Clarence Town Board·July 22, 2026

A Crime Spree Named Out Loud · The Last Penny · A Hearing Set for Transit Road · Farewell to a Supervisor

Eighteen Cars in Ten Days

The Town Board convened early Wednesday — and kept it to thirty-one minutes — so members could attend the funeral of former Supervisor Dan Herberger, and still packed the half hour: Supervisor Patrick Casilio put hard numbers on a car-theft wave washing over the suburbs, eighteen vehicles stolen in ten days across sheriff and State Police jurisdictions, with stepped-up patrols and helicopters promised; the board resolved that cash tax payments must now be exact to the penny, because the United States Mint has stopped making them; a public hearing was set for August 12 on the final town-level approval for the retail project at 7631 Transit Road; and the meeting closed on a tribute to Herberger, the supervisor whose decades of service gave the town its library campus and Memorial Park.

30.6 minutes of audio · faster-whisper “medium” model · transcribed from the town's meeting stream · recovered from the town's video-on-demand after the live stream was missed

Casilio promised not to talk long and then delivered the morning's real news: eighteen cars stolen in the last ten days, by the combined count of the Erie County Sheriff and the State Police, with one night's work by what he described as probably young kids trying every door on entire streets. The pattern he laid out is the one police have described across the region — key fobs left in unlocked cars. “It's all fobs,” he said flatly. “It's not cloning devices.” Where a locked car held something visible and valuable — a purse, a computer — windows were broken. Residents have had direct encounters, he said, including people coming up driveways.

The supervisor stressed the spree is not a Clarence problem but a countywide one, running through Buffalo, Amherst — “where they have 12 to 15 cars on the road every day” — and Lancaster, where the town supervisor's own neighbor lost a car, though it is “more concentrated now in the suburbs” where unlocked cars are easier to find. The response: sheriff and State Police patrols stepped up, helicopters overhead “in the very near future,” a supervisor's statement and column to come, and a steady drumbeat of the only advice that reliably works — lock the car, take the fob, leave nothing visible. The story updated itself mid-meeting: the sheriff texted Casilio that three vehicles stolen from Clarence had been recovered overnight in Buffalo — on Broadway, Schiller and Collingwood^[*] — and a set of stolen AirPods had been traced across the city by their owner, who confronted the thieves in the street and got them back.

The oddest resolution of the year passed without dissent: cash tax-bill payments in Clarence must now be the exact amount owed. The chain of reasoning, read into the record whereas by whereas: the last United States penny was minted in Philadelphia on November 12, 2025; banks can no longer buy new ones; the town therefore cannot reliably stock them; and state law requires tax bills be collected “exact to the penny without rounding.” The town's tax collector cannot legally round up, round down, or keep the change — so once her penny drawer runs dry, a resident paying cash must bring exact change or write a check. The board acknowledged the absurdity it was codifying: a 23-cent shortfall could oblige the town to cut a check that costs five dollars to write. “It is a law that I cannot change,” the collector told the board, “and they haven't decided up there what they're doing.” Until Washington and Albany do, Clarence pays and collects to the exact cent.

The applicant behind the retail supply project at 7631 Transit Road^[*] asked for — and got — the fastest hearing date the calendar allows. Attorney Sean Hopkins, appearing with a project representative, told the board the proposal for a retail building in excess of 10,000 square feet has cleared every prior gate: a use variance from the Zoning Board of Appeals, a negative declaration under SEQR, concept plan approval from the Planning Board, and the Planning Board's recommendation that the special exception use permit — required by the building's size — be issued. The board set the public hearing for August 12 at 10:15 a.m., with members openly predicting a quiet one. Casilio used the occasion to air a procedural gripe: hearings on commercial corridors like Transit Road carry the same weeks-long notice and mailing requirements as a duplex in a residential neighborhood, and he wished the process could be tightened. Development plan approval from the Planning Board remains the project's final step after the town board's permit.

The board met early, and adjourned in half an hour, because much of the room was bound for a funeral. Dan Herberger, former supervisor of the Town of Clarence, died last week, and Casilio closed the meeting with a tribute to a public servant whose tenure — stretching back, he noted, some thirty or forty years, to when town meetings convened at the old Lamplighter — shaped the Clarence residents live in today. Casilio credited Herberger with two of the town's signature assets: the public library and its placement on the Town Hall campus, and Memorial Park, the baseball, softball and soccer complex that was, as it happens, packed full of kids at a tournament just last weekend. Several town employees are related to Herberger by marriage. “Hats off to Dan Herberger and the leadership that he gave the town of Clarence,” Casilio said, and adjourned.