Webster Town Board approves petition to annex part of Xerox campus, 5-0

The Webster Town Board voted 5-0 Thursday night to approve a petition to annex a portion of land on the Xerox campus from the Town of Webster to the Village of Webster.

Supervisor Alex Scialdone, Councilman John Cahill, Councilwoman Jennifer Wright, Councilman Nick Hunter and Councilman Garrett Wagner each voted aye.

The annexation petition identifies the land as Tax ID #65.03-1-41. The packet's assessment-roll extract lists the parcel at 1345 Chiyoda Drive and 28.04 acres, owned by Xerox Corporation.

The town's recordings of the meeting and of the 6 p.m. workshop that preceded it are on its YouTube channel. This recap covers the highlights.

The annexation

A board member said the municipal line between the town and village "goes directly through" the Xerox parcel.

The idea, the member said, is to move the West Campus into the village so a developer deals with one municipality.

An earlier attempt to settle the boundary went through the village's voters. "The village referendum did not pass the public, so it is now on us," a member said.

A member said the town's wastewater plant is on board with the village taking the waste. Another member qualified that it is not a done deal yet.

A member said the two boards should sign a memorandum of understanding, so there is a record of what they intended if nothing happens for six years.

"It's not a swap," a member said. The member said people had thought the town and village were exchanging land.

"Town taxpayers have no negative impact on this," a member said.

"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. "So if we do not vote tonight it will default to a yes automatically." Under General Municipal Law § 711, each affected local government has ninety days after the close of the joint public hearing to determine by majority vote whether the annexation is in the overall public interest, and a governing board that does not make, sign and file a written order within that period is deemed to have approved the annexation when the ninety days expire. The town's record does not establish the date the joint hearing closed, so whether Thursday was the last board meeting before the deadline remains the member's characterization.

A resolution raised from the floor

The presiding officer announced the annexation resolution. The town attorney interrupted from the floor and told the supervisor that an accompanying resolution had to be taken up first. That resolution was not on the agenda the town posted for the meeting.

The annexation is an unlisted action under the State Environmental Quality Review Act, the attorney told the board.

A member then moved that the annexation is an unlisted action under SEQR and will have no adverse environmental impact. The motion was seconded and adopted, immediately before the annexation vote.

What the public said

Open to the Floor came first, before regular town business. Four people spoke, described below in the order they took the podium.

Two of the four addressed the same subject from opposite directions: a pride flag that had been raised at Town Hall days before the board adopted a flag policy in June, and that later came down.

The board adopted that policy, Resolution No. 211, on June 4, according to the town's adopted minutes of that meeting. It provides that "the American and New York State Flags shall be the official flags and the only flags of the Town of Webster to be displayed on properties owned by the Town of Webster." Its only stated basis is that the town "does not currently have a defined flag policy." The resolution does not mention the pride flag, and the town's adopted June minutes record no separate vote to remove it.

The vote was 3-2. Cahill, Wright and Wagner voted aye. Scialdone and Hunter voted no. At the same meeting Scialdone said displaying the pride flag had been his own decision as town supervisor, not the board's.

A resident who identified himself as a combat veteran spoke about public trust. He said trust does not require agreement, but it does require believing that officials act in the public interest. "The decision to raise the pride flag on town property is what first brought me to this podium," he said.

"Government should exercise sound judgment whenever it acts in an official capacity," he said. "Its role is not to promote one cause over another but to serve every resident equally."

A second speaker brought a public-safety request and physical exhibits. He said he came across the remains of a Bigfoot specimen in Adirondack Park in 2024. "Up here near Chimney Bluffs and off 104, we've seen a lot of activity lately, and there's been a string of accidents," he said. "This could be as simple as some signage along 104 indicating that this could be a Bigfoot Crossing area."

A third speaker talked about local solar projects.

A fourth speaker, a retired priest who said he and his husband live in Webster, spoke about the same flag from the other direction. "The optics of taking it down has been received by the LGBTQ plus community as a sign that some of our neighbors don't think that we belong here," he said. "And I'm afraid that this action, even if it wasn't meant to, the optics of it are that it's pushing the community even further to the margins."

He told the board he accepted the criticism that the flag had been misplaced, and said he understood the decision to remove it to have been made in a spirit of fairness to all residents.

The rest of the agenda

The board enacted Local Law #3 of 2026, amending Sections 320-1, 320-4 and 320-6 of the Webster Town Code relating to traffic regulations. The vote was 5-0. Scialdone, Cahill, Wright, Hunter and Wagner each voted aye.

The board also approved three sets of minutes, the bills, the prepaid warrant, purchase orders, two fence licenses in town drainage easements, a 30-day liquor notification waiver for United Buffet 941, Inc., and the disposition of two police vehicles. A member moved that the board go into executive session for labor and personnel, citing Public Officers Law §105. The town's recording ends during that motion.

AI tools were used in drafting and research.