The Town of Clay Planning Board voted 5-2 on April 23, 2025 to approve a drive-thru site plan for Tully’s Tenders at 3567 State Route 31 — a tally that hides how uneasy the majority was. Two members voted no outright, and three of the five who voted yes said, in the same breath, that they agreed the project posed a safety problem. Mr. Henty cast the first no vote after noting he had spent a lot of time on the project. "It is difficult to make a left out between the hours of 4 pm and 7 pm." He added: "The traffic study is not a safety study." Mr. Graves voted no as well, framing the restaurant’s own popularity as the problem: "Tully’s is a victim of their own food." He said the board had to balance the business’s success against the corridor’s safety. The three board members who voted yes did not dispute the safety concern so much as decline to act on it. Mr. McMahon said, "I am not comfortable with it but they acted in good faith and done the research so I am voting YES." Mr. Palumbo cited the applicant’s "due diligence" and how far the project had come. Ms. Guinup said she could not vote no against her own resolution. Ms. Borton said she was in favor of the site plan and "cannot think of a practical way to improve on the entrance." Chairman Russ Mitchell cast the fifth yes vote, and his explanation ran longer than everyone else’s combined. He said he was "disappointed" in the project and considers the Route 31 corridor a real safety issue that he drives regularly. He recalled that the board had "unanimously voted no approval for the drive thru originally" and had proposed alternatives that were "flatly turned down." He put it plainly: "I think the town board made mistakes and this project went ahead and now we have to live with it." He raised the precedent question directly: "What happens when someone else comes and wants a drive thru in that corridor. Precedence is being set with this." Much of his statement concerned the neighboring Niagara Car Wash and a dispute over shared ingress and egress; the minutes are not fully clear on the specifics, but Mitchell said he had spoken with the state and believes the town retains the ability to revisit driveway access later even after full mitigation has been granted for full access. He then said simply, "I don’t like it." He voted yes anyway. The vote followed a separate, unanimous 7-0 resolution declaring a SEQR negative declaration for the project. The site plan approval itself carries two conditions: wall signage is excluded from the motion, and no building permit can be issued until the project’s drainage easement is filed. The Town Board accepted that easement on April 7, 2025, according to Town Engineer Ron DeTota. The Tully’s vote came during a meeting Chairman Mitchell opened by warning that the board’s caseload — with some applications dating back to 2023 — had outgrown its old habit of adjourning cases from one meeting to the next. Going forward, he said, adjournments will be pushed out at least two meetings at a time, a shift tied to the volume of applications arriving as Micron’s chip-fab campus moves forward. The same meeting illustrated the backlog: a site plan for Equipment Share Syracuse, 7481 Henry Clay Blvd., was adjourned to May 14 for the ninth time, and a warehouse project at 4583 Buckley Road was adjourned to the same date for the twelfth. The board adjourned at 9:20 p.m.; its next regular meeting is scheduled for May 14, 2025.