Utica, New York Common Council Meeting Records

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Common Council Meeting with Committee of the Whole Meeting February 4th, 2026

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Common Council Meeting with Committee of the Whole Meeting February 4th, 2026

13 matches · 4 unidentified
Unidentified speaker 1:33:17
Energy related, and the thought was we needed time to review to figure out what we wanted to do, where we wanted them to be. My understanding, if you're not familiar with what these systems are, and I have a very simple knowledge of what they are, but my understanding is they are essentially, you know, large shipping containers that house energy that they take off the grid during off hours and then sell and reuse it during high periods of energy usage. Other than that, I don't know much more, but I know that the state is pushing them. But I also know that there's a lot of concerns with where they're located because I believe there's issues with— you can't actually put them out with regular— with water. So we had some discussions and I did do some research. The state came out with guidelines for these systems. So the piece that you have in front of you is the actual definition. We're just adding what the definition of battery energy storage system is. That definition came from the New York State, I pulled that directly. We're going to be adding that into the code. The second piece, which you don't have in front of you, designates the specific areas within the city that they would be allowed in, which would be the industrial district and the industrial mixed use district, and they'd be allowed only by a special use permit, which would mean they'd have to apply for a permit. There'd have to be a public hearing notice to, um, property owners, and then, um, a site plan approval.
15:53
And I also just took, um, at a couple— just a couple locations, um, of pictures of what I was trying to explain. Uh, they're not the best pictures, but, um, I've talked to each one of you guys, or for the most part, and I believe all of you have the same issues in your district. I know last time when we brought this up they started talking about like tractor-trailer cabs and all that, and which, which would be a nuisance to if somebody was there next door to them. But I wasn't, um, that's not what I was talking about. That's not where my complaints have been. My complaints have been mostly, you can see by the pictures, where you have people operating businesses out of their house, where they have multiple trailers, multiple you know, pay loaders, plows. The one place in North Utica, they actually were next to the woods, and nobody really knows who owned the property. They took it upon themselves to cut trees down and move all the property and move the vehicles over there. And I've had multiple complaints. I talked to Marcus. When codes would go there, they would come back and tell me— Marcus would come back and tell me that there's really nothing that they can do about it. I know like last year on Lorraine Ave, we had a guy bought a bus and it sat there for, I'm pretty sure it's gone now, sat there for almost a year while he was remodeling it. Just stuff like that. I know I talked to you, Joe, you have the same issue. Talked to Bob, you had the issue. So it's just something, and we're not here, Marcus will speak of it too, we're not really here to go— for these codes guys to go out and look for all problems. It's more or less the people that are nuisance when there's a problem, they have something to help us out with. So that's what I'm trying to do. So, Marques, you want to talk on it?
Unidentified speaker 30:45
I did hear your own appointment. That's one of the reasons we got the new software. Um, holes that I've seen in the Codes Department that I've, I've expressed in the past, um, and I've, I've had these concerns forever. I don't know if they're willing to say, but the, the, the, the 3 concerns I've had is a lot of people know when we work. And they do construction after we work, especially in scenic and historic districts, because it's more expensive to do scenic and historic districts. So I've asked for overtime to do on weekends. I've never been given overtime. It's because they're union contracts. I have to pay them overtime. I can't just have them do it. And it's frustrating to me because I get calls from— like, there's in every scenic and historic district, there's like 2 or 3 neighbors that really believe in that stuff. And they call and he put up new siding, he put up a new porch. And we weren't there to stop it. And, um, so the weekends are tough. The other thing that's tough is, um, the, the ride-alongs, like, um, with DPW. I'd like to do that, but then I would need overtime to do that, because if somebody improperly disposes of green waste, DPW can't write them a ticket. So they're just picking up their waste if Codes didn't catch it earlier in the day. Um, so that's a lot of people don't flag is put out after 4:30. And so that's— having guys be able to work those shifts, plus they work better sometimes when they're on their own, it's peaceful, it's office, because I think what a lot of council people or administrative people that I talk to don't understand is how many appointments they have every day. My codes officers will have between 5 and 8 appointments per day. So you want, like, everybody on the council and the mayor and and administrative people always want us to patrol the neighborhoods, but like those appointments are their first obligation. So a guy might have to write up 8 cases and be in 8 different apartments in a day, and then you wanted them to catch the neighbor that put their garbage out improperly on top of that, and, and they always don't have that extra time, you know. Um, so those things. And, uh, the other thing is just the volumes that are coming down. I mean, We're going to amend the vacant housing registry and, you know, right now we're one secretary short in the department and we're going to amend the vacant housing registry. They're looking at a permit for chickens. They're looking at other legislation that could require permits and patrols. And then after a while it's kind of like, you know, you send me tools like this, okay, they're doing the same thing, they can react to it. You send me a new permit or legislation, I got to figure out who's going to do that.
Unidentified speaker 1:51:25
The legislation does provide for that, that they're only allowed in the industrial and the industrial mixed use, but some of our districts— so the industrial, um, district does a but Some residential? Yeah. So the rationale for why there should be a distance is obviously if you have someone looking to put a battery energy storage— battery energy storage system, you know, somewhat near residential property, that there should be an appropriate amount of feet distance between the actual storage and then the property that it's— you know, the residential property itself.