# The Town of Clay is absorbing more development review than any place in Onondaga County, and the county tells builders to change something about half the time

**By Frank Mahoney, CNY Signal**

Every significant land use decision made near a state highway, a county road, a park or a municipal boundary in Onondaga County passes through one room on Montgomery Street first. The Onondaga County Planning Board meets roughly every three weeks, works through a stack of referrals from towns, villages and the city, and votes on each one.

Through August 5, the board had voted on 156 referrals in 2026. It recommended modifications to 77 of them, just under half.

The Town of Clay sent more than anyone. Clay accounts for 36 of the 207 cases that appear in this year’s minutes, and 34 of those went to a full board vote, more than double the next town. DeWitt is second among towns that actually reached a vote, with 17. Salina follows with 15.

Those three towns, plus Cicero at 11, account for roughly half of everything the board voted on this year.

### What the actions mean, because the labels mislead

The board records four ordinary dispositions, and only one of them carries legal weight.

**Modification** means the county recommends changes before or as a condition of local approval. It is not a rejection, and it is not binding. Under General Municipal Law section 239-m, a town or village that wants to approve a project anyway may do so, but “shall not act contrary to such recommendation except by a vote of a majority plus one of all the members thereof,” and it must set forth its reasons. That is the entire enforcement mechanism: a higher vote threshold and a paper trail.

**No Position** means the county found no significant county-wide or inter-community impact, and the local board may act on its own.

**No Position With Comment** is the same finding with advice attached. The advice is not binding either.

**Approval** turns out to be rare and specialized. It appears twice all year, both times for legislative instruments rather than projects: a Town of LaFayette local law in February and a Town of Camillus comprehensive plan in June.

Among the 156 referrals the board actually voted on, modification is the most common outcome at 77 cases, or 49.4 percent. No Position With Comment accounts for 46, No Position for 30.

### The distinction that changes the picture

The minutes contain two separate tables, and conflating them produces a materially wrong story.

Section V lists cases where, in the minutes’ own words, “Board members reviewed and voted on the municipal referral cases attached.” Section VI lists “administrative and informal reviews,” where staff merely “notified the Board that the following administrative reviews were completed.” Those are cases the board has delegated to the Director of Planning as routine.

There were 156 of the first and 51 of the second.

The delegated pile is overwhelmingly uneventful: 43 of 51 came back No Position, 84 percent. That is the point of delegating them. Merge the two tables and No Position looks like about 35 percent of the county’s output. Separate them and No Position is 19.2 percent of what the board voted on, while modification climbs from 38.6 percent of everything to 49.4 percent of actual votes.

This also reorders the municipalities. The City of Syracuse appears in 27 cases, second-highest in raw volume, which makes it look like a hotbed. It is not, at least not here. Only 9 of those 27 reached a board vote. The other 18 were delegated, and 14 came from the city’s zoning administration, the routine end of the pipeline. Clay’s 36, by contrast, are 34 board votes.

Ranked by referrals that reached a vote, the order is Clay 34, DeWitt 17, Salina 15, Cicero 11, then Syracuse and Van Buren at 9 each.

### Who gets told to change things

Modification rates vary more than volume does. Among municipalities with at least four board-voted referrals:

| Municipality | Board votes | Modifications | Rate |
|-|-|-|-|
| Town of Van Buren | 9 | 7 | 77.8% |
| Village of Liverpool | 4 | 3 | 75.0% |
| Town of Fabius | 4 | 3 | 75.0% |
| Town of Cicero | 11 | 7 | 63.6% |
| Town of Salina | 15 | 9 | 60.0% |
| Town of Geddes | 7 | 4 | 57.1% |
| Town of Clay | 34 | 16 | 47.1% |
| Town of Lysander | 7 | 3 | 42.9% |
| Town of Onondaga | 7 | 3 | 42.9% |
| Town of Camillus | 5 | 2 | 40.0% |
| City of Syracuse | 9 | 3 | 33.3% |
| Town of Elbridge | 4 | 1 | 25.0% |
| Town of DeWitt | 17 | 4 | 23.5% |

Van Buren and DeWitt are the spread. Van Buren drew a modification on more than three of every four referrals it sent. DeWitt, with nearly twice the volume, drew one on fewer than one in four.

A caution on reading that table: a modification is frequently a routine utility condition, not a fight. Requirements to submit a stormwater plan to the county water department, or to keep permanent structures out of a county sewer easement, appear constantly. A town whose parcels sit inside county drainage districts and sewer corridors will collect modifications regardless of how its projects are drawn. The rates measure where county infrastructure runs at least as much as they measure project quality.

### What the county is reviewing

Across all 212 cases with a record this year, site plans dominate at 89. Then special permits at 27, area variances at 23, local laws at 22, zone changes at 17.

Subdivisions are a small share. Counting the whole family, preliminary, final and unqualified, there are 24, about 11 percent of the record.

### Five cases with no recorded outcome

Reading the individual case files against the summary tables turned up something the tables do not show.

Five cases in 2026 have a full resolution page in the minutes and appear in neither summary table. In all five the resolution stops mid-sentence, at “NOW THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED, that the Onondaga County Planning Board,” and goes no further. There is no disposition and no roll call. The next page begins the case data sheet as if nothing were missing.

They are Z-26-13, a Village of Marcellus local law, from January 28. Z-26-103, a Village of North Syracuse site plan, from May 13. And three from June 24: Z-26-150 and Z-26-151, a special permit and site plan for the same North Syracuse applicant, and Z-26-159, a Town of Onondaga area variance.

These pages were checked with two independent extraction tools and examined directly before being reported. The sentence is incomplete in the published documents. What the board decided on those five cases cannot be determined from its own minutes.

CNY Signal has reported on several of the individual cases inside this record. The three battery storage permits that have sat before the Clay town board since February came through this referral process, as did the farmland rezone Lysander rejected 4 to 0 and the Cicero approvals that cleared a Holland Farms bakery. The DeWitt case we examined most closely, a parking variance on Erie Boulevard East, is the one compliance check in this analysis.

### How to check this yourself

The county posts every set of minutes at onondaga.gov/planning under 2026 Meeting Agendas and Minutes. There are 18 meetings on the calendar this year and minutes for the 11 held so far. The August 5 set is still labeled Draft, so those figures may change.

Open any file and go to Section V for cases the board voted on, Section VI for cases delegated to staff. After the adjournment line, each case gets its own resolution, a data sheet naming the referring board and type of action, and a staff review.

Two traps are worth knowing. The August 5 draft carries a DRAFT watermark that splits its table into separate column blocks, so four rows are easy to lose. And one case in March, Z-26-46, is recorded as “Informal Review,” a label that fits none of the standard categories. Those five rows are the entire difference between the 202 figure a quick automated pass produces and the 207 rows actually in the tables.

One more warning. The board abbreviation codes in the summary tables are not fully reliable. Case Z-26-146 is coded as a Town of Clay matter. Its own file, in the same document, is addressed to the Town of DeWitt Zoning Board of Appeals and concerns a property on Erie Boulevard East in DeWitt. Every municipal figure in this article was built from the board named on each case record rather than from those codes.

### What this does not show

It does not show whether municipalities follow the county’s advice. That would require reading the minutes of every referring board, and it was not done here.

CNY Signal checked one case all the way through. On Z-26-146, the Raising Cane’s variances at 3159 Erie Boulevard East, the county recommended No Position With Comment, which triggers no supermajority requirement. The DeWitt Zoning Board of Appeals held its hearing June 15 and approved all five variances, trimming one of them. That is a single case and proves nothing about the other 211.

It also does not show all development in Onondaga County. Section 239-m only captures actions within 500 feet of a state or county highway, a county or state park, certain public buildings, or a municipal boundary. A project in the middle of a town, away from those triggers, never reaches this board at all.

And 2026 is not finished. Seven meetings remain, beginning August 25.

### Sources

– Onondaga County Planning Board, 2026 agendas and minutes index: https://onondaga.gov/planning/ocpb/ocpb_agendas_minutes/2026-meetings-minutes/
– January 7: https://onondaga.gov/planning/wp-content/uploads/sites/260/2026/02/Minutes01-07-26.pdf
– January 28: https://onondaga.gov/planning/wp-content/uploads/sites/260/2026/02/Minutes-01-28-26.pdf
– February 18: https://onondaga.gov/planning/wp-content/uploads/sites/260/2026/03/Minutes-02-18-26.pdf
– March 11: https://onondaga.gov/planning/wp-content/uploads/sites/260/2026/04/Minutes-03-11-26.pdf
– April 1: https://onondaga.gov/planning/wp-content/uploads/sites/260/2026/04/minutes-04-01-26.pdf
– April 22: https://onondaga.gov/planning/wp-content/uploads/sites/260/2026/05/minutes-4-22-2026.pdf
– May 13: https://onondaga.gov/planning/wp-content/uploads/sites/260/2026/06/Minutes-05-13-26.pdf
– June 3: https://onondaga.gov/planning/wp-content/uploads/sites/260/2026/06/Minutes-06-03-26.pdf
– June 24: https://onondaga.gov/planning/wp-content/uploads/sites/260/2026/07/Minutes-06-24-26-1.pdf
– July 15: https://onondaga.gov/planning/wp-content/uploads/sites/260/2026/08/Minutes-07-15-26.pdf
– August 5 (draft): https://onondaga.gov/planning/wp-content/uploads/sites/260/2026/08/Draft-Minutes-08-05-26.pdf
– New York General Municipal Law section 239-m: https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/laws/GMU/239-M
– Town of DeWitt Zoning Board of Appeals, June 15, 2026 minutes (spot-check): https://dewittny.portal.civicclerk.com/event/1377/files

Full counting method, per-meeting tables and every discrepancy against an earlier automated pass are published alongside this article in `data-method.md`.