Town of Amherst Town Board — Work Session·June 22, 2026
Five public hearings queued for one night · A lawyer's eye catches two typos · No presentations, no appointments, no votes
In a brisk sub-ten-minute work session ahead of the June 22 regular meeting, the Amherst Town Board took no formal action — the point of the afternoon was to line up the evening. Supervisor Lavin walked the board through an unusually heavy docket: five public hearings in one night, on a $750,000 storm-sewer-lining bond, a $1.19 million “Peanut Line” sewer-and-plant study package, a street-lighting-district extension, a downtown environmental-impact statement, and a North Forest Road rezoning. Before the board moved the rest of the agenda onto its consent list, Deputy Supervisor Marinucci — a lawyer by trade — flagged two “scrivener's” typos in the Peanut Line resolution: an inconsistent all-caps “LEAD” agency reference and an extra zero in an estimated cost. With no presentations and no board appointments on the calendar, the session ran straight through the docket and recessed into executive session; the actual votes came later, at the 7:00 PM regular meeting.
A work session is where the Amherst Town Board does its housekeeping in the open before the cameras and the public turn to the formal 7:00 PM meeting. On June 22, the housekeeping was mostly about volume. “We do have a total of five” public hearings, Supervisor Shawn A. Lavin told the board — “the most public hearings we've had in quite a while,” he added, with the tone of a man bracing for a long night.[1] No formal votes were cast in the work session itself; the board used the ten minutes to confirm who would present each item and to sweep the balance of the agenda onto its consent list.
Lavin ran down the five hearings and checked that a staff presenter was ready for each. Engineer “Jeff”[*] and “Steve”[*] would split the technical items. The queue: the 2026 Storm Sewer Pipe Lining bond ($750,000), relining roughly 20,000 linear feet of aging pipe; the 2026 Parallel Peanut Line and WWTP Studies package ($1,190,000 in bonding) — which Lavin was careful to note is a wastewater-treatment interceptor sewer, “not the bike riding one”;[1] the extension of the Consolidated Lighting District to The Hamlet and Cricket Lane; a supplemental environmental-impact hearing on the Boulevard Central District; and a reclassification of four North Forest Road parcels (2559, 2535, 2529 and 2493).[2]
With the hearings sorted, Lavin noted there were “no personal appointments this evening” and moved the board straight into staging its resolutions for consent — asking each councilmember whether their items could go on the consent agenda rather than be read out one by one that night.[1] The session then recessed into executive session for personnel and litigation matters, with the town attorney and staff named to attend. Everything of consequence — the bonds, the district extension, the rezoning — would be decided at the regular meeting that followed, not here.
Amherst holds a short Town Board work session the same day as, and just before, each regular meeting. It is where the board previews the evening's agenda, sorts out who presents what, and moves routine items onto a “consent” list so they can be adopted together without individual debate. The work session itself takes no formal votes — it is deliberation and staging. The binding action happens later, at the regular meeting. So nothing on this page was “passed” on June 22 in the work session; it was lined up.
The session's most human moment was also its smallest. As the board reviewed Resolution 2026-473 — the Peanut Line sewer-and-plant-study bonds — Deputy Supervisor Angela Marinucci[*] asked to slow down. “I do have a slight thing on this,” she told a staff member, and prefaced her critique with an apology and a self-aware explanation: “I know it's really particular, but lawyers are really particular people.”[1]
Her two catches were both what she called “scrivener's” errors — clerical slips in the drafting. First, the resolution capitalized “LEAD” in all caps in one “whereas” clause (where it refers to the Town serving as SEQR lead agency) but not in another, which, she noted, “indicates that it might stand for something” when it does not. Second, she spotted an extra zero in an estimated-cost figure. A staff member confirmed both were fixable and not substantive — “it's no big deal,” as the exchange had it — and the corrections were noted for the evening's version.[1] It is the kind of catch that never makes the minutes but is exactly what a work session is for.
Beyond the five hearings, Lavin walked the board through the department-head resolutions bound for the evening's consent agenda — asking, item by item, whether anyone objected before deeming each part of consent. The slate previewed a request to schedule a public hearing on a term-limits local law (Res. 2026-477), a litigation settlement, a vehicle-auction request, senior-center HVAC and parking-lot repairs, an award of the RFQ for the Town's Comprehensive Plan update (Res. 2026-483, $726,515 to Interface Studio per the packet), a PVC-pipe bid, sidewalk-snow-plowing and tree-planting funding, and personnel items. One planning item drew a note of thanks: Resolution 2026-496 asks the board to declare the Harlem Road Community Center a “blighted” property so it can qualify for federal Community Development Block Grant funding — and Lavin thanked staffer “Lori”[*] for an email clarifying the loaded word “blighted” before it reached the board.[1] Also queued: two sewer-plant procurement contracts, a court-flooring contract, and four communications — a seniors' petition and three legal notices (Notices of Claim from Benjamin M. Cedeno and Kevin Taylor, and a summons and second amended complaint from Bradley Ensminger) — all recommended for “receive and file” and referral to the town attorney.[2] None of this was voted on in the work session; it was set up for the regular meeting.
A Town Board work session is a discussion-and-staging session: it takes no formal votes. The only motion recorded was the procedural motion to recess into executive session at the close. All binding action on the items previewed here — the bonds, the lighting-district extension, the rezoning, and the consent slate — occurred at the 7:00 PM regular meeting that followed (see the companion Town Board brief for June 22). The row below is the single procedural motion; it is not a substantive vote.
At the close of the work session, the Supervisor moved to recess into executive session to discuss personnel and litigation matters; the town attorney and named staff (including Jessica O'Neill[*]) were asked to attend. The motion was seconded and carried on a voice vote (“all those in favor… I see everybody”). This is a procedural motion to change the meeting's mode, not action on any docket item.
The board's five-member roster used here — Supervisor Shawn A. Lavin (chair), Deputy Supervisor Angela Marinucci, and Councilmembers Michael Szukala, John B. Davis and Jack Kavanaugh — is verified against the Town's official Town Board page and its recent official minutes; no first-brief roster caveat applies.
What this is. This documents the Town Board's work session — the short discussion-and-agenda-setting meeting held the same afternoon as, and before, the 7:00 PM regular meeting. Work sessions take no formal votes; the value here is what the board previewed and discussed. The binding outcomes on the items above were decided at the regular meeting; see the companion Town of Amherst Town Board brief for June 22, 2026. The official minutes for the June 22 meetings were not yet posted at compile time, so vote results are not asserted in this work-session brief.
Sourcing. Resolution numbers, titles, dollar figures, addresses and entity names are anchored to the Town's official IQM2 (Minutetraq) agenda packet for June 22, 2026, which governs every proper noun; the transcript supplies the discussion and quotations. Two staff presenters are heard only as first names in the audio (“Jeff” and “Steve”) and a Planning staffer as “Lori,” along with “Jessica O'Neill” named for executive session; these carry the [*] flag and were not confirmed against minutes. Street-name validation returned one candidate (Harlem Road) as an exact match; no corrections were required. The [*] symbol marks a proper noun taken from audio and not yet reconciled to the official record — verify against the Town Clerk's minutes before quoting in any formal communication.