If you ever need to do GIS work with R using an remote ArcGIS server … you’ll like arcpullr

With arcpullr you can for example get a shapefile of Schenectady EDs with all of four lines of code, only one if you don’t count loading the libraries. It also can do seamless spatial queries using get_layer_by_polygon(), so you can pull only part of layer your interested in, which is good for large layers like tax maps.

library(arcpullr)
library(tidyverse)
library(sf)

get_spatial_layer('https://spatialags.vhb.com/arcgis/rest/services/29816_SIMS/SIMS/MapServer/54') %>% write_sf('/tmp/schenectady_eds.shp')