PLATTSBURGH — Town of Plattsburgh Supervisor Chuck Kostyk announced a draft report will be made to review the definition of public building use in the zoning laws during a regular board meeting Thursday.
During their Jan. 15 meeting, the town board passed a resolution instructing the planning and community development department to review the definition and locations for public building use.
“That report would look at the definitions for public building use, and that would also look at locations within our current zoning laws, zoning rights, where these public use buildings can be put, and there can be exclusions for various definitions etc.,” Kostyk said during the meeting.
He said he was notified of plans for the report shortly before the meeting took place. A public hearing on it will be posted by the town.
“I talked to one of the senior planners just before the meeting. They have a draft report prepared, so we will be reviewing the draft report before it is presented to the Town Board,” Kostyk said. “As long as the draft is acceptable and made the changes, etc., there will be a public hearing,” Kostyk said during the meeting.
These actions are in response to public comment regarding the U.S. General Services Administration project to convert the property at 284 Idaho Ave. in the Town of Plattsburgh Department of Homeland Security/Homeland Security Investigations facility, which was approved by the Town Planning Board in November 2025.
“Hopefully, that’s good news to everybody. That’s good news to us … Our Planning Board put a lot of stuff over to one side so they can concentrate on this one particular issue,” Kostyk said.
About 30 individuals from the Town of Plattsburgh and surrounding areas were in attendance Thursday to show support for a moratorium on jails in the town.
Cadyville resident Patricia Barnett stood before the board to speak in support of a moratorium on new jail facilities and amended jail applications in the town.
“I want to start by being very clear about what this moratorium is and what it is not: This is not a permanent ban, this is not a judgement on any specific applicant and it is not an attempt to take authority away from this board or any other board of a town,” she said at the podium.
Barnett and Tim McCormick proposed a moratorium on jails in the town during the December 2025 town board meeting.
A moratorium is a temporary lawful planning tool designed to preserve the status quo while a municipality analyzes known deficiencies in its zoning and land use regulatory framework.
“And here, those deficiencies are real and already acknowledged,” she said, emphasizing the word jail appears only once in the town’s zoning ordinance, as it is currently written.
“There are no standards, no siting criteria, no guidance for how a use with profound implications for public safety, community character, infrastructure and individual liberty is supposed to be evaluated.
“By contrast, the ordinance contains a detailed definition of the word kennels. That word appears multiple times throughout the ordinance with clear standards and guardrails governing location, operation and impacts.
“As it stands today, the Town of Plattsburgh zoning ordinance provides more structure and protection for the detention of animals than it does around the detention of human beings. That should give us pause.”
At the meeting in November, the Town Planning Board and residents learned the proposed facility near the airport will be used as a DHS/HSI office and temporary short-term holding and detention facility. The application was submitted in August 2025 by the GSA.
The project’s description includes plans to convert an existing warehouse to a public building with a 1,120-square-foot addition, exterior sally port with a roof, security and perimeter fencing, and parking renovations.
During the Town Planning Board’s October meeting, it tabled the application due to a lack of information provided by the applicant then created and submitted a list of questions to be answered by the applicant.
Those questions were reviewed during the meeting in November, and the board, satisfied with the answers provided, approved the plans in a 4-1 vote for further review by the Codes and Zoning Department.
The application met all the requirements for public building use, according to the zoning laws, which states a building can be used by any department of any local, state and federal government agencies, including libraries, fire stations and jails.