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

10 matches · 6 unidentified

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.

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 19:58

It depends on if you want to. So, so the word that we use in this legislation very intentionally was keeping. So it's not parking, it's not storing, it's keeping. If you keep the truck on your property, then it's illegal. So if if we have more than one instance of idling, I would say that was keeping. If we get one call about idling at a property and we only see it once, probably say, okay, that's something that's not repetitive, right?

Unidentified speaker 35:43

it's been years. The only, the only issue I had with that was having a property manager is supposed to be, um, and having his displayed in the apartment, in the apartment. So having a property manager supposed to be there now, if we have it displayed on the apartment, it's cool. The only thing that I kind of worry about, but not really, I think it's a good law, um, it's just that it's going to change over time and it's gonna be— so, so the fire department inspects those buildings, and so it's going to be the task on them to call that number when they do their inspections is make sure it's the same guy, you know, because I don't want the guys to have the wrong information and calling the wrong numbers. So as long as they keep it current and we have a way to keep in touch and make sure it hasn't changed.

1:27:49

It's 188 North Genesee Street. I'm not sure what property it is.

Unidentified speaker 1:29:18

Um, so there are billboards that are up in, uh, District 2 and 5 that are on buildings, like some of them are kind of located on buildings. Will those stay too? There's like— and down by the brewery, I think, and then there's some like on property. The only reason why I ask, because those are ones that specifically talk about lead healthcare for people, Fidelis, things like that. I was just curious if those billboards will still stay going or if they will—

1:31:22

Yeah, as I said, what you're talking about is considered a snipe sign, which in our code is defined as any sign of any material whatsoever that is attached in any way to a utility pole, tree, or any object located or situated on public or private property.

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.