Town Conducts on Both Commercial & Residential
By Nicholas Pircio

The Town of Ellicottville will conduct a reevaluation of all property, both commercial and residential. The town board voted to authorize the spending of $13,000 already in the budget. The goal is to keep the equalization rate at one hundred percent. A professional appraiser is necessary, according to Town Assessor Robin Pearl. State official Dennis Fisher told the board that generally speaking, municipalities that do reassessments in-house have large, professional staffs. Referring to a “cap” agreement between the Towns of Ellicottville and Allegany, Fisher said, “You treat the two towns as if they are one town, in terms of your analysis.” Town Supervisor John Burrell said if spending $13,000 “keeps us at one hundred percent, it’s worthwhile to me.” Board members voted unanimously to hire Emminger Appraisal Services of Buffalo to help with the work. Burrell said this will not be a full-blown reevaluation, “an almost in-house type of an adjustment, but done with a licensed appraiser.” The process will look at vacant land as well as developed property. “What it will do is fine tune everything so that we meet the state guidelines.” Burrell noted that when all is said and done, people should not notice a big difference in their tax bills.
Kristen Sciara addressed the town board about possibly rezoning of industrial property in the Robbins Road area so that she can build a single-family house there. Her grandfather gave her twenty-five acres of land there as a wedding present. The property will not be rezoned back to agricultural, but will instead consider changing the permitted use so that Sciara will be allowed to build there, as suggested by Town Engineer Mark Alianello. It was noted that single-family homes are already located in the neighborhood. The proposal will be referred to the Ellicottville Town Planning board for their meeting on March 26th, and to the Cattaraugus County Planning Board for their review. A public hearing on the matter was set by the for April 6th.
A sewer and water bill proposal was tabled at the March 16th Ellicottville Town Board meeting. Burrell noted, “At this point, it’s a little premature.” The motion will come up at a future meeting.
Other matters involving water were also addressed at the meeting, including a storm run-off problem that was flooding a couple of properties in the Northwood subdivision. Town Engineer Mark Alianello will design a project that will help ease that situation this summer. Burrell said it should be a $10,000 to $15,000 project.
The board addressed problems being experienced with their accounting software. There are apparently glitches or bugs causing some water customers to be under-billed over the past year or so, according to Burrell. “We don’t believe there’s been anybody who has been billed too much. We’ve got to figure it out. Its money that they owe, but they don’t know they owe it. They need to know before it gets to a point where they can’t afford to pay it.”
An informational meeting will be scheduled at HoliMont by the State Department of Transportation on March 25th at 7 p.m. The plan is to award a contract to extend the sidewalk from where it now ends in the Village of Ellicottville. The new sidewalk will continue along Route 242 to the HoliMont Road. Burrell notes that it’s not a safe situation with “lots of people walking along the side of the road.”
New York State will fund the project.
The Ellicottville Town Board will investigate the possibility of establishing a combined fire district with surrounding municipalities. Burrell said the idea is to see whether there would be a savings to the taxpayers. “We want to have a meeting with surrounding communities to see if it’s something we would like to study and possibly do in the future.” He said that having one larger fire district ‘just might cut down on everybody’s costs. You might not need as much equipment. And you’ve got economies of scale in possibly sharing one attorney and one insurance company. ” Individual fire companies would stay autonomous, according to Burrell. “We’ve got a great fire department here, and I’m not looking to bust it up or change it. I’m just looking at a better way possibly to bring us all together so that maybe we can enjoy the same insurance rating that we have now, but not need as much equipment.”