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Our team is putting Pittsford before politics to Keep Pittsford Strong. Please share your thoughts with us on how to make Pittsford an even better community.
Meet Our Team
Keep Pittsford Strong
Bill Smith
Bill Smith took office as Pittsford Town Supervisor on January 1, 2014. Originally elected to Town Council in 1995, Bill played a central role in the Town’s adoption of its Greenprint plan, which preserved two-thirds of the Town’s then-remaining farmland from development. Not long after the Greenprint became final, Bill was appointed to a vacancy in the Monroe County Legislature, where he served for 11 years, the last 6 as Majority Leader, before stepping down due to term limits in 2007.
A lawyer by profession, Bill practiced law full-time for 29 years before taking office as Town Supervisor. Bill earned his Bachelor’s degree at Yale University and his law degree at the University of Virginia.
The Supervisor’s first duty is responsible fiscal management of the Town. Since 2019 Bill has reduced the Town tax rate by 9%, with reductions in the rate for 2019, 2020 and 2022, and holding the tax rate flat, with no increase, for 2021. Notwithstanding 8% inflation, for 2023 Bill kept the Town tax rate flat, with no increase, in the current year budget for 2023. Town tax now comprises only 8 cents of every dollar Pittsford households pay in property tax. For Pittsford residents it funds among the most extensive and comprehensive municipal services of any Town in Monroe County
Under Bill’s leadership Pittsford is the only town in all of upstate New York -- and the only town of its size in the United States -- to have the highest possible credit rating: Triple-A.
Higher than the State of New York. Higher than the United States government.
As Supervisor Bill has emphasized environmental responsibility and sustainability. Under his leadership Pittsford earned State certification first as a Clean Energy Community (2017), then as a Climate Smart Community (2022). He’s reduced the Town’s use of pesticides and synthetic chemicals to the point where now, on the 3,000 acres of land the Town maintains, it uses fewer pesticides and less synthetic chemicals than just two – two – houses on half-acre lots that employ a lawn service. Bill initiated the plan, and carried it through, to turn 20 acres of Town-owned land by the Erie Canal into a nature preserve, for public enjoyment. The same land had been slated previously for construction.
Bill initiated food scrap recycling at the Community Center. It produces compost for use at the Community Gardens at Thornell Farm Park. Most recently Pittsford partnered with Monroe County in a town-wide voluntary household food scrap recycling pilot program. This will generate gas to produce electricity, which can then be sold to the grid.
Under Bill’s leadership Pittsford has found great success in obtaining grant funding from the State of New York to pay for municipal improvements, such as new sidewalks, residential street repaving, electrical vehicle chargers and more.
Working in cooperation with the State is important. So is standing up to it to protect the interests of the people of Pittsford. Bill successfully sued the State Power Authority to stop it from clearcutting trees along the Erie Canal. Pittsford’s own Town Attorney, an experienced municipal and environmental litigator, argued the case – meaning the Town won without incurring legal fees.
When the current Governor wanted to override town zoning laws across the State, to force unwanted building in residential neighborhoods and elsewhere, Bill initiated and led the effort on the Monroe County Supervisors’ Association to oppose it.
In his own words: “For two years in a row we’ve defeated it. But Pittsford’s success in this and so much else depends on having a Town Board that stands with me in support of our residents. Pittsford’s a wonderful place to live, with low crime, low Town taxes and good schools. To keep it that way we need a Town Board that’s in sync with the lives and values of Pittsford residents."
WHY WE'RE RUNNING
Responsibility to Taxpayers
Since 2019 Supervisor Smith has reduced the Town tax rate by 9%, with reductions in the rate for 2019, 2020 and 2022, and holding the tax rate flat, with no increase, for 2021. Notwithstanding 8.2% inflation, for the 2023 Budget he kept the Town tax rate flat, with no increase, in the current year budget for 2023.
Responsible fiscal policy and planning like this keeps more money in the pockets of Pittsford taxpayers, without compromising the high standard of Town municipal services. Pittsford Town tax remains proportionally low. Town tax now comprises only 8 cents of every dollar Pittsford households pay in property tax. For Pittsford residents it funds among the most extensive and comprehensive municipal services of any Town in Monroe County.
We cut taxes. We not only maintained services, but improved them. The Supervisor’s 2023 budget maintains the Town’s stepped-up program of repaving residential neighborhood streets. The Town has been resurfacing more residential streets each year, and getting to more neighborhoods faster, and more often. Funding additional positions in our Highway Department has permitted quicker response to residents’ requests.
Cumulatively, since 2017, the Supervisor’s budgets have increased support for Pittsford Youth Services by 83%. And that does not count special supplemental funding to Pittsford Youth Services of nearly $40,000 in 2022.
The Supervisor has increased funding for Pittsford Volunteer Ambulance by 114% since 2018.
Through careful financial management under Supervisor Smith, the Town Administration has set a high standard of responsible leadership and duty to taxpayers, increasing funding for all of our municipal services while decreasing the tax rate.
Experts agree: Moody’s Investor Services continues to classify the Town of Pittsford’s credit rating as Triple-A. This is the highest credit rating possible. Pittsford, alone, is the only town in the entire state north of Westchester and Putnam Counties, to have earned it, year after year. And Pittsford is the only town of its size in the United States to have it. A higher rating than the State of New York. A higher rating than the U.S. government!
The Smith Team’s priority in budgeting is to protect our taxpayers by continuing to keep Town taxes low, maintaining Pittsford’s high standards of services for residents, and planning carefully to provide adequate funding for expenditures down the road and for unexpected expenses. This is how we were prepared when COVID hit Town revenues throughout 2020. And it’s why we could cope with it without raising Town tax rate, as other communities had to do.
Leadership in Sustainability
Pittsford has a long history of policy commitments that benefit our environment. Our path- breaking Greenprint plan preserved over 2,000 acres of farmland from development – two-thirds of the farmland remaining in the Town when it was enacted.
In 2017 we earned designation by the State of New York as a Clean Energy Community. We are among the earliest municipal adopters of Clean Energy Community standards in Monroe County. In 2022 Pittsford earned State designation as a Climate Smart Community. This renders the Town eligible for more grant funding for municipal projects, further easing the burden on taxpayers.
As a next step, Supervisor Smith has initiated the Town pursuing a Climate Action Plan.
The Smith Team is committed to pursuing sustainable options without burdening our taxpayers. When grants are available, we pursue them. We won a $50,000 grant to solarize the lodges at Kings Bend Park and to add two electric vehicle charging stations in Town. More recently the Town has won grants to pay for a new electric vehicle fast-charging station and to help finance electric vehicles for the Town fleet.
The Smith Team, has and will, keep the progress going for sustainability.
Nature Preserve: In 2021 the Town cut the ribbon on its Erie Canal Nature Preserve. Twenty acres of unspoiled land owned by the Town, along the Erie Canal in the Village between the towpath and the Auburn Trail. It had been destined for development. Supervisor Smith reversed that when he came into office, instead winning a State grant to make the acreage publicly accessible as a nature preserve. Now, here in the heart of our Town, we have a lovely area of protected natural beauty with trails, ponds and wetlands. Working with the community group Color Pittsford Green, the Town has planted “pollinator gardens” at the Nature Preserve and at Great Embankment Park. These consists of plant species native to our region, that provide a hospitable habitat for bees, butterflies, birds and other creatures whose role in carrying pollen to fertilize plants is central to a healthy ecosystem. Now in 2023, the Town has announced its Pollinator Garden Challenge program, to encourage residents to plant pollinator gardens in their own yards.
Food Scraps Recycling Program: In partnership with Monroe County, Pittsford in August 2023 launched its Food Scraps Recycling Program, to permit residential recycling of food scraps. The recycled food waste will create biogas, to be used to generate electricity to be sold to the grid. This program builds on the Town’s Composting Program for municipal buildings launched in 2019 and its Zero-Waste program for public events. Undertaken in partnership with Impact Earth, the Town collects food scraps from the Seniors lunch programs at the Community Center instead of throwing them away. Impact Earth collects and composts them, using worm composting and other natural methods. This produces nutrient rich soil, for use in agriculture. The compost is returned to Pittsford, for use in our Pittsford Community Garden at Thornell Farm Park.
LED Street Light Conversion: The Town converted our street lights from conventional lighting to LED lighting. It means less energy use and one more step to a sustainable future. And it pays for itself quickly, through reduced energy and maintenance costs.
Trees: For years our policy has to plant at least as many trees every year as we cut down. Most years we plant many more. Supervisor Smith successfully took the State Power Authority to court to stop it from clear cutting trees on the canal path in Pittsford. And we won.
Community Solar: This program has allowed residents to sign up for solar-generated electricity, for a 10% reduction in their electricity bills.
These are just some of the Sustainability Initiatives the Town has been pursing under the leadership of Supervisor Smith. The Smith Team is dedicated to a sustainable future for all to enjoy!
SENIOR/LIFETIME LIVING
On another front, we’re paying attention to the needs and interests of our entire population in their retirement years or approaching them. Our goal is for Pittsford to be as convenient and conducive as possible to continue enjoying life right here in Pittsford throughout your retirement years. It includes convenient access to information about relevant home services.
It includes housing. The Town’s Comprehensive Plan update calls for zoning law changes to make it easier, in places where some kind of housing is going to be built, to build smaller homes, with smaller yards, and more closely situated. Housing that makes it easier for Pittsford residents to remain in Town if they choose to downsize. The Supervisor successfully proposed an addition to our updated Comprehensive Plan that, as a specific community goal, incorporated changes that make this kind of housing more reasonably priced, to make it an option for more residents aged 55+. As just one example, the Town could offer builders not just greater density in siting houses, but could provide for changes in allowable lot coverage, setbacks, height, floor areas and the like.
Pittsford should be a place where lifelong living is a realistic option for everyone. The Smith Team will continue in its work to expand and strengthen that opportunity.
CONTINUAL IMPROVEMENT
Continual Improvement has formed the central theme of Supervisor Smith’s administration. Improvement that augments, complements and supports a way of life, a healthy and safe environment and that entire bundle of positive attributes that collectively comprise the character of our community. A community that’s successful and pleasant; prosperous and beautiful. That fosters neighborhoods of people of every background, all walks of life, faiths, ethnicities, but substantiality united in our many basic shared values about the kind of community we want to live in.
We’re running to continue to support you. Your family. Your neighborhood. Your quality of life.
The Smith Team maintains a resolute focus on our prime duty -
Our performance illustrates our promise. Continual improvement. For all residents. Since 2019 alone, in addition to the projects already discussed we have:
- Cut Town Taxes
- Opened the East Ave Sidewalk
- Opened the Town’s First Dog Park
- Opened the Erie Canal Nature Preserve
- Solarized the King’s Bend lodges
- Adopted Refuse Districts – making it possible for residents to lower their cost of trash collection substantially, and reduce garbage truck traffic in the neighborhood.
- Improved our Library
- Added new Parks, Trails, Athletic Fields and Playgrounds
- Continued Pittsford’s tradition of Historic Preservation
- Maintained Pittsford’s unique Triple-A Credit Rating – the only town of our size in the United States to have it
- Adopted the joint Town and Village Active Transportation Plan — an improvement plan for more sidewalks, trails, better pedestrian safety and a more bicycle-friendly environment
- Launched the Community Solar program – enabling residents to get solar-generated electricity at a lower price than they paid before
A Low-Crime Community – and Keeping it that Way
Quality of life begins with feeling safe where you live. For decades Pittsford has been a low-crime community.
The Smith Team will keep it that way. The Town Supervisor is the link to Zone A of the County Sheriff’s Department and its Captain – for practical purposes, our police force and chief of police.
We live in a high-crime state. High crime is not an accident. It’s a policy choice. It’s the policy of the State of New York. In the past several years crime rates have skyrocketed across the State. It’s been driven up by ill-conceived legislation imposed by Albany, effective January 2020, that deprives judges of authority to hold even violent offenders on bail. And deprives law enforcement of so many of the tools it has had traditionally to keep us safe. Driven up by attacks on police and demands to “defund the police.”
New York City showed the way in the early 1990s. It adopted new policies, such as “broken-window policing,” recognizing that minor infractions, left unpunished, serve as an invitation to more crime. Policies aimed at deterring crime in the first place and going after those who commit crimes. Crime, even the most violent crimes, were reduced to the lowest levels in decades. Sadly, New York City abandoned these policies in 2014 with a predictable resurgence in crime. The State in 2020 made the situation worse statewide, with its disastrous “bail reform,” changes in criminal trial procedures and raising the age of criminal accountability to 18. In New York, crime pays.
With the changes in State law that put the innocent at greater risk, and the other forces and influences seeking to impede or eliminate law enforcement, the role of local officials in making sure we live in safety from crime is more important than it has ever been before.
The Smith Team brings to this task a clear focus. As a law student, Bill Smith was a founder and organizer of the Victims Rights Advocacy Project at University of Virginia Law School. Throughout his career as a lawyer and today, he’s been on the side of the victims. Not those who victimize. Like reasonable people of good will everywhere, he and the Smith Team understand that the first duty in protecting victims is to work so there won’t be more of them.
Town Board has no jurisdiction over state policies that encourage crime and protect perpetrators. But Town Board members in their individual capacities as citizens can add their voices to the growing demand to change state law to protect people from crime.
Supporting Pittsford’s Schools
Did you ever think that expressing support for Pittsford’s first-class schools would be controversial? We didn’t think so either. That’s why we were so appalled a few years ago when a Town Board member denounced Supervisor Smith for commending the Pittsford Schools for winning an award. And denounced the schools themselves. Sadly, this is what it’s come to.
Which makes it essential to have a Supervisor and Town Board members who will stand up for Pittsford’s schools. Which means standing up for all Pittsford schoolchildren and all Pittsford families.
For innumerable residents the excellent Pittsford Schools are a core motivation to move here. The Smith Team supports Pittsford’s schools. The close working relationship and cooperation between the Town Administration and the Pittsford Central School district has been one of the great success stories for our community in recent years.
The last thing Pittsford needs is a Town government that works against our schools and our teachers. No human institution is perfect. When issues arise that offer opportunity to evaluate an aspect of school performance and to improve our schools even further, we need to work together. Not to go running off to the media for self-promotion, and grandstanding denunciation of one of our community’s most valuable assets.
The difference between that, and the current Supervisor’s partnership and cooperation with our School district, is directly at stake in this election.
The Smith Team supports Pittsford’s teachers, its schools and its students. It’s the only team in this election that includes a teacher and a member of New York State United Teachers.
Good Government
Continual Improvement means putting Pittsford before politics.
The Smith Team deplores attempts by partisans craving power to politicize our community life in Pittsford. The extreme and dysfunctional partisanship we see at the national and state levels has no place in Pittsford.
When you deliver good government, you don’t need to pay attention to politics. That’s been Supervisor Smith’s guiding principle, and will remain so.
The Smith Team believes in transparency, ethics and full communication. When a sitting, partisan, Town Board member sought to cut off the people of Pittsford from communication with their Town government, with proposed legislation written behind closed doors with a party political boss, then dumped on Town Board with a demand for immediate approval, a bipartisan coalition on Town Board defeated her effort.
We want you to know what’s happening at Town Hall. To know what those of us working for you -- instead of for a political boss – are doing.
Under Supervisor Smith the Town has added live video of Town Board meetings. A policy that allows people to comment before each agenda item as well as general comments at the end of the meeting. We communicate with you through an informative Town newsletter, through our e-News and on social media. You should always know what we’re accomplishing on your behalf and with your tax dollars, or what we’re planning based on your input.
The Smith Team is committed to full communication, ethics and transparency. And will maintain the focus of Town Hall solely on good government – to continual improvement for the residents of Pittsford.