Clay charges $100 for the first $1,000 of a building permit's value, and $7 for every $1,000 after that. It is the formula the town has used for additions, garages and strip malls for years, and under state law, the fees it produces can be spent on nothing but inspections. On July 7, 2026, Deputy Supervisor Bick stood before a public hearing and ran that formula against Micron's Fab 1, a project he priced at $89 billion. The answer was $69 million - a sum the town would be legally required to spend on inspections alone, on a project the fee code's ordinary-development math was never built to handle. Bick told the room plainly there was no precedent for fees at this scale. That collision - an ordinary-scale rulebook meeting machines of an entirely different magnitude - is not confined to one hearing. It runs through everything Clay's Town Board has done in 2026. A battery-storage law has spent six months loosening its own numbers - a setback distance, a response-time requirement - because the versions modeled on ordinary industrial uses did not fit. A zoning code with categories for solar farms and cell towers has no category at all for data centers, artificial intelligence computing or cryptocurrency mining, which is why the board's only tool has been a temporary moratorium rather than a permit process. And the single largest dollar figure in this record, the $30 million Community Host Agreement tied to Micron, was moved and seconded on July 7 - and then, according to the minutes as released, never put to a recorded vote before the meeting adjourned. The battery-storage law shows the strain most clearly because the board has had to keep rewriting it. On Jan. 21, the Town Board voted 7-0 to call Feb. 2 hearings on three applications: Nexamp's proposed Wetzel Road Storage and Long Branch Storage facilities, using Tesla Megapack batteries tied into the National Grid system, and Carson Power's project on Goguen Drive. At the Feb. 2 hearing, the code's assumptions met an industry the town had never dealt with before: Nexamp's Olivia Sproviero said the units run about 75 decibels, and that the company's emergency dispatch team is based in Massachusetts, 6 to 8 hours away, though she said it could reach Clay in about 4. Residents pressed on the burden that would put on volunteer fire departments and asked the board to deny the applications or impose a moratorium. All three were referred to the Planning Board, which by Feb. 25 was recommending the town not act on individual applications until a comprehensive ordinance existed. "I am not in favor of current approval," Deputy Chair Mitchell said, citing unresolved questions about siting, screening and whether volunteer firefighters were trained for this kind of emergency. The Town Board froze new BESS decisions for six months with Local Law No. 3, adopted 7-0 on April 6, and began drafting a permanent law the same night. That draft kept changing. By May 18 - the fourth revision, in Bick's own count - required setbacks from residential property had been cut from 100 feet to 50, and the mandatory emergency-response time had been loosened from one hour to two. Developers argued even that was too strict: Nexamp's John O'Hern said a two-hour requirement was tighter than the state fire code's own four-hour standard, and attorney Sara Yoon, representing Aurora Renewables, filed repeated letters objecting to the setback and wetlands language. By June 1, Bick reported no changes since a fifth draft had been posted, and the board adjourned the hearing again, to July 20 - taking the three original 2026 applications with it, six months after they were filed. That same June 1 meeting, without having closed the book on batteries, the board opened an entirely new front: a hearing, set for June 15, on Local Law No. 6, a moratorium of up to 12 months on "large-scale data centers, artificial intelligence ('AI') computing facilities, cryptocurrency mining operations, and similar high-intensity computing uses" - a category the town code had never defined until this law tried to. At the June 15 hearing, Bick said the proposal predated Onondaga County's own announcement of funding for a study of such facilities. The IBEW contacted the town to oppose it; Councilor Young said the scale of electricity involved justified a pause, and residents Michele Bristol and Kris Beckett spoke in favor for the same reason. The minutes as released do not record a vote adopting Local Law No. 6; the following meeting's minutes reference an intervening June 29 special Town Board meeting that is not included in this record. Micron's own track moved furthest. On July 7, the board adopted Local Law No. 7, the fee-and-host-agreement law, 6-0, creating the $100,000,000 threshold and the voluntary host-agreement option the old fee code had no room for. Resident Paul Doody asked for a breakdown of the resulting Community Host Agreement: $20 million over three years plus $10 million in Green Chips spending dedicated to the town, a total of $30 million that Councilor Russell noted exceeds the town's own budget. Other residents raised construction-truck traffic on Morgan Road, and Aaron Schanbacher suggested the money go toward low-cost housing, restrooms at Meltzer Park and sewer extensions for residents who lack them. Then came the motion, the second - and, in the minutes as released, the adjournment, with no vote recorded in between. What to watch: the three original 2026 BESS applications and the still-unadopted battery-storage law are due back before the Town Board on July 20, 2026. Whether Local Law No. 6's data-center moratorium was ultimately adopted is not established by the record reviewed here, which points instead to a June 29 special meeting not included in it. And whether the board takes up a recorded vote on the Micron Community Host Agreement remains open in the minutes as released.