Clay, New York
· Tuesday, August 18, 2026· Aug 18, 2026
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📰 Editorials
On Liverpool's School Board, the Routine Vote Is Always 5-4 — the Real Ones Never Are
For fourteen straight routine items at its June 8, 2026 meeting, the Liverpool Board of Education split 5-4 on an identical line every time — but a tax-settlement tie, a failed motion to go into closed session, a job-cutting vote and two contested appointments over the following weeks show no coalition held twice.
●June 8, 2026: all fourteen routine business items (minutes, personnel actions, treasurer's reports, a budget transfer) passed on the identical 5-4 vote — Nicholas Blaney, Kimberly Martin, Daniel McKeever, John Solazzo and Alexandra Gyder voting yes each time; Jecenia Bresett, Stacey Chilbert, Kimberly Melnik and Matthew Jones voting no each time
●June 8: after two speakers addressed workforce reductions and early-retirement incentives during public comment, a motion to table a resolution abolishing an unspecified number of positions failed 3-4-1 (Blaney abstaining); the abolishment resolution itself then carried 6-2, with McKeever and Jones the only dissents
●June 8: the board voted 5-3 to appoint Michelle Merlino to fill the seat left by Kimberly Martin's resignation, effective June 30, 2026
●June 8: the meeting opened at 6:37 p.m. and did not adjourn until 12:34 a.m.
●July 7, 2026: at the annual reorganization meeting, newly elected members Dawn Curry-Clarry and Victoria Baratta and appointed member Michelle Merlino took their seats; Stacey Chilbert and Daniel McKeever no longer appear among members present; the board elected Alexandra Gyder as President and Kimberly Melnik as Vice President, both unanimously
●July 7: a motion to enter executive session later that night failed 3-5-1, with Gyder abstaining
●July 21, 2026: a proposed tax certiorari settlement with Target #1475 in the Town of Clay tied 4-4 and failed
●July 21: the board voted 5-3 to appoint Kimberly Vile as Deputy School Purchasing Agent and 2-5-1 to reject a routing-efficiency study contract with FEH BOCES
At its June 8, 2026 meeting, the Liverpool Board of Education worked through fourteen straight items of routine business — minutes, personnel actions, treasurer's reports, a budget transfer — and every one of them passed by the same 5-4 vote, with the same five members voting yes and the same four voting no each time. Nicholas Blaney, Kimberly Martin, Daniel McKeever, John Solazzo and Alexandra Gyder carried each item; Jecenia Bresett, Stacey Chilbert, Kimberly Melnik and Matthew Jones opposed each one. The minutes record no discussion attached to any of the fourteen votes and no stated reason for the dissents.
Then the routine business ended, and the lineup didn't survive contact with anything that mattered.
Later in that same meeting — which opened at 6:37 p.m. and did not adjourn until 12:34 a.m. — the board took up a resolution to abolish an unspecified number of positions. The minutes don't list which jobs or how many; the resolution is recorded only as the board's motion "pertaining to the abolishment of positions as presented." Two members of the public had addressed the board earlier in the meeting: Jody DelBrocco on incentives, and Jim McClenthan on what the minutes describe as current reductions in workforce and early-retirement incentives. A motion to table the abolishment failed 3-4-1, with Blaney abstaining and only McKeever, Solazzo and Jones voting to delay. When the resolution itself came up minutes later, it carried 6-2 — but the coalition had rearranged. Blaney, who had voted with McKeever and Solazzo on every routine item that night, now voted with Bresett, Chilbert, Melnik and Gyder to abolish the positions. Solazzo, who had just tried to table the item, voted for it. Only McKeever and Jones were left in opposition.
The same meeting produced the board's other unresolved business: word that member Kimberly Martin had resigned, effective June 30, 2026. The board voted 5-3 to appoint Michelle Merlino to fill her seat through May 18, 2027 — Bresett, Melnik, Blaney, Chilbert and Gyder in favor, McKeever, Solazzo and Jones opposed. In the space of one meeting, Blaney had gone from the routine-business majority, to the abolishment majority, to the appointment majority; Bresett, Chilbert and Melnik had gone from the routine-business minority to the abolishment majority to the appointment majority. No two of the night's contested votes broke down the same way twice.
By the board's July 7 annual reorganization meeting, the numbers changed again — this time because the seats did. Stacey Chilbert and Daniel McKeever no longer appear among the members present; newly elected members Dawn Curry-Clarry and Victoria Baratta had joined, alongside Merlino. The reconstituted board's first vote was its most unified of the year: it elected Alexandra Gyder as Board President and Kimberly Melnik as Vice President, both unanimously, with all nine members present voting yes.
The unity didn't last the night. A motion to enter executive session later in the same meeting — the routine language board members use to discuss personnel and legal matters behind closed doors — failed 3-5-1. Bresett, Solazzo and Jones voted to go into closed session; Blaney, Melnik, Curry-Clarry, Baratta and Merlino voted no; Gyder abstained. Every other executive-session motion in this record passed without recorded opposition. The minutes don't say why this one didn't.
Two weeks later, on July 21, the new board's fault lines sharpened again. A proposed tax certiorari settlement with Target #1475 in the Town of Clay — the kind of routine revenue item boards typically approve without controversy — tied 4-4 and failed. Bresett, Melnik, Gyder and Merlino voted for the settlement; Blaney, Jones, Curry-Clarry and Baratta voted against it. The same meeting split 5-3 to appoint Assistant Superintendent Kimberly Vile as Deputy School Purchasing Agent, with Bresett, Melnik and Baratta opposed, and 2-5-1 to reject a routing-efficiency study contract with FEH BOCES, with only Jones and Gyder in favor.
What the minutes support, and no more, is this: on a nine-member board that turned over three of its seats between June and July, the routine agenda repeatedly broke down on a clean numerical split — but the moment a vote touched money, a job, an appointment, or whether to leave the room, that split scrambled into something the record doesn't explain. Blaney anchored the routine-business majority in June, then helped sink the Target settlement and the FEH contract in July, while still joining every member in electing Gyder board president. Jones voted against abolishing positions, against the routing contract and against the Target settlement, then broke from those same members to vote for entering executive session. The minutes give the vote totals and the names attached to them; they do not explain why any member voted as they did. Whether any of these lineups holds a second time will show up the next time money, a job or a closed door is on the agenda.
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Coverage of the Editorials meeting on 2026-08-14,
Town of Clay, NY.
· Meeting record
Minutes report. Drafted by our AI minutes pipeline from the official minutes — the board's own record of the meeting — and checked against that record by an automated verification gate before publication.
●Town Board opened the public hearing on Case #1251, The Reserve at Clay (RA-100 to R-7.5 rezoning for ~61 lots on 20.18 acres at 8201 Lawton Road), May 18, 2026, then reopened it June 15 after a Planning Board recommendation; no final vote appears in the record.
●Applicant Cornerstone Homes CNY LLC, represented by Tim Coyer of Ianuzi & Romans, proposes demolishing the existing house at 8201 Lawton Road and building 61 lots around a loop road extending Harriet Fisher Drive, connecting to Lawton Road at the site's northeast corner.
●Commissioner of Planning and Development Brian Bender told the Town Board the parcel could yield only 8 to 10 lots if it stayed zoned RA-100, versus the 61 proposed under R-7.5.
●Planning Board recommended the zone change 5-1 on June 10, 2026 (Henty, Guinup, Palumbo, Mitchell and Chairwoman Borton in favor; Graves opposed, saying he would "go with the neighbors" and proposing RA-100 as an alternative) -- after two sessions (May 27 and June 10) in which the Town of Cicero, which shares jurisdiction over Lawton Road, never responded to Clay's outreach for comment.
●Onondaga County Planning Board found no significant adverse implications but recommended county health department/OCWA sign-off on wastewater extensions, walkable connections to the surrounding area, and stormwater facilities kept on their own lots.
●Residents at the May 18 Town Board hearing raised drainage, wildlife (including red-tailed hawks and blue herons) and trash concerns; applicant's representative Tim Coyer said state law bars new development from worsening a neighbor's drainage, and the Deputy Supervisor said there are no wetlands on the property.
●At the May 27 and June 10 Planning Board hearings, residents David Yates (5404 Brisbane Trail) and Nick Gallipeau (3201 Harriet Fisher Drive) objected to the loss of trees and to added traffic on Lawton Road.
●The minutes describe the applicant's traffic study two different ways four weeks apart: "no significant impact" on May 18, versus "there will be impact with this construction" on June 15; resident Chris Underwood told the Town Board the study dates to November 2024 and does not account for Micron-related traffic growth, and raised concerns about speed and unhelmeted e-bike riders on Lawton Road.
●July 7, 2026 Town Board, 6-0: adopted Local Law No. 7, the "Large-Scale Development Permit and Community Host Agreement Authorization Law," defining large-scale development as $100,000,000 or more in project cost and authorizing the town to negotiate voluntary Host Agreements instead of the standard fee formula
●During that hearing, Deputy Supervisor Bick told the board there is no precedent for fees at this scale, citing Fab 1's cost as $89 billion and the resulting permit fee as $69 million — money usable, under existing law, only for inspection costs
●The Host Agreement presentation given later the same night put Fab 1's construction cost at $8.9 billion with a $62 million fee under current code, a tenfold gap from the $89 billion figure cited earlier, with fee estimates that don't scale proportionally between the two
●The presentation's own risk analysis said Micron could sue to recover a fee it was forced to pay in full, and that a judge weighing only the town's actual cost of service — case law behind it, per the slides — could leave the town with far less than the formula implies
●Negotiation history per the presentation: an opening ask based on the $51 billion value of all four planned fabs (a formula fee near $273 million), the town's own initial request of $150 million over 15 years for the full project, before settling on Fab 1 alone for $30 million over three years ($20 million in three annual payments plus $10 million in Green Chips Act spending dedicated to the town)
●Resident Shelly Hotaling gave the board a different tally — $15 million for fees/inspections and $6 million for the town — and argued the agreement should go to a public referendum; Deputy Supervisor Bick said it would not go to a vote of residents
●Councilor Russell said the money involved exceeds the town's own budget; Deputy Supervisor Bick called the arrangement "a pioneer agreement, nothing like this currently exists" and said the town had done its own diligence "to ensure everyone benefits"
●Councilor Russell separately noted the agreement covers only the Fab 1 portion of Micron's larger, multi-fab project
●Immediately after Local Law No. 7 passed, Deputy Supervisor Bick moved adoption of the Community Host Agreement with Micron New York Semiconductor Manufacturing, LLC, seconded by Councilor Capria — the minutes as released record no vote on that motion before the next recorded vote, a 6-0 vote to adjourn at 6:17 p.m.
●Residents floated uses for the money — sewers, roads, parks, splash pads, low-cost housing, Meltzer Park restrooms, sound barriers, a citizens' advisory board — none committed by the law itself, which leaves spending beyond administrative costs "at the town's discretion"
●Jan. 21, 2026 Town Board, 7-0: called Feb. 2 public hearings on three battery energy storage system (BESS) special-permit applications - Nexamp's Wetzel Road Storage and Long Branch Storage projects and Carson Power's Goguen Drive project
●Feb. 2, 2026 Town Board: held the hearings; Nexamp's Olivia Sproviero said the batteries run about 75 decibels and that emergency dispatch, based in Massachusetts 6-8 hours away, could reach Clay in about 4 hours; residents cited the burden on volunteer fire departments and asked for denial or a moratorium; all three cases were referred to the Planning Board
●Feb. 25, 2026 Planning Board: recommended tabling BESS applications until a full ordinance exists; Deputy Chair Mitchell said he was "not in favor of current approval" pending answers on siting, screening and fire-department training
●April 6, 2026 Town Board, 7-0: adopted Local Law No. 3 (f/k/a No. 4), a six-month moratorium on new BESS zoning and special-permit decisions; same night called an April 20 hearing on a permanent Chapter 209 "Battery Energy Storage System Law"
●April 20-June 1, 2026: that law went through repeated revisions - by May 18, what Deputy Supervisor Bick called its "4th revision," required setbacks had been cut from 100 feet to 50, and the emergency-response requirement loosened from 1 hour to 2, even as Nexamp's John O'Hern argued the state fire code only requires 4; by June 1 it was a 5th draft with no further changes, and the hearing - along with the original three BESS applications - was adjourned again, to July 20
●June 1, 2026 Town Board: the same meeting that re-adjourned the still-unfinished BESS law, the board also called a June 15 hearing on Local Law No. 6, a proposed moratorium of up to 12 months on data centers, AI computing facilities and cryptocurrency mining - uses the existing zoning code does not otherwise address
●June 15, 2026 Town Board: held the hearing; Bick said the proposal predated Onondaga County's announcement of funding for a study of such facilities; the IBEW contacted the town to oppose the moratorium while Councilor Young and residents Michele Bristol and Kris Beckett spoke for it; the excerpted minutes record no vote adopting Local Law No. 6, and the next meeting's minutes reference an intervening June 29 special meeting not included in this record
●July 7, 2026 Town Board, 6-0: adopted Local Law No. 7, the "Large-Scale Development Permit and Community Host Agreement Authorization Law," covering projects of $100,000,000 or more; Bick told the hearing Fab 1 alone costs $89 billion against $69 million in old-formula fees, while the town's own presentation that night put Micron's planned four-factory campus at $51 billion
●July 7, 2026 Town Board: a Community Host Agreement with Micron New York Semiconductor Manufacturing, LLC - $20 million over three years plus $10 million in Green Chips spending dedicated to the town, a total Paul Doody's question put at $30 million, which Councilor Russell noted exceeds the town's own budget - was moved by Bick and seconded by Councilor Capria; the minutes record no vote on that motion, only that the meeting adjourned at 6:17 P.M.
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