Two Trustees Recap the September 22, 2026 Village of Pittsford Board Meeting

So, my intuition was correct on this one: we finally voted on placement of the statue! A supplemental PDF was provided to the Board the day before the meeting by the artist, Olivia Kim, that included renderings of preferred placement. I would highly recommend you take a look at the renderings to better understand where the statue will ultimately be placed (within weeks).

The Board voted unanimously to approve placement of the Frederick Douglass statue at the location noted in Olivia Kim's rendering, including solar up-lighting to aid in illumination of the statue at night.

After voting, Trustee Dave Marshall made a statement saying how proud he was of our Board for accomplishing this milestone. I subsequently noted that I held the complete opposite opinion, viewing the entire process as an unnecessarily drawn out circus to slow roll honoring an American hero, one who will forever be more accomplished than any of us in the Village of Pittsford, as our nation celebrates its 250th birthday. This process was 100% the lowest point in my time on the Board, and I remain thoroughly unimpressed and disappointed.

We passed a motion to place the statue, with suggestions from the artist, on the front lawn of Village Hall near the flag pole. It will be lit with solar lights. Exact installation will be determined when the artist can get it to us.

This agenda item was regarding Board authorization for the Mayor to execute a renewal intermunicipal agreement with Monroe County and participating municipalities. The agreement focuses on reducing stormwater pollution, protecting water quality, and supporting compliance with stormwater management requirements.

As I have mentioned before, especially when we had grease trap dumping violations earlier this year in the Village that created stormwater pollution, it is critical to keep our water quality high given the direct impact on wildlife and human health. The Board voted unanimously to authorize the Mayor to execute the renewal agreement with the county.

Section 106 requires that, before federally involved projects can proceed, federal agencies must consider the impacts on historic properties and consult with state and local governments, Tribal Nations, property owners, and the public. On Thursday, August 27, Historic Pittsford, along with 600+ public, private, and nonprofit-sector organizations representing 5 million Americans, sent an open letter calling on Congress to reject efforts underway through regulation, legislation, and executive action to gut Section 106.

Trustee Dave Marshall said that he was not comfortable with the Village expressing support for this national coalition because he doesn't "like local politics mixing with national politics." The rest of the Board was pretty confused by his remark, especially given that our Village is, well, super focused on historic preservation. We literally have a Historic Preservation Board that follows most of the same requirements of Section 106 (and ensures your window replacement bill will be six figures), so it would be odd to champion historic preservation only in our Village, but not the preservation of our nation's historic properties and locations.

Ultimately, the Board voted unanimously to support the signatories to the national coalition to protect Section 106.

This agenda item was regarding an updated quote from David Kruse at LaBella Associates to study traffic calming measures we could implement for the Village, including a comprehensive review of existing reporting data and materials, new data collection at core gateways, benchmarking of data, and a complete memorandum detailing areas for execution and opportunities for improvement.

For some reason, the Board was sent an updated version of the quote the day of the meeting at about 5:15 PM, so 45 minutes before the meeting (not great). Unsurprisingly, the updated quote was incorrect and missing certain changes that were asked to be incorporated. The Board will redline the updated quote and send a consolidated edit back to LaBella for their corrected proposal. Stay tuned.

This agenda item was added by the Mayor, and she was "requesting consideration by the board to grandfather in remaining short-term rentals [("STRs")] that were in place prior to passage of the [May 2025] law which eliminated them." As a reminder, the Trustees who voted to severely restrict STRs were Trustee Dave Marshall, Trustee Lisa Cove, and Trustee John Limbeck.

Ultimately, nothing changed here. Trustee Cove and Trustee Limbeck continued to say they are not in support of an STR moratorium or grandfathering in any formerly active STRs that have not been sold by the property owners. As I have noted a few times now, I continue to think this is dead in the water, because I don't see Trustee Marshall crossing the aisle here. He didn't say anything during this agenda item, so I get the sense he is just going to "Homer into the bushes" on this one until it dies.

The Mayor asked to bring back the option to allow the last remaining short-term rental (STR) businesses to be grandfathered in. The current legislation states that all non-districted STRs need to be either converted to long-term rentals, lived in by owners, or sold by September 9, 2026. This did not even get a motion to support it.

Six STRs remain operating in non-approved districts. I expect our Code Enforcement officer will alert these owners to abide by our local law and close business in those locations as soon as possible. If you think someone is operating an STR illegally, please notify Village Hall.

I added this agenda item primarily because I feel like we've been talking about bringing a print Village newsletter to life for more than a year, yet haven't made demonstrable progress. According to the Mayor, a print newsletter will be created for October; however, no one else on the Board has seen anything related to this, so unless this print newsletter is coming from the Office of the Mayor, I'm confused as to what is actually going on there. I have asked that the Board be included, because creating a brand new communication avenue is a major decision, and you only get one chance to make a good impression.

Regarding the email newsletter that the Village sends out, apparently 850 individuals are signed up. I calculated a penetration rate of about 62.7% of our 2020 census if we assume all 850 sign-ups are current Village residents (highly unlikely). I volunteered to work with the Deputy Clerk, Alexandria, to dig into trend analysis of engagement metrics from the email newsletter, as well as to bring to life a "new resident welcome packet," so stay tuned on that one. Hopefully I can get something put together in under three years (zing!).

I have asked numerous times over the past four years to have a Village newsletter crafted for our residents. Although we have our new "E-bulletin," residents want a newsletter similar to what Supervisor Smith does for the Town. We will move forward on this. The Mayor has agreed to allow me to help.

I have also asked numerous times to work on a "New Resident packet" to help new Village homeowners understand our Village living benefits and regulations. We have finally brought this to the attention of the Board, and the Mayor has asked Trustee Wilkes to help with this.

This agenda item was added late, on the Sunday before the meeting, by Trustee Dave Marshall, and was regarding a discussion of Village review requirements for converting existing office space to residential use. Dave was focused on regulating this type of activity via site-plan reviews at the zoning district level through the PZBA; however, our Village lawyer noted that if the Board ultimately wanted to regulate this activity, a more efficient route that avoids trying to impact another Board would be to draft language requiring a special permit under specific conditions. Ultimately, the Board landed on having our lawyer draft language that would require a special permit for any development of 3 or more multifamily units in the Village.

Personally, I don't view this as a real issue, given the limited number of impacted properties combined with concentrated multi-generation ownership of properties in zoning districts where the described multifamily buildout could even be viable (properties with enough floor area to build 3+ units that would likely need to be 700+ square feet per unit on average), and thus a reduced chance of flipping to a new owner or developer interested in office-to-multifamily conversion. Stay tuned.

Trustee Marshall was concerned that some of our larger office building complexes could potentially be converted to residential units without Planning or Zoning approval. Examples of those structures are the Pickle Factory and the Grain Mill. Our attorney will draft new legislation to address this and bring it forward for continued discussion.

The DPW asked the Board to allow up to $60,000 to repave the DPW parking lot. This was not on the agenda to inform residents. Trustee Marshall asked to put it on the next agenda to allow residents to voice any concerns about this additional non-budgeted spending.

"Make our job harder — please get involved!" The full meeting video and minutes are available on the Village website. For the taped video, visit the Village of Pittsford YouTube channel.