Town of Amherst — Town Board
Eight public hearings, four hours and seventeen minutes. On the term-limits amendment every resident who spoke — including two attorneys who said they wanted a referendum — objected to how it was drafted. The board approved it and sent it to the voters. The Deputy Supervisor said she expected it to be sued over next year.
This recording sat untranscribed in our archive for three months because of a backlog in this pipeline, not because of anything the town did. We are publishing it now, late and with that admitted, because the measure at the centre of it goes before Amherst voters on Tuesday, November 3 — and this is the only full public account of the hearing that produced it. Several other items here carried August 10 decision dates that have since come and gone; where that is so, this brief says so and does not pretend to report the outcome.
The proposal came from a Term Limits Commission the board itself appointed in April, presented by its chair. It amends Chapter 55 of the town code and, having been approved, goes to the voters as a referendum.[1]
Nine residents spoke. Every one of them criticised the proposal as drafted. Nobody spoke in support of it as drafted. That is not the same as nine people opposing term limits — several said plainly that they wanted limits and wanted a referendum. Their objection was to the drafting, and it concentrated on one word: retroactivity.[1]
Two of the nine were attorneys. Both said they supported putting the question to voters and both objected to what the measure does with time already served — what speakers called resetting the clock. A Harlem Road resident took the same position: for a referendum, against the reset.[1]
The commission's own account of the 2006 law is the strangest thing on the record. The commission chair explained that the existing term-limits law, enacted in 2006, is in his commission's view legally ineffective — and that the new law repeals it only if the referendum passes:
“the law that was enacted and adopted in 2006 is only repealed in the event of a favorable decision on a referendum.” And if it fails: “the 2006 law would remain on the books and would be putatively enforceable unless someone… wanted to bring a challenge.”[1]
So a “no” vote on Tuesday leaves in force a law the commission that studied it believes never took legal effect. Voters are entitled to know that before they vote, and it was said once, in the fourth hour of a July meeting.
A board member forecast the lawsuit. The Deputy Supervisor, questioning the chair, established the scenario she was worried about — a sitting member at the end of two four-year terms circulating petitions in 2027 — and asked whether that “would result in a lawsuit. We, as the town of Amherst, would be the defenders of that lawsuit, is that correct?” Later she said it outright:
“This is the first chance that I believe it could be challenged next year. I strongly believe it will be challenged next year.”[1]
She referred to “two colleagues that are at the end of the two four-year terms at the end of '27.” She did not name them and nobody asked.[1]
The town attorney never gave an opinion. A resident asked for one directly: “I would also like to hear the opinion of our town attorney, because our town attorney is gonna be the one defending this law should it pass.” The Supervisor agreed he could weigh in. Before the vote, counsel was asked exactly one narrow question — whether approval puts the measure on the November ballot — and offered nothing on the law's validity or necessity.[1]
Two further objections drew no response at all. One speaker objected that voters get a single bundled question covering both council and supervisor limits and a new twelve-year limit for town clerk and highway superintendent, up from eight in the 2006 law. Another asked why town justices were exempted; only the commission chair answered, not counsel. The ballot language was never read aloud at the hearing.[1]
The resolution was approved.[1]
The Supervisor, opening: “we are now going to move into our first of eight public hearings this evening. Might break a record.” The hearings took about 3 hours 14 minutes of the 4 hours 17.
| Item | Spoke | Outcome |
| North Forest Rd — 144 apartments | 0 | Approved |
| Battery energy storage law | 4 | Adopted |
| Coronation Dr parking | 1 | Amended |
| FOIL chapter repealed | 1 | Approved |
| Term limits | 9 | To ballot |
| Muir Woods SEQR findings | 1 | Deferred |
| 1 Cloister Ct landmark | 1 | Deferred |
| 4467 Main St landmark | 8 | Deferred |
Immediately after the term-limits vote the Supervisor says “Sir, just give one minute, okay?” The next words on the recording are seven minutes later: “we are gonna now come back from our recess.”
No recess was moved, seconded or voted. The board returned by motion without ever having left by one. Nothing explains the seven minutes, who was being addressed, or whether it related to the hearing that had just ended.
Set the term-limits hearing beside the one that opened the evening, and the night tells you something about what draws residents to a microphone.[1]
The first hearing reclassified four parcels on North Forest Road for 144 apartments in two four-storey buildings, with 20% workforce housing and 249 parking spaces. It is the largest physical change the board authorised all night. The Supervisor asked: “any questions from the audience with regards to this?” The recording's answer is “Okay.” Nobody spoke. The SEQR negative declaration and the reclassification were both approved.[1]
By contrast, the proposed local landmark designation of a 1929 bank building at 4467 Main Street — the former Bank of Snyder, now a Key Bank branch — consumed about 54 minutes and brought outside land-use counsel from an Albany firm plus a Key Bank corporate real estate manager to oppose it, against six residents in support.[1]
Two facts about that nomination deserve to be on the record. It did not come from the owner — Key Bank's counsel: “We did not request HPC's designation. I understand it came from a resident of the town.” And it had been pending a very long time: the bank's appeal to the board is dated August 14, 2025, and a resident noted “this particular recommendation has been pending for more than a year now.” Why it took a year to reach the board is not explained anywhere in the recording. A decision date of August 10 was set.[1]
None of this is a criticism of the residents who came. It is a description of a pattern worth noticing: the item that reshapes a streetscape passed in silence, and the items that drew a crowd were a question of who may hold office and the fate of a bank facade.
The board adopted a local law regulating battery energy storage systems. The hearing had been reopened to take further correspondence. Of four speakers, one offered qualified support and three objected; the flat opposition came from a firefighter.[1]
The supportive speaker worked in energy-sector cybersecurity and framed his concern as fire and cyber risk, asking for 300-foot setbacks. Another speaker raised voltage and maintenance; a third asked that the fire chief review the law before adoption.[1]
Two things about the process are worth recording. First, the one named private party to have changed the text of this law is a developer: planning staff reported an amendment added to one paragraph at the request of a power company that had been watching the earlier hearing remotely. Second, nobody has actually proposed a facility — but someone has asked. The Deputy Supervisor, later the same evening: “Our planning department has had outreach from someone who wishes to put one in. There has been no proposal at this time, so this is open-ended.” Who made that approach is not stated.[1]
One figure in this brief we will not assert. The Supervisor said setbacks in the adopted law are “at 500 feet versus the 300 that was requested” — but the request on the record was for a minimum of 300 feet, so “versus” describes the board exceeding the request rather than falling short of it. The 500-foot figure should be checked against the adopted text, which was not read aloud.[3]
The board also approved the law, then approved its own SEQR determination, then re-approved the law — three votes in about thirty-six seconds, prompted by staff: “Mr. Supervisor, we also need a motion on the seeker determination.” The same near-miss recurred later on a bond resolution.[1]
Amid four hours of deferrals, one hearing shows a board being moved by a single person's argument.[1]
The town's traffic safety coordinator brought a proposal to remove the parking restriction on the east side of Coronation Drive between Hartford Road and Rosemont Drive. The Traffic Safety Board had heard from exactly two residents — one opposed to any removal, one in favour.[1]
One resident spoke at the hearing, from Coronation Drive itself, and proposed a compromise rather than an outcome: keep the restriction on the half nearest Hartford, remove it elsewhere. The board adopted an amendment doing essentially that — retaining a 100-foot parking restriction — approving the resolution as amended rather than as recommended.[1]
A board departing from its own advisory body's recommendation because one neighbour proposed something workable is the system functioning as intended, and it took nine minutes.
The board repealed Chapter 22 of the town code and replaced it with a Freedom of Information policy following the state Public Officers Law. One resident spoke, and her questions were specific rather than oppositional: no copy of the state law had been provided alongside the policy; the policy states no response deadline; and it does not say what happens when the records access officer is on leave.[1]
The resolution was approved. The response-deadline question does not get an answer on the recording. Under the Public Officers Law an agency must acknowledge a request within five business days, so the obligation exists whether or not the town's own policy restates it — but a resident reading the policy would not learn that from the policy.[3]
Readers following this publication's coverage of the Village of Williamsville will find the mirror image in the same edition: a village whose volunteers are being asked to route messages through official channels precisely because FOIL requests now reach into their personal devices. Two municipalities, the same statute, opposite ends of the problem.[5]
Under this publication's standing practice, a work session is never a separate brief — it is reported inside the parent meeting's, because its job is to explain the evening. This one does, four times over.[2]
The session itself is eleven minutes and almost entirely procedural: the Supervisor reading some sixty resolution numbers with one-line titles and no debate. It contains no substantive discussion of term limits, the bank designation, the battery law or any of the eight hearings. What it does contain is the plan.[2]
1. The board knew eight hours ahead that the bond resolution needed a recorded vote. The afternoon: “it's a bond resolution that's going to require a voice vote so we're going to hold off that… to tonight.” That evening the Supervisor nonetheless began it as a collective chorus before catching himself — “Wait, I need a voice vote.” He caught it; the point is that the requirement had been flagged in advance and still nearly slipped.[1][2]
2. It explains why one resolution was pulled out of the consent agenda and read at length. A Millersport Highway item was held back in the afternoon “because there is an amendment to it” — which is why the Supervisor spent a minute and a half that night reciting conditions on it: an Army Corps permit covenant, an open-space declaration of restrictions, drainage and sanitary sewer easements, and a street-lighting performance bond.[1][2]
3. It explains why three resolutions passed with no discussion. A councilmember was asked in the afternoon whether he wanted to present his three resolutions or put them on consent; he chose consent. That night they were swept into the clerk's call as “Council Member Cavanaugh, one, two, three” and approved in the blanket vote — conservation council appointments, fire investigation equipment, and network accessories — with none of their contents described aloud.[1][2]
4. And it points at the item we would chase hardest. The afternoon list includes, under the town attorney's office, a resolution titled “the boulevard central district approval of appraisals and authorization for action,” followed by “the settlement of litigation.” The session then adjourned into executive session, where the stated first business was “an update on the Boulevard mall.” That night, the clerk's consent call was “Town attorney, two, three, five” — three items identified only by position in a list.[1][2]
The honest limit of that finding: the evening recording never states which resolution numbers “two, three, five” are. Matching them to the afternoon's ordering would put the Boulevard appraisals, the litigation settlement and a tax-enforcement authorisation inside that unnamed consent vote — but the correspondence is ours, drawn from the work session's sequence, and the evening file does not confirm it. What we can state without inference is this: approval of appraisals and “authorization for action” on a central-district property was briefed to the board behind closed doors that afternoon, and no resolution number, title, subject or dollar figure concerning the Boulevard Mall was spoken aloud in public at any point in the four-hour meeting. We have filed a records request for the July 27 consent agenda.[4]
Public expression and the Supervisor's answers took about 41 minutes. Several questions got substantive replies. These did not.[1]
One exchange belongs here for balance. Mid-public-expression the Deputy Supervisor volunteered that “It has been an incredibly tough two and a half years on this board, but for every disingenuous or obstinate, irrational, whatever we wanna say type argument at me, I do wanna notify that there have been numerous other wonderful people in this town…” It came roughly ninety minutes after a hearing in which residents had called the board's own proposal self-serving. Reported as said, by a member entitled to answer criticism of her.[1]
This brief is three months late and that is our fault. The recording was captured on the night but sat untranscribed until October because of a processing backlog in this pipeline. We are publishing rather than quietly dropping it because the term-limits referendum reaches voters on November 3 and no other full account of the hearing exists. Items given August 10 decision dates — the Muir Woods SEQR findings, and the landmark designations at 1 Cloister Court and 4467 Main Street — were still undecided as of this recording, and this brief does not report their outcomes, which will be in the August minutes.
No vote tallies. Every motion but one was a collective voice vote in which a dissent is inaudible by construction. No “no,” “nay,” abstention or recusal occurs anywhere in 257 minutes. This brief reports outcomes and does not describe any vote as unanimous.
Attendance. All five members answered or can be placed in the room; the clerk's roll call captures four “Present” responses and drops the Deputy Supervisor's, though she had already delivered an in-memoriam before the roll was called and spoke throughout. We read that as a transcription drop, not an absence.
Names. The roster is human-verified against the town's official board page and reconciled against official minutes. Whisper mangles every surname here — the town attorney alone appears half a dozen ways across the two files, which is why he is identified by office. Residents, petitioners' attorneys and commission members are named on the recording; those names carry [*] in our records and are given here by role where the rendering is uncertain, because at four hours the error rate on names is high and a misattributed objection is worse than an unattributed one.
The work session. Folded into this brief rather than published separately, per this publication's standing rule that a work session is part of the parent board's story and never its own document. Its transcript is cited separately because the fold is editorial, not archival. Note that the work-session audio file carries the evening meeting's filename in its own header — a labelling fault in our capture, not a mix-up of content: the duration and subject matter confirm which is which.
What we have not asserted. The 500-foot battery setback; the identity of the two colleagues facing the end of two four-year terms in 2027; who approached the planning department about a battery facility; which resolutions the consent call's “two, three, five” denote; and the contents of the executive session. Each is flagged in the text as unresolved rather than filled in.