LETTER: Valuing people over packages

To the editor:

I realize that the subject of the warehouse in Clay is considered old news, but the most interesting — and so far, under-reported — implications of the project are still unfolding. The company is asking for a variance from fire safety codes — to wit, the code requires fire exist, with stairs for multiple-level buildings, at most 250 feet apart. The company is requesting a variance that allows them 400 feet apart. The reason, as they stated rather clearly at a previous meeting of the board that grants or denies such variances, was to put in more staired exits in the building would reduce the space available for packages.

In a Dec. 19, 2019, meeting of that board, the company presented volumes of “evidence” with diagrams and colored pictures and lots of print and computer models; a gentleman speaking for a consulting firm that represents the company said they didn’t want to have to go to the company and tell them they have to put in more stairs, though he said that if they had to, he couldn’t say that this was a deal breaker.

The fire chief said, quite simply, that while not putting himself in front of the experts, the department would prefer the stairs.

So here is the question before all of us now because it’s crunch time: What do we value, care more about, allowing a company to proceed with a plan that values maximum space for packages or the lives and safety of the folks who volunteer their time and risk theur lives to save us from fires? It is not enough to send donations or have “events” to fund equipment for our fire departments. We have to stand up for the people themselves, and let the board and the company know that we back these folks and we, too, would “prefer the stairs.”

Call or send letters to: NYS Division of Building Standards and Codes, Hughes State Office Building, 333 E. Washington St. Room 514 Syracuse, NY 13202-1428 or Jim King, 315-428-4434.

Tell them that we do not want them to grant a variance from the required minimum 250-foot distance between fire exits for the proposed warehouse in the town of Clay. Tell them that we value the lives and safety of the folks who risk their own to protect ours over “more room for packages.” Tell them that we, too, would “prefer the stairs.” But please do it soon. The decision will be made Jan. 3.