Planning Board - Regular Meeting

All right, ladies and gentlemen, good evening and welcome to the 2 June meeting of the city of Rome planning board. I'd like to call the meeting to order. Meeting is called to order. Let's see item 1 review and approval of the 5 May 2026 planning board minute meeting minutes of the Rome planning board.

Make a motion to approve the meeting minutes from May 5th.

2nd, the motion all those in favor. I all those opposed. Motion carries unanimously. Public service announcement. In December of 2025, we set the meeting dates for 2026. We're generally on the first Tuesday of the month, like this month. However, in July, Our meeting is going to be on the 14th and in August, it's going to be on the 11th 4th of July holiday and tax grievance in July is pushing us out a week. We're going to be the 2nd Tuesday and then 9 August. We're going to be the 2nd Tuesday because of tax grievance day. is held on the first Tuesday. So that's going on at City Hall. So the conflict, like I said, in December last year, we rescheduled those meetings. I jumped right into the agenda. I forgot to do introductions. I'm Mark Esposito, Planning Board Chair, Vice Chair, Joe Calandra. We have board members, Brittany Formarola, Eric Gonzalez, and David Smith next to me. On this side, we have Garrett Wyckoff, City of Rome Community and Economic Development. We have Jim Rizzo, our corporation counsel. He's our attorney. Make sure everything's legal according to Hoyle. And we have Danielle Salisbury from the City of Rome Community and Economic Development. She supports us with IT and getting a lot of things. The whole operation would fall apart without Danielle. So thank you, Danielle. All right. Old business, we have none. New business, we have a site plan review of a request by Penrose New York Limited Liability Corporation to reaffirm a previously approved site plan for the construction of a 312,500 square foot mixed use development in Rome's waterfront district between Savoy Avenue and Washburn Boulevard and Baptiste Avenue. Petitioner, please come forward. The microphone probably needs to be turned on. Please speak into the microphone so that we're recording and we're live casting on YouTube. And there might be one, three or five people listening out there and we want them to be able to hear you.

Good evening. Angela Eicholtz on behalf of Penrose. I'm here this evening requesting an extension for the Copper Village site plan that was previously approved. There's been no changes to the site plan since it's been approved. We're simply asking for an extension this evening so that we can continue to secure our funding for the project.

I'm sorry, you just said it. What was your name again?

Angela Eichholz.

Angela. Thank you, Angela. Do you happen to know when this was approved?

I don't have the exact date off.

I believe it was spring of 2024. I forget the exact month. And then it's usually good for, well, it's usually good for 12 months. So this would be a reaffirmation and would reset that 1 year clock. And then if they needed further time, they could come back during that period and get an extension.

Okay. And what are the rules on extension? He's kind of our parliamentarian essentially.

It's at the it's at the discretion of the planning board. It basically says it expires within one year unless an approval before the expiration is approved by the planning board. And that's really all the code says. So it's basically discussionary.

Okay. Nothing has changed. Just the extension. Okay. I think that's any other questions?

I have a question. Do you anticipate coming to request multiple extensions or will the one year extension we give you today be sufficient to make progress on the project?

Based on the information that we have today, we believe that we'll be in a position to close on construction financing and put shovels in the ground third quarter of 2027. So that's when we expect to break ground.

Okay. So you likely need another... Absolutely. So, that's any other status so you've been work since the approval you've been working on securing funding and grants and working with the state and the county and the city.

Is there anybody still living in the trailer park? Or is it totally.

Um, I believe at this point it's been fully vacated. Um, there was one last move out. Um, and I, I think that's been complete, but I would need to confirm.

Okay. And there's, there's nothing that's been started that, you know, you guys haven't cleared anything.

Okay. Thank you. All right. Thank you, Angela. Appreciate it. Uh, You can leave it on, I think members of the community will give the opportunity any members of the community to like, to speak for against the project. Okay, can we get a motion regarding item? 3 site plan review Penrose for 312,500 square foot mixed use to extend their approval. I recommend extending it.

I second the motion.

All those in favor? Aye. Aye. All those opposed? Motion carries unanimously. Thank you. Good luck securing your funding. And we hope you break ground ASAP. Appreciate it. Let's see, public hearing request, Tarpon Towers, Verizon to construct 190 foot telecommunication tower facility with associated accessory equipment at 6507 Lowell Road, State Route 26. I believe, sir, we are going to do our public hearing. Are you the petitioner? Yes. And then so we're gonna do the public hearing, and then we're going to do the environmental review and site plan at that point, I think we'll invite you up. So please, thank you. Let's see. So public hearing request, I have to do three calls. Any members of the community public hearing request is open. Any member of the community like to speak in favor or opposing or any comments regarding Tarpon Towers, LLC, and Verizon to construct a 190-foot telecommunication tower facility with associated accessory equipment at 6507 Lowell Road, Verizon. So this is for a cell phone tower. Members' community, first call. Second call, cell phone tower at 6507 Lowell Road, State Route 26. Third and final call, members of the community like to speak for, against, or comment. Tarpon Towers and Verizon to construct a telecommunications tower at 6507 Lowell Road. None heard, none seen. The public hearing is closed. It does say telecommunications tower, cell phone tower, right, right. Okay, environment. Okay, so now, item five and six, the public hearing was item four on our agenda. Item five is the environmental review seeker and six is the site plan review. request by Tarpon Towers LLC and Verizon for the construction of a 190-foot telecommunications tower facility with associated accessory equipment at 6507 Lowell Road. Petitioner, please come forward and tell us about your project. So yeah, telecommunications tower is probably better, right? Because you could put cell towers, you could put a microwave dish.

Yeah. Either way, it's the same sort of thing.

Right, right.

Go ahead and grab the microphone.

Yeah, please speak into the microphone.

You want to stream it to YouTube to all of the, you know.

Handfuls of people adoring or maybe none more likely.

All right, I'm Steve, thank you though. Uh, everybody attorneys for. With the, uh, president, uh, also, um. So, yes, we have applied for for your 90 foot salt power communication facility. Um. And it'll be located 507 state 26, which is property owned by crazy little block company. And located in the city's general industrial district. Uh, the only way to be upon these with our powers, our owner.

And I think when you put in community infrastructure like this, Verizon would have to lease to AT&T or whomever else would.

Yeah, so they would design and put in the co-location in Miami.

Right. Right, right. Yeah, because we wouldn't want AT&T to build a tower right next to it when they're trying to

Yeah, probably.

This is from target powers. That's correct.

That's our business is to aggregate those characters. On location to then.

Right, right. Small part.

Yeah, if 9, 1, with the fire department or something needed, uh, yeah, yeah. Okay. Okay, sorry, I interrupted you, Steve.

Yeah, I'm just, you know, I'm going to get into a little bit, but the need is essentially. Radio frequency. And additionally, um, basically the, the sort of offload, um, over the area groups that are, that are in the city.

So, um, that's essentially what's driving it. They create a search area.

It's an ideal site.

Excellent. Thank you. I'm just looking at this. Sorry to interrupt you, but so it looks like we've got a three-legged tower, 190 feet, 194 with the lightning rod. So that's under 200 feet. So we don't need lighting, right, for air obstruction.

Yes, correct. It's very rare in patients who are in towers.

only reason why i think about it is there's a small rural private use air isn't there a little airstrip out there i think doesn't david or duke i think he's down there in south rome there might be a small private little no i don't know i've thought my head yeah maybe i'm

Just maybe the FAA would know if there is one. Yeah. Yeah.

Just tuck that away and, you know, look, look around. And, you know, when you're talking to the FAA, make sure there's contemplated that.

Yeah.

Let's see. So you're bringing commercial power and you're going to bring in commercial fiber or something.

Yes.

Any generator battery backup on site would be Verizon.

PREDOMINANTLY.

PROPANE IS PROBABLY A LOT BETTER IF YOU HAVE A LEAK. IT JUST EVAPORATES. YOU DON'T HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT CONTAINMENT, DIESEL. YEAH, YEAH.

OKAY.

ALL RIGHT. I INTERRUPTED YOU WITH QUESTIONS.

Is there any battery? Maybe a small battery to handle so there's no interruption if you do lose power.

Is it always running off the battery? You can wire that and connect that in different ways, right? So you're always charging the battery and then always running off the battery. Then if you lose power, the system doesn't even really know because you lose the grid, the generator comes on. It doesn't know because it's been operating off the battery the whole time. I see, I think your colleague's nodding affirmatively. Okay.

Yeah, yeah. What's in your house?

It's about 800 to 850 linear feet to the nearest residential structure from the proposed location.

What type of generator? Is that expect out yet? Generator?

Propane.

It's noted on the plans.

Is it in a cabinet like a Generac, or is it, it's probably a bigger, they have like an exhaust stack, I think, but I'm trying to think of.

It's a cabinet, it's almost similar to an all-matter generator. That's why I didn't say nothing else.

It's a 50 kilowatt generator.

50 kilowatt?

I think we typically have, we request the third party engineering analysis on these. So I think the city has been trying to get in touch with some firms. How does that work? The city?

Yeah. So we, yeah, so we will, we send out a request for proposals to a few different engineering firms. And once we get, get a couple back, we'll choose the, the lowest responsible proposal and we'll give a copy of it to you guys, set up an escrow account to cover the review within reason. And the plan would be to have B, have them at the planning board meeting on July 14th. Just to answer any questions you guys have, it's pretty much a standard procedure.

Just review the documentation that was submitted. And maybe have them do a noise analysis.

Yeah, we can ask them about noise analysis. If you guys want to submit a noise analysis, that's also easily doable. Like I said, that's a pretty standard procedure.

It starts in details. Where do you put it? Do you put slides in it? Screening? No, it would be just a . So we can provide a study letter.

Sure.

I'm just wondering .

Not an engineer, but just off the top of my head from what I know of the way that sound attenuation works over distance, I SUSPECT THAT IT PROBABLY WOULDN'T END UP MATTERING ALL THAT MUCH. IT'S SOMETHING LIKE DOUBLING THE DISTANCES MEANS IT'S LIKE ONE QUARTER THE SOUND OR SOMETHING ALONG THOSE LINES. SO ONCE YOU'RE OUT PAST A COUPLE HUNDRED FEET.

YEAH, IT'S A SQUARE LAW. IT GETS LOW PRETTY QUICK. I'M SURE THE SLATS WOULD MAYBE ATTENUATE A LITTLE BIT. I DON'T THINK IT WOULD MAKE IT ANY LOUDER. That's a good point on the odd sound.

Yeah, but I think that given the distances that we're able to achieve to the property lines, I think that people outside sell as much as possible. Absolutely.

And for what it's worth, I will note that the other side of the property is an active state dot, like warehouse and material storage where they've got trucks coming in and out. So it's there are other noise generation uses that are already in that area.

Any other comments or inputs on environmental seeker water runoff you're not going to have a large concrete pad or driveway or anything yeah and you're going to sink some uh foundations yeah Yeah, what about, yeah, what about access for emergency and if there's a fire and the fire department's got to get back there?

Yeah, so this has been sent to all the, all departments for potential comment, and we have circulated it for seek review. We started that clock, so that'll be completed by the July 14th meeting. I believe the rules in the outside district, which this is, are you can do gravel driveways and things along those lines, but there's a requirement for, I think it's 20, I want to say it's like 20 feet of like a pavement apron. Yeah, of hard surface just to prevent gravel getting pulled out onto the roadway.

Do you have a detail on what the gravel road is going to be? And I think just make sure that engineering city engineering, make sure it's adequate for fire apparatus.

Okay.

It's probably designed for, like, fire truck and right here. Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Yep.

Sounds like it's already built in.

Okay. No, it's just going to the back of the block. It just sort of circled around the back there. Okay.

I haven't gotten a response from them yet. It has gone, the documents have gone out to them asking for it, but the fire department obviously looking for our site plans is not the highest thing on their priority list, I'm afraid.

Okay. Any other questions? Comments? Anything you'd like to tell us that we have? Sure.

The coverage at one minute post hour seems to be covering a larger area for coverage. I think it's going to be similar. There might be differences

You're really kind of limited because the phones have to talk back. So, right if the. You can't do like, you know, if the tower sending a signal out. But if the phone can't reach, so it's kind of a. A lot of diminishing return, I would think, right?

I think it shows that. Right, right.

It may also just benefit from the fact that most of that area is South Rome. Well, flat and also very low line. That's why there's so many wetlands in that area is just low elevation.

So it might be bigger coverage because the line of sight and no obstructions. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

The additional power has strong areas as well. Okay, so I think make sure due diligence on lighting. You're going to work with the FAA on that. Sound analysis. Anything else?

Lighting with make sure lighting FAA, make sure engineering, um, yeah, review on the road for emergency fire department. Police are going to look at it. And, uh.

Sorry, did you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Or just take a look at it before you come back. Yeah, make sure that's fair. Go ahead. Just don't see. You can probably talk with Riley. He's very helpful.

He's chief now, Mike, right?

There's multiple right? Yes.

Oh, oh, Timmy.

Yeah. yeah you can certainly reach out i see what you mean it looks like they could go in and then back around the building and typically the concern is that they drive in yeah yeah it's fire department and tim riley's probably a good yeah

POC for you. All right. Anything else? Great points, everyone.

Yeah, all of the site plan requests get sent to Tim Riley and Mike Riley, who's the new chief. So they both have received it as a chance to have a chance to comment on it. yeah so we did send for 239 review and i believe it came back with no recommendation which is pretty standard um i'll double check tomorrow when i follow up uh an email and if i've i've got that i'll include that in my email so i think we're gonna table uh this because we're waiting on the seeker

And some other engineering and probably next month, I think July.

Yes. July 14th, I anticipate it'll be ready for a vote. As soon as I can get the quote number for the third-party engineering review, I'll be in touch with you guys to set up the escrow. I don't anticipate it'll be huge. They're just reviewing what you guys submitted.

I'm going to submit a fact back.

Yeah, they'll give a memo, and you guys will get a copy of it. Like I said, it's mostly just so that the planning board has done its due diligence. It's standard procedure.

Okay, so I think we're going to table items five and six, environmental and site plan. Before we do that, members of the community, any comments on this project? I don't think we, well, we did a public hearing, but give the public another opportunity. None heard. All right. Item five.

I'll make a motion to table items five and six.

Second.

All those in favor? Aye. Okay. That puts items five and six on the table. Thank you. Hopefully we'll see you next month and be ready to go.

Yep.

All right. Next is a public hearing request by national grid for two lot minor subdivision. At 310 and 312 South James Street, like to call the public hearing to order. First call, any members of the community like to speak for, against, or any general comments, request by National Grid for a two lot minor subdivision at 310 to 312 South James Street. Second call public hearing request any members of the community national grid to lot minor subdivision 310312 South James Street. 3rd and final call public hearing any members of the community like to speak for against or. just make general comments regarding two-lot minor subdivision at 310, 312 South James Street. And that's the third and final call. Public hearing is closed. Petitioner, come forward. Environmental Seeker Review and Subdivision Review, National Grid for two-lot minor subdivision, 310, 312 South James Street, items eight and nine on our agenda. Good evening and welcome.

Good evening . I think it's still on.

There we go. All right. My name is Nolan Koukouris with Bonchenek and King, attorneys for National Grid. This is a minor subdivision application involving a 1.8 acre parcel. The address is South James Street, but really what we're talking about for the subdivision is... off of Ridge road to the Northwest of the parcel. So, um, I think you've got it.

Yeah.

So it's, it's an irregularly shaped parcel. It involves kind of what's behind those, um, buildings down at the bottom portion and it kind of goes across into James street there. So the portion of the property that, um, national grid is, um, looking to purchase is on the Northwest of the property so it's uh in that bottom left corner off of Ridge Street and it's that little strip that goes up yep that right there uh so that's uh two tenths of an acre uh and then there'd be uh one and a half acres remaining to uh the parcel senior Center correct right so uh yeah the uh remaining parcel there's there's a portion that kind of goes back down into um uh ridge street between the senior center and the building that's on the corner and then um at the back it connects to james street so it's um The purpose of the subdivision is for a construction of a gas regulator station. National Grid is proposing. It's currently in the design process, so we anticipate coming back to the board for site plan and special permit approvals at a later date. once the designs finalize. So for purposes of tonight, we're just seeking the subdivision approval so that National Grid can close on the property and obtain site control.

And then come back with the site plan in secret. Correct. Okay. Questions, anyone? Minor subdivision? So if we approve, that becomes the final on a minor subdivision? subdivision request any comments questions looks like none um i think we have what we need thank you okay we did a public hearing but uh in light of this information being presented any members of the community And then we do community economic development comments.

The proposed subdivision is compliant with minimum lot sizes and dimensional standards for the C1 local commercial district. Therefore, our department recommends issuing a seeker negative declaration and approving the proposed plat as presented.

Get a motion on the environmental seeker.

Make a motion to issue a negative declaration for the seeker.

Second. All those in favor? Aye. All those opposed? Motion carries unanimously. subdivision review request this minor subdivision once we approve that becomes the final make a motion to approve as presented second all those in favor aye all those opposed motion carries unanimously good luck we'll see you sometime in the near future um let's see it looks like we're in the home stretch here we've got uh two items left we have a public hearing request and a recommend Two public hearings and two requests to the City of Rome Common Council. First one, I'd like to call to order a public hearing request regarding ordinance number 9867, authorizing the creation of a residential plan development PD-R7900-7902 Turin Road. So that's first call, public hearing request. Second call, public hearing request. Regarding ordinance, city ordinance 9867, creation of a public planning, residential planning development district. 7900 to 7902 Turin Road, that's the second call. Third and final call, public hearing. City ordinance 9867, plan development at 9700-9702 Turin Road. Okay, none heard. That closes the public hearing. um now we make a recommendation do we have the petitioner come i believe there is a representative from nascentia that's here uh to present yeah if yeah if you could come and tell us about the project and uh and so you're requesting the common council to create a pd and we're going to make a recommendation to them based on

your presentation here and answering any questions we might have yeah that sounds perfect so i'm mike lascell with mbl engineering we've been working on this project for a minute we have uh cheryl manna here the ceo of nascentia and tom dixon with dixon builders who is in charge of the full development and construction so we have those people present with any questions but um you have it well you'll have it up on the screen I'm sure but I'll use this for a second so I think everybody's seen this plan okay good so you can see the the blue or I'm sorry the red outline is kind of the PDD area that we're shooting for uh which includes all the the residential housing development portion of it so what it is is there's 30 there's 30 30 uh 34 duplex buildings area there's six single family uh dwelling buildings and there's six six plex type buildings so it's kind of a mix of all type residential um of dwellings that fit well in this property so in the code r1 is so one and two it's one and two but uh the six plexes are considered attached single family for the purposes of the code because they all have their own entrance and their own

If they're on their own parcels.

So would that still be an R1?

So that's still allowed because the TAP single family is allowed. If it was... single entrance and then the interior corridor moved into different apartments, that would be multifamily and that wouldn't be allowed. But as long as everything's on its own parcel and has its own entrance, it counts as attached single family because it's basically just... Yeah, it's multiple units, attached units together.

So I think this blue line that you see here is important. That's where we have the R1-A versus the institutional. You see even the sixplexes, a lot of them are in the institutional, but It's easier, we incorporated everything in that red zone. And really two things happening with the PDE, why we requested it. A, our front setback, our frontage for those six plexes, for your attached units for frontage, you require 50 feet, and we actually are showing 20. So that's one of those requests of why the PD was needed. Again, looking at these lots, we have 20 feet, which is the width of the structure, the actual dwelling unit. So that's our frontage versus 50 feet where they're looking to have one sixplex on one larger property.

So that's one.

one request and then the second request is the duplexes require 15 foot side yard for attached dwelling units so zero lot line in the center 15 on one side we only have 10 to fit this kind of what we consider a little bit of a cluster development and kind of squeeze everything in i think it's important to see because of that we opened up this large central area right here for a community area for kind of this duplex side and single family side which includes a pool you know bocce ball courts a pavilion um and just a lot of amenities for the for that community we have the same thing similar over here where we have a pool and a pavilion and then a shared pickleball court area uh down away from the residential um from there to to get them down by this actually our maintenance building uh that's existing there today uh there is a fully looped walking path that goes through the entire and essential kind of complex that is proposed through this whole area. And we worked with the DEC actually to go even through this one wetland. So this is a DEC regulated wetland. We've had it delineated and flagged. It's actually under a general permit. We're able to go right through it. So they're all on board. So that worked well too. So again, I think that's where we're moving in terms of the PD. Obviously, I think if anybody's been over there, there's obviously been a lot of work on this complex on this side. There's some more proposal stuff that will come in front of the planning board as kind of a standalone and parallel project. Which will be some parking and some other improvements over here to support the beaches.

Yeah, the main building, the beaches is came out really nicely. Yeah, they've done really good. So, and then the same thing, I think they're started construction on the end and renovations and. Yeah, it's right.

So that ends on its own line here. the beaches area and then you also have the office area for an Essentia where all these buildings are actually being proposed to be demoed and in process right now with demo permits.

And it looks like you're keeping, there were some office buildings and are you tearing any of those down or kind of all those? You are taking some of those down.

So this is the main one that they're keeping.

Okay.

And then these ones they've already are out of and they were very poor shape and they weren't original. Those were like built way after and not built very well. So all of these are actually being demolished

Okay.

Right. I think the demo permits have been pulled. Yeah, everything's been pulled for that. So those are in process now being removed. And obviously, if anybody went out there, they saw last year that we got rid of a lot of the trees and did all the grubbing. So we went through the DEC and got permitted for that to clear those trees while we could in the timeframe to do that. So with staying out of the wetland, obviously. So that work was all done. So the site is a stabilized site ready to kind of go on the infrastructure side is our main thing right now.

So I think R1 has, they want an 8,000 square foot lot size. Are you meeting that? I mean, again, you're not going R1, but the one half is, it's kind of sort of equivalent to a R1.

I think I consider attached R1 single family.

Yeah, attached is 2,500, but for single family, it's 8,000.

Exactly. Yeah. So that's where it cuts it down a lot. And we are meeting that. We actually are at 5,000.

So we're meeting for the single fit. We got six single family. Those are over.

So we go over to the single family column and our minimum area would be 8,000 and we are at 28,000. So yeah, these are, well, these lots go into the wetland area that are not really usable.

I'm sorry. Keep going. I have a couple.

No, I think, I mean, the overall, that's the overall of it. The stormwater, we have a full slip. We provided a trip generation from our traffic engineer. So, I think all those things have really been thought about stormwater work really good. It's all gravel out there. It's really great sites all type a soils.

So, I mean, this is for the PD, and then they'll come back with secret insight plan and all that.

So, the secret will be handled by the common council as part of PD, because it covers the entire project. Okay. Um, they will come back with. And I believe site plan, basically, the common council takes our responsibilities for site plan as part of the PD because it's all wrapped together, but they will come back for subdivision approval because it's more than 4 lots that are being created as part of this. So they'll come back for major subdivision approval.

1 thing I noticed is the pickleball courts. I know people kind of post on social media. They, I've never really been around. Uh, but they, the ping, ping, ping, ping, that kind of drives people crazy. Have you thought, you know, you're getting awful close to, uh, beach street houses. Yeah. You think, I don't know what you consider some sound abatement.

Um, I, we can, I will look and I have, I can actually look at an elevation there. I think we're a considerable amount lower. We're so much lower than that area.

I think that'll do a lot of it, but we can right now, I think the house, the last house is pretty far away, but if I, you know, someday they may extend that and put more houses over there. And yeah, there's, I know you guys want to be a good neighbor.

yeah well we'll look into that and any kind of plannings and then also just looking at the elevation itself um i think will help uh mitigate that what's that elevation difference uh i can actually tell you i have the drawing set right here yeah

Well, there's noise city has noise ordinance, right? That would still apply. So I think we're thinking a little bit about, you know, hours of playing pickleball and city has noise ordinances that would probably cover. See.

variances have a specific standard that they they required to meet under the uh under the requirements from new york state like new york state sets the requirement and really they're intended to be a sort of last result adjustment um rather than for a a plan thing um legally speaking they would prefer a planned development to a variance variances are supposed to be sort of uh last resort and i think a bigger problem here part of it is

What was the other part?

Well, you would ask for a variance for all units too. So you have hundreds. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You'd have to do every variance there.

And what is the 1 part is our 1 and the other part is institutional institutional had that right?

So institutional actually allows. The 6 bucks buildings as they are, they can see that line, but it's just, it's very clean.

Yeah, I think you can do it this way for you want to have it all in 1 and have it all 1 big PD.

So, is that the goal to have?

Yes, that's that's kind of the reason that plan development exists. Um, it. It also has the benefit of bringing the city into the conversation in terms of design more so than it would with a simple site to plan review and things like that because it's. Whereas site plan, we're looking specifically at code clients and things like that PD is really a discretionary thing on the part of the part of the common council. So, yeah.

Water you have enough the main is big enough. You've kind of thought through all that.

So you remember correctly when they, the city just did an upgrade along powder road. That was really anticipation of this project. So they weren't with essentially to get funding for that. And that was done last year.

We worked through that for the sewer gravity or do you have to gravity?

Actually, there's a gravity manhole right here and that was also part of that project is the plan for that tie into that manual. So the entire sewer system here has been in front of the city engineering. That site's approved. It's the water system approval for our water extension. For the city is in the Department of health right now. So that's going through that process.

Awful lot of residences here. What about traffic study on powder road?

Uh, we didn't do anything on traffic study on powder road. We put a trip generation together for this. Um, and I did provide that. I don't have a hard copy of it, but we actually had all the traffic studies for the cherry street project. Is that what it was?

Just not street.

There we go. Um, so we, the, my traffic engineer reviewed all of that to see how it kind of played in. Um.

I'm sorry, where's chestnut street project just to do with this?

It's just to the South and it gives you a good estimate of of trips. They did a full, they did all these intercepts like they did as part of the, the traffic analysis for the chestnut street study. They did the adjacent streets. As part of it, including Potter, because Potter would be the. was part of the overall study area.

Chestnut Street's the core of it. Chestnut Street's waste. There's no connection from Chestnut directly up to here.

Correct, but the Chestnut Street corridor study included several areas to the north and south.

Yeah, so we used that without going out to do a new traffic study. That one's not very old. We had all the data, all these intersections that we were able to review.

That was completed in 2024, I believe, so it's fairly recent.

Okay. And... Okay.

and you haven't so you haven't done anything as far as potter road with the lanes traffic well yeah we knew what the traffic was based off that chestnut study and then he put together a trip generation which um gts consulting is who we use and the trip generation based off of this in the clientele in the market of this facility uh our trips you know they're i think our peak is a 16 trips per hour so it's very

yeah you know we had some questions in the pre-meeting is this a 55 plus community it's it's it's orchestrated for senior living right there's 55 going to work

I don't think they're going to have like a deed restriction for that on the sale of a home where it gets a little bit challenging with the HOA and deed restricting that. But the entire community is really driven towards that. So that's how we looked at it. I don't know if you want to add anything.

There's a lot of talk of that. That's the intention of it is this thing is designed for a 55-kilometer community. Right.

I don't think there's any restrictions.

That's your intention, but it's not deed restricted, right?

There's more sale units.

So, and then I think you all do some assisted living and thing that none of that's any part of home care. Is any of that service part of this PD?

So our offices are in that building. We've been on the property since 2012.

So, could you tell us a little bit about the kind of what kind of services you buy a home in there? What kind of what you have to is that a separate fee or does that come with? So, like, H. O. A. fee.

So, sometimes insurance will cover it. So, I'm kind of here with a. Try to choose to cover it either service. But, yeah, services are there so somebody has a hospital stay or an issue.

That's a fee for service for home care to have like a nurse in the home to help you. You offer that service outside the essential complex or just.

So, it's in the home, so the goal is to keep people right.

Right. But if someone live, let's say it on a beach street or somewhere else in the community. Yeah, you can have in homes care.

Interesting. So, I kind of.

And the plan is to eventually have a primary care clinic in September.

So we have one down in Syracuse and we'll have an extension, primary care, focus on geriatric services.

Okay. So it really makes that neighborhood.

Yeah.

Connect.

I have a question. Com, you're going to have, I don't know, like spectrums are going to be offered for phone and cable and all that kind of standard city. natural gas electric are going to be all electric right now natural gas and electric pretty heavily we have the state had some legislation but i think they've postponed it in act yeah any other quest board members you get a question so there's i think three existing access roads to this property are you going to be adding additional access roads yep so right now well you have the one

no that's okay danielle can you zoom in on this for me yeah just the entrances yeah yeah yeah you can look at those uh so those are those top i guess let's call it three right so you have these three opposing streets yep And you have an existing access right here that they used to get to the over the beaches. Yep. That access is very skinny. Sure.

Right.

So the intention here is to pull some of that traffic and get the traffic away from everybody driving about their entrances. We're putting this entrance in here, which is serious and clear. And that's what this next project is that we was talking about right in front of you guys. Okay. So that would be the main entrance for the beaches. Gotcha. You still have the entrance down here. Right. And then for us, we have two more entrances lined up on the residential. So these are the residential entrances, gated community-style entrances. This one here and this one servicing this, which creates a nice loop. So both of these access points line up very nicely with the current intersections.

Is that key card or are people going to have to call? I was just going to ask. It's secure?

It'll be probably an occupancy sensor on your car or a key card or something like that or a code. Okay.

So there's no connection between this community and the center. The beaches and the end, right?

Right.

Although yeah, the perimeter path.

So, in front of these houses, sidewalks.

So, right now, when we get done. it's it's not a very like i said six to seven peak or 16 peak hour trips that means in one hour 16 years so very low traffic right because they're not going to get the kids to school they're not taking the kids to sports there's not a lot of a lot of trip counts coming and they're not usually lined up everybody doesn't believe in seven to eight and four to five So we found a couple of larger ones that we've done. You didn't need specific sidewalks to keep people on. You have the walking trail. Anybody walking around here, the roads are 24 foot width. And we find that if they have a shoulder, that's where people are moving around. Now, we can work through that. It's not a recurring infrastructure proposal in terms of cost.

How about lighting for that area, too?

Yeah. So there is all low street lights for this whole facility, of course. Yeah.

Well, that was.

the gates and owns all the community areas they typically manipulate controls you know along the plowing so this is not a city of her own road it's a private so i think that's the key here yeah from a code perspective that's the the difference i was just going to jump in but so new public rights of way have to have sidewalks but since this is a private right-of-way it's essentially a driveway um or a shared driveway just shared by a lot that restriction doesn't come into play

So, the individual, like the single family homes, you're going to, someone's going to buy that, you're going to deed that to them?

Any of them.

And the same on the duplex?

And the sixplex.

And the six, so I'm going to have a deed to one-sixth of the, with my own entrance and exit.

So the HOA is really driven off of you know, you have 110 units and the HOA is one 110th. So if this building is owned by Accenture, the whole thing, it's they're paying six of the one tenths fee on the HOA. So it's just a divvy up like that. So if you buy a unit with pay that HOA fee, that covers a raise kind of flies that way.

Oh, wow.

And it's h-o-a gets you know there will be deviations yeah you can't go in there and change the color obviously can't do it do this you know all those things there'll be a whole laundry list of clothes um there's a whole hoa thing that's going on right now yeah we don't have a lot of hoas in this community and uh yeah they're less common up here you do see a lot of them down south though yeah it's very common

So if you got a six blocks and the roof goes, you split it six ways or the HOA makes the difference?

You own your roof. You own the roof and you own the ground underneath you. So I have actually done another test in HOA and we own the roof, the walls, everything. Anything that roof, it's yours.

And there's sort of like a firewall in between them?

Yeah, they're partition walls. That's a single driveways, you have your own driveway. I think, I mean, garage is an alligator. Yeah, we've had it both ways. But you know, all of these, everybody has their own driveway everywhere. Six by six, own driveway, own property line. You own the property, but the HOA maintains.

Yeah.

So I think that's it.

So the HOA is going to do the lawn and the snow. Are they going to brush the car off for the seniors too? Yeah.

trash is private yeah the city's haulers not it's all right right right so where do you put the trash basically in like that you're going to pick it up right there no i'm guessing they're going to have some sort of facility for them to operate and then have a hauling company come in yeah to get it there are people going to do it right down there

We just did one of these, one that's actually operational now. We cleaned it and they actually towed it. Trash got out to the road. We had to build a separate building. That's the trash that we actually, on that one, we actually made all the deliveries come there. So we weren't getting a lot of Amazon UPS traffic in the facility.

Is it similar to that site?

It's Morty, probably.

Morty?

Yeah.

So what's, I mean, when are you going to participate in the HOA fees? And what about the housing property tax? Same.

Same. The HOA has their own fee because they own the property, and then every individual person has their own. Same with the water meter. The individual person has their own water, electric, gas. They all have their own accounts. The water line has been gone through this. The water and sewer are really owned by the city because they don't want to own the sewer line. And so the city has a right-of-way throughout the whole development for their sewer and their water. They have the ability to go in if they need to.

National grid has a right-of-way for the gas and electric.

Everything is just right-of-ways. Most of it's only on HOA properties with right-of-ways, so it keeps a little set of models and have all these written in. But policy is for me.

All right. Yeah, yeah.

It's a significant amount. And that's where this is driven towards that senior, older community. Now, when you say 55 plus, I think that's old. That's young. Yeah, I know. Right, Smitty? I don't want to call it significantly 55 plus. That's what I'm saying. But that's the person that the kids have moved out. You're trying to downsize them. Yeah. they hang out, they have their health care, and they have community all tied in one. I just looked, it was about 25 feet of elevation change from here to here, but I'll confirm that. I'm going off of memory of when we were planning this, understanding the elevation, and my zoomed in plan stopped right here, but I'll confirm that.

Yeah, from here to here, 30 feet. So they're going to see a little bit of privilege.

These people don't see each other very much. No. No. Like you can't. When you're near where this is all clear, and there's trees up, you can't see them at all. They're in the fall. So what about your pickleball table? Right here. Down in the hole. So if you're climbing up significant grade and you're climbing up this way, You wouldn't even notice that right now. You don't even see it. You guys shed. And that's where all their debris is now. They store all their debris, such as trees and troughs and everything. All their lawn maintenance happens from here.

Let me come on here. It's got a little flexibility.

Thanks for all the information. Yeah, thank you.

Yeah, excellent. We kind of augured in and asked a lot of questions, but I think it was good, yeah. Now, how do we take all of this conversation that we've had and put that in a recommendation of the Common Council? That's our...

I'll tell you, I remember he said it from Georgia. I don't think we get anything to change.

Yeah.

I think it should be.

It's just, you know, maybe the first 50 times we got granted.

so the the the options presented under the code for recommendations are approvals proposed approval with modifications uh or recommend rejection um you could the two options that i think the board could do if they're leaning towards uh an approval would you could do approvals proposed and then just include a note um in the letter that sent to the common council saying suggest considering sidewalks or you could do approval with modifications recommend the additional sidewalks depending on how How much emphasis do you want to put on it?

I would think one side would be adequate.

Did we want to do anything on sound abatement around Pickleball or maybe try to do a sound analysis, make sure that any sound there is not going to impact the folks in the other neighborhood there? Because I think they're going to be closer to the homes on Beach Street than the homes in the PD.

Yeah.

And again, I think that would just be a recommendation of the common council and then working through the design and all with you all, they'd have that recommendation to, Hey, think about this, make sure it's addressed and mitigated and, uh, and they, they'd be the ultimate adjudicator. We're just making a recommendation and they could say, you know, thank you. We don't want to do that.

Yeah.

Oh, so it's going to be, and then the HOA could put restrictions on time of use and things.

Yeah, yeah.

So I don't, we don't get a comment from community economic development. Members of the community, anyone have any given other chance? We had a public hearing, but no. All right.

or I think a motion to issue a recommendation with- To approve.

Yeah, we recommend, the planning board's recommending- Recommend a pool with- Yeah, sidewalks on one side of the street and sound mitigation around the pickleball courts. All right, can we get a motion on that? You captured that. He's writing it.

I'll second it. Okay. I made the motion.

Okay. All those in favor? Aye. All those opposed? Motion carries. We're going to get a recommendation of the common council and then you're going to work with them. They're going to create a PD or not. Joe proposed and Brittany. Yeah, they're gonna, you know, contemplate and give you a PD or not. Our recommendation is that they do with thinking about sidewalks and some sound mitigation. Other than that, I mean, it looks, you know, water, sewer, you guys sounds like you've done a lot of due diligence on traffic and other things. So, appreciate everything that NSENCH has done so far and look forward to more good things. I'm over 55. I might move right in over there. I don't know. I'm that old. Weren't you graduating high school when I was born? Oh, OK. And back to our agenda. We're in the home stretch here, folks. All right. We've got a public hearing on a six month moratorium to establish Installation construction of a battery energy storage systems within the city of Rome. So this is, let's see, public hearing regarding ordinance 9869, authorizing a six month moratorium with respect to establishment installation, construction of batteries. Okay, so this is the common council wants six months to address and include in the city code battery storage systems like we did a few years ago with Solar. Yeah, but did you want you're going to after? Okay, so public hearing request going to open a public hearing request. First call ordinance 9869 authorizing a six month moratorium respect to battery energy storage systems within the city of Rome.

Is that on? Hello there you go.

Okay. Sorry. Good evening. My name is Brooke son to my right is own major and to my left is Hayden Butler and we are here on behalf of the city of Rome's youth common council to discuss the placement and use of lithium batteries in the city. The placement of these batteries have the potential to create a huge environmental disaster. While they are used as a renewable resource for energy and storage, the construction of these batteries call for a massive disruption of the surrounding environment and wildlife, pollution of nearby water supplies, and could put hazardous toxic chemicals into the waste treatment plant that would be hard to recycle through. These batteries could cause many environmental issues and safety concerns for our fellow residents, wildlife, and green space.

Although there are some positive aspects to having these batteries, such as providing the city with reliable backup power during outages, renewable resources, and decreasing the release of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. The placement would also bring up the important issue of how and if they, they could be properly disposed of and cared for. during inclement weather such as snowstorms, rain, heat, et cetera. Risks of thermal runaway are more likely than in property regulated facilities meant to protect against environmental stressors. In that case that the batteries are approved, what would the regulations be to ensure that cases like this do not occur? And if they did, what would the steps be to prevent damage to the surrounding area and its environment?

Hi, I'm Tatum Butler, and I'm just going to talk about some questions, concerns, and some background. As Owen Major had already previously said, I wanted to talk about thermal runaway, just give a little bit of background on that. So thermal runaway is the process that occurs when a battery system failure does occur, and it is caused by the overheating of the batteries, which can really... which can release gases so one of my questions is will there be gas detection systems in order to like check and see if the off gas like procession is given so would they be able to detect it and notice earlier on if the thermal like batteries were to be occurring if there would be thermal runaway so we could prevent that from occurring um another concern is that If a fire were to start, what would be the extinguishing process? So would the fire department have proper ways to reach this location as it is kind of close to Bellamy Harbor Park? Would they be able to? Is that correct?

Technically, the moratorium covers the entire the entire city and would be for drafting legislation. So what locations would be?

Yeah, this is not for any given project. This is for the common council to establish a code within the city code. Conditions and restrictions on battery electric storage systems.

Okay. So, yes, I apologize for that. We were given a possible location for that.

So, I think I've heard there's a possible. I'm sorry to cut you off. No, you're fine. I think I've heard that there is a possible project that is contemplating submitting.

Oh, did they submit to Beyond a Future? We've got one that has submitted a site plan for inclusion in the on the next agenda subject to the outcome related to moratoriums. There may be other projects that are in process that have begun the process of due diligence, property acquisition, things along those lines. They haven't gotten to the point of submission yet. This moratorium essentially would be a tap the brakes, hold off for six months while we adjust the code to accommodate this.

So what is in front of the planning board tonight? We're going to make a recommendation to the City of Rome Common Council whether or not to implement a moratorium on battery electric systems for six months which would then give the city common council time to enact legislation and then in the legislation this is wonderful that owen uh owen brooke and tatum I get that, right? Yeah, it's great that, you know, you people are energized and and you said you're junior juniors.

Yes.

I was going to say the same. Yeah, that's excellent. And so you're going to want. I mean, it's I'm going to let you finish once we interrupted you. I'm sorry about that.

Do you want to say that again? Yeah, he's a social studies teacher, recommended this, because he is part of the- Rick Dursey.

Rick Dursey, yeah, yeah, sure. No, this is wonderful, and you're going to want to talk to your counselors for wherever you live, figure out who your councilman is. bring your concerns to them, you're bringing very good valid points, especially with lithium ion batteries. You get dendrite formation and the dendrites grow through. And then once they touch one side to the other, they short circuit and the things, right? Lithium ion batteries. Yeah, yeah. And that is a bigger problem in very cold temperatures and very hot temperatures. So if they're not climate controlled to, you know, you guys brought up, Um, and, you know, gas detection system is something good that the kind of council should contemplate and possibly include a fire suppression system. Um, again is something that, you know, I think we would include recommend that the common council include. Um. But all good points, and you said the proposed project. That you think is where.

It should be around Bellamy Harbor.

Bellamy Harbor.

That's where we were told that it would be instated.

Just past the U-Haul.

Okay. I believe that the only application that's been formally received so far is on Canal Street, and that was received this morning. Canal Street.

Okay. So now we have... This could get interesting because the city's contemplating moratorium for 6 months. People are trying to they're going to say, hey, we. Submitted our 1st notice before the moratorium and that's that's that's above our right here at this board. Yeah, that's going to be. Yeah, that's that's not for us. Thank God. We're just going to make a recommendation to common counsel.

so did you share some what you've written with us tatum did you want to continue your yes i can continue can you share it with them do you have your drive available that way they can put it up Or do you just want the papers?

No, we would love for you to just go through the rest of your presentation, I think.

Yeah, I'll kind of start over. As I was talking about with the thermal issues, it's definitely a cooling problem. So if overheating is to occur, especially during our hot summers, because I know this one's supposed to be on the hotter end and it's supposed to get hotter. But also considering that we just had the tornado and we just had a lot of heavy weather implements so it can definitely affect these batteries and if proper measures are not taken then this can definitely cause an issue um like i said before one of my questions is if there will be gas detection systems to prevent off gassing so if they are to be noticed that this can be prevented definitely um how would they dispose of the like the damaged batteries or what's like what would be the separation between ones that simply died or the ones that had found failure and were unable to be continued to be used um just considering proximity to there's really not a lot of space for these batteries so proximity to housing proximity to like living areas just city in general um and one of the questions another one I'm sorry I have a lot um But in the case of a fire were to be started, as you said, it is a chain reaction. So any nearby in proximity would also catch fire and reach system failure. So in the case of this happening, as I said before, would the fire station be capable of coming here? Will there be agents? on site in order to cool them. So because one of the hazards is if the fire were to come in contact with any of the hazardous materials such as the burning chemicals, it could lead off and run off into the ground as groundwater and can contaminate the area as well. So one of our big questions is just like, how will things be managed? What are the regulations that will be put in place? Most of this is determined by the project itself. So we don't really have much information on that aside. But it's a lot of things that can come up that we just want to be considered properly.

Excellent. And again, I commend you three for coming and engaging with us in this capacity as future residents of the city of Rome. I think it's important that we hear from the future generations that are that are to come. So we very much appreciate your engagement. And I think I can speak for the whole board and echoing Mark, please feel free to continue to come forward and speak on things. But I assure you, as a board, uh, we do look at things from, from all angles and, and, and really do consider every avenue and make sure we're compliant with the city's code. Um, and, and think of the best interest of the city of Rome and its residents. Okay.

Yeah, it's wonderful. Like I said earlier, make sure you work with your common counselors, any information research that you've done, uh, concerns that you have, make sure they're aware and then they can include that in the legislation. I know a lot of, you know, the city can put restrictions on say no closer than a certain distance to a house of worship, a school, our one district, so on and so forth. They can, and then they have software that will kind of say, put these constraints in, and then what does the map look like where these things would be available in the city?

So I do actually have a quick comment on that. I have a little side note here. The proximity for structural damage due to fires is typically 25 to 100 feet. So that is the general proximity that they try and keep between buildings and residential area between the batteries. But gases can be emitted from such reactions, which can pollute the entire surrounding area up to 350 feet. So proximity is definitely one of the big concerns. Excellent.

You know, you brought up lithium ion. I was just doing some, I've done research on this numerous times over the years. That's not the only technology of battery. There's also flywheel storage and other methods of storage.

I think sodium ion, just a large scale commercialization for sodium ion just started spinning up.

And then there's a iron air, which is like another upcoming future technology. So I think the recommendation. our recommendation, the common council should, you know, the code should include analysis of things like gas detection, fire suppression, climate control, appropriate for the type of battery system. Right. And.

And I think they go out with it. How is it going to be managed?

Yeah.

Who's going to be managed?

And I think like the solar, yes, we should, there should be a, they should have to bond for, maintenance and disposal kind of full lifecycle costs.

So decommissioning bond.

Thank you. Yeah. So like, we don't want them to come in and build this. No, it's not. Economically viable and walk away, the city can say in the code, they can say, hey, you have to include the full life cycle, a decommissioning bond. So if something happens in the entity goes bankrupt and no one's available to. Purchase and dispose of it, the city has is somewhat identified. They have this bond that they can then have a company come in and do the proper close out and disposal. Yeah, so we did have, um. Also, I think in our recommendation, I think the code should address solar coincidental with battery energy systems and standalone battery energy systems. And we already do kind of, or the code has standalone solar, right? And then I think the current solar talks, there's like a small passage about battery energy storage but I think that should be kind of clearly laid out in the city code. Any other thoughts, questions, board members?

Any? No, no more comments from this point.

Again, we all commend you. And while we're this, we did the first call. So these folks came up on the first call. Um, Did you all have anything else that you would like us to consider? Not to my knowledge, no.

Would you consider sharing what you've written with Garrett? Yes, absolutely.

Yeah, and if you have an electronic, you can email Mr. Wyckoff, Garrett Wyckoff, City. Garrett, you can give them your email address.

It's not on a computer, Eric.

They can print it. Yes, thank you all so much. Yeah, very, very excellent. Very well done. Appreciate you coming out.

yes um so we had a call sir to june yeah um thank you guys oh of course please yeah i'd also like to say i think it's great that we have people at south germany you know being part of this and if you know this is what i do for work and i only wish that i had the opportunity to be able to come up and talk grab that flip the switch make sure that's on Yeah, I only wish I had that opportunity when I was their age. I could imagine that one day, maybe in the future, maybe they'll be up here doing this job or in one of your seats. I think that's great. So the first thing is I wanted to talk to you about a site that we have planned for battery energy storage. I understand that this is not a site review. That being said, I think it's great to give you some context about the site. That way you can understand the language of the moratorium and how it affects this particular site. So we started looking for a battery energy storage site. And there's a bunch of different types. What we do specifically is called distribution level. So that means that it's connected to the three phase lines. Generation, transmission, distribution. Right. So this is the most local type of battery. So we started doing a search in 2025. The first thing that we do when we do a search.

Can I ask you a question, sir? Yeah. You're referencing we. Can you share with us? Yeah, and you didn't say your name either.

My name is Scott Aronson. I'm the CEO of DLD Energy LLC. Okay. And that's...

is the site?

The site is on Canal Street. It's on 600 Canal Street. So that's in an industrial area. It sits next to a metal, I think it's a metal processing facility on one side. They used to house propane for about 30 or 40 years of propane. It's very industrial.

I think, is that area, is that a C3?

Technically waterfront.

It's waterfront. Okay.

Thank you. I just wanted the context. Yeah.

What was the LLC again, Scott?

DLD Energy. Demeter Land Development is what it stands for. Okay. Yeah. No, I appreciate that. So the first thing we do when we do it is that usually we make a call to the town. We talk to the town. We say, hey, where do you want to see these sites? You know, we understand where the sites are best. There's an electronic component, but then there's also a... a local component where we want to try to make this the town happy just as you said previously our main goal is we want to be good neighbors we do want to do everything the right way we understand that this technology is new or it's not new but it's new to you guys um and and that you might have some concerns so With that, we called the town. We've had conversations with the town. We were informed that it was a permitted use. I didn't have any idea that there was gonna be any type of moratorium or that anything like that would happen.

I'm sorry to cut you off. Please. The code doesn't address it. So it's a lawful purpose. So by default, it would be unallowed to use.

Right. I consulted with the chief code enforcement officer, Mark Domenico, and basically the conclusion that we came to looking at the existing language of the code is that it would fall under the blanket utility classification that's in the code. I think that the realization that the Common Council may have come to looking at that, that is an approved use, either a special use permit or just like permitted in pretty much every zoning district in the city. Because the idea is these are things that might be like electrical substation that serves residences, natural gas, natural gas equivalent, et cetera. So that was our determination at the time was that appeared to be what it would fall under the closest fit with the code.

Certainly, you know, the city has done this. And I'm in favor of, at one point on adult entertainment, the code didn't address solar meat processing. And, you know, the Common Council said, you know, let's just take a pause here, press the pause button. And instead of it being mute, And if the code doesn't address it, then we really don't have much to evaluate it against. And once we have something that says, hey, here's the rules for doing this in the city of Rome that that gives us guidance to, you know, to then interact and make sure these things are. Designed architected and implemented in a manner to address concerns to the community. We're all volunteer board members, right? We love where we live. And we want to make the city a better place and we try to be fair to the current property owner, the petitioner that would potentially be coming forward with a project and the members of the community. We want to try to be fair, just and equitable to everyone. So just a little background. I'm sorry to cut you off. Oh, no, no.

And I understand it, too. You don't want to be able to have this use everywhere. You don't want to see this in a major residential area where someone buys a residential property and puts this right in the center and everyone's upset with you. I get that. And if I was in your position, I would think the same thing. That being said, right now you have one application in an industrial area that was very, very well

So the principal use in that area is an industrial section. The waterfront area covers a large span within X number of feet of the canal. But within that, there are industrial. I think there's even a waterfront WD-industrial subdistrict, which I believe this is what it might be.

Okay. Which actually is interesting because the substation sits there too. So it's not on that side of the waterfront, but the substation sits in the same area. So, you know, That being said, so I understand your idea with the moratorium. The issue is that when we, the issue in our, another thing though is like our role or me coming here and talking to you about this moratorium, our goal is not to try to prevent you guys from doing whatever type of regulations that you feel you need to protect the community. My goal, which I believe you can do during site review. The problem is if this moratorium happens because the wheels have already been set in motion for interconnection with our particular site, we're going to lose all of the progress that we have. um and that's a significant amount of money that's a significant amount of time and and um to give you a little bit of background about that usually so usually what happens in how we start the process is again we call the city we make sure it's a good spot we kind i kind of get a little bit of an off-the-record feel about how people feel about it um and then we decide to go forward now there's kind of there's a couple of different prongs that happen and whether one happens first or the other one happens first it depends on on um It really just depends on developer preference. But one of the hardest parts to developing these are the interconnection process. So usually what happens in, you know, usually, as you can imagine, although they've been very good at working with us, a lot of times utilities are not known as being the easiest groups to work with. So, they're regulated in order to have an interconnection process, and we run through that process.

And they're trying to protect the grid and make sure it's stable. Yeah.

In some instances, also, they don't necessarily want third parties to be doing it. They want to be generating. I mean, I have to actually be careful about what I say in terms of other, but because I don't.

Things have changed a lot over the decades, microgrids and distributed generation. It's a complicated calculus.

Exactly. It's above my pay grade. But to give you an idea, so what usually happens is it starts with the pre-application. We got the pre-application. It looked good. You had a pre-application from? From the national grid.

And when did you get that?

I want to say approximately three months. This is an estimate. It might have been more, but approximately three months ago. From that point, you know, we have a team of highly qualified engineers that create a very complicated, very detailed interconnection drawings and stuff that they submit in something called a preliminary study. That costs tens of thousands of dollars together between dealing with the dealing with the engineers that need to put everything together and make sure that everything is perfect, make sure that a lot of the things that you were talking about that you had concerns about were addressed. And then it's running through this study process now. So in between the study process and that pre-app process is a bunch of meetings and stuff along those lines. Those meetings look good. They believe it's a great place to put this you know we get something called a q position that q position means that if any other developer lock tries to say hey i want to build something somewhere else on that same line we get priority they work with us first and that q position is locked in now the problem is once the preliminary once the study comes back They're going to give us a cost list on what we need to do in order to upgrade the grid. And then they're going to have a pretty strict deadline. I think it's 30 days before, it might be 60, but 30 to 60 days before we need to start saying, okay, we need to provide 25% of all the upgrade costs. That very well might be hundreds of thousands of dollars. Now I've talked with the planning folks. So I talked to Garrett and they've been very responsive and very helpful. And I think based off of my discussions, that the site is a great location and where you guys, and we could work with everything that you need. The problem is if this study comes back and I have 30 to 60 days, I still can't operate on what I think, especially if I'm partnering with a large IPP, they're gonna say, no, there's a moratorium in place. We're not gonna spend hundreds of thousands of dollars if we don't know what's gonna happen. So that's why I'm here today. Again, I have a couple suggestions in what I would recommend. And one of them would be to keep the moratorium, but to allow people that started the application process, which is only my site, and it's only in this one industrial site, prior to be able to continue with site review. And again, that's not saying that you guys have to approve site review. That's saying the moratorium doesn't, and I'll sit down with you.

Yeah, I'm tracking. Do you want the Common Council, if they impose a moratorium, to include language that someone submitted before those are allowed to go?

I think all of the concerns are great and valid, and I'd be more than happy to work with, even sit down with the group that were up here before, go through my specific project, sit with them and they could talk with these engineers that spend their careers trying to make sure that these sites are safe in putting in all of those things.

How many of these sites have you built?

I have not built any battery energy storage. However, I think in terms of generation power sites, we've been involved in 25 to 30 plus, and we have about 200 or so that are pending throughout the United States.

So these projects that you've been involved with, there's solar, wind, natural gas.

I only work, DOD Energy only works on DG. So none of these big utility scale stuff that you see hundreds and hundreds, specifically what we work on is something called community solar. So those are, they're called, sometimes they're called shared, like in Virginia, they're called shared solar. Those are typically what we work on. DLD is not going to be the ones actually constructing the project. We have partners with IPPs that are very, very large independent power producers. They're like the size of utilities. You don't have to worry about a hack job, kind of not knowing what they're doing type of thing. By the time it gets to development, the companies are oftentimes Fortune 50 companies.

So you've done...

so community solar projects and this is your first foray into battery energy start we have about we have a significant amount of them that are in that are in the process right now yeah but they haven't been constructed they haven't been constructed and it makes sense when you think about where we are sitting in in the the development timeline i think massachusetts from what i've read has done a

encouraged more solar including battery storage with them we haven't seen that around here we've seen some solar projects but how so this uh system is going to how much power kilovolts can you ingest how much can you deliver back for this particular project between

Each part is under five megawatts, so there might be two parts, so up to 10 megawatts. And just so that everyone understands, because I don't think I explained it at all, there's a bunch of different systems in New York. And essentially, you know how I'm oversimplifying it, mainly because I'm not an engineer. We have engineers that do that. But essentially, what it does is... When you need power, especially in high industrial areas, the utility needs to provide power to produce, it might be, I'm sure you probably already know this, the utility needs to provide power, enough power for the uses. So that's fine during normal use, but what happens when there's, I'm like a, hot summer day at two you know two o'clock when everyone's in the middle of the day everyone's running their air conditionings and they have these strains so what this does is during those times it pushes power out um and then it during the high you know the very high peak and then when there's not a lot of use like in the middle of the night when all the industry isn't there it sucks electricity back in so I mean kind of what I was getting at is you're

five megawatts or 5,000 maybe kilovolt KVA that you can draw from the grid or that you can push back into the grid. And then how many kilowatt hours can you deliver said so for delivering 10 so you'd be able to deliver for? Yes. Yes. For 4 hours is what we have expected in the in the drive. So you could possibly charge at night. Say, the nuclear power plant is running. You could draw that cheap from. midnight till 4am you could charge your batteries and then noon to four o'clock when there's absurd you could deliver that back to the grid helping to stabilize and there's a lot of benefits to that right because now national grid doesn't need as much generation you can kind of offset that there might be a point during the day where we've got a lot of wind Energy coming down from the northern tier. There's a couple thousand 2.5 megawatt, uh, wind towers up there and the line from Marcy, not an edict road. Down to Albany to go down to the city is. congested and they have to idle the wind. You might be able to buy that, get it down here and store it in your batteries on the cheap because they might, instead of turning off, they'll sell it to you really cheap. And this is all market rates. So there's a lot of opportunities to take a surplus and it strengthens the grid. It's less generation, it's probably going to be a lot less peaker plants than natural grass.

And a lower surge pricing, which is great because everyone is worried about their life.

There's a lot of advantages.

Yeah, exactly. I mean, I see you guys have a lot of industry. I see there's a lot of very exciting stuff with the new yogurt, one point something billion dollars. What drives industry is power. And what drives everything these days is power. And there's whole conversations about data centers because of it. And what we're trying to do is help bridge the gap. And that's the start of other development.

I have a question. Yeah. You shouldn't have a preliminary decision right now?

Yes.

How long does that last?

I've been stalling it a little bit because I wanted to see what you guys were going to do today. But that might, once we have some additional documentation to get into them, and once we get in that documentation, which might take a week or two, there'd probably be another 45 days before they come back, possibly. Maybe a little longer, but the National Grid person told me that they'd possibly be able to make it a little quicker.

So you said not 45 days?

So the study is actually done by National Grid. So National Grid is saying, we can build this, but this is how much it's going to cost you. You know, you have these options for how you want to pay for it. And then we got to make our decision once we have that information very quickly.

So, so, so.

So before we need to make, so there's a lot more that needs to be, as you can imagine, that needs to be done. But before we need to actually start to make payments in that part of the process, it might be as soon as two to four months, I would say. So, and it doesn't mean that you're going to see this constructed more than, you know, within like the year, probably not.

but but you know it's as you imagine it's it's a process and this is the next step in a in a wide huge process to make sure that the grid is safe and reliable and all the things that that you know say something like if six months is too much after a certain amount of months in this moratorium if there's an application to consider that if it's going to go past it past whatever like okay yeah six months is important but Take two, establish a portfolio, whereas submit an application if it's going to push back. So it gives them time to put something on. I'm writing an action piece. We're firing them to get something. We don't answer them. And it still gives them more time.

Karen, I have a question. So please submit.

Yes.

It can dive further into detail on the site plan.

I believe so. I'll defer to Jim on how a moratorium would interact with that.

If we decide to move forward with the moratorium.

If the common council decides to move forward.

Well, we provide the recommendation to the common council to move forward with the moratorium.

Yep.

Would he still come before the planning board?

I think that's going to be a function of how the Common Council writes that whether they would allow it or not.

Right. I'm hesitant to give a definitive answer just because we don't know exactly what the Council is going to do with it. So that will certainly be a topic of conversation absolutely over the next couple weeks. Or we'll see what happens next week at the Council meeting, number one. All right. So that's an open issue for right now. But I certainly understand the issues and where you're coming from. And we're aware that you obviously filed the application.

I just want to make sure we're using the hearing type effectively, right?

Right. Right. I agree. I mean, I know there's been... A lot of latitude, usually a hearing doesn't have this much interaction back and forth.

I appreciate that. I very much appreciate that. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Usually a public hearing is just us listening. We tend to dialogue a lot. I appreciate that.

Yeah, I very much.

Based on his timeline, he submitted a side plan review, so he would potentially come back next month, let's say, if everything goes according to plan. So that's 30 days, right? then another issue of moratorium another two to three months potentially till the whole process within national grid finishes right so we could say i mean that's three months we could say moratorium can our recommendation would be the moratorium would be six months but with the condition that we recommend would there be a condition that you have three months to put something and codify it and if you go past that we recommend hearing people who have already submitted an application and not go the full six months So that way it still gives them an adequate amount of time to put something on writing and might still be at that minimum threshold that, you know, project will need.

So the language would be something to the effect of recommend approval of the proposed moratorium, but include language that if new new code language has not been adopted within three months,

applications received prior to the advent of the moratorium be allowed to proceed right the common council could yeah yeah i thought our recommendations they're not gonna they might not approve it right but i was gonna say i said that's a little it's a little i'm not sure if i understood that oh just so you're saying or your potential motion is recommendation um yeah recommendation for for the full six months but with but that after three

Consider there be a period where if something hasn't been codified ASAP that the application should still be allowed to. It might be a simpler language to say recommend a three month moratorium and if the moratorium is extended to allow previously received applications to proceed.

I was just going to say like recommend consider exclusion for projects that have been submitted.

Okay.

then we can let the council figure out how they're doing whether they want to do something like hey the six months went by we're still not done so i i have a question on that so what about people that have are are actively working on projects just haven't yet submitted right we want to be right the timing yeah so i just want to be considerate that's sort of the devil in the details um

And again, I echo Jim in that it depends is always the sort of the legal answer. Historically, application dates are used just because it's a bright line differentiator. Because it's obviously hard to validate someone says, Oh, I was working on a project, right? It, it's the convenient bright line determination of proof of proof of concept that you were indeed working on it.

I think And I'm not on the Common Council, but I think they would have evaluated the amount of time that it's going to take them to arrive at how they're going to move forward. So as our partners, I think we should consider honoring what they've requested as far as the six months moratorium. And I understand the urgency of your project. um and you know very much appreciate the interest in investing in in rome and i don't think we're looking to discourage that um but i think the common council would have evaluated the time that they need to address kind of what brought this to light um so you know i would i would make a motion to issue the recommendation authorizing a six-month moratorium with respect um to the establishment of the yeah the code to

I have a question for you, and then we've cut you off several times.

It's my pleasure. I appreciate the questions.

Your project, we talked about it being two units, five megawatts input output, and then it'd be 25 megawatts. for four hours, be 20 each megawatt hour of capacity that you're storing. Are you contemplating using lithium ion or different technology?

So right now we have, and I don't want, I'm not trying to be invasive, but I always have to be very careful because I'm not an engineer and I don't want to state something that could, that isn't correct. I know that we are using Tesla 2X packs that use 2X, let me verify that.

That's why I said, what are you contemplating? I'm not going to hold you to it. Tesla 2x pack?

Let me verify that. Yes.

I think Tesla is largely using lithium ion, but. Yeah.

And these have, you know, you do have options in terms of what you could use, but these are widely known as the safest solutions. or some of the safest options that you could use. I mean, it's not, they're UL rated, they're, you know, they're not some unknown brand from, from China. Tesla has some of the biggest projects in the world. Right. And they, they've worked out, you know, there hasn't been a lot of kinks to be honest, they they've, they've, um, and over time, the, the, the few kinks that there were, they, they've worked them out. Um, and, Yeah, yeah. And like, the other thing is, this is, I understand how technical these projects are. And you know, I've seen this some in solar, you know, you get you, you see people come up and they say, Oh, you know, for like cadmium telluride, I do not want cadmium telluride on my land. And it's like, you know, if you look, if you research solar, maybe you'll see all panels have cadmium telluride. And like, you know, as you know, probably, you know, there's no cadmium, they haven't been cadmium telluride in in panels that have been put up in like 15 years plus so it's you know it's the only reason i bring that up as an example is is you know it's you know it's good to do we it's good to do research but you know not everything it you know it's a very technical thing and there's a lot of work into it and you know we're going to work with you and when you get to the point where you have to answer those very technical questions we're going to have the people that are um qualified to do it and give you all the answers that you need. And that includes talking to the fire department. That includes, you know, making sure that they're Knox boxes and appropriate setbacks so that the fire trucks can get in if they need to and everything else that needs to happen. What are the Knox boxes? Nitrous oxide? No, those are just the boxes that go on the front that the fire... Got it. That way, if there is a problem, they don't have to call whoever's managing it at TRAM. Yeah, yeah. Okay. So...

were there any points i know we cut you off did you so i think the bottom line you kind of you want to uh you'd like the city to include an exclusion for projects that have already been yeah which to my understanding is just my project and and i i i guess if i can ask a question to the attorney to make sure that i understand this

approving this doesn't mean that we can skirt anything. Approving this means that you can work with me and look at the site review and go through everything. So while you're making these regulations, you can make it so that we have all of the same regulations that you're gonna include in whatever the final, whatever the final, or you don't issue me the permit. So the way, but what it does do, Is by allowing me to be allowing this project to do it, because we're already halfway through the process, it allows me to tell the people that I work with that. Yes, they're interested in in having this and and they're interested in working with us and it's more solid than they're interested in working with us. But there's a 6, you know, a moratorium and we don't know what's going to happen.

I mean, I think we can appreciate his willingness to work.

Yes. And I will add there is a provision under the current language because you guys got a copy of legislation. I believe there's a provision under the proposed moratorium language that says anyone who's unduly burdened by the moratorium can go before the ZBA for an exemption. So there is some mechanism within the code or within the proposed language as it exists.

However, I do believe that that process would take several months. So if even that process is, for me, and I would certainly try to do that process as quick as I can, but that process for me is the same as a moratorium.

That's at least going to be a couple three months.

That's the same as a three-month moratorium. And then even then, it's a bunch of extra work, and I don't know. Yeah.

All right, thank you so much. Thank you.

And what I wanted to do for you guys is share my email address. So, if you have any other questions, so I'm going to so if you stay out and afterwards, I'll give you my email and my phone number and then I'll even share with you the plans and we can have discussions about everything. And sure.

How much time wouldn't.

Um, I would think. That's a great question. I would think. Two months, perhaps. Yeah, I would think two months, but I would like to check my math just to make sure.

Okay. Thank you.

Thank you all. Thank you all very much. I appreciate it.

Okay. So we did one call for public hearing. The public hearing is still open. I need to do two more calls. Any other members of the community like to speak for, against, or general comments? against Ordinance 9869, authorizing a six-month moratorium, respect the establishment, installation, construction of battery energy systems. As the second call, third and final call, members of the community like to speak regarding Ordinance 9869, six-month moratorium, respect the BES within the City of Rome. That closes our public hearing. All right, I propose We recommend they implement a six month moratorium and in their proposed code that they address fire suppression, gas detection, climate control based on the size of the system, be that how many megawatt hours in and out and the total or based on megawatt hour storage and have a size based code like they did with solar. I think they probably want to exclude home like they did with solar, right? That's not included.

Yeah, I don't think this moratorium would, I think this is specifically for grid scale, like full home battery backup and stuff like that. Right.

And if I was doing a Tesla Powerwall in my home, that wouldn't, shouldn't be included. That's a small. I think they should consider an exclusion for projects that have been submitted. The Common Council should address that and include it or not based on their discretion and deliberation. Submitted prior to enactment of the moratorium, I would think. Now, Jim, we need, so we would have, I mean, we could say submitted by today or submitted before they enact the moratorium projects, you know? So we're making a recommendation to Common Council that they consider a moratorium and also contemplate and consider an exclusion for projects that have been previously submitted. We believe there's only one, but what if someone came with a project before the city enacted the moratorium?

Um, well, Mr chairman, um, it would, You should clarify a little bit as long as it's well, a completed application number 1, just to prevent someone from. Someone else coming in with a scribbled piece of paper or something saying, oh, yeah, we've been working on something and I don't mean to be. Flip about it, but. But it does have to be a completed application, at least substantially completed application on file, just like any other applicant as far as for any other project. But it's really up to the board to make the recommendation. Well, then obviously ultimately up to the council either to accept your recommendation or make their own changes to it. But with that being said, just say your recommendation is clear how you want that, whether it's anyone who comes in before the moratorium, which, I mean, if you were going to recommend that exception, it just makes sense that if it's before they enact it, because Um, you know, the meeting isn't until well, it's next Wednesday. Yeah. Yeah.

Okay. Yeah.

Right. I agree. And I agree. Yes, it should be clear.

I'm going to say before moratorium is enacted. It says to this point, it doesn't mean that we won't, like, if they enact certain codes at this, and then the common council can do, they can say, well, you know what? No, we want to do it before the planning board meeting on 2 June. And they're free to do that. This is just our recommendation. Right.

Um, that's good. All right.

Anything else we'd want to include? You want me to run through those again? Or are you good?

Let's read them out again just so we have it clarified on the.

Yeah, exclude residential battery storage systems, right? BES energy storage. Contemplate based on the battery type and the size of the project, fire suppression, gas detection, climate control.

address solar battery systems combined if someone's coming with a solar battery solution to the community i think it should be clearly i will add in the code for what it's worth so you guys will get another recommendation request whenever any new language is proposed by the county council that would be a separate recommendation request right right this would only be for more time so you can pass it along but you'll get another right right yeah yeah yeah speak yeah

and then and whether or if it's a battery entry storage only like i believe is contemplated here um and then consider an exclusion for uh completed applications submitted before the moratorium is enacted okay i second the approval notes yeah sure i second the motion all those in favor hi here's my vote oh uh Yep, member Calandra's. I'll mark that on the recuse and I were out and then opposed word for unanimous on recommendation.

Let me just record that.

Thank you Scott. Good luck.

You don't see me.

okay yeah yeah well congratulations on that thank you best of luck to you and you know i i you know you're free to contact the council members and let them know your language that you would like included and i i work and i very much appreciate you guys listening and saying you guys have any with i don't know what's uh the normal phone call is but please

Do you have any questions about anything?

We usually funnel them through Eric. Through Eric. Through Garrett.

Eric's the clerk.

I make a motion to adjourn. Second.

All those in favor? Aye. All those opposed? Motion carries unanimously. We are adjourned. Shave and a haircut. Nope.