The Zoning Steering Committee, which was established by the Town Board in 2018 and has been meeting since last fall, has completed the majority of their work. The next step for the committee, and our consultant, LaBella Associates, is a public informational meeting. This meeting will be held on August 5th, 2019 at 7:00 PM at the Town Hall. For interested parties, electronic copies of the draft of the revised Zoning Law, along with a revised Zoning Map, are provided here below.

All are welcome at the public informational meeting. The feedback received during this meeting will be reviewed and used by the committee and the consultant to make final revisions to the draft Zoning Law, which will then be sent to the Zoning Board of Appeals and Town Board for consideration. The Town Board is the entity which has the authority to adopt the proposed Zoning Law, and that will follow the normal process of having ample notice, along with a public hearing, before being enacted.

Town of Gaines – Zoning Law Update for Public Review – July 2019

Town of Gaines – Zoning Map Update (Draft)

LaBella Associates has created a website to track the information related to the update to the Gaines Zoning Ordinance. The website is here: Gaines Zoning Update

 

On October 30, 2018, the Gaines Town Board held a budget workshop session to review the preliminary budget prepared by the Supervisor and move it forward in the budget process. (Approve it as the tentative budget).

A lot of work was put into the budget to keep taxes flat. The tentative budget is a very conservative one, both in expenditures and in estimates of revenue. One item of note for the 2019 Budget cycle is the reduction in the Assessment Equalization Rate by the State of New York from 100% to 98%. This has a net effect of lowering the assessed values in the town by about 0.64%. That equates to an instant tax increase without efforts to reduce the tax levy. We were able to prepare a budget that accounts for this and keeps taxes flat this year, even in the face of rising costs for salaries, fuel, salt, etc. If this budget is approved as it stands today, taxpayers in Gaines who reside within the Village of Albion will see a very slight reduction in the Town portion of their property taxes. Those outside the village will see the Town portion of their taxes stay flat – within pennies in fact – of last year’s values.

The Town of Gaines will go through an assessment revaluation in 2019, which will have the effect of raising our equalization rate back to 100%.

Attached to this post are the documents reviewed at the Budget Workshop Meeting, which includes the entire Tentative Budget for 2019.

The annual public hearing on the budget is scheduled for Thursday, November 8th, 2018 at 7:00 PM. At the conclusion of the public hearing, the Board will move directly into the regular November meeting.

Town of Gaines 2019 Tentative Budget

2019 Preliminary Budget Presentation