The Dunkirk Common Council’s next agenda includes more money proposed for two city employees and a measure to block off part of the Washington Avenue parking lot for a housing construction project.

The agenda for Tuesday’s meeting contains resolutions to authorize stipends of $1,200 for Deputy Planning and Development Director EJ Hayes, and $800 for Youth and Recreation Director Alexis Tofil.

Both resolutions state that the stipends are for summer festival work. Both workers took “on additional duties for the operations of festivals outside their normal job duties.”

Neither resolution states where the money is coming from to pay the stipends.

Another resolution calls for lease of approximately half the Washington Street parking lot, the side nearest Sixth Street, to Kulback’s Construction, Inc. for at least six months. The rent would be $500 a month, with an option for a month-to-month lease after the original term expires.

Kulback’s is the general contractor for Regan Development’s project to build two apartment buildings in the area, including on Washington Avenue just a block from the parking lot. The “leased area will be utilized as a construction material laydown yard and employee/subcontractor parking area in support of ongoing construction operations in the vicinity,” Tuesday’s council resolution states.

Kulback’s anticipates using the property from Aug. 1 through Feb. 1, 2027. The resolution mandates that the construction company return the parking lot to its previous condition when it vacates the lot.

Here’s a couple other notable resolutions from the council agenda:

— City government continues to navigate the bureaucratic requirements for a 250-megawatt Battery Energy Storage System off Brigham Road. A resolution seeks to hire the Mackenzie Hughes law firm of Syracuse to draft a Host Community Agreement and Road Use Agreement.

Lighthouse Battery, the company that wants to install the BESS, will pay the fees associated with the drafting of the agreements, according to the resolution.

— The ownership transfer of a courtyard next to the city-owned Stearns Building on Central Avenue was fouled up, and a resolution seeks to rectify it.

The Common Council accepted a donation of the courtyard parcel in 2021 from the Robert K. Lesser Living Trust. However, “the city never actually took title to the parcel due to clerical errors made by then-City Attorney Richard Morrisroe, thus the parcel is still owned by the Lesser Trust,” according to the resolution.

Meanwhile, the prior owners of the 332 Central Ave. and the Central Station restaurant, across the courtyard from the Stearns Building, sold to a new owner in 2025. The new ownership wants to purchase the courtyard parcel from the Lesser Trust for $4,000, and retain a use easement for the courtyard that the city negotiated in 2019, when it bought the Stearns Building. However, it wants “removal of the words granting the city right of first refusal.”

So as “to avoid confusion, clarify ownership, and remain true to its 2021 original intent, the Lesser Trust has offered to transfer its rights to the purchase proceeds to the city of Dunkirk; the city in effect avoids future liability for care, maintenance, and capital expenditures for the courtyard, continues freely with existing use and excess as it had before, and gains a $4,000 donation.”

The resolution nullifies the 2021 acceptance of the courtyard donation, and a 2023 lease to the former Central Station owners that then-City Attorney Michael Bobseine negotiated under the assumption that the city owned the property.