Tully Begins First Full Zoning Rewrite Since 2006, With a Decisive Environmental Vote Set for August 12

TULLY, N.Y. Supervisor John Masters and the Tully Town Board opened the formal review of a complete rewrite of the town’s zoning code and zoning map on July 8, 2026, the first top to bottom overhaul since the current code was dated November 8, 2006, nearly 20 years ago. The board took the procedural step at its regular meeting at the Municipal Building at 5833 Meetinghouse Road, and posted a public notice explaining the process three days later, on July 11.

According to that notice, the board “began the formal review process for the proposed zoning code and zoning map updates” on July 8 and declared itself Lead Agency under the State Environmental Quality Review Act, known as SEQR. The town’s planning consultant, the Syracuse engineering and planning firm Barton and Loguidice, is shepherding the draft. If the schedule holds, the board expects to take up the environmental determination at its August 12 meeting and hold a public hearing at its September 9 meeting, where adoption could follow.

For a town of roughly 2,700 people spread across farm valleys and forested hills at the southern edge of Onondaga County, the stakes are concrete. The draft rewrites the rulebook that decides where homes, farms, businesses, solar arrays, and industrial uses can go on every parcel outside the incorporated Village of Tully, which runs its own zoning.

Twenty years of patches, then a rewrite

The current Chapter 280, titled the Zoning Code of the Town of Tully, is dated as of November 8, 2006. The town has amended it piece by piece in the two decades since. One example sits in the draft’s definitions: a shoreline “access” definition added November 5, 2020 by Local Law No. 4 of 2020, part of the town’s effort to manage crowding on its small lakes.

The trigger for the full rewrite came on July 12, 2023, when the town and village jointly adopted the Tully Joint Comprehensive Plan. New York Town Law requires that a town’s land use regulations be in accordance with its adopted comprehensive plan, and the plan itself says the quiet part plainly: it recommends “a comprehensive review and update” of the town and village zoning codes as the means of putting the plan into effect. The draft now before the board, along with a proposed zoning map dated April 6, 2026, is that update.

The draft keeps a familiar structure. It divides the town outside the village into use districts labeled A-1 and A-2 for agriculture, R-1, R-2, and R-3 for residence, B-1 for business, and IND for industry. The A-1 district’s stated intent is to keep productive farmland in production, encouraging what the draft calls “maximum retention of productive farmland” alongside a limited amount of low density single family housing.

What residents asked for

The comprehensive plan behind the rewrite was built on local input. A community survey ran from March 14 to April 15, 2023, and drew 156 completed responses, 129 online and 27 on paper, advertised through the Tully News and a March 30, 2023 open house. Two thirds of respondents, 66 percent, lived in the town, and 22 percent in the village.

Environmental protection topped the growth questions. Respondents ranked protecting Tully’s environmental quality first and protecting the aquifer that supplies Tully’s wells second among growth and development priorities. More than 85 percent said the community needs a grocery store, the single most requested business. And when asked whether the town and village should study consolidating into one government, 51 percent said yes, 12 percent said no, and 37 percent were not sure.

The plan’s demographic tables explain the urgency behind the housing and senior services language in the draft. As of the 2020 Census figures reported in the plan, the town’s population outside the village stood at 1,772 and the village at roughly 904. From 2010 to 2020 the village grew 4 percent while the town shrank 5 percent, against 2 percent growth countywide, and the plan notes the combined population is aging, with residents 55 and older the only age groups growing.

The biggest change: an environmental overlay

The most consequential new tool in the draft is Section 280-6.1, the Environmental Protection Overlay District, or EPOD. It is a map layer that sits on top of the underlying districts and adds development standards on lands the Town Board designates as environmentally sensitive, including wetlands, waterbodies, steep slopes, shorelines, and flood prone areas.

The draft’s EPOD standards are specific. Clear cutting of trees is prohibited beyond 25 percent of a parcel’s forested area, except for forestry operations under an approved management plan. Structures and impervious surfaces are barred within 100 feet of wetlands regulated by the state Department of Environmental Conservation and within 250 feet of a town designated environmentally sensitive area. Grading is prohibited on slopes steeper than 25 percent without an approved plan. Any project disturbing more than 5,000 square feet must submit a Stormwater Pollution Prevention Plan, and a minimum 50 foot vegetated buffer must be maintained along all streams and drainage corridors inside the overlay. Outdoor lighting must be downshielded. Boathouses, docks, and in kind repair of existing lawful structures are exempt from the placement restrictions.

Forestry is not an abstraction in Tully. SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry’s Heiberg Memorial Forest, a 3,800 acre teaching and research property with 18 miles of trails and a 23 acre sugarbush, spreads across the towns of Tully, Pompey, Truxton, and Fabius from its entrance at 7393 Maple Ridge Road in Tully. The draft’s carve out for forestry operations under an approved management plan is written for exactly that kind of working woodland, while the 25 percent clear cut cap targets speculative land clearing on private parcels.

Solar rules with teeth

The draft also carries a full framework for solar energy systems, split into three tiers. Rooftop and small systems in Tier 1 get permits from the town code officer. Ground mounted accessory systems in Tier 2 are allowed in all districts with review. Tier 3, the large commercial scale category, is confined to an overlay district of its own, Section 280-11.4, and faces the heaviest requirements in the code: in the R-1, R-2, and R-3 residence districts the minimum lot size for a Tier 3 system is 100 acres, a decommissioning surety of 125 percent of removal cost is required, and operators must carry at least $5,000 in property insurance at all times, alongside full site plan review. The stated goal in the draft is to spread any Tier 3 projects out so no single neighborhood is overburdened.

The board is fighting the same battle on a second front. At its June 10 meeting, the board voted 4 to 0 to authorize the supervisor to join an Article 78 legal proceeding brought by the American Land Resource Fund challenging the state’s RAPID Act as it relates to transmission permitting, subject to review by the town attorney. The RAPID Act shifted major renewable and transmission siting decisions to a state office, and towns like Tully have watched their local say shrink. A homegrown zoning code with explicit solar standards is the other half of that strategy.

Three steps between here and adoption

The July 11 notice lays out the remaining path in three stages. First, Part 1 of the Full Environmental Assessment Form is being distributed to surrounding municipalities, and the proposal goes to Onondaga County for review under General Municipal Law Section 239, the standard county check on local zoning actions. Second, the board expects to consider Parts 2 and 3 of the assessment form and a potential Negative Declaration, the SEQR finding of no significant adverse environmental impact, at its August 12 meeting, set for 7:30 p.m. at 5833 Meetinghouse Road. Third, Barton and Loguidice will fold in agency and county comments and prepare a final draft. In the notice’s words, “A public hearing is anticipated for the September 2026 Town Board meeting,” which falls on September 9. Adoption could come the same night.

Until then, the 2006 code remains the law, and land use business continues under it. The Zoning Board of Appeals published notice on July 21 of a July 29 hearing at 6:30 p.m. on a request from Christopher and Susan Nevins of 200 Long Road. The Town Board also scheduled a separate 7 p.m. public hearing ahead of its July meeting on a proposed solicitors licensing law, modeled on the hawkers, peddlers, and solicitors law LaFayette adopted, after what Masters described at the June meeting as a significant number of resident complaints about door to door solicitors.

A crowded summer docket

The zoning rewrite is moving through a board with a full plate. At the June 10 meeting, financial officer Thomas Chartrand reported ambulance cost recoveries above $32,000 for the month and interest rates holding near 3.5 percent. The board approved $46,000 in budget transfers toward a $191,000 cab and chassis for a 2027 Western Star ten wheel dump truck, a purchase Highway Superintendent John Herold wants ordered before emissions rules change in 2028; with body work the truck’s total cost is expected near $350,000. The board accepted a $5,050 quote from Shute’s Water System for the Green Lake water treatment system, under the roughly $9,000 budgeted and below the competing $5,126 quote from Amber Water Pros.

Regional cooperation is on the docket too. LaFayette signed an intermunicipal agreement with Tully on June 9, 2026 covering the Green Lake swim program, where registration stood at 95 non Tully residents and 60 Tully residents. And the supervisor reported that the federal grant for the Route 11A Water District is moving forward, with a June 11 meeting scheduled with the Environmental Protection Agency and the town’s engineers, plus what he called positive indications on State Revolving Fund assistance.

Every one of those items will eventually run through whatever zoning framework the board adopts this fall. Residents who want a say have two dates: the August 12 board meeting where the environmental determination is expected, and the anticipated September 9 public hearing, both at 7:30 p.m. at 5833 Meetinghouse Road. Written comments reach the town through Town Clerk Susan Vaccaro at [email protected] or 315 696 4693.