City of Buffalo Common Council Community Development Committee·September 22, 2026
Golombek’s two-year moratorium on cryptocurrency mining and data centers drew nine speakers, none opposed, and goes to the full Council Sept. 29 without recommendation — with four of five members present saying they will vote yes. The “Department Order” explanation waits two weeks; the Charter Revision report was noted. Seventy carried-over items stayed tabled.
The resolution the full Council referred here on September 15 carries the title “Resolution to Adopt a Two-Year Moratorium on Cryptocurrency Mining and Data Processing Centers,” and by the time it was opened for discussion at 10:23 on the recording there was a list. “I think there's eight of them,” Golombek said of the speakers; a ninth added herself. The first, Bridge Rauch[*], an organizer with the Clean Air Coalition of Western New York, gave the room its numbers: roughly 12 gigawatts of data-center projects in the statewide queue, about 2 gigawatts of them proposed in Erie and Niagara counties, a 20-megawatt threshold in the Buffalo proposal that she called “the consensus point” among groups statewide, and “over 50” petition signatures from city residents gathered over the weekend. She also said she had been told, by a source she would not describe, of a proposal for an 80-megawatt data center in downtown Buffalo. “I don't know if any of the council members have heard about that yet.” None said they had.
What followed was 26 minutes of testimony without a dissenting voice. A Black Rock resident who described herself as a wildlife rehabber said she had spent two years fighting a data center proposed at the STAMP industrial park in Genesee County, first at 900,000 square feet and 250 megawatts, then at 2.2 million square feet and 500 megawatts, and had come to worry most about water: closed-loop cooling “still uses water,” she said, treated with anti-corrosives and biocides that end up in the wastewater. PUSH Buffalo's climate justice organizer asked the members to “feel this before you move forward on it,” and framed the pause as “not just bureaucratic caution, it is a moral floor.” The coalition's executive director, Chris Murowski[*], recounted North Tonawanda's fight since 2021 against a cryptocurrency operation at a shuttered gas plant, the moratorium that city passed “too late for that facility” and extended this summer, and the statewide Responsible Data Center Act he said is awaiting the Governor's signature. He asked supporters in the audience to raise their hands; the tape does not record how many did. He also said his group is working with the building trades “during the time of the moratorium” on policies both could accept.
The residents were shorter and, by their own account, less prepared. A Niagara District resident said she was “shaken like a leaf,” had no statement, and thought data centers would “spit in the face” of Olmsted's green city. Another Niagara District resident, speaking for the Latino elders she called “the Latino Silvers,” asked the members to remember, when water rights come up for negotiation, that “we are tired of being the sacrifice zone.” A mother who lives four blocks from City Hall said she had heard about the meeting 45 minutes earlier, canceled her afternoon and came with her own mother: “I don't have facts. I am a mother in this community.” The last speaker, a Pennsylvania Street resident, put the industry's scale at “around $1 trillion per year for the next three or four years” and drew the distinction the members would pick up: “fight them when necessary and invite them in when appropriate.” The room's one recurring misfire was on units — “is it 20 watts?” — sorted out from the floor as 20 megawatts in Buffalo's proposal against 50 in the state's.
Golombek's response ran from the personal to the procedural. He had first met the Black Rock speaker at a block club; he reminded the room that Buffalo passed what he believes was “the second anti-fracking law in the United States” with the Clean Air Coalition's help, over a rumor that fracking wastewater was coming to the city; and he described riding around his district at 10 and 11 at night with constituents holding their ears against a sound from the railroad tracks that he, and about half the couples he visited, could not hear. “All I could think of was data centers coming in and that problem being even worse.” The point of two years, he said, is to let the city “update our charter” and “update our zoning” so that a data center could not go in “next door to residential properties” — and he named the risk: Clayton Street in his district, “several acres back there” zoned for light manufacturing, where he believes one could be built “right now, without there needing to be any changes.”
Halton-Pope's contribution was the only friction, and it was about what happens during the pause rather than whether to pause. “I got a random call from somebody who said, oh, I heard you're against it. Like, why would I be against it?” Her question, she said, was what the city does “in that quiet time.” She listed what she thinks the Green Code, the city's Unified Development Ordinance, should carry before the moratorium lifts — zoning standards, energy and water thresholds, noise requirements, setbacks, environmental standards, community benefits — and gave the reason plainly: “if I don't put it in law or it's not in the UDO, then it doesn't exist. And I think as a city, that's been consistently our problem.” Without standards in place when two years are up, “now we're open to lawsuits.” Golombek answered with a commitment “that went without saying” until it was said: as with the Council's earlier work on taxicabs, Uber and food trucks, he will have staff assemble “a working commission out of the council, out of this committee” to review the Charter and the zoning ordinances within the two years, “or hopefully less than that.”
Rivera said states that approved data centers quickly “are now rolling them back,” that he would rather “delay it and do it right,” and that the economic benefit is “certainly not trickling down to the regular folks”; he plans “to vote for this moratorium come Tuesday.” Everhart, who said she had met with many of the speakers in the past week, told them “everything that they said, you can add to my name.” Bollman: “Data centers aren't going anywhere. We have time to get this right.” The motion to send the resolution to the full Council without recommendation carried 5–0 at 45:45, and the committee adjourned eleven seconds later.
Committee: Joseph Golombek (North), presiding; Zeneta Everhart (Masten); Leah Halton-Pope (Ellicott); Bryan Bollman (Lovejoy); David Rivera (Niagara). Feroleto and Scanlon were called and did not answer; the minutes list them, Wyatt and Nowakowski as excused. Committee chairs are not verified (Editor's Note).
Administration: one unidentified voice, on Item 1, explaining an absence.
Public speakers: nine on Item 3, all in favor: two from the Clean Air Coalition of WNY, one from PUSH Buffalo, six residents (Black Rock, two from the Niagara District, Pennsylvania Street, one living four blocks from City Hall, one unplaced). None on Items 1 or 2.
Next step: full Council, Tuesday, September 29, 2:00 p.m.
The full Council will vote September 29 on a resolution. A resolution is the Council's statement of intent and direction to itself and the administration; it is not, on its own, a zoning rule. A moratorium that actually stops a property owner from building a data center on a light-manufacturing parcel like the Clayton Street acreage Golombek described is a change to the Green Code (Chapter 496, the Unified Development Ordinance), which is enacted as a local law or ordinance amendment with notice, a hearing and its own vote. That is the sequence Golombek and Halton-Pope were, from different angles, both describing: the resolution first, then the working group, then the code language — thresholds, setbacks, noise and water standards — that Halton-Pope wants on the books before the two years run out. Two figures to keep straight as this moves: the Buffalo proposal's 20-megawatt threshold, described by speakers as the point at which a facility would be covered, and the 50 megawatts they attributed to the pending state bill. A megawatt is a unit of power draw, not size; a 20 MW facility is small by hyperscale standards and large by the standards of a Buffalo block.
Item 1, docket 26-000600, is the “Department Order RE: Council Member Contact” that Golombek brought to the Council floor on September 15: a memorandum he said a commissioner circulated earlier this year telling city employees they may not respond to council members without permission, routing constituent problems through the commissioner, a deputy mayor and a liaison instead. He had asked that day for “somebody from the administration” — he suggested the deputy mayor — to come to this committee “next week” and either explain the policy or say on the record that council members may no longer help their residents.
On Tuesday the item took 27 seconds. “My understanding is that there was a little bit of a mix up, and we'll have somebody in two weeks to speak on this,” a member said. An unidentified voice, apparently from the administration, confirmed: “It was a communication error, and he is out of training right now, so he'll be here in two weeks.” “Okay, yeah, we can table it,” Golombek said, and it was, on Halton-Pope's motion, seconded by Bollman, 5–0. The committee's next meeting on the Council calendar is October 6. No member added anything to the September 15 speech, and the order itself is on file as an attachment but was not read.
Buffalo's committees do not pass things; they recommend. Three dispositions covered everything Tuesday. Tabled means the item stays in this committee and can be taken up at a later meeting — the Department Order and the Charter report are tabled on purpose, to wait for a witness and for the election; the seventy older items at the bottom of the docket are tabled by inertia, some since 2023. Without Recommendation means the committee sends an item to the full Council with no position of its own — a way to move something quickly that the committee did not want to hold for two more weeks. It says nothing about how the members will vote when it comes up; Tuesday, four of the five said out loud that they will vote yes. A third disposition, Received and Filed (noted, no action), did not occur. What did not happen is also worth naming: the committee took no vote on the merits of the moratorium, and none of the seventy tabled items was mentioned aloud.
Item 2, docket 26-000633, is the Charter Revision Commission's report, filed under the name L. Rubin and referred here on September 15. It drew one speech and no questions. The member who spoke to it — the record lists Halton-Pope as the mover — called the report “pretty self-explanatory” and used the item to make an announcement: the Commission's measures “have gone to the Board of Elections,” there are eleven of them, and a series of public meetings on them is starting, the first “this week at the Merriweather” and another at 5:30 tomorrow, September 23; the schedule is available from council members' offices. Two pieces of voter guidance followed. The measures are not a package: “You can vote on each measure as it's important to you.” And finding them “means turning over your ballot, because there's a lot of information.” Discussion was closed, seconded by Bollman, and the report tabled, 5–0. On the Legislation Committee's tape the same afternoon, the Corporation Counsel's office said these eleven questions made the Board of Elections' August 3 deadline; the Council's own legislative-counsel referendum did not.
Built from the city's recorded votes (agenda items) and the summary minutes, cross-checked against the tape. Every recorded roll call was 5–0 with the same five members: Golombek, Everhart, Halton-Pope, Bollman, Rivera. Feroleto, Scanlon, Wyatt and Nowakowski excused. No recusals. Every motion of record was moved by Halton-Pope. The record does not state pass/fail; the motion name is the outcome. Docket numbers are the city's (26-000xxx); “MT” numbers are the original Council file numbers on carried-over items. Timecodes are recording positions.
Docket 26-000600. Tabled because the administration official expected to explain it “is out of training right now”; due back in two weeks (October 6). Moved Halton-Pope, seconded Bollman per the record; the tape agrees.
Docket 26-000633. Public information meetings announced (first this week at the Merriweather; one at 5:30 p.m. September 23). Record vs. tape: the record lists Bollman as seconder of the motion to table; on the tape Bollman seconded the motion to close discussion and Rivera seconded the motion to table. Reported per the record.
Docket 26-000627; attachment “Data Center Moratorium Resolution.” Nine public speakers, all in support; none opposed. Sponsor's stated purpose: time to update the Charter and zoning so facilities cannot be sited next to residences; commitment to a Council working commission on the Charter and zoning ordinances, modeled on the taxicab/Uber/food-truck effort. Halton-Pope: what standards (zoning, energy and water thresholds, noise, setbacks, environmental, community benefits) go into the UDO during the pause. Rivera, Everhart, Bollman stated they will vote yes at Council. Record vs. tape: the record lists Rivera as seconder; on the tape the motion to send without recommendation was seconded by Everhart, who also seconded the motions to open and to close discussion. Reported per the record. Flagged as the meeting's principal item.
Dockets 26-000500, 26-000503. Record vs. tape: the record shows a 5–0 roll call on each; the tape has no motion on either — after Item 3 the only motion is to adjourn. Item 4's record has a blank mover and seconder; Item 5's lists Halton-Pope and Rivera. Read as the clerk's carry-forward of the standing table, not as votes taken Tuesday.
Dockets 26-000382 through 26-000464 and 26-000408. Each shows “Tabled” with no roll call (“yes 0”) in the record; Items 6–20 list Halton-Pope and Rivera as mover and seconder, Items 21–73 list neither. None was mentioned on the tape. The oldest, the Commissioner's Report on Proactive Rental Inspections (Item 72), is MT 23-348, filed in 2023. Item 73 (docket 26-000408) is a second docket entry for the same communication as Item 27 (docket 26-000409), Halton-Pope's MT 25-1981 on BMHA-managed facilities. Item 6's MT number is printed without a year (“MT-1267”).
Seconded by Rivera. Not recorded in the minutes.
What this is built from. The City posted video of the meeting on its CivicClerk portal; the audio was extracted and transcribed. The recording runs 46.0 minutes; the first 7¾ are a pre-meeting countdown, the roll call begins at 8:01 and the motion to adjourn is at 45:53. Timecodes are recording positions, not clock times. The agenda items file (with the clerk's recorded roll calls) and the summary minutes were read in full and are the ground truth for dispositions and vote counts; the transcript was read in full.
Where the record and the tape disagree. (1) Seconders on Items 2 and 3: the record lists Bollman and Rivera; the tape has Rivera seconding the Item 2 table and Everhart seconding the Item 3 send. The record is used and the tape noted. (2) The record shows 5–0 roll calls on carried-over Items 4 and 5 and “Tabled” with no votes on Items 6–73; the tape contains no motion on any carried-over item. All are reported as the record states them. (3) The tape's roll call names seven members (Feroleto and Scanlon do not answer); the minutes list nine, with Wyatt and Nowakowski also excused. (4) Item 73 duplicates Item 27 under a second docket number.
Who presided. Committee chairs are not verified for this body. The presiding voice is addressed as “Mr. Chair” throughout and is identified here as Golombek from the tape's content: the same voice sponsors the resolution, is thanked by name for bringing it, describes Black Rock and Clayton Street constituents in “my district” (the North District), and makes the working-commission commitment in the first person on behalf of “this committee.” The speaker on Item 2 addresses the chair and is not named on the tape; the record's mover, Halton-Pope, is noted as the likeliest. The Item 3 speaker who asked about standards during the pause is Halton-Pope by elimination: Golombek presided and Rivera, Everhart and Bollman were each called on afterward by name.
Names. Council members are corrected against the verified roster: Whisper's “Golumbia,” “Golombak” and “Golumbic” are Golombek; “Houghton-Poe” is Halton-Pope; “Peraletto” is Feroleto; “Balman” and “Bullman” are Bollman. No public speaker is named in the items or minutes, so private residents are described by role and district only, including the Black Rock resident whom Golombek and the coalition thanked by name on the tape. Two organization representatives are named as heard and carry [*]: the Clean Air Coalition's organizer (“Bridge Rauch”) and its executive director (“Chris Murowski”; the surname's spelling is not confirmed). PUSH Buffalo's organizer is described by role because the tape renders the name two different ways. The administration official who did not appear on Item 1 is not named on the tape; the deputy mayor Golombek named on September 15 is identified by role. “Governor Hokel/Hoco” is Governor Hochul; “Tana Wanda” is Tonawanda; “Stamp Project” is the STAMP industrial park in Genesee County; “the Merriweather” is reported as spoken.
Streets and addresses. The street check found two references, Clayton Street and Pennsylvania Street, both exact matches to the city index; no corrections were applied. One address was not extractable by the tool: the first speaker placed an existing East Side cryptocurrency mine at what the tape renders as “1001 East Sullivan.” There is no Sullivan in the city street index; the corrections file records “Delavan” as a frequent Whisper miss, and East Delavan Avenue is the likely street, but the address is left as heard rather than guessed. The claimed 80-megawatt downtown proposal, the 12- and 2-gigawatt queue figures, the 30 hyperscale applications attributed to the Governor and the $1 trillion industry figure are speakers' statements and are reported as such. The interests watchlist was checked against every address, applicant and entity on the docket and in the transcript; no match.