The application was small enough to explain in a sentence. A property owner on Brewerton Road wanted to put an apartment on the second floor and live in it, while keeping the ground floor commercial.

It did not pass, and the way it failed is worth understanding, because it never got a straight up or down vote on the merits.

### What was asked

At its June 22 meeting the Salina town board opened a public hearing on a local law for a change of zone from C-2 and OL-1 to C-1 at 2229 Brewerton Road. Councilor Page Steinhardt moved to open the hearing, Councilor Leesa Paul seconded, and all five members voted yes.

The applicant addressed the board directly. He told members he had purchased the property and wanted to put an apartment upstairs that he would be living in, while keeping the main floor commercial. He said the previous zoning would have allowed this but was changed by the previous owner, and that he was looking to change it back. Asked about the future, he said he was not sure whether he would rent the apartment if he moved out.

That last answer is honest and it is also the part a board has to weigh, because zoning attaches to land rather than to the person standing in front of the board.

### The objection

One resident spoke against it.

Dominick Ciciarelli questioned why the change should be allowed, saying it is not consistent with the rest of the parcels in the corridor. He also raised concerns about what the minutes describe as the alleged liquor store the applicant plans to operate on the first floor.

That characterization comes from the resident, as recorded in the minutes. The applicant’s own description of his plan, in the same meeting, was that the main floor would remain commercial without specifying the business.

The consistency argument is the more durable of the two objections. A single parcel zoned differently from everything around it is what planners call spot zoning, and it is a genuine concern rather than a technicality. Whether this request amounts to that depends on what the rest of the corridor looks like, which is exactly the kind of question a comprehensive plan is supposed to answer.

### The town’s own planner disagreed

Pete Mitchell, the town’s Director of Planning and Development, offered the opposite view.

Mitchell explained that second floors are not useful for commercial use, and that mixed-use residential properties are in line with the vision for the town’s comprehensive plan as well as the county’s plans.

That is a substantive planning position, not a procedural one. Upper floors of small commercial buildings on suburban corridors are frequently vacant because the uses that want street-level visibility do not want a staircase. Putting housing there is one of the few things that reliably fills them, and it is the standard prescription in nearly every modern comprehensive plan in the region.

The board then split on a different question entirely.

### Two councilors, two philosophies

Councilor Leesa Paul said she believes the town should wait for the town’s comprehensive plan and rezoning to be complete before approving any new zone changes.

Councilor Page Steinhardt said mixed residential and commercial properties are the goal of the town’s comprehensive plan, and that he had no issues with the request.

Those two statements are not really about 2229 Brewerton Road. They are about sequencing, and it is a real dilemma facing several Central New York towns right now.

Salina is in the middle of rewriting its comprehensive plan and rezoning. During that process, every individual zone change is a decision made under the old framework about land that will shortly be governed by a new one. Approving them keeps property owners from waiting years. Holding them preserves the integrity of the plan being written.

Neither position is unreasonable. They just cannot both govern the same vote.

### How it actually died

The hearing closed on a unanimous vote. Then the board took up the environmental review, and that is where the application ended.

Councilor Steinhardt moved to declare the local law enacting the zone change at 2229 Brewerton Road to be an Unlisted action with no significant environmental impact, and to designate the town as lead agency. Supervisor Raul Huerta seconded.

The roll: Hayley Downs no, Leesa Paul no, Page Steinhardt yes, Eliza Driscoll no, Raul Huerta yes.

Motion not passed, three to two.

The local law itself was never voted on. It did not have to be. Under the State Environmental Quality Review Act, a board must complete environmental review before approving an action. Without a determination of significance, there is no lawful path to enacting the local law.

So a zone change that had support from the town’s planning director and from two of five board members ended on a motion that, read literally, is about whether a second-floor apartment would harm the environment.

That is not unusual, and it is not a trick. Boards frequently register their position on the merits at the SEQR step, because it is the first binding vote in front of them. But it does mean the public record contains no vote on the zone change itself, and no stated reasons attached to a denial of it.

For the applicant, the practical effect is the same as a denial. For anyone reading the minutes later, the reasoning has to be inferred from the discussion that preceded it.

### What an Unlisted action means

The vote that ended this application used language most residents will never have encountered, so it is worth translating.

SEQR sorts proposed actions into three buckets. Type II actions are pre-cleared as having no significant impact and require no review. Type I actions are presumed likely to have significant impact and carry the heaviest review. Everything else is Unlisted, which is where most small local decisions land.

For an Unlisted action, a board reviews an environmental assessment form and then issues either a negative declaration, meaning no significant adverse impact, or a positive declaration, which triggers a full environmental impact statement.

The motion here asked the board to declare the zone change an Unlisted action with no significant environmental impact and to name the town as lead agency. That is the routine, low-friction path, and the one nearly every small rezone takes.

Voting it down does not mean three members concluded a second-floor apartment would damage the environment. It means the motion in front of them was the one available to stop the application, and they used it.

### The other thing the board did that night

The same meeting produced a resolution that is more technically interesting than it sounds.

The board adopted Resolution 2026-002, authorizing limited public use of the community center for the Mattydale Market under safe harbor provisions, and separately authorized the supervisor to sign a Mattydale Market use agreement. Both passed five to nothing.

The reasoning in the resolution is a small lesson in municipal finance. The town owns facilities financed with tax-exempt bonds, and those facilities are subject to restrictions on private use. Bond counsel advised that certain safe harbor arrangements allow temporary use by non-governmental parties when structured to avoid private business use.

So the resolution builds a careful structure. Use of the Hoosock-Jenson Community Center is authorized for a limited seasonal period not exceeding safe harbor allowances. The market must be open to the general public on a first-come, first-served basis or under uniformly applied participation terms. And the town explicitly will not collect, receive, process or distribute any vendor fees, donations or other payments.

All vendor contributions are to be treated as independent charitable donations administered by the vendors directly to the charities, through charity-provided QR codes, and not as fees for the use of town property.

That last clause exists because if the town touched the money, the arrangement would start to look like private business use of a bond-financed building, which can jeopardize the tax-exempt status of the bonds.

Recreation Director Jake Brigham also updated the board on insurance for the market, saying he had spoken with the town’s insurance company and that each vendor will be required to sign an indemnification form, with vendors either carrying their own coverage or being covered under the town’s policy. He noted that all residents are covered at town properties under the town’s policy.

Insurance turned out to matter. A related Mattydale Market use agreement vote failed at a later meeting in August over an unresolved insurance question, which CNY Signal reported at the time.

### Who was there

The Salina town board consists of Supervisor Raul Huerta and Councilors Hayley Downs, Leesa Paul, Page Steinhardt and Eliza Driscoll. Town Engineer Jason Hoy was present. No members were recorded absent.

Also participating were Pete Mitchell, Director of Planning and Development, and Jake Brigham, Director of Recreation.

Salina town board meetings are held at 201 School Road in Liverpool. Agendas and minutes are posted at salinany.gov.

The town has five more public hearings scheduled for September 14, including one on a local law to override the 2027 tax cap and another on a zone change at 400 Buckley Road from C-1 to R-5. That second one is a change in the same direction as the request that failed here, from commercial toward residential, and it will be a useful test of whether the sequencing argument that sank 2229 Brewerton Road applies consistently.