Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Good. Hello, everyone. It is July Tuesday, July the 28th 2026. Four o'clock. This is a meeting of the coffee County Planning Commission. Everybody welcome. We'll call this meeting to order. And I'm going to ask for any public comments. Anybody wants to speak, please come to the podium. Tell us who you are. And speak of peace. Don't everybody come forward at the same time.

Mr. Chairman, I'd like to remind the crowd you can speak to anything regarding planning commission meeting. It does not have to be an agenda item. That's correct. So if you've got anything on your mind that you'd like to bring to this body, you are allowed to speak to it in this meeting.

Still no volunteers? All right, we're going to move on. Can I do it again? I just want to see if things are addressed.

What's that now?

Why don't you come on up and speak? That's what we've been doing, and we'd appreciate it if you do that.

Okay. You may actually address this in the meeting. This is my first meeting here. Okay. My name's Donna Smith.

Wait a second. Start with your mouth in front of the microphone.

Donna Smith? Can you hear me okay? Yes. Okay. This is my first meeting, and like I said, you may address some of these things. I've just seen that the Planning Commission with the data centers, and I just had a couple of questions, and again, you may address them, so I apologize if I ask in advance, and you're going to get to them.

What's your name again, please? Donna Smith. Thank you.

And with that, I know... They're going to be coming along. Do you know where they're going to be? Are they going to have, I guess, the decommission bond? I've been hearing about that because, as you know, technology changes, and in a couple of years when they do something different, we don't want that just left. What benefit is it going to be to us, to the taxpayers? And I'd like to know, you know, as our power grid going to work are we going to have to update that and who's paying for that?

You came to the right meeting, ma'am. Okay, that's what you may address. That's what we're going to be discussing today.

Okay, good. That's what I said. I'm sorry if I jumped the gun.

No, no. One thing, and I think the mayor has mentioned it many times and we have to in here, we cannot ban data centers. They're a legal land usage. And all we can do is regulate them. And that's what we're going to be talking about today. And I'll tell you what I'm going to do. When we get through today, if you've got another question, I'm going to let you ask it. Okay.

That works for me. All right. Thank you.

Thank you. Okay. Any other public comments? We're going to move on to the approval of the previous minutes. Hope you all had time to read them.

I'll make a motion to approve.

I've got a motion from Mr. Carroll to approve.

I second that motion.

I have a second from Ms. Lauren Nettles. Any discussion? All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Opposed? Unanimous. We're going to move on to the approval of the agenda.

I make a motion to approve the agenda.

Pretty tough there. I've got a motion for approval of the agenda. Do I have a second?

I'll second.

I have a second for Ms. Anastasia Gonzalez. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. This is the surprise. We actually have bond review today.

Oh, man.

You want to explain it, Kurt, please?

It's a brokable letter of credit that Curl has with Benton Bartlett for the top coat on the phase four, the final that's going through tonight.

Does everybody have a copy of the agenda? Mark do you have one? Amanda needs one. Cindy do you have extras?

She got it. Thank you.

Okay, that's all, Kirk. We're going to move on then to our first item of business, the final PLAT Phase 4 Country Landing Major Subdivision. And I think we have a presenter right back there. Please state your name and who you represent.

I'm Todd Sherrill with St. John Engineering. I'm here representing the final plat for country landing phase four. We are seeking contingent approval. They have the paving done and are working on the curb. to finish that up with the rain that's been going on. It's kind of slowed them up just a little bit. But as mentioned, we are in the process of getting the curb down and hope to have that done very shortly. And we did provide the letter of credit for the topping on that also. and we have TDEC souls approval. I do not have the signature on the plat, but we have an email from TDEC with restrictions on the lot stating that that is ready for approval and for them to sign.

You have a copy of that? Mm-hmm.

Okay. I do.

So you got a copy of the email?

I do, and here's the restrictions on that. Okay. Here's the email right here.

Kurt, you're saying everything's good and ready to go?

It is.

Any questions? There are no questions. I will hear a motion either way.

I'll make a motion to approve.

I have a motion for Mr. Harrell.

I second.

And I have a second for Ms. Lawrence. for approval of this plat for country landing, phase four. Do I hear any more discussion? All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Opposed? Thank you, sir. Thank you. OK. Now we're going to move on. And this is going to be a bit informal, because it's going to be in the form of a discussion. and we're gonna do the resolution amendment, the data center regulations. In other words, we're gonna talk about the conditions that we're gonna require for a data center to be here.

May I take this opportunity to introduce Amanda Reinhart from RCS Planners? She is our professional planner and our employee, and she's here to weigh in on data center restrictions and language, as you guys may ask her to, okay?

That sounds good to me. I have what we worked on a couple of meetings ago, and... It's got the resolution, the data center, the data center structures. It starts on Section 3, data centers and data center accessory uses. And then we go to C, dimensional standards. And that's the first thing I think, Anastasia, we discussed. Is that not right, Randy? Mm-hmm. I think that in the resolution that we looked at, the height was 65 feet. I believe that's right, Mark. And we wanted to change that to 35 feet to match all the other structures in our building. zoning regulations.

That's correct.

Is that right? You have this copy too, don't you, Mark?

Yes, sir.

Good. I'll be asking you more questions. Does anybody have a problem with any of that? That's a pretty simple one. Now, setbacks. And we talked about 300, 500... 300 feet 500 feet and those setbacks were from Schools residential uses

Would it be just from parcel lines or you're not talking about a joint parcel?

That's my suggestion is that it would be, and I think we talked about 500 feet, did we not, Anastasia?

Yes, we did.

500 feet from the parcel line.

Mm-hmm.

Now, is that enough? That's the question.

i would like to ask if you're if it's a like kind zoning district would you apply the same setback i'm just throwing that out there if you have the data center on an m2 parcel and there's another m2 parcel adjoining would this setback d would you designate that this applies to all zoning districts

I don't think so, because I think the data center has its own special characteristics, the main thing being noise and light.

And Mr. Chairman, I mean, my notes from last time, and it's whatever you all, because this is obviously not final, it's just a working copy for discussion, but we had discussed last time just eliminating the word residential and and changing it to the boundary of any other zoning district. The situation the mayor just described, if you're in a larger M2 zone, does it matter? But that's up to you. I like that. Any other zoning districts?

Well, M2 is a special impact or...

mean it's arsenals and fireworks factories you know so they're rock quarries so it is it is those type of neighbors that they would have so a special impact district would have those same activities so I'm just saying we need to clarify any parcel no matter what the district is if it's a like-kind district it doesn't matter just whatever the language we are putting in the document for setbacks, I suggest that that be addressed.

What setbacks? What setbacks would be recommended for M2? I'm talking about, I mean, you know, if you have a M2 zoning and they have a data center come in there and build what would their setbacks be for there if we made an exception for the N2?

Are you saying what would it be for the data center or what would it be for any other use? Well, that's what you're saying right now is what it's going to be for the data center. I'm just suggesting that there's going to be other uses could be on another M2 parking lot.

Right, but right now we've got 500 feet.

That would be specific to data centers is the way you're, right now the way you guys are going.

Right. I don't think we decided on a distance other than what I had in my notes was a minimum of 300 feet, but it could change to be 500, 700. I think that was just a discussion point last time that you all were going to think about and discuss at the next meeting.

I don't think 300 feet is enough.

That's a football field for people.

Right, but I still don't think that's enough. I don't think that's enough for... for what we're seeing.

Can we make a, have it like we've got it, but also make exception M2 zoning? Since that's where a lot of it would be at.

It's gonna have to be, it's in an M2, that's for sure.

From the fencing and the natural surrounding area that we have or outside of that? Remember, I think we discussed the fact that they have to have natural habitat around them. And so with that being said, is it outside?

That would be inside that 500 feet is what I think.

Okay.

the outside of our distance would be the natural barrier. In other words, if it was 100 feet, it would be 400 feet away from, is that what you're getting at? Yes, yes.

Amanda, she stated earlier in our conversation that we were pretty much out in front, but other counties and municipalities are following suit in herds, if you will. So I'm going to ask her if you'll That was my next question. Has anybody else, have you worked with setback requirements for data centers with other entities?

So one thing that what I caution other communities is that you don't want to be very far out of line with the conditions that you have for other uses in the same district. So, for example, if you're setback for a rock quarry was 200 feet. You don't want to condition a data center to be 600 feet because theoretically the impacts of a rock quarry would be greater than a data center. Does that make sense?

Yeah, but I don't know if I agree with that.

Well, I'm just, but what I'm saying is legally to withstand challenge, and of course I'm not going to overspeak on your county attorney who's present here, but that is something that lot of counties and cities are are struggling with and trying to determine what exactly is the right setback and so they're using their underlying zoning setbacks as that guidance to look at what compared to other uses in that zone is going to be the most appropriate. When you have impacts for noise and you have impacts for vibration and you have those different types of impacts, a lot of times you don't know what those impacts are because they haven't been studied.

That's where we are, right?

Right. So that's what I'm saying. You don't necessarily want to go too far above and beyond the setbacks for the other M2 uses in your zone.

Okay, we've got a question for you. One thing, could we go all districts, zoning districts, 500 feet M2 zoning only be, what is the setback for M2?

That's what I was trying to find in your book here.

I can't remember.

Yeah, I was looking as well. I didn't know if Kurt, you know that offhand or?

special conditions under section H hold on just a second structures okay so no I'm sorry it's eat off street parking shall be provided minimum and gone one space so it says Well, that's referring to parking, but it says it's located no more than 500 feet from lot boundary, and that's section 5E under special conditions. That's kind of what? Right. It's parking, but the 500 feet is in there, so that would be Q5E. Here's M2.

Okay.

You looking in our zone? Uh-huh. OK. Conditions for.

Required yards. Uses adjoining at least 200 feet. Along any rear or side lot line which adjoins residential property, whether such property is presently occupied for residential purposes or only zoned for such use, an unopened area obstructed form, I think that should say from the ground to the sky, at least 200 feet wide shall be provided within the M2 district. If use adjoins commercial or industrial property along any line which adjoins property either classified or presently utilized for commercial or industrial uses, open area of at least 150 feet wide shall be provided and so you've got 200 and 150 so if you went 300 and you know 200 250 that would be within the realm of reasonableness my problem and maybe somebody else doesn't have this problem

is that we're talking about something that runs seven days a week, 24 hours a day and makes a lot of noise, okay? But nothing else in our M2 district compares to that. That is why I think there needs to be a greater setback. You know, I mean, that's up for discussion.

Well, the M2, M2 is all industrial. and stuff, something some type, like I said, noise, something like that. So impactful. But can we, what I'm thinking is, can we not do because if you get if you're gonna build an m two, you're not gonna be around residential. So What about making all other zoning districts besides M2 500 feet make M2 setbacks what we require now already? Which is 200 feet. Which is 200 feet. Can we do that?

Say that again.

Say that again. All districts, zoning districts, besides M2, M2 is an exception, it could be set back. M2, if they build one there, has a setback of 200 feet. All other zoning districts has a setback of 500.

You can't do that. Well, you can't build another one anyway. You have to have a house 500 feet in RS1. That would not work.

But if you're meaning... No, I'm talking about for the data centers.

But a data center can't go anywhere but M2.

Yeah, it can only go on an M2. It can't go anywhere else.

I think maybe stated differently, maybe amending the M2 setback to... Because there are no residential... If I understand what you're trying to get to, and I may be misunderstanding, so please correct me. To make it... uniform across the district for use adjoining residential property, instead of having the setback be 200 feet for all uses, make that 500 feet for all uses. That way it impacts, it goes, it would apply toward all uses in M2, not just data centers. So if all uses, that would be special impact. Whether it's a rock quarry, whether it's a data center, whether it's a what have you.

Randy, just to clarify, this body and the legislative body has already said data centers are only going to be in the M2. They can't be anywhere else. I know what you're saying, but they can't be anywhere else.

I was just thinking, because I know some of the news I've seen, they're trying to put them out in more rural areas.

They can't hear.

They can't hear.

No, they cannot hear.

Not without being any parcel for a data center is going to have to be rezoned to an . OK.

And then if there was a use that adjoins commercial or industrial property, as Mayor Hunt was saying, if it's industrial that's abutting industrial, then you can look at that and make that, it's currently 150 feet, you can make that a certain number if you wanted to double that or leave it at 150 feet because of industrial. Right. Well, let me ask you this, Amanda. If we did

say 500 feet, but then a data center is locating in a parcel M2 that is adjoining an M1 or M2, and they have an argument, well, we should be allowed to move a little closer. Could the BZA grant a variance to allow that? Would that be a pathway for them to get a little relief on a setback if they're joining another like

district at least m2 or m1 that's a good question let me look to see what your m1 says so your m1 doesn't You don't have a yard recommendation for an M1 in your book. It just goes to M2. Okay.

Did you already read this one, the required yards within M2? Yes, sir.

So, I mean, that, I guess it... I don't think it would be a best practice. I'm not saying that it couldn't be done, but I don't think that it would be a best practice to be that flexible with a setback just for a certain use.

So if you do 500 in M2 for all uses, that means if there are two separate parcels with two not like kind uses, they're gonna be 1,000 feet apart. Right? If that's what we stick with. Or two data centers. I mean, it'd be two separate parcels. It could be a data center here and a data center on the adjoining parcel, if it's M2.

but the data center accessory building would not have to be 500 feet away from the data center, correct? I mean, they could, they're a project, right? Both together, correct?

Generally speaking, they're situated. Well, generally, what I have seen is that a data center and a data center accessory use are not located together. You get a data center, and then you've got data center accessory uses, which are smaller, which are data center light that would go somewhere else that are these fiber huts is what I've seen them referred to. So they're smaller, and they go into a more urban footprint. Those go into... I think the one proposal that I've seen for those is less than an acre.

So you're saying that the smaller pages, like you're talking about.

The accessory use.

Accessory stuff. They've been putting them in. Like an acre or more out. Instead of like in the M2, they were putting them out in more urban development.

And it looks, you know like what the telephone switching buildings look like? They're like that, but probably about three times bigger. They're not huge. You wouldn't know it from a telephone switching center if you drove by it.

Is that what they're putting in some of the abandoned buildings that they're talking about?

I don't know if it could be retrofitted or not. I don't know the construction side of it.

What's your suggestion?

I think that you would be on better footing if you were to modify the zone for setbacks than if you were to try to put that specific requirement on the data center. Especially since you would really be singling out that one specific use.

I got you. That makes sense.

So the smaller building she's talking about will still have to be an M2 because it's a data center. That's the way it's written. That's the way it's written, correct? Correct, Mayor? Yes. Yeah, it would have to be an M2, the smaller ones.

Yes.

And really the way this is defined in the current zoning, what was passed by the county commission at the last meeting, really seems to... imply that they would be on the same site or would be close because it's an ancillary use or structure secondary and incidental to a data center use including but not limited to administrative logistical fiber optic storage and security buildings for structures generators, environmental controls. Correct. At least that's what seems to be intended in the resolution at the current time. Any data center, if it was a data center, would be, no matter the size of it, would be covered by this as a data center.

So an accessory use must be on the same parcel, or if we do approve a parcel and rezone it into, and it's actually an accessory use, it's going to have to meet all the same setbacks as what we did for the primary data center, correct?

Yeah, and I don't think it has to necessarily be, yeah, it could be on a separate parcel. It could be, you know, maybe the same sort of campus, but it might be a different parcel for property tax purposes or whatnot. But, you know, that could be consolidated, assuming that's... allowed and they don't require the this commission was doing its site plan review and all that or plat subdivisions doesn't require it all to be on one on one track i think this would be so complicated that's why that's why moratoriums are good because it gives you all time to think through these things

the chairman asked me how long this building is it's approximately 600 feet long so two football fields from one end to the other okay that's 600 feet i'm just getting a relative so people can understand how far apart that is in realistically

Anybody else got any comments?

So we're looking at redoing the setbacks in the zoning.

I think so. And the way that you have them written in your M2 is that if they do happen to abut a, if the M2 happens to abut a residential, you have your larger setback. So you can have your 500 or whatnot And then if it happens to adjoin another commercial or industrial property the setback is smaller because theoretically the impact from data center on I keep I keep using rock quarry because that's dusty and loud and you know there's impacts to roads and things like that so it just keeps coming to mind but theoretically the impacts are not as great on each other as they would be on a resident on it either of those uses would be on a residential use So I think in that way you get your same protections that you're after, but you're not singling out just one single potential use. So I think it accomplishes the same purpose. That would be my recommendation.

That sounds good to me. Now explain that to Mark. I think he understands.

You got it. I got it.

The question just is, do you want it to be, what do you want those distances to be? So if we made it, and I agree, I like it where it's... spelled out not having to worry about variances and things because that gets a little so we're looking at 500 what's well what i was going to give you were sort of three categories to look at one is if it abuts a residential zone two if it abuts another industrial zone and then three would be any other zone be a commercial could be a whatever so would be the we could easily spell that out that any adjoining line with a residential zone it's got to be 500 feet if that's what you're wanting it to be another industrial zone you may 150 and then any other zone 300 that's uh mark so are you lumping m1 and m2 together to be considered the same for setback that's that that would be the question if you wanted to be we could break it into M2 and M1 and have it less in an M2 and have, but that's...

I could see it being incremental depending on the actual negative impact. M1 would be less, I think, an impact to them as... M2 or an RS1 or whatever.

Got to think about the size of the data center too.

Yeah, that's true.

You got that, Mark?

I would suggest, guys, we've told the public that we're going to have something by October. This is just one restriction, just one. I suggest that everybody come to an agreement on what it needs to be. and make a motion, second, and approve that one, and then say that one's done, and then move to another subject line for restriction. That would be my suggestion. You agree with that, Mark?

i mean i'm i'm fine with that if unless this is if this is just discussion if there's a consensus i also think if because what i would expect is then um and for whatever reason i didn't have this meeting down today until the mayor texted me this morning but um i would i will email out to everyone a red line copy because i've already made a lot many of the changes we talked about last time but i can email out everybody a red line copy and then at the August meeting we could actually vote on that in its totality is that what you're saying they could vote on any individual section and say then change this or change that or vote on it in its totality if they like it but everybody would have it ahead of time to look at and review can you repeat the three sections you were talking about What I just sort of threw out was if it abutted a residential zone, it was 500 feet. If it was another industrial district, which could be M1 or M2, it was 150. And any other district would be 300. But that was just a...

So part of it, I think, since we don't know the testing yet, should we wait until, because we're already requiring testing pre-construction and then during construction. So let's say they're building this thing pretty noisy. We should be able to have the right, you know, to extend it, or I guess we need some results first, depending on what we're going to see.

We're going to get to the testing on further in this as we go. But you're right. You're right.

So 500 feet may not be enough if it's just got, you know.

Decibels, is that what you're speaking?

Right. So if we don't know that, you know, it could be enough, but it could be.

Well, I think it would be difficult to change it once the, if they, in theory, before they're building anything, their site plan and construction plans have been approved. So I think they should have much of that data when they're submitting, at least their proposed data. Remember, we can't, like we talked about last time, we can't truly know a sound test before it's built. because it's not built. There's nothing really to test. But they can certainly have their engineered specifications and their estimations on when they're presenting that to the body.

What about the, like he was talking about, the residential, if it butts up against residential, be 500 feet, the M1, be 250, 300 feet, and industrial be 150. Because like I said, if everybody beside an industrial building that's got a bunch of heavy equipment in it and stuff or machinery, you know, I'm just thinking that it's where it needs to be. It's in an industrial area and stuff. But I'm just saying, but they can increase it. That's just like he was talking about.

Sammy, you run a pretty noisy business from time to time. What's your opinion about that?

Well, I mean, we're not going to be able to change it after it's already built. That's exactly right. I mean, you're not going to be able to say, hey, you're too noisy. You're going to have to back them up. That's not a possibility. And another thing we hadn't thought about as far as like the setbacks, is there going to be a difference, say, if it's woods versus open field?

Well, they're going to have to build a barrier.

They've got to have screening with evergreens and stuff.

Yeah, there's very specific guidelines on that.

What I was going to suggest was we sort of, have a placeholder with what we've got here but then we kind of sit on that because really some of this too we really don't we're also somewhat speculating a little bit as well we don't know because we don't know but we at least have something we can have in here to to consider and to review but then might move on to another section.

I'm ready to move on to the next problem we have and just go with the 500, 300, and 150. Is that what you're going to do?

Because you're not voting right now, right? We're just getting this down into a revised draft that you can look.

Do you guys want to vote on this now?

No.

Well, that's pretty good answer out there. All right. So let's, let's leave that hypothetically as Mark has it. Does everybody agree, agree that first good starting point? Okay. want to move on. The next thing I have mark is the landscape buffer. Is that the next thing on your list? Correct. And I think this is pretty much self explanatory. Anybody has a different idea than this or let me hear it. But don't you think this is pretty decent mark the way this is written?

Yeah, I think the only other note I had made on that was to just remove the word residential and that it would apply to any adjoining zoning district. Correct. Not just necessarily residential.

As a matter of fact, I've got that scratched out. Okay. Is everybody good with that? Speak now, if you ever hold your peace. Screening and fencing. That looks pretty solid to me. Have you got anything else on anybody? Anastasia, did you have something different on the screening and fencing?

No.

Sammy?

My only comment was I took out the word residential as well. Do what? I took out the word residential.

Residential zoning?

Yeah, you got to just, yeah.

Another zoning district.

This next one's going to be fun. Noise and vibration. Now, this is everything I have read makes two points. Mark's already mentioned one of them, and that is we don't know. We don't have a clue. The second thing is when you do go to test, who does the testing? And I felt like that we as the county need to have a say-so in that. We don't need to pay for it, but we need to have a say-so in who does the testing.

I agree. Yeah, the county doesn't need to pay for it because, I mean, I can say they need to do the noise test.

I know I had something on that.

Well, we've discussed multiple times that we should have some input on who it is that they hired, the engineering group, or needs to have some insight from the county. And I guess all of the future ones that we're going to require as quarterly, yearly, or whatever the decision that is when it's finalized, you know, are they continue to choose their own person or do we consistently, you know, I mean, they may want to switch someone so many years down the road and, You know, I guess, like, would we require them to be re-approved by us, or how does that work? Or we just choose the initial person?

Well, what about, I'm thinking, let's say they have a list of ones that they can choose from that are approved by us.

Out of choices.

have them a list and say, okay, here's these five. You can pick any of these five, any one of them. And that way we've got them already approved by us instead of us having to try to get approved because we can just go ahead and get a list of however many we can. And then they can, all right, here's your list. It's approved. It's got to be one of them.

Makes sense to me. Makes it easier.

one of the things that... Yeah, and I'm not exactly sure how to put that. I mean, I understand what you're saying about having some that are pre-approved. I guess the question would be if they've got a professional engineering firm, you know, that may be even from another locale, would there be a process where they would be approved? I mean, you get into a lot of... detail on some of that and people that are licensed and if they're signing off on it as an engineer and they're, so to speak, stamping it, that becomes, I'm not sure.

Yeah, but how are we going to approve those?

Well, what if we did something like what we do with traffic, well, what some communities do with traffic studies where it's their professional engineer but we hire our own professional engineer that would review their submitted work submitted report but at their cost so it's kind of like we have somebody that would be grading their paper yeah we talked about that that way that way we have we're not getting into the business of telling them no you have to use our guy to do your study you know

But we have a report to compare to just to verify the results.

But we have somebody that we've hired that we feel comfortable with that is somebody from perhaps our own locale that we know and we feel comfortable with that's checking to make sure that the boxes are checked and the T's are crossed and the I's are dotted.

To look at their report.

Looking at their report.

Not for that engineer to have his report, but to look at their report, that they're furnishing.

Which is what the cities do now with all of their site plans and construction plans and everything the city engineers review.

That way if they want to get somebody out of Philadelphia, that's fine, but we've got somebody out of Nashville or Lexington or wherever else that we're comfortable with and that's past our, you know, that the county is comfortable with working with.

Okay, I got a question for you. What happens if there's a disagreement?

Well, then that's something that the county would have to look at and go, well, we don't think that your report is right, and we're the determining body on that.

Correct. Right.

One of the things that was pointed out to me that most of these centers, they just do decibel level testing. They don't do subaudible testing.

And subaudible testing,

So it needs to be a complete test. It doesn't just need to be a bit. I mean, we're talking at about 60 decibels right here. Well, when we leave, nobody's going to be talking and everybody's going to be comfortable. But if we had this same 60 decibel level all the way home and all the way through the night tonight, it kind of gets aggravating. And some of you have husbands, and some of you have wives, and you know how that goes. But anyway, that's it.

that works in our codes enforcement office also has honeybees. He brought up that bees have been brought into this subject, that it affects their radar, their GPS system, basically this subaudible that you just brought up, that they can't find their way back if their hive is anywhere near a data center. That's another subject.

Okay, Mark, are you satisfied with what you can come up with out of that?

Yeah, and I was also going to think, would it be appropriate to... Seek some input. I mean, do we have, who is the, does the county have an engineer that is currently on any sort of a retainer that you used at all or not? I was going to say they could provide any.

I would say no.

Okay. You know, they would provide any comment. Not that would have that expertise. So. I'll do a little tweak on that and I'll maybe put some blanks and then we, when we get back together in August, we can, and I'll see if I can get some other information from some other people that have broached that and see what they've, what they've done as well. So we'll have something to compare to.

Okay. We was talking about the quarterly testing. There's another thing we was talking about. Do we want to stick with that after a length of time? or just stick with it from then on.

That's what I'm saying. I think you're quarterly testing. All together. That's what I'm saying. I think that needs to be.

Yeah, I agree, but I'm just asking. We need to keep it, because I knew that was something we discussed.

Did any of your other clients address that? We haven't gotten this up yet.

Okay.

And then also the 72-hour run time on the generators.

Yeah, we'll get to that shortly. Are you good? OK. Let's move on to the water and sewer questions. I know people around here are used to hearing all about this. The first thing we have is that use shall not be served by the public water supply. And Randy says that we can make that distinction. Randy works with TDEC a lot.

If they're doing a well, like we talked about before, we cannot tell them they can't use a well.

Right. That's private, okay?

With it being a public utility, If I'm not mistaken, I'm pretty sure about it, I think we can say that they cannot hook to it, but also the utility themselves has to sign off on it and approve it before it can happen. What I'm talking about, if a data center comes in, they'll have to go to that utility and say, okay, we're going to need X amount of water. And the utility has to sign off on if they can supply that or not. And none of the utilities around here can supply that. Not what they're talking about. So I think we can make it in there saying that we do not that we vote against them hooking to a public utility but also state that the utility themselves has to sign off on it, about the amount, if they'll do it.

Well, what I'm hearing you say, I'm hearing you say they can't hook onto a public utility, but it's up to the utility whether they can approve it or not. So I don't think that's too diametrically opposed there a little bit. I guess the question is, because what if the utility, what if they wanted to, if they felt they had the capacity, if the question is not drawing much at one particular time it's going to affect other people connected to that what if the utility provided them a separate source without going through the same water lines that are going to adjoining properties well that would be a private

Utility that I'm saying that would be their private.

That would be a think about like they're like if TVA or somebody right a direct power connection to somebody could a good a Water company run a direct Yeah, could they build their own water tower and have their own? Water there in a way that wouldn't impact other people

Well, the problem is they can build their own power station, and they can get the utility to agree to supply them with so much water. But how is that going to affect the rest of the communities? How is that going to? I mean, we know what happened this last winter when we had a shortage of, I don't know if there was a real shortage of water, but there was a water thing issued, water warning issued. These people will come in and take what they can get. I mean, they really will. I like just saying you can't hook to public water. Now, my question is, can we make that distinction? Can we tell TVA and Duck River, hey, you can't supply the data center? I don't think we can do that, can we, Mark?

Well, I think it would be difficult, but I think the other question would be, it gets back to, again, somewhat like the sound. Is this something that the engineers have to say, okay, here's what our use is going to be. They've got to get approval. They've got to be able to know that a local utility or somebody could actually supply that, but then it would also have to be done in a way that it was not going to impact other users, and that would be something as well that I think that the engineer that the county is using to review if one of these were to come up um i would caution and the utilities engineers would have to also all agree on um and you know and i guess it's we have to remember for those watching on youtube there is no data center proposed or anything right now and actually that this committee is trying to get ahead of the curve maybe even ahead of a lot of other communities because we do see on the news virtually every night where another community has done a moratorium or is doing something on data centers, at least those that have zoning, to be able to figure these things out and address. So I'm sure after we do this and we have something down at least that can go to the county commission, it may very well be that that gets amended again once we have a little more information, but at least we have something to show that this county is working in, in good faith to come up with regulations that are designed to allow a data center were one to be proposed as long as it can meet the criteria.

I feel like the cooling of this can be categorized three areas. total closed loop, where basic consumption, after it's charged system, basic consumption would be next to zero, just like the radiator in your car. That's a closed looped cooling system. Number two would be an evaporative system, where there would be an outdoor cooling tower, just like it rains and the air is going through these raindrops going down, and that is recirculated, but you lose some, due to evaporation. The third one would be total discharge, where they're just pumping it out of a reservoir or somewhere and putting it back somewhere, discharging it. So that would be, I think would be the most alarming consumption rate would be a total discharge. The evaporative system would be number two. I feel like we need to just say you must have self-contained closed-loop cooling system. That's what I think. I think that's where most of them are going anyway. And you've got to let them have water to flush commodes and wash their hands and do those normal things. You've got to let them have public water supply. that but if you just say a closed-loop self-contained cooling system then all you have to worry about is when they have to flush that system just like you take your vehicle to a car dealer and have your cooling system flushed periodically if you listen to the manufacturers you do that so we have to address the flushing and discharge in the recharge and what comes out of that system that's what I think we really need to look at we just say it's got to be closed loop self-contained and we're going to look at what you have what it looks like when you change it out and what are you going to do with it when you change it out that's my opinion but like say also the utility

would have to sign off on their usage. That's state regulations. They had to go before them and say, okay, we need this much water.

If it's a large consumption. What I just addressed, there would be no large consumption, no more than any other industry in this county. If it's a closed-loop system, self-contained, it wouldn't be any different than any other industry. I'm going to say Little Leaf Lattice is going to be a large use because they're growing lettuce and water. That place is 20 acres under roof, a hothouse. It's amazing.

Do you want to... put in there? Do you want to make it ?

I would hope you guys would start off, I would hope you guys would just say, it must be self-contained closed-loop cooling. Because that's where the technology's going. I mean, the industry's hearing, they're listening, they're seeing what's going on. And you can see that's what, as far as I know, that's the technology that's here already. Channel 5 News did a on-site report inside a data center in Nashville just yesterday and it was all closed loop cooling system and they made comment that most neighbors are driving by this one every day and do not even know it's there but it's the There's different data centers. I think different decibel levels are going to be associated with the different kinds of data centers. That would be my suggestion. Closed-loop, self-contained, then all you've got to worry about is that you let them hook up for their bathrooms. But address what they do with the discharge when they do a recharge.

Well, that discharge has got to be tested. I mean, there's no question about that. Right. And the testing they're doing now is fixing to change in 2029, I think, because they're not testing for everything. And they're not testing for a lot of the things that we really need to test for. I think you know that, don't you, Mark? I mean, you've seen that before. Does anybody have a problem with that? The closed-loop system is, if it's a truly closed-loop system, is the way to go. And like you said, I'm thinking that it's not far in the future where we don't use water. It's going to be something like antifreeze. That's my opinion. But anyway. Have you got enough there, Mark? Mm-hmm. OK. Power supply. We've kind of gone over that haven't we? Now we've got under here the applicant shall not be permitted to connect the data center to the electric grid. Does that mean that they are going to build their own substation? which is gonna be connected to the grid, correct? And one of the things that I've read that we need to be warned about is not only do they need to upkeep whatever they build, they need to upkeep the transmission lines and everything from the power company to their substation. In other words, citizens don't need to pay for any damage that might be caused by any of that. I know you had something on that, Anna.

Yes. Well, for one, we considered, I guess, two different things. Right. They build their own substations, but they also have the generators. So with that being said, are they going to be completely self-sufficient if they're still drawing off the substation? Or, you know, you said they're still going to be connecting. I guess I did not understand the fact that the substation is allowed to connect to the regular power. How is that?

Right. I mean, that's what a substation does, doesn't it?

TVA has their primary transmission lines go into all the substations in our area. And that's where the big transformers are, changes the voltage and amperage and sends it out to all of the users, the rate payers. But TVA, I feel like TVA has already made it public that they are addressing the power requirements for data centers in their service area. So I really don't know if they've come up with anything concrete. We certainly, if we say they have to generate their own power, we don't want to do that. Because that means they're going to have diesel or natural gas powered generators. until these little small nuclear generators come around. I think the technology is evolving very fast on the nuclear stuff. I think the small modular units are in the future. I don't know how far in the future. I really don't know what to say about the electric consumption at this point. If TVA and Duck River Electric are looking at this, that might be the Achilles heel for data centers in this immediate area. I don't know.

They would obviously have to be Involved in that and I guess to the point of the talk about if they had their own substation Depending on what kind of power need they had that's really something also probably that TVA or Duck River would Would require and I would think they would be bringing just like they do to other substations lines directly to it so to your question And I don't think even if they built a substation, then they could just, let's say, hook a wire up to the power pole. It'd be a separate line, I would think, coming in to feed that substation, to feed that use. But that's something every industry that comes in has to work out with Duck River and TVA to be able to have appropriate power.

So I guess in my eyes that's not really a closed loop to me if they're still.

Excuse me?

I said I guess in that case it's not necessarily a closed loop.

Well, the power.

Right, because they're still drawing.

They're drawing from the. Right. He's talking about water. Yeah, he's closed loop. He's talking about water.

Okay. Yeah, but not for the power.

Not for the power. Just for the water. Now I'm going to be devil's advocate here because if you see all the stuff on the internet about data centers, and this is what concerns everybody as far as the water and the electrical, is that all of a sudden your rates on your electricity and your rates on your water just go sky high. And I'm sure that in some cases that's happened, but it hasn't happened all the time. I mean, when you're looking at these things, kind of stay grounded because there's a lot of, I'm not pro-data center, don't get me wrong, but a lot of the stuff out there is pretty fantastic. Some of it true, don't get me wrong, but kind of keep your head about you.

I'd like to say, and I say this ad nauseum, we really don't know what we don't know. The megawatt. We hear different megawatt. Well, we promise we're only going to be 40 megawatts. Well, if you'll cut that back to 10 megawatts, we might approve you. I'm hearing this in other municipalities and all that. i don't know what megawatt is that the data or is that the actual power consumption is that number i don't know what their megawatt capacity actually relates to i don't i don't know does anybody know that

I know that they classify them. You've got this, haven't you? They classify them small, medium, and large by megawatts. And have you got that?

Right. I do. But I don't have any notes about how they classify that.

That would be their ability to store. Would that be the megawatt?

Well, no.

I mean, we talk about gigabytes on our laptops and tablets and cell phones. You know, our ability to store our TGBs, now TBs. Gigabytes is how we would talk about storage, but I don't know about the megawatts. I don't know.

All right. Let's move on to the emergency management.

We had a couple of guys in here last week that... Has any of your clients discussed megawatt capacity updates?

You're the first to really get into detail.

Is that bad? Would you want us to wait a while?

No, this is great. So in that case, we need to work on a definition, I guess, for that portion.

What does it mean, the megawatt capacity? I do know the larger the number, the larger the facility. I'm pretty sure that applies.

We had our emergency management people. What I took from that is that they need bigger and better equipment to work with this. And training. And training. And I think we decided, if I'm not mistaken, that whoever owned the data center needed to furnish us that equipment and furnish the training. I agree. Did we not decide that?

Yep. I agree.

And both guys that were here were very, very, very, very good, very thoughtful about what they said. But one of... My objectives, and if anybody disagrees, please speak up. I don't think this needs to cost the county any money. I just don't think it needs to cost the county any money.

No, I agree with you. I think they need to supply the equipment, if it's a fire engine or... and also the training, because when they were here last time, they stated that they're gonna have to have special training for this stuff. So it definitely needs to be paid by them.

One thing that was pointed out to me a couple days ago, that they need to make us aware of all the hazardous chemicals that are stored on site. And they must be approved and inspected by our guys, by our emergency management people.

Yeah, that way they kind of know what they're going into.

Would they not have regular like EPA inspections like Tyson, Coca-Cola, and all those? Did we not?

We did.

That's what I was just looking through the nets. If they're still, if we're requiring, you know, like let's just use Tyson for example. They have USDA there that does regular inspections, EPA, and they measure the output out of the ditches and everything coming off the property. So they're held accountable for everything. You know, they have those gut ponds and all that. They have to be filtered, cleaned, maintained, and any kind of output is consistently monitored. So we have that in the notes.

And didn't we say quarterly? Did we not say quarterly? Yes, quarterly.

And it's at their cost. You know, like Tyson reimburses all those organizations to do that regularly. And... I guess it would be essentially the same thing. Like a regular factory would have regular monitoring for multiple things. Chemicals, sound output, and pollution.

Correct. But you've got that. Mark, did you get that in your notes?

I've got some notes on that. Okay.

All right. Let's move on to... Am I skipping anything? No. Let's move on to aesthetics, which is, we kind of all laughed about this, because I don't know where this all came from, but art, it need to be art deco style, or neoclassical style, or I just think it needs to be a nice build.

I think one thing we talked about, maybe y'all could refresh me, we was talking about basically take that out? Because, I mean, like I said, we can't tell them exactly what style, as long as it's a nice building.

If I'm not mistaken, I think what you're looking at is what we, is the zoning amendment of Knox County. So there is probably some stuff in there that would be specific to their area, not ours.

The Dallas vendors I've seen look like a chicken barn, long and narrow. Is that kind of what you've looked at?

Long and narrow or concrete block, kind of ugly, plain, nondescript. I guess they're meant to just kind of blend in, but they just, you know, I guess just depending on where they are is the context of the area.

I would be more concerned about how well the building's built rather than what it looks like. parking that came out of Knoxville. Anybody got a comment about the parking?

Well, I know that they, a lot of the ones that I've seen, they don't have many employees. No, 20, 25 employees. I mean, that's in the big data. So, I mean, I

I want to go to something. Mark, we've got severability, a repealer, codification, and effective date. We don't really need to talk about those, do we? No. Okay. This is something that Anastasia and Randy and I talked about and we did it with solar farms. And this is a question we want to ask you. We need to come up number one, with a decommissioning statement. We need to have something, if they walk out and leave this thing, it needs to be, they need to have paid for, it needs to be paid for or not by the county. We have to go and clean up a mess, okay? I don't know what kind of mess it would make. The other thing Anastasia brought up was that, was it Texas? that was bringing up putting in so much money in the beginning?

Let me look through the notes right here and see.

Basically kind of like a bond? Well, a bond I think we decided would be hard to do because you don't know the life.

What's it intended to do? What's your goal for the bond?

Remediation escrow. The bond closes out once the building is done and then they're out. You know, there's no insurance. So let's just say they belly up like the solar panels. They got hit by hail. They didn't have enough funds to repair them all. They just left and that's it. You know, there's batteries that are leaking into the soil. Who's going to take care of that? With that being said, so what... I'm going to look it up and see which county it is. I want to say it was like Linn County or something like that. They are paying a fee per kilowattage used or certain income. Let's see, it says impact. So here it is. Each data center shall pay an annual community impact fee to Coffey County or equal amount per megawatt of capacity used each year. So essentially like a tax based off how big this thing is or how much they're using like what we would estimate to take to decommission and it's consistently paid in while they operate.

I'm going to defer to your legal on that one.

Well, and I'm also thinking, is that separate from the zoning? We're talking about zoning things here, and I could see potentially whether we had some sort of a, I understand what you're talking about from a decommissioned bond. I'm also curious as far as having a bond, if they can get that from a bonding company to do that, I don't know that they'd have to pay a, premium for that if they walked away and just abandoned the system whatever the cost would be to dispose of the batteries and all that sort of stuff I also am curious if I need to find out if if TDEC is gonna have a any sort of permitting process for for data centers in the state you know and much like underground storage tanks and you have fees that are paid in and that's part of the and then the state come if you're fund eligible then the state you know cleans up if there's a problem you know after you meet your deductible based on that based on that same thing with that's required of landfills and other things along those lines and that the state requires. I understand what you're saying. I think we just need to do a little more research on that to come up with how best to address that concern.

Agreed.

Good call.

Thank you. I have those once in a while. That

I do have the endangered species and wildlife study. They required it of Love's Truck Stop, so I'm pretty certain that they're going to require it, or we should require it of a data center.

When you say they required, who are you?

That was, gosh, they held up Love's forever because there was an endangered plant out there.

So we... TDAC or the city or the county? Probably TDAC.

It was TDAC and then there was another organization, probably Nature Conservancy or somebody like that.

But... That was brought up, but the Army Corps of Engineers is the one that actually held it up.

Is that what it was?

Yeah, it was... Waters of the US. That rule, when President Trump first term, he taught Congress to modify Waters of the US rules, and that took the Army Corps of Engineers out of the equation. It was only TDAC, TDOT were the approving entities for them.

Mark, have you got light pollution restrictions covered in that?

I don't know if we had light pollution restrictions. There probably was some light.

I know we dropped the high to cut down on light pollution.

Yeah, we discussed that one time.

But what I was going to say is I will also try to have for your next meeting, I will get with TDEC and discuss with them what, if anything, they are looking at as far as data centers go. I mean, I'm vice chair of the underground storage tank and solid waste disposal control board for the state, so I'll, through TDEC, so I can, I think I can get to the right person to find out who, what TDEC's looking at, if anything, that would answer some of these questions, I think.

Do you have also about, I'm pretty sure you do, the 72 hours run time on the generators? Yes, sir. I was thinking you did.

And then my goal would be that prior to the next meeting, the draft that we have, like I said, we'll have a red line, and I think if maybe a draft not to volunteer everybody, but that the mayor and Amanda and I all kind of work together to, feel like we've addressed the things that this committee really ought to be looking at and then whatever this committee also wants to add can be can be added or changed before it's presented to the County Commission because they'll be the ones to actually make the final the final decision on that but I think that the three of us based on this discussion here today in the notes that we all have can come up with a with a pretty good draft for y'all to consider. But again, the goal was to have something for October. The moratorium we did was for a year. So we've got some time. We don't wanna do something that's wrong, but at the same time, we wanna make sure we've addressed it and addressed it as quickly as possible. And then we can move on to other business, right?

We want to be sure that we review all areas of our zoning resolution

we were talking about parking number of employees like right now manufacturing activities require one parking space per 1500 square feet of floor space of the facility i could see that uh they would come in here and say hey you know we're building this 400 000 square foot facility but we've only got 10 employees why do we have i didn't do the math but they would have this huge parking lot are we going to i think we ought to probably do the math make sure the math is mathing for them and we might want to modify that, or could that be a BZA variance?

I could get a variance. That's what I was thinking. They have 20 employees and four robot dogs.

Most of them I've seen, like you say, only have 20, 25 employees at most.

You've got another meeting, haven't you?

She's got a meeting at 530.

I'm okay.

So you don't have anything else? Mark, you got anything else?

No, sir.

Thank you. Again, let me stress that, number one, There are parts of this county that we have no jurisdiction over. And I know everybody says, well, the data center's gone. ARO's not going to get one. Well, we don't know that. They just missed out on the first round. But we would have no oversight on that. Remember that data centers are legal. And we're trying to make a place for them and put some heavy restrictions on them. Please get out and vote. Early voting ends Friday, I think, and next Thursday is the final day to vote. Anybody got anything else?

I do. Okay, I knew that. I do want to say, due to vested right, if an entity walked in tomorrow to the codes office with the intent of... Moving forward with a data center, they would have the vested right for what regulations we have in place right now, which is, one, that it must go in the M2, and that's it. We don't have any restrictions. We don't have the conditions for the special exception. Now, we all know they would have to obtain a rezone for a parcel They would probably choose one in one of our industrial park areas and ask for that parcel to be rezoned to M2. That's a possibility. That might get approved. I don't think they're going to get an M2 approved next to a school. But in any one of our industrial parks, there's a distinct possibility they may accomplish the rezoning of a parcel. So Having said that, we don't need to wait too long on these conditions for the special exception. So the conditions need to be ready for the October full commission to vote on. That's my objective.

One criticism that I'm going to correct is that the county sold the mega site to the state. That is absolutely not true. The county did not sell that land to the state. That was sold by three individuals to the state. So people are saying, why did the county sell? The county did not sell that land to the state. Three individuals sold that land to the state. So maybe that will quiet some folks down too.

And we have no oversight over that at this point. We have no oversight on that either. Except we did initiate a rezoning for all the different parcels that comprise the 1,822 acres. It is now the entire property has been rezoned to M1 by the legislative body. Now the state of Tennessee is in charge and the ECD. So we're just waiting on them to tell us what's going there.

You're talking about not waiting. I agree with you 100% about October and stuff because I saw the other night there's a county that is trying to get – zoning and stuff on data centers, and they're trying to stop one that's already came in and applied. And so they're in trouble. They're in trouble. They're behind. Yeah, I agree.

Anything else? There? Amanda?

He had questions. Yes, yes, sir.

Yes, sir.

Would you please come to the microphone? Please. State your name. Everybody needs to know the public is allowed to speak in these meetings. And they don't know it if they can't hear you.

Okay. My name is Dwight Pruitt. I live over here in Manchester. I am impressed at the way y'all conducted your meetings. Y'all answered almost every question that I had when I got here. Now, the lady was talking about the noise. And I'd heard, of course you can't believe everything on the internet, but they're saying that some farmers are losing their calves. They're miscarrying. And that's within a mile of a data center. And I don't know whether it's true or not. I hope it's not. But if it will affect the cow, it'll affect the child. And y'all look at that. You look like you're really doing a good job. And I want to commend y'all for what you have done, okay? And like I said, I'm impressed. Because before I come here, I was really, really down on them. And personally, I don't think we really need data centers. I don't know what kind of data they're going to put in there. I think they got enough data already. But, you know, I'll live with whatever y'all come out with. But at least I feel like you've done your best. Okay.

Thank you, sir. Thank you. John, did you get that down? I think he pushed a quarter up. Anything else? Actually, if I could speak real quickly.

Yes. I'm Dr. Keith DeMille, by the way. My Ph.D. is in electrical computer engineering, specializing in networking, things like that. And I'm also home inspector plus town of Woodsbury consultant. I can answer a lot of questions if you guys want privately, things like that, what a megawatt and all that stuff is, and I do have an opinion. So thank you guys very, very much. I appreciate it.

We're going to ask you to weigh in in the next meeting then, but this body cannot discuss stuff like this in private outside of this meeting, okay?

Absolutely.

Thank you.

Thank you. Can you be here at the next meeting?

Most likely, yes. All right.

Plus also I want to mention I'm part of the rescue squad as well, so I like all this stuff about rescue stuff.

Okay, thank you.

When is our next meeting? 20. Our next meeting is August the 25th. Is that right? Yeah. Well, Sammy, look to you as always.

I can make a motion to adjourn.

I got a motion from Sammy to adjourn. Anybody want to second that motion?

I'll second.

I got two seconds. All right. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Thank you, Mark. Thank you very much for being here. We appreciate it.

Thank you.