Trees, Hot Dogs, and the Future of Pittsford: What's on the Agenda April 14, 2026
The Short Version
- The April 14 Board of Trustees meeting includes a public hearing on the proposed 2026-2027 budget — $2.68 million across General, Sewer, and Refuse funds — with property taxes set at $6.15 per $1,000 of assessed value.
- Harladay Hots, the lunch cart that has operated at 10 North Main Street since 2009, is up for its annual seasonal retail permit covering May through October.
- The incentive zoning discussion is the sleeper item on this agenda — it directly addresses whether the Village has the planning tools to attract the essential retail residents have been asking for since at least 2019.
- In the last formal resident survey, 54% rated traffic speed poor and 33% rated walkability and pedestrian safety poor — the commercial gaps those numbers reflect are exactly what incentive zoning is designed to address.
- The multi-year capital plan runs through 2030-2031 and includes Sutherland Street Phase 2 at $950,000, software modernization at $75,000, and a detailed DPW vehicle replacement schedule through 2032-2033.
- The meeting is open in-person at Village Hall, 21 North Main Street, and live via Zoom — public comment on the budget is your formal opportunity to weigh in before final adoption.
Meeting Notice and How to Attend
Meeting Notice and How to Attend
Tentative Agenda — April 14, 2026
Tentative Agenda — April 14, 2026
Item 1: Short-Term Retail Business Permit — Harladay Hots
Item 1: Short-Term Retail Business Permit — Harladay Hots
This agenda item is regarding a seasonal retail business permit for Harladay Hots to operate a temporary food-service retail business within the Village. Harladay Hots is a daily food vending cart serving lunch to people in the Village of Pittsford since 2009. Their cart will be located at 10 N. Main St. from the beginning of May until approximately the end of October; hours of operation are approximately 11AM - 2PM, Monday through Friday.
Item 2: Arbor Day Proclamation
Item 2: Arbor Day Proclamation
This agenda item is to consider an Arbor Day proclamation recognizing the importance of trees to the environmental health, beauty, and quality of life in the Village, encouraging community participation in Arbor Day activities and tree stewardship. I'm all for recognizing the awesomeness of trees, so...yeah, sounds good!
Item 3: 2026-2027 Budget Presentation
Item 3: 2026-2027 Budget Presentation
This agenda will be our actual presentation of the Village's 2026-2027 budget (remember, the Village's fiscal year ends on May 31st of each year, hence why we're approving a 2026-2027 budget vs. a calendar year ending budget). This budget outlines the Village's funding sources (tax revenue, permits / fees, etc.) versus its cash outflows, i.e., monies used for essential services throughout the Village (staff / DPW salaries & benefits, equipment purchases / repairs, road salt purchases each winter, annual brush & leaf collection, etc.).
The Village's budget is split into three funds: (i) General; (ii) Sewer; and (iii) Refuse.
The General Fund covers daily municipal operations; the Sewer Fund maintains and improves wastewater services; and the Refuse Fund supports refuse and recycling collection.
You can find the budget abstract for each fund on PDF pages 50 - 53 of the meeting packet.
Item 4: Discussion on Incentive Zoning
Item 4: Discussion on Incentive Zoning
This item will, according to the agenda, be a discussion of "the Village's approach to incentive zoning, including whether current provisions effectively encourage desired community benefits and guide development in a manner consistent with Village planning goals." (As I said a few weeks ago, what in the holy legalese is this Batman?? Sounds like the world's most boring version of ChatGPT wrote that...oy.)
See PDF pages 14 - 18 of the meeting packet for existing language from the Town of Pittsford, a great baseline for the discussion.
Public Hearing: Multi-Year Financial and Capital Plan
Public Hearing: Multi-Year Financial and Capital Plan
The first public hearing item is regarding the Village's multi-year financial and capital plan. I've found this document to be pretty cool, providing project by project descriptions, details, and cost estimates, all by fiscal year, and through the 2030-2031 fiscal year. DPW's schedule of vehicle and equipment replacements is also included, with details through the 2032-2033 fiscal year. See PDF pages 22-45 of the meeting packet for these details.
Public Hearing: 2026-2027 Village General, Sewer, and Refuse Budget
Public Hearing: 2026-2027 Village General, Sewer, and Refuse Budget
The second public hearing item is regarding the Village's proposed 2026-2027 fiscal year budget. See PDF pages 50 - 84 for line item by line item financial details, inclusive of actual amounts for 2023-2024 and 2024-2025, YTD amounts for fiscal year 2025-2026, and the proposed fiscal year 2026-2027 budget amounts. PDF pages 46 - 48 are also an excellent overview of year-over-year changes for the General and Sewer funds, with actual amounts starting from 2021-2022, through projected amounts up to 2029 - 2030; PDF page 48 shows the levy information re: the Village's property assessments.
Why This Meeting Matters — Adam's Take
Why This Meeting Matters — Adam's Take
Four items on a Tuesday evening agenda don't sound like much. A hot dog cart, a tree proclamation, a budget, and a zoning discussion. But I've been following Pittsford Village government closely enough to know that the most consequential conversations often arrive dressed as routine business — and this one is no exception.
Harladay Hots is easy to love. That cart has been at 10 North Main every spring since 2009. It's one of those small, reliable things that makes a village feel like a village — the kind of presence that doesn't show up on any strategic plan but that people notice, quietly, when it's there and more loudly when it isn't. I hope the Board approves the permit without drama, and I hope to see the cart back on the sidewalk in May.
The budget hearing is the most consequential item of the evening for most residents. The proposed General Fund comes in at $2,115,685.50, with property taxes accounting for 55% of revenues — a proposed tax rate of $6.15 per $1,000 of assessed value, up from $5.70 last year. The Sewer Fund is $374,167.87 and the Refuse Fund $190,979.58, bringing the full picture to just over $2.68 million across all three funds. The multi-year capital plan — which runs through 2030-2031 — maps out where the big dollars are heading: Sutherland Street Phase 2 at $950,000, software modernization at $75,000, and an ongoing schedule of road maintenance and equipment replacement that the DPW has been managing with notable discipline. These are real decisions about what this Village prioritizes and what it doesn't. The public hearing is your formal opportunity to say something about it.
But the item I keep coming back to is the incentive zoning discussion. Not because it's the most urgent thing on the agenda — it isn't — but because it connects directly to something residents have been saying clearly for years.
In the 2019 Harvey Research resident survey — the last time the Village formally asked residents what they thought — 54% of respondents rated the speed of traffic poor. Not fair. Poor. That was the single worst score in the entire survey. Walkability and pedestrian safety rated poor by 33% of residents — nearly one in three people saying they felt unsafe walking in a Village they specifically chose for its walkability. And when it came to commercial life, retail store health and viability rated just 24% excellent or good. Variety of commercial establishments: 22%. More than three quarters of respondents said the commercial life of their Village was failing to meet their needs.
One resident put it simply, and it's stayed with me:
"When we moved in, we could pretty much not need the car to get what was needed. This is what attracted us. Now no grocery, pharmacy, department store."
— Pittsford Village resident, Harvey Research Survey, 2019
As I wrote in my piece on walkability, Pittsford Village is genuinely excellent for leisure, dining, fitness, and canal access. It falls short — significantly — for daily necessity errands. The last grocery store in the village core closed in 1973. More than fifty years later, it hasn't come back. The village revised its Main Street zoning to require retail or restaurant use of first-floor storefronts precisely because it recognized how the walkable retail mix was eroding.
Incentive zoning is one of the tools the Board actually has to change that math. Done well, it lets the Village say to a developer: we'll give you something you want — density, a variance, flexibility on dimensional requirements — in exchange for something the community needs. Affordable housing. A neighborhood-scale grocery. A pharmacy. Ground-floor retail that serves daily life rather than discretionary spending. The Town of Pittsford has had this framework in place for years, and that's the language sitting in pages 14-18 of tonight's packet as a baseline for discussion.
The question the Board is taking up tonight is whether the Village's current provisions actually work — whether they're written in a way that encourages the right outcomes or whether they've been sitting in the code, unused and underspecified, while the commercial gaps residents named in 2019 have continued to widen.
That is worth showing up for. Not as a zoning technicality. As a conversation about what Pittsford could actually become.
What would it mean for this Village to use the tools it already has to close the gap between what residents said they needed and what's actually here?
