How Webster's two governments actually diverge and cooperate

This year, Webster's Town and Village governments have drawn certain tax dollars through legally distinct channels, held separate state permits for what used to be one shared wastewater arrangement, sat together at the same economic development table, and let a private company put a piece of the map up for a public vote.

Readers who want the basic structure first (the two boards, the two tax bills, the election calendar) should start with our earlier primer, Town or village? A plain-English guide to how Webster is actually governed. This piece assumes that ground is already covered and goes into what actually happens when the two governments' jobs meet.

Where the town tax bill splits by law

New York Town Law requires any town that contains an incorporated village to keep certain budget lines separate: a town-wide fund that every parcel pays into, village included, and a part-town fund that only the parcels outside the village pay into. The logic is that village residents already fund an equivalent service through their own village government, so charging them again for the town's version of it would double-charge them.

Webster's 2026 adopted budget shows the mechanism in its fund structure. Fund A, the General Fund, is town-wide and covers all 16,894 parcels in the town, village included. Fund B, the General Fund's part-town counterpart, and Fund DB, the part-town Highway Fund, apply only to the roughly 15,397 parcels outside the village. This is a different mechanism from the Village's own tax rate, covered in our May piece. That rate layers directly on top of the town tax village residents already pay. The part-town funds are a legally required split inside the town's own levy.

One wrinkle applies to this year specifically. The Town zeroed out its part-town tax rate for 2026, drawing on sales-tax revenue and fund balance instead. Village and non-village residents are currently paying the identical $5.52 per $1,000 of equalized assessed value. The zero rate is a budget choice the Town Board made for this year. It does not mean the part-town and town-wide split has disappeared structurally; the funds still exist on the books and could carry different rates again in a future budget.

A wastewater permit that used to be shared, and now isn't

For years, the Village of Webster's wastewater treatment plant at 613 Webster Road pre-treated its effluent and sent it to the Town's plant for chlorination and discharge, all under the Town's State Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permit, NY0021610. That is still how the Village's own website describes the arrangement. Records from the state Department of Environmental Conservation show something changed on paper in 2024: the Village requested and received its own SPDES permit, NY0026794, effective March 2024 through February 2029, authorizing the Village's plant to discharge up to 2.5 million gallons a day to Lake Ontario under that permit rather than the Town's.

On the ground, though, the routing has not changed: the Village's flow still runs into the Town's plant. DEC's Region 8 draft permit for NY0026794, dated Feb. 24, 2026, includes a Monitoring Locations diagram that labels the link directly: an "Effluent Pipe (Village WWTP to Town WPCF)" feeding a "Combined Outfall at Town WPCF" before the water reaches Lake Ontario. The separation the Village asked for still has to be built. That same draft permit's Schedule of Compliance carries a target completion date of Sept. 1, 2028 for an independent Village disposal system, and the final post-separation effluent limits take effect only once the work is done and the state accepts it. The Village's project page for the plant does not publish a cost estimate for that work.

The Town's plant, still operating under NY0021610, is partway through a $94.3 million bonded upgrade, reported 86.8 percent complete on the Town's wastewater project page.

Two governments, two park systems

Parks are another place where the same word means two different budgets depending on which side of the village line a resident stands on. The Village independently operates five parks totaling 22 acres: Milton R. Case Memorial Park, Wilmorite Recreation Area, Schantz Park, Veterans Memorial Park, and Harmony Park. That system runs on its own village parks budget, distinct from the Town's spending on its recreation facilities, which include Sandbar Park, a Town capital project with roughly $9.5 million in bonded improvements across four sub-projects. Ask "which government maintains this park" in Webster, and the honest answer is: it depends on the parcel.

Where they sit at the same table

Division is not the whole story. The Webster Economic Development Alliance, known as WEDA, is a five-party partnership formed in 2009: the Town of Webster, the Village of Webster, Webster Central School District, the Webster Chamber of Commerce, and the Village of Webster Business Improvement District all sit on the same nonprofit board. Since 2014, WEDA has secured more than $10 million in state and federal funding for local projects, most recently a $9.8 million FAST NY grant for infrastructure near the former Xerox Wilson Campus.

When the boundary itself went on the ballot

Town and village lines are not permanent by default. New York Village Law Section 18-1804 allows a village boundary to be adjusted by petition and referendum, and Webster tested that this year. The June 16, 2026 Village general election ballot included a proposition, filed by Xerox, to shift roughly 33 acres of an industrial parcel out of the Village and into the Town. Had it passed, the territory would have left the Village entirely, and the Town would have become the sole authority for zoning, land use and permitting there instead of the two governments each signing off. The proposition was tied to the Reimagine Webster Brownfield Opportunity Area Plan, a redevelopment framework the Town and Village jointly designated and the state certified in June 2025. That joint designation is itself a case of the two governments planning together even while remaining legally separate. The proposition failed, 130 no to 125 yes, with 19 blank ballots cast out of 274 total, a five-vote margin, according to the Monroe County Board of Canvassers' official certification.

The bottom line

Webster is still two separate elected governments sharing one ZIP code. What 2026 shows is what that structure produces day to day: a tax levy that splits by law even when this year's rate does not show it, a wastewater arrangement that is mid-change on paper, a shared parks vocabulary that hides two budgets, a five-party partnership that raises real money together, and a boundary that can be put to a vote, even if that vote comes up short.

For a fuller map of which board decides what for the town, see Who decides what in Webster: the Planning Board, Town Board, and Zoning Board of Appeals, explained.

AI tools were used in drafting and research.