Certified minutes from Fulton’s July 7 and July 21 Common Council meetings show the city awarded a $246,634.70 paving contract to a bidder that was not the lowest, authorized a $262,350 study of former Nestle site infrastructure, and amended a demolition contract for a second former Nestle building.
The Fulton Common Council held two regular meetings in July 2026, on the 7th and the 21st, and the certified minutes of both, obtained and reviewed by CNY Signal, document eighteen separate resolutions covering a paving contract, two tax-foreclosure property sales, three grant applications tied to the former Nestle industrial complex, a wastewater engineering study, and a set of zoning code amendments. Cross-referencing the bid tabulation in the July 21 minutes against the city’s own contract award shows Fulton did not select the lowest bidder on its largest 2026 public works contract, a detail that appears nowhere in the meeting’s brief resolution language and has not previously been reported.
This story came from public records we pulled ourselves
Get the next one, plus overnight incidents, in your inbox at 6 AM. Free, no spam.
The paving contract: five bids, one skipped
On June 16, 2026, the council authorized the city clerk/chamberlain to advertise for sealed bids on the “Paving Project 2026,” with submissions due by 2:00 p.m. on July 16 and a public bid opening set for 2:15 p.m. in the Community Room of the Municipal Building. Five contractors submitted bids under two pricing structures, one in which the city retains the recycled asphalt millings from the resurfacing work and one in which the contractor keeps them. The minutes list the results in full: Lindsley Excavating submitted no bid under the city-owns-millings option but bid $450,000 under the contractor-owns-millings option; Costello Blacktop Paving, Inc. bid $224,309.37 and $227,106.37; Barrett Paving Materials, Inc. bid $246,634.70 and $243,548.60; Earthscapes Outdoor Contracting, Inc. bid $206,047.20 and $209,647.20; and Northern Asphalt, LLC bid $270,000.00 and $265,000.00.
Under the city-owns-millings structure, the option the council chose, Earthscapes Outdoor Contracting submitted the lowest price at $206,047.20, more than $40,000 below Barrett Paving Materials. The minutes state that Mayor James A. Rice and the Department of Public Works work leaders reviewed the bids and recommended awarding the contract to Barrett Paving Materials at $246,634.70, a recommendation the council accepted without discussion recorded in the minutes. The resolution does not explain why Earthscapes’ lower bid was not selected. New York’s General Municipal Law does not require municipalities to award public contracts to the lowest bidder in every circumstance, but it does require the award go to the lowest “responsible” bidder, a standard that can turn on factors such as bonding, experience or capacity that would not necessarily appear in a bid tabulation. Those factors are not documented in the minutes CNY Signal reviewed. The council approved the $246,634.70 award to Barrett Paving Materials by roll call vote, all six councilors voting aye, at the July 21 meeting.
A second Nestle building, and a demolition contract nobody covered
Local coverage in June 2026 focused on the pending demolition of Building 30 at the former Nestle Chocolate Factory site on South Fourth Street, the last structure on the original Nestle parcel, which Mayor Rice told reporters would likely come down in August 2026 once a contractor was selected from bids due July 24. The state’s $1 million Restore New York Communities Initiative award, announced by Governor Kathy Hochul’s office on May 22, 2025, is funding that project, which will convert the 30,000-square-foot Building 30 site into an advanced manufacturing incubator aimed at companies in the semiconductor supply chain, according to the governor’s office.
The July 7, 2026 council minutes show a separate, unreported action tied to a different structure. Under Resolution 13-2-2026, Mayor Rice’s notation to the council approved an addendum to the city’s existing professional services agreement with the engineering firm Barton and Loguidice “relative to Building 61 Demolition Services,” altering the scope of that project with no additional cost to the city. The minutes give no further detail on Building 61’s location, condition or demolition timeline. The Palladium-Times reported on July 13 that the fire damaged building on the former Nestle site was set for demolition, citing asbestos and remarks Mayor Rice made to the council on July 7. It was not raised for discussion at the July 21 meeting.
Two weeks later, on July 21, the council authorized a formal application for state funding tied to the broader Nestle-area footprint. Resolution 14-10-2026 authorizes the city to apply for $262,350 through the New York State Department of State’s Brownfield Opportunity Area (BOA) Program, with a required local match of $29,150, ten percent of the total project cost. The resolution states the funding would pay for an evaluation of the “condition, engineering design and cost estimates for the repair or replacement of the infrastructure serving the Nestle site as well as adjacent commercial and residential areas located along NYS 481, Fay Street, and South 7th Street.” The council designated Mayor Rice as the authorized applicant. As of this writing, there is no public record of whether the state has acted on the application.
Wastewater grants and a DEC restoration contract
The July 7 minutes also document two separate wastewater-related actions. Resolution 13-9-2026 confirms the city was awarded $50,000 through the New York State Wastewater Infrastructure Engineering Planning Grant (EPG) program for an “Infiltration and Inflow Improvements Study,” with a local contribution of up to $10,000. Infiltration and inflow refers to groundwater and stormwater that leaks into sanitary sewer pipes through cracks, joints or improper connections, forcing a wastewater system to treat far more volume than the sewage it was built for; identifying and fixing those entry points is typically the first step toward relieving an overloaded treatment plant. The same meeting’s Resolution 13-10-2026 authorized the clerk to advertise a Request for Qualifications for licensed engineering firms to carry out a related Preliminary Infiltration and Inflow Study for the New York State Environmental Facilities Corporation.
A third resolution, 13-11-2026, formalizes an amendment to the city’s Environmental Restoration Program contract with the state Department of Environmental Conservation. Under the terms recorded in the minutes, Fulton commits to funding ten percent of an unspecified restoration project’s costs and to reimbursing DEC within ninety days of receiving an invoice, with a certified copy of the authorization sent to DEC’s Albany office. The minutes do not identify which contaminated or formerly contaminated site the amendment covers.
Two foreclosed properties, sold for $30,000 and $3,000
The July 7 meeting also disposed of two city-owned parcels acquired through tax foreclosure. Resolution 13-15-2026 approved the sale of 610 Rochester Street, Tax Map #236.57-05-13, to Kevcor Real Estate Group 2, LLC for $30,000, citing New York Real Property Tax Law Section 1166 and City Code Subsection 17-2. Resolution 13-16-2026 approved the sale of 51 South 2nd Street, Tax Map #236.64-01-01, a second tax-foreclosed parcel, to a buyer identified in the minutes as Elizabeth Rice for $3,000. Both sales carried unanimous roll call votes with no discussion recorded. CNY Signal is reporting the transaction exactly as it appears in the certified minutes; the document does not state whether the buyer is related to any city official, and this reporting draws no such conclusion.
The same meeting approved a Commercial Line of Credit Mortgage tied to a different city-owned property. Resolution 14-8-2026, adopted July 21, states that Fulton Savings Bank required the city, as owner of the property at 715 West Broadway, to execute the mortgage document “in connection with financing for the YMCA of Fulton, Inc.” The council authorized Mayor Rice to sign the mortgage and related paperwork; the minutes do not disclose the loan amount or the scope of the YMCA project it is financing.
Code amendments split the council; a parking measure failed outright
The July 21 meeting closed three public hearings on zoning and traffic code amendments that had been advertised since the June 16 meeting. An amendment to Chapter 640-16, the C-2 Commercial District section of city code, passed 5-1, with Fourth Ward Councilor Mark T. Sherman casting the lone dissenting vote to close the hearing. Final adoption of that amendment was unanimous at 6 to 0. On the Chapter 640-17 amendment covering the C-2A Central Business District, Sherman was the lone no vote both on closing the hearing and on adoption. A parallel amendment to Chapter 640-17, the C-2A Central Business District section, also passed 5-1 with Sherman again dissenting. A proposed amendment to Article VII’s parking schedules, covering Section 608-58, “Parking Prohibited at All Times,” failed outright: after a contested 4-3 vote to close the public hearing, the substantive resolution to adopt the amendment drew no recorded “aye” votes at all and six recorded “nay” votes, and the minutes mark it “Motion Failed.” A separate, narrower amendment addressing handicapped parking under Section 608-66 passed unanimously the same night.
The council also voted July 21 to advertise a public hearing, set for August 4, 2026, on amendments to City Charter Chapters C7 (“City officers”) and C9 (“Eligibility for City Offices”) and the addition of a new Chapter C62 governing the “Powers and Duties of the Deputy Commissioner.” As of this writing, the certified minutes of that August 4 meeting have not yet been posted to the city’s website, so the outcome of that hearing is not yet part of the public record CNY Signal could verify.
Other July 7 business included the council’s acceptance of a $10,577.00 city clerk’s report for June 2026; the appointment of Oswego County Legislator Ryan Taylor, representing District 25, to the city’s Downtown Revitalization Initiative Advisory Committee; and a new legal-services agreement with attorney Rebekah S. Prosachik to handle code enforcement and code-violation court proceedings from August 1 through December 31, 2026. Both July meetings were chaired by Mayor Rice with all six councilors, First Ward’s Daniel T. Farfaglia, Second Ward’s Rhonda A. Campolieta (Council President), Third Ward’s Donald R. Patrick Jr., Fourth Ward’s Mark T. Sherman, Fifth Ward’s Dennis J. Merlino and Sixth Ward’s Brandi L. Clonch, present and voting at both sessions. The roll call clerk of record differed between the two meetings: Erin Pickrell is listed on the July 7 minutes and Misty L. DeGroat, who also signed both sets of minutes as City Clerk/Chamberlain, is listed on the July 21 minutes.
Sources and verification
This story is based on the certified minutes of the City of Fulton Common Council meetings of July 7, 2026 and July 21, 2026, each signed by Mayor James Rice and City Clerk/Chamberlain Misty L. DeGroat and obtained by CNY Signal from the city’s official Common Council document archive at cityoffultonny.gov. Background on the Building 30 demolition timeline and the state’s Restore New York award is drawn from Governor Kathy Hochul’s May 22, 2025 press release and from Oswego County Newsnow’s June 29, 2026 reporting, cited for comparison only where it does not overlap with the council’s own records. No fact in this article beyond that clearly attributed background is drawn from any source other than the certified council minutes themselves.
