Town of Clarence Town Board·September 9, 2026
Two hearings, both granted · An 1866 parsonage tabled · The bills, finally read · A recusal without a reason
The Town Board granted the special exception use permit that lets LENCO Supplies build a retail store of more than 43,000 square feet at 7631 Transit Road — three residents spoke, all in favor, none against, and the roll call was 5–0 — then granted Flavors of India its outside-dining permit at 4401 Transit Road on a second 5–0 roll call. In between and around them the board tabled a request to even schedule a hearing on landmark status for the 1866 Zion Lutheran parsonage at 6065 Goodrich Road, set an October 14 hearing for AJ's Tree Service on County Road with Supervisor Patrick Casilio recused for a reason he never stated, approved final plat for twenty more lots at Woodland Hills with both of the applicant's attorneys absent, and finally paid the August 27 bills — $894,282.04 — two weeks after the supervisor told the board he had not reviewed them. Also: a seat is open on the Planning Board, the two boards meet jointly on September 30 to go through the new code, and the Town Clerk would like you to know about the pennies.
The hearing the board set three weeks ago was noticed for 10:15 a.m. It was called at about 10:43, after a nineteen-minute argument about a farmhouse and four councilmen's reports had eaten the morning, and the supervisor said so out loud — “it is well past 15” — before handing the item to staff. Nine minutes later the last Town Board obstacle in front of a building-supply store that predates the pandemic was gone.
Director of Community Development Jonathan Bleuer described the site plainly: 7631 Transit Road, the southeast corner of Transit and Wolcott Road, 6.88 acres in the Restricted Business zone. The applicant entity is 7631 Transit Road, LLC; the tenant is LENCO Supplies. The building, Bleuer said, is proposed at approximately 43,800 square feet, centered on the property and fronting Transit Road. Because the Restricted Business zone stops at 10,000 square feet, it needs a special exception use permit, and only the Town Board can issue one.
Sean Hopkins[*] of Hopkins Sorgi & McCarthy[*] appeared for the applicant with Kevin Coppola[*] of LENCO and recited a procedural history that is, by itself, the story. The parcel was once slated for a mixed-use project that “predates COVID” and was “not economically feasible.” The Planning Board issued a negative declaration under the State Environmental Quality Review Act on May 20 of this year. The Zoning Board of Appeals then granted a use variance to allow retail at all. The Planning Board approved the concept plan on July 1, subject to 19 conditions, and recommended this permit. Hopkins put the building at approximately 43,200 square feet — six hundred feet under the figure staff had given four minutes earlier, and nobody reconciled the two. “We could commence construction this year,” he said, which is the only forward-looking claim anyone made.
Then the supervisor opened the floor, and three people walked to the microphone to say yes.
Lindy said he uses the company's Sheridan Drive store “for myself and in my capacity at the town,” and its Delaware store when visiting two sisters in the Kenmore area. He also delivered the morning's only competitive intelligence, about an unnamed rival: “a lumber company that doesn't sell lumber anymore. They sell trim products. And they're going to stop doing that now, I guess. You're going to see a place that's going to eventually close.” The board, which appeared to know him, asked how he was feeling before it asked anything else.
Nobody spoke against. The supervisor noted one written comment from a neighbor, also in favor. Councilman Peter DiCostanzo moved to close the hearing; it closed on a voice vote. The permit itself went to a named roll call, as the supervisor had announced every land-use item would: Altieri aye, Michnik aye, Shear aye, DiCostanzo aye, Casilio aye. Five to nothing, subject to all 19 Planning Board conditions.
The applicant's team was out the door within a minute. What they have is not permission to build.
Two of Wednesday's grants sound final and are not, and the distinction is the same in both.
A special exception use permit answers one question: may this kind of use exist here at all? A temporary conditional permit answers the same question with a clock on it. Neither answers where the pipes go, how the water leaves the site, where the trucks turn, or what the lighting does to the house next door. That is development plan approval, and in Clarence it belongs to the Planning Board.
So LENCO's 5–0 is real and it is not a building permit; Hopkins said as much — the final step is development plan approval, and the team is working with the Engineering Department now.
Bleuer made the point sharper an hour later on a different item. A temporary conditional permit, he told the board, “may be approved before development plan approval” — but “it would not become active until such development plan approval is issued by the Planning Board.” A permit can exist and do nothing. That is not a loophole; it is the order of operations.
The second noticed hearing of the morning, for 10:20 a.m. and called around 10:52, was over almost before it started. Flavors of India, 4401 Transit Road — the east side of Transit, a 20-acre parcel in the Major Arterial zone holding the existing Shops at Main/Transit plaza — asked for a temporary conditional permit for outside dining in front of the restaurant. Bleuer's description ran three sentences: a grouping of tables out front, behind the existing protective bollards.
The applicant identified herself as Kala Chima[*]. The supervisor placed the request geographically and historically in one breath — it is going in “where Brennan's[*] used to have outside dining also,” so the barricades that stop cars “from coming in on top of you” are already there. The board had no questions. The public had nothing to say. The hearing was closed on a voice vote, and a councilman explained the speed rather than apologize for it: “It's not like we're trying to rush it, but it's an existing outdoor dining already, so there's no reason to beat it up.”
The permit carried 5–0 on a roll call, on four conditions: an initial term no greater than one year; operation in conformance with the submitted application, business plan and the applicant's testimony; compliance with any additional requirements of the town's engineering, building and planning departments; and any applicable fees required by the town code.
That closes both of the hearings this board set on August 19, on the mornings it said it would, in the slots it said it would use. Both applicants got what they asked for. Nobody appeared to object to either.
The supervisor moved agenda item 13 to the top of the meeting as a courtesy — the volunteers had other appointments — and it consumed nineteen minutes, more than a third of the meeting, and ended in the one outcome nobody in the room had planned for.
Donna Truman owns 6065 Goodrich Road[*], a quarter-acre parcel on the east side of Goodrich north of Maple Street, in the Clarence Center Traditional Neighborhood District. She is asking the town to designate her own house a Local Landmark. The Clarence Historic Preservation Commission, after what Bleuer called a thorough review, recommended the designation. All the board was asked to do Wednesday was pick a date for the hearing.
Instead it got a research paper. A commission member read a prepared statement built on Clinton Brown's[*] 2009 survey — a simple clapboard-sided building, two-story front-gabled main block, one-story side-gabled south block, a cut-stone foundation, a gable-roof barn at the rear serving as a two-car garage — and on a church history turned up by a commission colleague. In 1866, the statement said, the property was bought from Peter Boat[*] for $400 to serve as the parsonage of the Zion Lutheran Church. The church held it 36 years and housed nine pastors. A tailor bought it in 1902. A hobby shop operated out of the barn in 1983.
The commission also quietly corrected itself in public. The agenda calls the house an early twentieth century vernacular Greek Revival; Clinton Brown called it vernacular Victorian; a consultant the commission retained, Laurie Howard LaDuca[*], called it Victorian folk, or American farmhouse. “We will edit the designation papers,” the member said.
None of it moved the board. The supervisor went first and went to materials: “the windows don't look original, the siding doesn't look original, and I thought we went for originality.” The commission's answer was that the National Park Service softened its position on replacement siding in 2023, and that what matters now is the overall look of the property rather than the exact materials — rehabilitation, not restoration. The supervisor's reply was almost wistful: “I was always brought up by you that you couldn't have vinyl siding on it.”
Councilman Paul Shear was blunter, and his objection was arithmetic rather than aesthetic. The additions “represent areas that are larger than the house,” he said, and the garage has been replaced. “Over a half of what we see in that photograph is not original.” Then the part that explains the whole exchange: “the property gets a forever tax exemption for — what? Maybe 50 percent of the property is historic.” Asked whether there was a story, a notable resident, anything: the first pastor of Zion Lutheran lived there. “I don't think that qualifies, in my opinion,” Shear said. “I'm not inclined personally to support this at this time.”
Truman herself was nearly not heard at all, and it took a commission member to say so — “Donna has submitted her house for this, and she hasn't really been heard.” Her defense of the additions was the shortest and best argument offered: “Houses were not big then. It was two rooms, probably just that front part. And that's not how people live now.” A board member observed that in 1866 you were not going to the bathroom inside; someone in the room noted there was still an outhouse at the property in 1970, and that a previous owner had died on the way to it.
A councilman moved to table “until we can look at it closer.” It was seconded. Asked whether tabling would drag the whole commission back for a second appearance, the answer from the table was that setting a hearing is ministerial — the applicant need not return for that, only for the hearing itself, “if and when you set it.” The supervisor said he did not think a roll call was needed. Voice vote, carried, no tally taken. The board promised to look for the house in the town's own history book.
Two things here would mislead a reader who takes the word “tabled” at face value.
First, the board did not vote on landmark status. Under the town's landmark procedure the board cannot designate anything without first advertising and holding a public hearing. Wednesday's only question was whether to schedule that hearing — a step the town's own counsel described as ministerial. The board declined to take it. The application is alive and has simply not been given a date.
Second, the objection was fiscal as much as architectural. New York's Real Property Tax Law §444-a permits a municipality that has adopted a historic preservation law to exempt a designated property from the increase in assessed value attributable to qualifying alterations. Councilman Shear called it a “forever tax exemption” and asked what share of the building is actually historic. Neither the statute nor the town's own schedule was cited in the room; the exemption's terms were assumed on all sides. A landmark designation is not only an honor. It is a permanent regulatory status on one side of the ledger — a certificate of appropriateness required for every exterior alteration, which the commission itself proposed writing into the designation — and a tax question on the other.
Which is why a hearing on a single quarter-acre house took nineteen minutes and produced no date.
Item 14 produced the only recusal of the morning and no explanation for it. “I have a Teams call, so this might be perfect timing for me,” Supervisor Patrick Casilio told the board. “Item number 14 — I'm going to be recusing myself from that. You'll quickly know why.” He then stepped aside. Nothing in the audio says why, and Deputy Supervisor Peter DiCostanzo ran the rest of the meeting.
AJ's Tree Service wants a temporary conditional permit for outside operations at 9865 County Road, the south side of County west of Strickler Road — a 47-acre vacant parcel straddling the Industrial Business Park and Agricultural-Rural Residential zones. The operation as described is substantial: equipment sales, service, display and storage, plus material storage, processing and production, with a building at the front, storage yards in front of and behind it, and the operations yards to the rear.
It is also not new. Bleuer noted that the Planning Board issued a SEQR negative declaration for the project in October of last year, gave concept plan approval subject to 19 conditions — the same number riding on LENCO, and the same boilerplate discipline — and recommended this permit.
The applicant was represented by Carolyn Vinci[*], construction manager, of PAT Construction Management[*]. The board's only substantive remark came from a councilman who declined to make it a question: “It's an ambitious project. Honestly, I'm a little concerned about what's going to happen in the rear. But we'll address that in planning.”
Hearing set for Wednesday, October 14, at 10:40 a.m. Roll call: Altieri aye, Michnik aye, Shear aye, DiCostanzo aye — four to nothing, the supervisor recused.
New York's General Municipal Law §§800–809 requires disclosure of a municipal officer's interest in a contract; the Town of Clarence also maintains its own Ethics Board, which this same meeting filled a seat on. Neither regime obliges a board member to narrate a recusal from the dais, and Casilio did not: “You'll quickly know why” is the entire public record of his reason.
This publication is not going to guess at it. What is on the record is what he did — he named the item in advance, removed himself before the discussion, and was recorded as recused in the roll call rather than simply absent. That is the visible, correct form of the thing. Any stated reason, if one exists, will be in the Town Clerk's minutes or the Ethics Board's files, not in this recording.
Item 15 opened with a problem. “It appears we do not have an applicant,” the deputy supervisor said. The answer from the table was that the applicant's attendance is not a requirement; staff could summarize and the board could proceed. It did.
Cimato Enterprises, Inc., SBL 70.07-6-11, asked for final plat approval of phase three of Woodland Hills, the previously approved 77-lot major subdivision on the south side of Greiner Road east of Harris Hill Road, roughly 58 acres in the Residential Single-Family zone. Phase three is 20 residential sublots and the road dedication of approximately 1,360 linear feet of Kandefer's Trail. Bleuer said the engineering department had determined it ready, and warned that this is not the last phase — “there's at least one additional one.”
A councilman asked the only question that mattered on a pre-written motion: does the applicant know about these conditions and agree to them? Yes, Bleuer said — they are standard, imposed on every prior phase, accepted every time. Then someone asked who the attorney was, and got the morning's best answer. Two names, Ken Zalich[*] and Jeff Palumbo[*]: “they were dueling over who would be here this morning. So they probably are neither one.”
The plat carried on seven conditions — town engineer sign-off; highway superintendent sign-off; all conditions of past approvals on phase three; installation of required landscaping; road dedication and easement documentation to the town attorney for review before filing with the county clerk; no building permits until those deeds and easements are actually filed in the Erie County Clerk's office and proof is submitted; and open space, recreational and any other applicable fees. A roll call was called and taken. The individual responses are not audible on the recording, so no tally for this vote exists in this record; the Town Clerk's minutes have it. What survives on the audio is a single voice, after it passed: “Congratulations to the ghost.”
This is the same Cimato item that sat on the August 19 work-session list, vanished from the August 26 agenda entirely, and reappeared here as a formal agenda item. It is the answer to a question this page asked two weeks ago about where such items go. They come back.
On August 26 this board reached item 16, the August 27 bill pay, and did nothing with it. “I have not reviewed them yet,” the supervisor said then. “Has anybody else?” Nobody had. “We'll do that one next time.” No motion, no warrant, no dollar figure in the record.
Next time was Wednesday, and the figure finally entered the record: $894,282.04. It broke out as $234,242.30 from the general fund, $564,174.89 from highway, $445.69 from sewer and $95,419.16 from capital. The four components sum to the stated total to the penny.
Two things about that abstract are worth sitting with. It is the largest single dollar figure this board has handled in weeks, and 63 percent of it is highway — more than twice the general fund's share. And it went unapproved for a full pay cycle because the person who signs for it had not opened it.
It carried on a roll call, with four ayes recorded — Altieri, Michnik, Shear and Deputy Supervisor DiCostanzo. Supervisor Casilio, who had stepped aside after his recusal on item 14, did not vote, and the word the roll returns for him is indistinct on the recording. He is not recorded as an aye here, and this brief does not record him as one.
A town board does not write checks. It approves an abstract — a schedule of claims already audited by the comptroller's office, grouped by the fund each will be drawn from. Approving the abstract is the authorization; the checks follow.
That is why the fund split is the informative part. General fund money comes largely from the town-wide tax levy and non-property revenue. Highway is its own fund with its own levy, which is why it can dwarf the general fund in any given cycle without anything being wrong. Sewer is a district fund — here, $445.69, a rounding error on a two-week cycle. Capital is project money, and this cycle's $95,419.16 is where a resident curious about the recreation facility project should be looking.
And it is why a two-week delay is not nothing: the claims in an abstract are bills the town already owes.
The supervisor's report ran five motions in roughly four minutes, and the first was the one with a body count behind it.
Turning lanes at Greiner and Goodrich. On the request of Superintendent of Highways James Dussing and the supervisor himself, the board formally asked the Erie County Department of Public Works for permission to install dedicated turning lanes at the intersection of Greiner Road[*] and Goodrich Road. The on-the-question recital is a short lesson in who owns what: the roads are owned and maintained by Erie County, but the signals belong to the Town of Clarence; any striping change needs county approval; the county requires a third-party traffic study to determine whether the intersection meets the warrants for turning lanes; the study must be done on a weekday while Clarence schools are in session, at both peak and off-peak times; and the town pays for any substantial striping work.
Casilio called it “probably the second busiest intersection” in town after Harris Hill and Greiner, and “at times maybe the busiest” — around 8:30 in the morning, with schools in motion. A board member mentioned a rollover crash there about three weeks earlier. “I think we need to look into that just for the safety of people.” Carried on a voice vote.
A bid date for the courts. The board set October 1, 2026 at 10 a.m. as the bid date for the Town Place Park Sports Court Rehabilitation Project, with bid documents available starting September 10 per the published notice. The plan: lower courts this fall, upper courts first thing in the spring, weather permitting. It is resurfacing, with bid alternates for fencing and for painting the courts — prices quoted separately so the board can take them or leave them when the numbers come in. New lights were asked about and ruled out.
Two transfers. $7,000 within the 2026 general fund from the contingent account (ending 4023) to consulting services (ending 4440); $18,000 from personal services part-time (ending 102) to stationary plant and equipment maintenance (ending 4540). Both on voice votes, both without comment. The board took them in the reverse of the agenda's order.
And $50,000 of standing discretion. The board authorized the town engineer to approve individual change orders on the Recreation Facility Project construction contracts in an amount not to exceed $50,000 each. A councilman asked for an explanation he admitted he already knew: “Can you explain that — why we do it this way?” The answer: “so that we can approve changes on the spot… rather than have to wait two weeks to come back to the town board. I will be providing updates along the way… We have a tight timeline on this one.”
A resident who watched a rollover at Greiner and Goodrich might reasonably expect the town to paint a turn lane. It cannot, and the reason is a term of art nobody defined on Wednesday.
A warrant is a threshold condition in the federal Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices — the standard New York adopts — that a location must meet before a given traffic control is justified. Warrants are counted, not argued: approach volumes, turning movements, delay, crash history, pedestrian volume. An intersection either meets one or it does not.
Hence the sequence the board recited. The county owns the pavement; the town owns the signals. So the town must ask the county's permission; the county requires a third-party study; the study must be run on a school-day weekday, peak and off-peak, because that is when the movements the warrant measures actually occur; and if it all clears, the town pays for the striping on a road it does not own.
Which is why Wednesday's unanimous, uncontroversial safety motion buys a request, a study and a bill — not a turn lane.
A change order is a written amendment to a construction contract: a condition nobody found until the excavator did, a substitution when a specified material stops being available, an owner-requested addition. On a live site they arrive weekly, and every one of them is a decision about public money.
Ordinarily each would come back to the board, which meets every two weeks. Wednesday's motion moves that decision to the town engineer for anything up to $50,000 apiece — the trade being speed for a layer of public review. The engineer promised updates “along the way,” which is not the same thing as a vote.
Note the word individual. The $50,000 is a ceiling per change order, not a total for the project. Nothing said Wednesday capped how many there can be.
A Planning Board seat is open. Councilman Paul Shear had no motions and two announcements, and the first is the one to watch: the town “currently ha[s] an opening on the Planning Board for another member. We will be taking applications for that and doing interviews when it's appropriate.” The Planning Board has seven seats and hears nearly every concept plan, subdivision and site plan in Clarence — including, right now, the LENCO development plan, the Lapp Road subdivision and the STEM Automotive expansion this board referred to it two weeks ago. No deadline, no application process and no timeline were given.
The two boards will sit down together on September 30. Shear's second announcement: the Town Board and the Planning Board will hold a joint meeting Wednesday, September 30, in the evening, “to review such things as the new code.” No time, no location and no agenda were stated. A joint session of the body that writes the zoning code and the body that applies it, on the subject of a rewrite of that code, is the single most consequential item announced Wednesday that carried no motion at all.
An Ethics Board vacancy filled. Councilman Peter DiCostanzo moved the appointment of Elizabeth Higher[*] to the Ethics Board, effective immediately, with a term expiring December 31, 2029, filling the vacancy created by the resignation of Lisa Casey[*]. The agenda names neither the appointee nor the member who resigned. Voice vote, no discussion, carried.
Roll calls, by announcement. Immediately after that appointment the supervisor stated the morning's voting convention out loud: “when we do land use, we'll do roll call votes on any land use issues that we have.” He kept to it. Every land-use item Wednesday — both permits, the hearing date, the plat — went to a roll call. Everything else took a voice vote with no tally.
Run Through the Hollow. DiCostanzo moved the only special event permit on the docket: the Run Through the Hollow 5K, applicant Run Through the Hollow, LLC / Thomas Hines[*], starting from and held at the farmers market lot at 10717 Main Street, Saturday, October 10, 10 a.m. to noon. Conditions: the special event permit memorandum of agreement and a certificate of insurance naming the town as additional insured. On the question: route per the submitted map; all appropriate agencies notified including the Clarence Highway Department; county and state permits where applicable; no street closures required; traffic control by Clarence Fire District No. 1 and fire police, with event staff at all crossings.
A fair, and the arithmetic behind it. DiCostanzo thanked the Clarence Center Volunteer Fire Company for the Labor Day weekend; Councilman Robert Altieri reported selling pizza Saturday and Sunday on behalf of the veterans' group at the same fair — “hundreds and hundreds of people.” Casilio turned it into a demographic observation: “everybody there is my age or older doing a lot of the work. So it's just going to get harder and harder for them to keep doing that every year.” He had one unreserved compliment: “They put cement down where the beer is served. That was genius.”
Eighty in a room built for eighty. Councilman Daniel Michnik had no motions and one report: the Historical Society's veterans-history program at the Town Park Clubhouse the night before drew about 80 people, and another is coming. On August 26 he had put attendance at these events at “usually around 100.” Wednesday the ceiling got stated: “the room can't handle more than 80 in the sitting position.” Casilio credited Doug and Sandy Larkin[*] and Joe McGready[*] and said the talks “sell out” — which drew the driest exchange of the morning. “And by sell out you mean a lot of people come to a free event.” “Yeah. Yeah.” Then, looking at the room: “this event today is free, and we only have 16 people here.”
The clerk's postmark warning. Town Clerk Karen Lang used public announcements for the one item that will touch more households than everything else on the agenda combined. School tax bills go out next week and are due October 15. Late school payments carry a 7.5 percent charge, and — she was emphatic — “there is absolutely nothing I or anyone in this building can do” about it. The post office changed its policy: an envelope dropped in a blue collection box may not be postmarked that day. “If you put it in on the 15th, it might not get marked till the 16th or 17th.” Walk it inside and get it hand-stamped, or use the town's drop box (before midnight; there are cameras), the lock box, the counter during hours, or pay online for a $1 fee. And a detail worth knowing before you print a label: a Pitney Bowes meter date is not a postmark. “That is not considered the postal date that I am required to accept per the law.”
And the pennies. The United States has stopped minting them, and the Town Clerk's office has a finite supply. “Once I run out of pennies, I'm not going to be able to give exact change.” Anyone paying in cash should bring exact change. She cannot round up, cannot round down, cannot keep the difference and cannot make it up out of her own pocket — “I cannot keep any extra money. I cannot throw any money in for you” — so a payment that is short becomes a partial payment until the balance arrives. Someone at the table volunteered a coffee-shop dish: “I probably have enough in my car cup holder to hold you over.”
The beer correction. Having finished the tax announcements, the clerk made a correction on behalf of a viewer: somebody watching online wanted the record to show that the fire company was serving Labatt Blue, not only Blue Light. The supervisor accepted the amendment on personal grounds. “I only drank Blue Light.” Asked whether that is fewer calories or less alcohol: “Calories.”
The close. Nobody rose for “For the Good of the Town.” The presiding officer closed on the week's other anniversary — 25 years since September 11, that Friday — and on the fact that some people now deny it happened. “It's crazy. So that makes no sense.” Another voice added that some people still deny the Holocaust. Meeting adjourned, about 54 minutes after the gavel.
Four Clarence hearings are now noticed and undisposed of, and two of them belong to applicants this page has already introduced.
September 23, 10:15 a.m. — Zoé Restaurant, 5701 Transit Road, temporary conditional permit for roughly 250 square feet of outside dining. September 23, 10:20 a.m. — Woodview Construction & Homeview Properties, 8955 Sheridan Drive, temporary conditional permit for outside storage of fleet vehicles and trailers. Both were set on August 26. Neither was mentioned Wednesday in any form — not on the agenda, not in the reports, not from the floor. That is normal: a noticed hearing sits until its date arrives. Both stand. The board's own prediction about the Sheridan Drive one — “I'll be surprised if anybody shows up” — now has a September 9 data point in its favor. Of the two hearings actually held Wednesday, one drew three speakers and the other drew none.
October 14, 10:40 a.m. — AJ's Tree Service, 9865 County Road. Set Wednesday, 4–0, supervisor recused. And a fifth date with no hearing attached: the joint Town Board–Planning Board meeting of Wednesday, September 30, in the evening, on the new code.
Gone downstairs and not coming back soon. The 9740 Lapp Road, LLC subdivision — 57 acres, eight lots, four of them on a private drive in a proposed Open Development Area — and the STEM Automotive expansion at 10575 Main Street were both referred to the Planning Board on August 26 and neither surfaced Wednesday. They were not supposed to. A referral moves the file; until the Planning Board acts there is nothing for the Town Board to do. Anyone tracking those two, and now LENCO's development plan, should be watching the Planning Board's calendar rather than this one.
And one item that has now missed three agendas. Local Hollow Brewing — formerly Shalooby Loofer Brewing per the August agenda — and its outside-dining permit modification at 10737 Main Street was on the August 19 work-session list, absent on August 26, and absent again on September 9 in both categories. Cimato Enterprises, which disappeared the same way, came back Wednesday and was approved. Local Hollow Brewing has left no record a resident can read.
The agenda posted for September 9 is a single document covering both the 8:30–9:30 work session and the 10:00 meeting, and it says on its own front page that work sessions are not live streamed. The docket is public even where the room is not, and this week's tells you roughly what the Town Board will be voting on through October.
Three items were listed as Formal Agenda Items — matters scheduled to reach the public meeting the same morning — and all three did: Truman, AJ's Tree Service and Cimato, which arrived downstairs as items 13, 14 and 15. Truman and AJ's Tree Service had been in the second category two weeks earlier, which puts the observable lead time from the closed room to the open one at about fourteen days on this cycle, not the seven the August agenda suggested.
The six items still in the second category, Work Session Items, are the pipeline. An annual excavation permit renewal hearing is to be set covering four sites: New Enterprise/Buffalo Crushed Stone at 8615 Wehrle Drive, Lakeside Sod Supply Co. at 6660 Goodrich Road, and Michael Development at 10001 and 10051 Wehrle Drive. Lakeside Sod wants preliminary review of a detached accessory structure at the same Goodrich Road address. 5445 Transit Road, LLC wants preliminary review of a clearing, filling and grading permit across Major Arterial and Residential Single-Family land. Canine Kennels of Clarence, 9785 County Road, wants preliminary review of an expansion — on the same County Road stretch as AJ's Tree Service. And Benderson Development Co., LLC wants preliminary review of converting the existing Eastgate access on Greiner Road to a full, signalized intersection at 5183 Transit Road — the second Greiner Road traffic question on this one agenda, the other being the turning lanes the board asked the county for Wednesday morning.
The last work-session item is the annual Community Development Block Grant program: set a public hearing to consider potential funding needs for federal community development grant requests. The agenda lists one applicant, Rural Transit Services, Inc., and then two blank lines — lettered b and c, with nothing next to them. Whatever Clarence asks Washington for this year, two-thirds of the list was still empty when the agenda went to print.
The board used two vote conventions Wednesday, and announced the rule itself: “when we do land use, we'll do roll call votes on any land use issues that we have.” Every land-use item accordingly went to a named roll call; every other item carried on a voice vote — “all those in favor,” “aye,” “opposed,” “carried” — with no numeric tally in the record and no audible opposition. Where a roll call was taken but the individual responses are inaudible on the recording, that is stated in the row rather than papered over; those rows carry no tally here. Supervisor Patrick Casilio recused himself from item 14 (AJ's Tree Service), stating no reason, and stepped aside for a scheduling conflict at the same time; Deputy Supervisor Peter DiCostanzo presided from item 14 to adjournment, and Casilio is not recorded voting again. The clerk's roll call at the top of the meeting is inaudible on the recording, so attendance is established from the floor: all five members spoke or voted. Movers are named only where the audio names them. The Town Clerk's minutes are the authoritative record.
Moved and seconded with nothing on the question.
Taken out of order at the top of the meeting because the applicant's representatives had other commitments. The request was to set a public hearing to consider Local Landmark status for a quarter-acre parcel on the east side of Goodrich Road north of Maple Street, in the Clarence Center Traditional Neighborhood District, containing a single-family residence and an accessory structure. The Clarence Historic Preservation Commission had recommended the designation. After a nineteen-minute presentation and colloquy on the building's additions, its replacement siding and windows, and the property-tax exemption that accompanies designation, a councilman moved to table “until we can look at it closer.” Seconded. The supervisor said he did not think a roll call was required; the motion carried on a voice vote with no tally. No hearing date was set. The board was advised that setting a hearing is ministerial and that the applicant and commission need not reappear merely for that step. The commission stated on the record that it will edit the designation papers to describe the house as Victorian folk / American farmhouse rather than the Greek Revival the agenda recites.
Upon the request of Superintendent of Highways James Dussing and the Supervisor, the Town Board requested permission from the Erie County Department of Public Works to approve the installation of dedicated turning lanes at the intersection of Greiner and Goodrich Roads. On the question: the roads are owned and maintained by Erie County but the signals belong to the Town of Clarence; any modifications to striping must be approved by Erie County DPW; a third-party traffic study is required by the county to determine whether the signal meets the warrants for turning lanes; the study must take place on a weekday while Clarence schools are in session and include peak and off-peak travel times; any substantial striping work must be paid for by the Town of Clarence.
Bid date set for October 1, 2026 at 10:00 a.m. On the question: bid documents available beginning September 10, 2026 per the published notice; lower courts to be done this fall and upper courts first thing in the spring, weather dependent; scope is resurfacing, with bid alternates for fencing and for painting the courts. New lighting was raised and is not included.
Transfer of $7,000 within the 2026 General Fund budget from the account ending 4023 (contingent) to the account ending 4440 (consulting services). Nothing on the question. Taken ahead of the agenda's item 5.3.
Transfer of $18,000 within the 2026 General Fund budget from the account ending 102 (personal services — part time) to the account ending 4540 (stationary plant and equipment maintenance). Nothing on the question.
The town engineer authorized to approve individual change orders to the Recreation Facility Project construction contracts in an amount not to exceed $50,000. On the question, the rationale given: approving changes “on the spot” rather than waiting two weeks for the next Town Board meeting, with updates promised to the board along the way, because “we have a tight timeline on this one.” The cap stated is per individual change order; no aggregate limit and no limit on the number of orders was stated.
Elizabeth Higher[*] appointed to the Ethics Board effective immediately, with a term to expire December 31, 2029. On the question: the appointment fills the vacancy created by the resignation of Ethics Board member Lisa Casey[*]. The agenda names neither individual; both names come from audio alone. Moved by Councilman Peter DiCostanzo.
Applicant: Run Through the Hollow, LLC / Thomas Hines[*]. Permit for the Run Through the Hollow 5K, held at and starting from the farmers market lot at 10717 Main Street, Saturday, October 10, 2026, 10:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m., subject to meeting all conditions of the special event permit memorandum of agreement and receipt of the required certificate of insurance naming the Town of Clarence as additional insured. On the question: route per the submitted map; all appropriate agencies notified including the Clarence Highway Department; applicant to obtain any Erie County or New York State permits required for use of their highways if applicable; street closures are not required; traffic control provided by Clarence Fire District No. 1 and fire police, with event staff at all crossings. Moved by Councilman DiCostanzo.
After three members of the public spoke, all in favor, and no one spoke in opposition, Councilman DiCostanzo moved to close the public hearing. Seconded.
Resolved, after a public hearing duly held Wednesday, September 9, 2026, and after all interested parties had been heard, that the Clarence Town Board approves the request of the applicant 7631 Transit Road, LLC for a special exception use permit for a conceptually approved commercial retail building in excess of 10,000 square feet for LENCO Supplies, in the Restricted Business zone, subject to all 19 conditions of the Planning Board concept plan approved July 1, 2026. Site: the southeast corner of Transit Road and Wolcott Road, 6.88 acres. Building size stated twice and differently — approximately 43,800 square feet by the Director of Community Development, approximately 43,200 square feet by the applicant's attorney; both figures are recorded here and neither was reconciled in the room. Procedural history recited: SEQR negative declaration by the Planning Board May 20, 2026; use variance granted by the Zoning Board of Appeals to permit retail use; concept plan approval and recommendation of this permit by the Planning Board July 1, 2026. Remaining step: development plan approval from the Planning Board.
No questions from the board and no members of the public came forward. Councilman DiCostanzo moved to close. Seconded.
Resolved, after a public hearing held at the duly convened Town Board meeting of Wednesday, September 9, 2026, that the Town Board approves the request of the applicant Flavors of India for a temporary conditional permit to allow outside dining at 4401 Transit Road, in front of the existing business at the Shops at Main/Transit, in the Major Arterial zone, subject to four conditions: (1) initial permit for a term no greater than one year; (2) operation in conformance with the submitted application, business plan and testimony of the applicant; (3) the applicant meeting any additional requirements of the Town of Clarence engineering, building and planning departments; (4) subject to any applicable fees required by the town code. Site described as a 20-acre parcel on the east side of Transit Road containing the existing Shops at Main and Transit plaza; tables to be placed in front of the restaurant behind the existing protective bollard area.
Hearing set for October 14, 2026 at 10:40 a.m. to consider the request of AJ's Tree Service for a temporary conditional permit for outside operations associated with an industrial tree service operation, including equipment sales, service, display and storage, and material storage, processing and production, all in the Industrial Business Park and Agricultural-Rural Residential zones. Site: an existing 47-acre vacant parcel on the south side of County Road west of Strickler Road, with the building at the front, storage yards in front of and behind it, and operations yards to the rear. Planning Board history recited: SEQR negative declaration issued October 2025, concept plan approval subject to 19 conditions, and recommendation of this permit. Staff noted that a temporary conditional permit, although it may be approved before development plan approval, does not become active until the Planning Board issues development plan approval. Applicant represented by Carolyn Vinci[*], construction manager, of PAT Construction Management[*]. Supervisor Patrick Casilio announced in advance that he would recuse himself from this item and gave no reason — “you'll quickly know why” — and stepped aside; the roll records him as recused. Deputy Supervisor DiCostanzo presided.
Final plat approval for phase 3 of the Woodland Hills major subdivision, SBL 70.07-6-11, consisting of 20 residential sublots and the road dedication of approximately 1,360 linear feet of Kandefer's Trail, in the Residential Single-Family zone, subject to seven conditions: (1) all conditions and approvals of the town engineer; (2) all conditions and approvals of the highway superintendent; (3) all conditions of past approvals associated with phase 3; (4) installation of required landscaping; (5) all road dedication and easement documentation to the town attorney's office for review and approval prior to filing with the county clerk; (6) no building permits issued until the required road deeds and easements are filed in the Erie County Clerk's office and proof is submitted to the town attorney; and (7) subject to open space, recreational and any other applicable fees. Site: south side of Greiner Road east of Harris Hill Road; the overall subdivision is a previously approved 77-lot major subdivision of approximately 58 acres, and phase 3 is not the final phase. The applicant did not appear; the board was advised that attendance is not required and proceeded on staff's summary. A roll call was called and taken, but the individual responses are inaudible on the recording, so no tally for this vote exists in this record.
Approved as listed on the agenda. Legion Hall: Jasmine Kaur, September 26, 2026; Valerie DiRienzo, November 28, 2026; Clarence Log Cabin Quilters, December 12, 2026. Clubhouse: Clarence Republican Committee, September 24, 2026. Pavilion: Boy Scout Troop 93, October 10 and 11, 2026. Nothing was added from the floor, unlike the August 26 list. A roll call was called and taken; the individual responses are inaudible on the recording, so no tally exists in this record.
Bill pay for August 27, 2026 approved: general fund $234,242.30; highway $564,174.89; sewer $445.69; capital $95,419.16; total $894,282.04. The components sum exactly to the stated total. This is the abstract the board did not act on at its August 26 meeting, when the supervisor said he had not reviewed it and no other member had either, and the item was deferred with “we'll do that one next time.” Four ayes are recorded on the roll. Supervisor Casilio, who had stepped aside after the item 14 recusal, did not vote; the word returned for his name is indistinct on the recording and he is not recorded here as an aye.
This meeting was not captured live. The scheduled live capture missed it, and a recovery attempt the following day — September 10 at 12:30 p.m. — failed at the download stage while the town's upload was still processing. The archived video was recovered and transcribed on September 14, five days after the meeting, which is why this brief appears late. The recording used is the Town of Clarence's own published stream, not a partial or third-party capture: the stream went live at 10:04 a.m. and runs 58 minutes 48 seconds, with the call to order at 4:49 and adjournment at 58:35 — a meeting of roughly 54 minutes, complete end to end. No dropouts. The delay affected when this was published, not what is in it.
The September 9 agenda is a single document covering both the 8:30–9:30 work session and the 10:00 a.m. Town Board meeting; it was parsed in full and governs over the audio on every proper noun, address, zone, dollar figure and item number. The 8:30 work session is not live streamed and no recording of it exists — the work-session material described in this brief comes from the printed agenda alone, not from any account of what was said in that room. The clerk's roll call at the top of the public meeting is inaudible on the recording, so attendance is established from who speaks and votes. On two items — the Woodland Hills final plat and the facility applications — a roll call was called and taken but the individual responses do not survive on the recording. Those rows carry no tally and are not presented as unanimous. The same discipline applies to every voice vote: “carried” with no numbers is recorded as exactly that.
Corrections applied from the agenda: “Griner Road” → Greiner Road; “town Park Sports Court” → Town Place Park Sports Court Rehabilitation Project; “Candifer's Trail” / “can defer trail” → Kandefer's Trail; “some auto enterprises” / “tomato enterprises” → Cimato Enterprises, Inc.; “SLB 70.07-6-11” → SBL 70.07-6-11; “76 31 transit road” → 7631 Transit Road, LLC; “lent-coal supplies” → LENCO Supplies; “the shops at Main Transit” → Shops at Main/Transit; “seeker” → SEQR. From the town's verified roster and corrections file: “Castelli” / “Castillo” / “Castiglione” / “Casillio” → Supervisor Patrick Casilio; “D. Costanza” / “DiCastanzo” / “P. Costanza” → Councilman Peter DiCostanzo, who is also the Deputy Supervisor; “Mitchnick” / “Miecznyk” → Councilman Daniel Michnik; “Scheer” → Councilman Paul Shear; “Alteri” → Councilman Robert Altieri; “Kevin Sopola” → Kevin Coppola (LENCO, per the standing corrections file); “Mr. Schaefer” → Andrew Schaefer, Senior Planner; and the Director of Community Development, who introduces every item, is Jonathan Bleuer per the agenda's own first line.
A disagreement between the agenda and the room, left standing rather than resolved: the agenda describes 6065 Goodrich Road as an “early twentieth century vernacular Greek Revival home.” The Historic Preservation Commission told the board on the record that it now considers the house Victorian folk, or American farmhouse, after consulting an outside reviewer, and that it will edit the designation papers accordingly. Both descriptions are reported here because both are in the record and the change is itself news. Three garbles were deliberately not guessed at: the applicant's attorney credited design input to “the Planning Board and the PBX” — the second body's name is unintelligible and is not named here; a councilman's aside comparing the sports-court lighting to another town park renders the park's name unintelligibly and it is left out; and the surname attached to the local history book the board wanted to search is not recoverable with confidence, so the book is described without it.
Street validation was run against the town's official street inventory and produced 14 candidate references. One high-confidence suggestion was applied: “Griner Road” → Greiner Road (confidence 0.957, and independently confirmed by the agenda). One ambiguous flag was resolved by hand rather than by the tool: “Lap Road” → Lapp Road — the tool offered both Lapp Road and Elma Road, and the speaker's own statement that he lives in Clarence Center settles it. Of the six unknown flags, one was a real error — “Goodridge Road” → Goodrich Road, repeated a dozen times by a speaker reading from a 2009 survey, and confirmed by both the agenda and the standing corrections file. Four were not streets at all and were left alone: “Clarence Highway” is the Clarence Highway Department; “Park Clubhouse Main Street” is the Town Park Clubhouse at Main Street Park; “Park Sports Court” is the Town Place Park project; “High Street Goodridge Road” is a sentence boundary between two real Clarence streets. A manual second pass was run because the extractor only sees phrases carrying a street-type word — bare references like “the east side of Transit” are invisible to it, and a clean tool result is not proof of validation. That pass confirmed six bare references against the town list: “the southeast corner of Transit in Wolcott” and “Wolcott and Transit” (rendered “walled cotton transit” in one pass) → Transit Road and Wolcott Road; “the east side of Goodrich north of Maple” → Goodrich Road / Maple Street; “the south side of County west of Strickler” → County Road / Strickler Road; “the south side of Griner east of Harris Hill” → Greiner Road / Harris Hill Road.
Three out-of-town street references were preserved exactly as spoken and NOT corrected into Clarence streets — the failure mode this check exists to prevent. A speaker described using LENCO's Delaware store “in the Kenmore area”: Clarence has its own Delaware Road, and this is emphatically not it. Another described getting lost on the one-way streets near Seneca Street, which is not a Clarence street and has not been made into one. And the Sheridan Drive store two speakers referred to is not treated here as a Clarence address merely because Sheridan Drive appears on the Clarence list.
The address cross-reference against this publication's scanner entity database was run for every specific property before the board and every property on the work-session docket: 6065 Goodrich Road, 7631 Transit Road, 4401 Transit Road, 9865 County Road, 10717 Main Street, 5445 Transit Road, 9785 County Road, 5183 Transit Road, 8615 Wehrle Drive, 6660 Goodrich Road, 10001 and 10051 Wehrle Drive, plus the two properties carried over from August 26 — 5701 Transit Road and 8955 Sheridan Drive. Twelve of the fourteen return no dispatch record at all. Two return something, and neither is a pattern: 4401 Transit Road appears twice, seven weeks apart — a commercial water-flow fire alarm in July and a Mercy Flight radio transmission in September — both logged to an Amherst fire dispatch with Sheridan Drive given as the locator, which leaves it genuinely unclear whether those calls are even the Clarence parcel at the Shops at Main/Transit. 5183 Transit Road appears once: a medical call for a 67-year-old woman outside a plaza entrance in August. Two isolated calls, one of them at an address that may belong to another municipality entirely, are noise rather than history. Nothing from the database appears in the story, and that is a deliberate decision rather than an absence of checking.
Names marked [*] come from audio alone and are confirmed by no official document. Agendas name entities, not the people who speak for them, so every individual who came to the microphone carries the mark: Sean Hopkins and his firm Hopkins Sorgi & McCarthy, and Kevin Coppola, for LENCO; the three public speakers at the LENCO hearing, Robert Lindy, June Ferrer and Mark Brandy; Kala Chima for Flavors of India; Carolyn Vinci of PAT Construction Management for AJ's Tree Service; the Cimato attorneys Ken Zalich and Jeff Palumbo, neither of whom appeared; Thomas Hines of Run Through the Hollow, LLC; the Ethics Board appointee Elizabeth Higher and the member she replaces, Lisa Casey, neither named on the agenda; and, in the landmark presentation, Clinton Brown (the 2009 surveyor), Laurie Howard LaDuca, Peter Boat, Daniel Nickert, Doug and Sandy Larkin and Joe McGready. The Historic Preservation Commission member who read the prepared statement is rendered by the audio as both “Thomas Steppen” and “Tom Stephens”; because the two renderings conflict, he is described by role in this brief rather than named. Donna Truman is named without the mark because the agenda names her as the applicant. Movers are named only where the audio names them. The Town Clerk's official minutes are the authoritative record of every vote, name and figure here.