this," a board member said Aug. 20\. No public document quantifies the levy effect on either side, and the Ledger is not going to estimate one. **Whether the parcel leaves the town's special districts is not settled by the record.** The assessment roll lists it in the Northeast Joint Fire District along with water, sewer and drainage districts. General Municipal Law Section 709 addresses fire districts only where a city is doing the annexing, so it does not settle what happens when a village does. ## What to watch The village board meets Thursday, Aug. 27 at 6:30 p.m. in the Community Meeting Hall at 29 South Ave., and its meetings stream live on the village's Facebook page. The Village of Webster Board of Trustees sits on the second and fourth Thursday of each month. The Ledger has not been able to establish from the village's posted record whether the petition is on the agenda for that meeting, or whether the board takes public comment on it. The other markers are the village board's minutes and the town's minutes of the Aug. 20 meeting, which the town posts once the board approves them at a subsequent meeting. One date is still unsettled. The town's posted record does not establish when the joint hearing closed, which is the event that starts the 90-day clock. Previously in the Ledger: [Xerox parcel annexation, traffic law update head Thursday's Town Board agenda](https://websterledger.com/2026-08-20-town-board-preview-xerox-annexation/) (Aug. 20) and [Webster Town Board approves petition to annex part of Xerox campus, 5-0](https://websterledger.com/webster-town-board-recap-august-20-2026/) (Aug. 21). ## Get Webster news in your inbox Independent local journalism for Webster, NY. Subscribe free Email sent! 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