Category: News, Notices and Articles

Town of Wheatland Legal Notice – Public Hearing.

Notice is hereby given that the Town Board of the Town of Wheatland sets Thursday, July 12, 2018 at 7:00 P.M. at the Wheatland Municipal Building as the time and place for a Public Hearing to consider Local Law No. 1 of 2018 a Local Law Amending the Code of the Town of Wheatland for the following sections:

• Article VII Special Exception Uses 130-60 General procedure and conditions, Section F. Replace existing Section F. Attachment 1.
• Article III Supplemental Use and Dimensional Regulations Chapter 130-23 Accessory buildings and Uses, the addition of 130-23 D. Solar Energy Systems.
• Article VII Special Exception Uses Chapter 130-62 Special conditions and safeguards for certain uses, the addition of a Section Solar Energy Systems.
• Article VII Special Exception Uses Chapter 130-62 Special conditions and safeguards for certain uses, the addition of a Section Wind Energy Devices.
• Article II Zoning Map: District Regulations Tables of Use 130-10, 130-12 and 130-15 the addition of Private Utility Structures as a special exception use.

The entire Law may be viewed at the Wheatland Town Office.

By Order of the Town Board Of the Town of Wheatland
Dated: June 21, 2018
Laurie B. Czapranski, Town Clerk

 

 

A Household Hazardous Waste Collection Day will be held for all residents of Monroe County, but specifically for the southwest region including the Towns of Chili, Gates, Wheatland, and Riga, and the Villages of Churchville and Scottsville. The collection, which is being provided by Monroe County, will take place at the Town of Gates Highway Department located at 475 Trabold Road, on Saturday, April 21, 2018 from 7:45 am to 12:15 pm. This collection gives residents the opportunity to dispose of potentially hazardous chemicals in a safe manner and keeps usable items out of the landfills.

Appointments are required at all Household Hazardous Waste Collections. Appointments for this HHW collection will be accepted until Friday, April 20th. Waste from businesses will not be accepted. To schedule an appointment visit the Online Scheduler or Call the Town of Chili at 889-2630 (option #2).

More details regarding scheduling an appointment and a list of acceptable and unacceptable items.

There will be a two joint meetings of the Town of Wheatland, the Mumford Fire Department and CHS Mobile Integrated Healthcare in the Mumford Fire Department Community Room. These meetings are being held to share information with the community regarding the transition of the district’s ambulance service. These meetings will include presentation of information, discussion and the opportunity for questions and answers.

Meeting #1: March 28th at 7:00 PM
Meeting #2: April 17th at 7:00 PM

Rochester Gas and Electric (RG&E) is planning to expand its distribution system by installing a new natural gas pipeline between the Caledonia Gate Station in the northeast corner of the Town of Caledonia to the Chili Gate Station in the southwest corner of the Town of Chili.

RG&E will be holding a public information session on the project in the Wheatland Town Hall at 22 Main St, Scottsville, NY 14546, Tuesday, March 27th from 1 to 3 p.m. and from 5 to 7 p.m.

The Wheatland local Town Government has recently approved a proposal for the establishment of a Town of Wheatland Community Hall of Fame. The purpose of the Community Hall of Fame is to facilitate a community wide tradition of identifying, recognizing and celebrating citizens that have made significant, positive contributions to the Town of Wheatland community. The Community Hall of Fame will be governed and supported by the Wheatland local Town Government in conjunction with the greater Wheatland Community. Much more information coming soon!

The Town of Wheatland recently installed new drop boxes inside the Wheatland Municipal Building to allow residents to easily and securely drop off town business related material at their convenience, such as tax payments, dog licenses or completed recreation program registrations. These drop boxes are available for use any time the Municipal Building is open. There are two drop boxes located at the front of the municipal building near the Town Clerk’s Office, one designated for Recreation Department material and the other one for Town Clerk’s Office business. When dropping off your material for the Town, please be sure to have any forms completely filled out and signed as appropriate. Your name and contact information should be clearly available. Where appropriate, receipts will be mailed after processing of the received material.

The following stories have not been widely told in the Town of Wheatland because they involved some of the most upstanding and respected families in the town. Now that a hundred years have gone by, we hope the history of these events is reported without offending anyone. It must have been a difficult time in the history of our town with war looming in Europe and scandals on the home front.

John H. Scofield was appointed Scottsville postmaster in 1910 and served until 1915, during the time when the post office was in the front east room of Windom Hall. John was a third generation Wheatland resident, son of Ezra, a Main Street merchant, and his wife Maria Hume Scofield. The family lived at 1223 North Road.

Robert Burns Cox was appointed postmaster as the successor to John Scofield, also a third generation Wheatland resident, a farmer on South Road. On May 1, 1917, Rochester district postal inspector Burke came to check the Scottsville office account books. Postmaster Robert Burns Cox told Burke that he would step out to get a bite to eat during the inspection. That was the last anyone saw of him in Scottsville. A shortage of $1500 was found in the post office funds.
It was not until March of 1918 that Robert Burns Cox was apprehended, living and working in Garden City, Long Island. He confessed that he was responsible for the shortage of post office funds and described how he had made his way on foot to Buffalo, sleeping in barns at night and avoiding towns and villages. He found work in Buffalo and was later transferred to Garden City. He was then arrested, brought back to Rochester and sent to jail. When it was over, he and his family moved to Michigan where he died in 1940.

John H. Scofield was called upon to come back and fill in until a permanent postmaster could be appointed. Four months later, on August 12, acting postmaster John Scofield, fortified with whiskey, found a ride up to the farm of William H. Garbutt on the corner of North Road and Wheatland Center Road, known as Blue Pond Farm (see photo above of house at 2100 North Road). Seeing Mr. Garbutt working outside, Scofield pulled out a gun and shot and killed him. Garbutt’s wife Jennie and their two daughters, Kate and Marion, witnessed the shooting. John Scofield rode back to town and calmly presented himself to Constable Vokes at the village jail. Scofield’s explanation for the shooting was that Garbutt had acted inappropriately with his wife Lillian Scofield. He was sentenced to no less than twenty years for murder and was sent to Auburn Prison. Again, an acting postmaster was needed, and Goodard Friedell was chosen.

Follow up regarding John H. Scofield, he served less than nine years of his prison term. New York Governor Alfred E. Smith commuted his sentence, and he returned home in time for Christmas in 1925. Lillian Scofield was living in Hilton during her husband’s incarceration. The story is told that when she heard the news of John’s pardon, she was so excited that she left hamburgers frying on the stove and ran up the street to her son’s house to tell him the good news. John Scofield Jr. was a dentist in Hilton, and a friend who remembers him related parts of this story. John and Lillian Scofield moved to the Syracuse area where they remained the rest of their lives.

The following is an email providing thanks to the Town of Wheatland’s contract ambulance service CHS Healthcare. Note that specific names and addresses were removed from this email due to HIPPA restrictions. Thanks to CHS Healthcare for their dedication and quality of service provided to our community.

TO: CHS Healthcare
FROM: Patient’s Son
RE: Ambulance’s Service in Helping my Mom

To whom it may concern:

I would like to give some feedback on the performance of Jesse M. and Kelci M. in caring for my mom, in the of The Town of Wheatland, Village of Scottsville, the evening of February 9 when my mom broke her hip.

First, Jesse and Kelci somehow were able to respond to the call very quickly despite the heavy snow coming down. I’m very thankful to them for this because my mother was in a great deal of pain.
Jesse and Kelci were both polite, professional, considerate and caring as they carried out their duties. preparing my mom for transport.

What impressed me most of all is how they were somehow able to get an IV into my mom in an ambulance in cold, snowy weather when often many nurses in warm, quiet hospitals have problems doing this (my mom’s veins are hard to find). Because they were able to do this and administer pain reliever, this made the wait in the emergency room more bearable for my mom. Thank Goodness they were able to do this because it took the emergency staff a long time to finally respond to my mom’s pain. If she hadn’t have received the pain killer from Jesse and Kelci, this wait would have been quite terrible for her.

After a successful hip operation, she’s now resting at the rehab home. If the staff there cares for her half as well as Jesse and Kelci did, she’ll be all right in no time at all.
Thank you, Jesse and Kelci!

Gratefully yours,
Patient’s Son

IN LOVING MEMORY
WHEREAS, Mr. George Banks, Mumford, New York, had grown up and resided in Wheatland; and

WHEREAS, Mr. Banks was recognized for his musical accomplishments locally in Mumford and the Greater Rochester area as well as Nationally; and

WHEREAS, Mr. Banks also served as Minister of Music and Director of the Men’s choir at the Second Baptist Church of Mumford; and

WHEREAS, Mr. Banks had given many hours of his time to the Second Baptist Church of Mumford; and

WHEREAS, Mr. Banks faithfulness and dedication have been outstanding contributions to the Town of Wheatland;

THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, That the Town Board of the Town of Wheatland, proclaim February 10, 2018 as “George Banks Day”.

Let’s leave our instant text messages and emails a moment and think about what it was like when people waited, sometimes for weeks, for a letter to bring them news – a new baby in the family, word about a son fighting a war far from home, or a long-awaited message from a sweetheart.

The first brave settlers in the Wheatland area traveled long distances, usually on horseback, over roads that were merely trails to get their mail. Canandaigua was the end of the line for mail from the east. The situation improved a great deal in 1812 when the mail route was extended to Batavia, and a post office was established in Caledonia.

The first post office in Scottsville opened in 1820. Dr. Freeman Edson was the postmaster, and both his medical office and the post office were in his house at 7 Rochester Street. It seems that for many years the person who was appointed postmaster got to choose the location of the post office. In Scottsville, David B. Lewis and B.B. Carpenter oversaw the post office in a frame building on Main Street approximately where the orthodontist office is now. When Otto Bennett was named postmaster in 1861, he moved the post office to his liquor store at 10 Main Street. (One has to wonder how the temperance and prohibition advocates, who were very active at the time, felt about going in there to get their mail.) In 1886, Bridget Scanlon became the first woman postmaster in Scottville. She moved the post office back down the street to its previous location.

From 1896 until 1918 the front east room of Windom Hall (now the Scottsville Library) was the post office. The Scottsville Post Office began Rural Free Delivery service in 1902 with one route up the present Scottsville Road to the Ballantine Bridge and the other extending as far as Garbutt. From 1918 to 1929, James Butler conducted the post office in the same building with his insurance office at 12 Main Street. In 1944 Romeyn “Dubby” Dunn became postmaster and moved the post office to half of his store building at 32 Main Street, where it remained until the building burned in 1959.The present Scottsville post office was built by the United States Postal Service in 1961.

The Mumford post office was established in 1844, and Duncan McNaughton was the postmaster. He presided over the mail in a room of his hotel, now the Mumford Fire Department building. The post office was moved to various stores along Mumford’s Main Street as the proprietors were named postmasters. In 1893 William Buckley moved it to the little stone building at 1093 Main Street where it remained for many years. Some of the postmasters in charge there were James Freeman, J. Stewart Grant, John A. Campbell, Francis Callan and Glenn Sickles. In April 1962 the Mumford post office moved to the corner of Dakin and William Streets, and has since occupied space in an addition to the old Mumford School building.

During the heyday of the gypsum business, the hamlet of Garbutt had its own post office. Most of the time it was located in the Garbutt store. Harlan Wheeler was postmaster in 1880, succeeded by Ezra Price and Duncan McQueen. Frank Garbutt served as postmaster for 22 years. In 1943 the Garbutt post office closed for good.

Our post offices have served the people of Wheatland throughout our history. Although we no longer completely depend on “snail mail” for communication, we recognize the dedication of the past and present postal workers who have faithfully brought us our mail.