Plan Commission - Regular Meeting

JUNE 9, 2026 MEETING OF THE HANCOCK COUNTY AREA PLAN COMMISSION CITIZENS ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON DATA CENTER SITING. I'D LIKE TO ASK YOU TO TURN OFF YOUR CELL PHONES, ELECTRONIC DEVICES. WE'RE GOING TO JUST KIND OF ROLL THROUGH OUR AGENDA HERE. IF YOU DON'T HAVE A COPY OF IT, WE'VE GOT SOME UP HERE ON THE EDGE, THE CORNERS OF THE BENCH THERE. This evening, we're gonna have a presentation from Charlie Nichols, who's the director of planning in Linn County, Iowa. And then we're gonna have some discussion on zoning ordinance, current zoning ordinance and comprehensive plan, just as some good background information for the committee here. And then we'll talk a little bit about our draft data center ordinance that was discussed last night by the planning commission and sent to the commissioners for the favorable recommendation for their consideration. And then we'll finish with some updates for meeting number three. This meeting is being recorded and streamed for public viewing and by participating this evening, you acknowledge that your image, voice and comments may be captured and made publicly available. This meeting has been properly noticed in accordance with Indiana Code 514 1.5. And I'll just bring everybody's attention. Dusty put some meeting room audio video best practices here in front of you, which is kind of nice. And I've learned a few things myself by reading this, and he taught me some nice things. If you're having some crosstalk or whatever, there's a little push on the microphone. Just like that, you silence yourself.

Thanks, Dusty.

That's pretty neat stuff. So could have kept myself out of some trouble over the years with that. So with that, I'm gonna go ahead. It looks like we have a full board. Do we have anybody participate, besides Mr. Nichols, participating online? Do we have any committee members online? We do not. Okay. So with that, Kayla, do you wanna introduce Mr. Nichols who's joining us remotely via the Teams?

I'll skip right to it. This is Charlie Nichols. He's the planning director of Linn County, Iowa. And he's going to give us a presentation that he actually gave at the National Planning Conferences here in Detroit, Michigan. So well renowned. So I'll turn it over to Mr. Nichols.

Thanks, Kayla. Can everyone hear me here? Yes. all right uh i'm gonna give a little background on myself and then just dive into these this presentation so i'm charlie nichols i'm the planning and development director in lynn county iowa we're the second largest county in iowa where the city of cedar rapids is we wrote a zoning ordinance for data centers and it passed early this year And interest in data center development in our county has really upticked in the past couple of years. We have a decommissioned nuclear power plant in our old energy center that is restarting. And with the restart of the nuclear power plant, the interest in data center development in our county has gone up. We also just have a bunch of transmission lines that are being upgraded, and that also comes with more data center development. So as part of our ordinance writing process, my department talked with other planning departments around the country. We hired some consultants to help us think through different data center zoning tools. And I shared the information that we put together at the National Planning Conference. These slides that I'm going to go over were pulled out of a panel presentation of a couple of different presenters just talking about data centers and using zoning to address the impacts of data centers. So I have 16 slides here. I'm going to try and go through them relatively quickly to leave some questions at the end, because I do have a hard stop at 5 p.m. my time, which is 6 p.m. your time. So the basic premise of the presentation is what are the most common or the largest impacts from data center development, and what are the zoning tools you can use to try and address or mitigate those impacts? The first impact is siting and scale. Data centers are extremely large, although with that said, there are still the kind of the legacy or the more traditional data centers that are smaller buildings. The picture in the lower left here is a CenturyLink building. This is in a small town downtown, and these are still fairly common. They're still being built. So when we were writing our data center ordinance, we broke up data centers into two tiers. The first tier was the smaller, more traditional data center buildings. The second tier was the hyperscaler data centers. And we broke them out based on how much water or power they use. If you use over a certain amount of water or power, then you're in Tier 2, which is the hyperscaler. And I would keep that in mind as you're writing your data center ordinance because you probably don't want to have whatever requirements you have apply to these hyperscale data centers apply to these smaller data centers. The other thing to keep in mind is that many data centers are built over multiple phases, and you're usually approving or talking about a project for multiple buildings. So as building one is wrapping up, the developer is starting on the foundations for building two. So it is a rolling construction schedule for five to seven years, depending on how many buildings there are. So you also want to make sure your zoning code works in that kind of phase development. If you have things like noise standards that require post construction checking. You want to make sure that you are considering the under the staggered schedule of when the buildings come online. So when does that noise verification have to be done? And just making sure that as you're writing your zoning code, you're keeping in mind that all of the buildings are likely not going to be built at once. Kayla, how do we want to handle questions here? Do you want me to go through this whole thing and then take questions, or do you want to have people jump in if they have questions?

For the sake of time, I'd say let's go through the presentation and then ask questions.

Sounds good. All right, so the next thing is siting and scale, defining where you're going to allow data centers to site. There's a few different ways that communities are doing this around the country right now. One of the ways that has historically been done, but this is changing quite rapidly, is by right or a data center is classified as a use that is allowed by right at a commercial or industrial district without any further review. This is the fastest for approval. It gives the greatest certainty for applicants, but is the least flexible to address site specific impacts from projects and Honestly, most communities, cities, and counties are moving away from allowing data centers by right. Loudoun County, which is the data center capital of the U.S., recently changed their zoning code so they no longer allow data centers by right in their industrial zoning districts. A hybrid way of permitting data center locations is a conditional or a special use permit issued by a zoning board of adjustment that allows a case-by-case review of the local impacts. It is more flexible than just the by-right approval, but it is less predictable for applicants. And the decisions can become inconsistent depending on how your state sets up zoning boards. These can be elected or appointed positions, and the decisions made by the zoning board can vary from project to project. The third way of kind of deciding where to site data centers is developing a dedicated zoning district just for data centers or an overlay district. This is what we did in Linn County. We developed an exclusive youth zoning district just for data centers. The standards are tailored specifically to data center projects. It is more proactive and comprehensive than the other two approaches, but it does take more time. You have to write a zoning code specific for your area, specific for data centers, and then you have to go through rezoning public hearings when the project does come forward. One of the other big impacts that zoning code can address is visuals. And these are massive buildings. You're not going to completely hide them, but there are different tools zoning code can use to try and mitigate the visual impact of these buildings. One of these is buffers, just requiring space between data centers and other uses like residential uses. Buffers can also incorporate berms and vegetation. It works best in conjunction with setbacks, and it's not very effective if the buildings are close to property lines. So a 50-foot buffer is really not going to do a whole lot. And then screening standards are often negotiated during the site plan review. Another thing zoning code can require is design criteria. That makes the data center buildings look a bit more like a large office building, for example. This is a picture of a data center, this middle picture down in Texas. It's a QTS data center where they had greater architectural design guidelines. Typically, the design guidelines are not required for every facade of the building, but maybe the street-facing facade, often applied only along public streets or residential edges. But the best tool for mitigating the visual impact of data centers is that deliberate placement of where you allow them to build. The most effective visual mitigation is describing where you want the sites. Do you want them in residential areas? Do you want them in special areas of your county? And that does require a balancing compatibility with access to power and infrastructure. As you could say, data centers are allowed to locate here, but if there's no access to the power grid or access to other needed utilities like water, they're not going to be able to build there. Another impact that data centers bring is noise. And this for me was one of the most surprising things I found when we were reaching out to other communities. I didn't think noise would be a very big issue, but it has been one of the more persistent issues. And this, I was talking with planners in Loudoun County where they do have noise regulations on their books, but residences that live near data centers were still hearing lower frequency vibration noises within their homes. And that's because data centers produce noise at two different kind of decibel ranges, DBA, which is the range of sound that we hear with our ears, and then DBC is lower frequency sound. So data centers are passing the noise test for that DBA sound, but still producing lower frequency noise, which travels further and is harder to mitigate for. The DVC noise producing components of data centers are things like the generators, HVAC equipment, cooling towers. So what we're seeing now is counties and cities start to put not just DVA noise limits, but also DVC noise limits in their zoning ordinances to try and account for both types of noise, the standard range of hearing, but also that lower frequency noise. One of the other big land use impacts of data centers is actually the construction impact itself. I mentioned earlier that these projects can span five to seven years depending on how many buildings are planned. The construction area is massive. This is a layout of a data center construction site in Cedar Rapids, Iowa right now. There's temporary offices, temporary storage buildings, huge lay down areas. The construction use itself is almost rises to the level of its own kind of land use category. There's thousands of workers coming in and out of the site every day. So what we've required in our zoning code is a road use agreement that has a traffic plan where the traffic for the workers coming onto the site is routed through specific roads meant to avoid daily commute for people who are living and working in the area. We also require a preconditioned survey of all the roads that are used for construction. In the first couple of weeks of a data center construction project in Cedar Rapids, we had over $100,000 of damage done to a county road with trucks going back and forth the quarries. So the level of construction traffic is unlike anything we've ever seen before. So that's important to keep in mind that your roads are going to take kind of a beating and you need to have steps in place so that the developer is paying to repair these roads. Another thing that we've found through just our experience here in Linn County with data centers is it's important to have a construction waste management plan in place. Our landfill here has maybe 8 to 10 years left of life before it is full and these projects generate a lot of construction waste that was not being segregated on site. We actually had our landfill director reach out and say, can you please ask for a construction waste management plan to be required at the time of rezoning so that the different types of waste are segregated and it's the landfill isn't filling up as quickly as it could be because these are generating lots of construction waste. here's just some pictures of what a data center construction site looks like it's really hard to get your head around just the scale of these sites if you've never visited one in person so another impact of data centers is the the power demand and this has gotten quite a bit of attention nationally there's a A graph on the right here that shows the percentage of electricity in different states that are now going to data centers, and that number is rising over time. Data centers take a ton of power, and that can show up in different ways on ratepayers' bills. An issue that has been encountered that now utilities are developing tools and processes to get around is when a data center comes and says, we're going to build seven buildings, we need 1,000 megawatts of power capacity delivered to the site. The utility companies have to build that infrastructure for the projected demand, so the 1,000 megawatt demand. If only half those buildings get constructed, then the infrastructure has still been built by the utilities, and now there are less data center buildings there to help cover the cost of that infrastructure. So utilities are starting to require commitment letters that if a full build-out is not reached, that developer is still paying for the additional cost of that infrastructure. Now, with the power demand and transparency question, zoning code cannot dictate what power rights are. It cannot dictate where the power comes from. It's fairly constrained at what it can and can't do. There are other regional governmental or quasi-governmental organizations that will be the determining factor on the power demand. So what I did here was broke it down into a common public question. Who could answer that question? And then what can zoning do? So, for example, a question we got quite a bit is, will the data center strain the electrical grid? We can't answer that as in zoning code or as zoning staff, the utility and the regional grid operator can answer that. What we can do is zoning is require the projected load as part of the application and also require disclosure of coordination between the utility and the applicant to make sure that they can actually provide that power. Another common question is will new power generation be needed? Again, zoning can't answer that, but what you can require is a power supply study or assumptions, and then whether or not the developer believes on-site generation will be needed as part of this data center project. So the role of zoning in some of these broader utility questions is more informational and more transparency focused of making sure all of the information for these projects is present up front when an applicant comes forward and when the public is first informed about the project. What can planners do? Require disclosure of projected electrical demand, require coordination among utilities and grid operators, and then verify project commitment agreements too. It's similar for water. And water is another big talking point for data centers and a big concern. It was a big concern for residents in Linn County. Zoning is, again, fairly constrained about what it can actually regulate for water usage. In Iowa, zoning cannot regulate water rights. It can't set utility rates. It can't manage the regional supply. What zoning can do is require water use disclosure. It can review cooling methods. You can even specify certain cooling methods have to be used. And it can coordinate with utilities and watershed agencies. So here's a similar chart of what are some common questions and then who can answer that and what can zoning do. One thing that came up over and over again is we've had a few droughts in Iowa in the past few years is what happens in a drought or an emergency condition. Zoning code could not typically curtail the usage of water for an industrial user during a drought. The municipal utility or the State Department of Natural Resources can. What you can require through zoning is contingency planning and emergency response disclosure. So you can ask upfront if let's just say they're withdrawing water from a river and the permit is issued by the Iowa DNR, you can ask for that emergency plan that they submit to the IDNR to also be submitted with the rezoning application. Economics agreements and community benefits. this is when in talking to jurisdictions around the country this varies the most between all these other things depending on where you go people do this pretty differently so the the purpose of an economic agreement is to ensure the data center projects contribute to long-term fiscal goals these are outside of just property taxes so they can support county services and infrastructure they can support a special environmental or sustainability initiatives economic and workforce development investments And something that is becoming more and more common is a community betterment agreement or community betterment plan where a data center developer will agree to contribute X number of dollars to a community betterment fund, sometimes per building for a set number of years. And then that community betterment fund can be used on a certain list of approved activities or projects that go to benefit the local community. But again, this varies widely from state to state of how exactly data centers are taxed and then are they agreeing to separate economic development agreements. So key takeaways for this, define the use, decide where you're going to allow data centers to locate and through what method. Is it its own zoning district? Is it by right? Is it a conditional use permit? regulate compatibility with some of the larger impacts through setbacks, noise standards, buffers, require infrastructure transparency, and use development agreements. Data center projects are massive, and there's so many different approvals needed from different governmental bodies for these projects that if you are a resident trying to follow along with the data center project and what all is needed, it's extremely confusing and can be very overwhelming. So Zona can help here by making the complexity a little bit more complex. reasonable or a little bit more legible by requiring coordination with all of these other entities that are part of the data center review in one local zoning review process. So this means that your residents, they don't have to go to a department a dnr meeting on a water use permit they don't have to go to a utilities commission meeting to to learn about the power usage they can go to your local zoning meeting where you've already asked for all of that information to be provided as part of an application to really make sure your residents are are informed and get all the information in one spot plus my presentation i'd be happy to take questions from this committee if there are any

I do want to say thank you for coming and talking to us today and doing the work that you do to be able to explain everything to everybody. I do want to start with that. So thank you.

No problem. Happy to do it.

I have one question. You've related how complex these data center projects are and it sounds like they require a lot of scrutiny by the local community and a county like ours, we don't really have, I don't think we have on staff, a lot of deep technical expertise to analyze all the things that might need to be considered. What are communities doing in order to give them the resources to go out and, I don't know, hire outside consultants? Do they charge data center applicants an impact fee of tens of thousands of dollars, for example, so that the county can have the funds to investigate an application?

yes that's the exact method that communities are using so it's a zoning fee paid at the time of an application that you can then use to go and hire third-party consultants to help review and confirm the studies of the information you're asking for i've also seen communities use the zoning fee to go and rent a a space that is larger than their meeting rooms because the public meetings they're holding are so large they can't accommodate it in their normal boardrooms and then also to hire third-party audio visual crews to come and live stream that meeting in the the space they've rented so if you're going to need outside help or just other outside resources you don't normally have making those into the zoning fee is a very well tested and very well accepted approach for that

And do you know how much those zoning fees might range from for other communities?

I don't have a ballpark figure, but I can tell you our zoning fee is in the tens of thousands of dollars for a data center zoning project. It's based on the size of the project. Thank you.

Your code has broken data centers simply into small scale and large scale. And you've picked 20 megawatts and 50 gallons per minute of water. So you did it based on resource use and not really building size. How's that worked so far? Has that been... pretty good couple of buckets for everything to fall into or has the scale of the, I guess, does the scale of the resources match the scale of the building in square footage and acreage?

Yes, our tests on power and water usage has worked so far. There are other ways to do it, and I'm not saying our way is the best way of doing it. But you could do by square footage instead of by power or water uses. Just have some way of differentiating between the hyperscale developments as opposed to the more traditional smaller smaller developments. But we have not had a case where we thought that based on the water or power usage, we were misclassifying a data center, OK?

Has the data centers in Linn County went into farmland, or did it have another use previous to the data center? And how was the relationship with the ag community in Linn County?

In Linn County, unincorporated, all the prospective data centers are going or want to go on farmland. And that is a concern of residents that we are losing high-value farmland to development in We do have a few utility-scale solar sites, and that was also a concern because they're built on farm ground. That's just kind of the reality of data center development right now, especially in the rural area that they are locating on ground that is being farmed. There are also two data center campuses in the city of Cedar Rapids, and that is ground that was set aside for industrial development, but it was being farmed until they had those industrial tenants for that ground. We're seeing farm ground converted to data center development.

Nick, thank you for your presentation. I have a couple questions for you. Sort of dovetails, your process that you identified here, is that from your experience from trial and error? Is this what Linn County did? Is this best practices? That would be part one. And then part two is, why did your community say yes?

Okay, so good questions. This right here, kind of the different zoning tools to use for the impact is more of a... So yes, we did use these zoning tools for our ordinance, but it's more of a general... pick your own kind of tool you want to use because ultimately you're going to have to decide what is right for your community. We did do quite a bit of research on existing data center zoning codes to kind of make sure ours was right for Linn County. And then your second question, why did your community say yes? Linn County and the Board of Supervisors haven't officially said yes to any data center project yet. We've written our code. We've said these are the standards that you have to meet. But there has been some back and forth with data center developers, particularly around water reporting. That is something that's very important to our county. We want to have water studies done and then ongoing water reporting. And that's something that data center developers have pushed back on. So we have not yet had a rezoning request where we have approved a data center project.

So if I understand correctly, then you're taking a proactive approach to to potential use of your land for data centers? Yes. So even at that, these processes can be time consuming and cost oriented, especially if you don't have anybody coming forward with your doing your zoning fee scenario that you shared with us. So how are you paying for all this expertise, so to speak, prior to you know, receiving an application that you would receive any fees from zoning.

The expertise and the staff time required to write the zoning ordinance.

Right. I mean, there's obviously lots of steps, a lot of evaluation time. So is this specifically your responsibility or do you have other staff people that are dedicated specifically to creating these processes for potential data centers that would come forward?

It was mostly Linn County staff. We have a 15 person planning and development department. So we are pretty fortunate in our staffing capacity. So we did develop the ordinance. We did reach out to other communities. Our board of supervisors did make funding available too. We hired three different consulting groups. One was MSA consultants. They write zoning code for local counties in the Midwest. The other consultant was the MANA group. They work with the National Association of Counties. on the rural energy academy so they have a very county energy focused lens then the third consultant we hired was the antara group they are a data center consulting group that helps data centers site projects and we use them for our our industry perspective on our data center zoning code and that did cost money and that money was made available by the board of supervisors who felt that it was important to to get our ordinance as right as possible before we do have a project that is constructed

A question for you, Nick. I don't believe you mentioned backup generation. Did you set any requirements on backup generation?

We require disclosure of all backup generation and then we also require generators to be on a permanent foundation. There was a community concern seeing what happened with another data center project where they brought in diesel generators on trucks and because they were mobile, they could get around some airport permitting requirements. So we do require all of our backup generators to be on permanent foundations and we do require disclosure of the backup generators at the time of rezoning application. this is something that is still developing the in cedar rapids qts has a data center project and they have now informed the city that they're going to be moving in 200 natural gas generators for temporary power for the project it's essentially a a small power plant that yes it's temporary but it is still it's going to generate noise it's going to generate emissions it takes up area obviously so that is something that if you are writing a data center ordinance keep in mind that sometimes they do not utility is not able to provide them power on day one and they will need some sort of bridge power question for you how uh you mentioned water studies for the water draw that the data centers could have how long do um in your guys's experience do these studies take if you guys have felt it yet Yeah, 12 to 18 months to do an actual comprehensive study. So we will rezone a project, but require the study to be done and show no detrimental impact before construction starts. And that is a way to not hold up the rezoning process while the study is being done. um ideally we would have a study done already that then just gets updated as more large water users are added to our system but we are we don't have that right now so we're kind of starting from square one where we need to get information together we need to kind of build our our model of water availability for our area and then once that's done it'll be easier to just update that as we get larger water users online because the nuclear power plant that we're starting is also a very large water user of the the river

Thank you.

All right. Six o'clock. So we're going to have to let him go, unfortunately. Thank you very much for your time, Mr. Nichols.

No problem. And if you have further questions, you can send me an email. I'm always happy to answer what I can and talk about data centers.

Appreciate you. Thank you. Thank you, Charlie. Thank you.

All right, so all of your information here, I believe, is in our links on the agenda. So you should be able to cross reference that back for future reference. One of the things that we need to keep in mind as we're listening to these presentations and doing these readings is that a lot of what he was talking about, what we owe the Planning Commission and ultimately the commissioners is some direction on how to classify these things and where can they go in our county and what are the best locations for those. And so as you're listening to these presentations, kind of be thinking about that, but to that point as well, we decided that this would be a good time for Kayla to give a quick overview of our current zoning and our current comprehensive plan and executive summary that we have this now just a couple of years old. IT MIGHT BE KIND OF REFRESHER FOR SOME OF YOU, IT MIGHT BE NEW FOR SOME OF YOU, BUT I THINK IT'S GOOD FOR US ALL TO HEAR IT AND THINK ABOUT IT. WE JUST DISCUSSED IT JUST AGAIN LAST NIGHT AT A PLANNING COMMISSION MEETING. IT WAS KIND OF GOOD TO JUST LOOK AT INDUSTRIAL ZONING ORDINANCES AND HOW THEY'RE DEFINED IN OUR CODE. IT'S JUST ONE OF THOSE THINGS THAT NO MATTER HOW LONG YOU DO IT, IT'S GOOD TO REVERT BACK TO IT AND READ IT EVERY ONCE IN A WHILE JUST TO SEE IF IT'S KEEPING UP WITH CURRENT REQUIREMENTS AND DEMANDS. SO WITH THAT, YOU'VE GOT A Little presentation story time with Kayla. Maria, did you get, I didn't call any roll, but did you get our absent people? Okay.

Two different documents I want to refer you to this evening. So there is first our quick guide, which are, that's our zoning districts and land uses that we have right now. This is the law. That's what the zoning ordinance, the code, that kind of stuff, that's what it is. It's law. It's in place right now. Regulates what you can or can't do on your land right now. The comprehensive plan, just by comparison, that is the long-term vision for the community. that guides zoning and legislation changes in the community. So we have a quick guide, and that's kind of a quick summary of the law, and then the guide, which is our comprehensive plan. So two different documents doing two different things. So one thing, and I'm kind of comparing back and forth between these two, so don't feel too tied to get into either one of them, I guess. But one thing I would tell you to do is go to Beacon GIS, sometime our GIS site for the county, turn on the zoning layer. That is the zoning, the zoning districts, they tie to the law, the zoning ordinance. That is what is in place right now, says what you can or can't do on that land based on what color it is, what overlay district exists. Also, if it's in a floodplain or within a buffer area of a cell phone tower or within so many feet of a confined feeding operation. These are all things that we can direct you to on our Beacon GIS website. We are very lucky to have a great GIS team, meaning John Milburn and Caroline Adams, here at the County Survey Department. And also other departments that partner very well and get John a lot of really good information that he can turn into layers. Okay, before I get off topic on that, so that's the zoning code. That ties to these different portions in our zoning ordinance that say what you can or can't do on these lands, how big a lot has to be, how many feet of road frontage it needs, how tall a building can be. It could have something even as far as some communities have maximum sizes. So if you said, hey, the commercial neighborhood district, we really think that should be very quaint downtown buildings. We think that there should be a maximum setback of 20 feet off the right of way on those lots. We think that there should be a, let's see, a minimum lot coverage of 50%. We think we want them to really fill up and take over those spaces and look a certain way. Whereas in other spots like agricultural, because we don't have any utilities in those areas, largely not a lot of services, we're saying, hey, you have to have at least so many acres to be out here. In this case, it's really just one and a half, but so many acres to be out here, and you need at least 125 feet on a county road, and you can't cover more than 25% of it with hard surface because we don't have any stormwater infrastructure. So all of these things come into play for your zoning workments. and the zoning map. So zoning map, law right now. Zoning ordinances, laws right now that connect to the zoning map. Comprehensive plan has the future land use map. Another very pretty map. This is not the zoning map. So this is, if you wanted to rezone your property or wondered what the grand scheme of things was, what the plan was for your area, this is the map you would look at. You would say, okay, I wanna live out here, oh, somewhere, we'll say between Greenfield and Wilkinson. And it's very green. That is ag preservation. So that means it's probably not an area that is going to be rezoned to suburban residential or industrial or what else? I don't know. Let's see. It's another village center. Those things don't make sense out there because there's no utilities available out there. you have to have a septic system. And our agricultural zoning district states in its, well actually, in that case I'm looking at, sorry, the description of the Ag Preservation District, which is close but not quite the same as the zoning district descriptions. It says, agricultural rural areas are intended to remain largely rural and undeveloped with uses primarily focusing on ag and ag-related processing and support functions, things like that. Residential subdivisions and development unrelated to ag should be kept to a minimum and be located in areas where they will be least disruptive to nearby ag operations. So these are differences, very slight, between what the zoning district for ag is and what the Land-use category for AG is in the future land use map or the flume So there's the flume and the future land use map that's in the comprehensive plan our guides for zoning decisions Any questions

One comment, I guess, Kayla, on the cross-hatched areas. Yes. Does that mean that they are multiple zones, or what does that mean exactly?

So the cross-hatched areas on the future land use map, those state that right now that should remain whatever it is currently, which is probably agricultural. But as utilities arrive and as the areas that are solid colors fill up, Those are the next areas that could convert from ag to whatever that land use category is.

Thank you.

I think I've asked this question once before, but I'm not sure I got an answer. Do we have the data behind these zones that would show how many acres are zoned? For example, planned neighborhood. How many acres are in the planned neighborhood zone plan for that zone?

I am sure that information is somewhere. I do not have it.

Is that something that, is it available to the public or is it something you'd have to dig for?

I'm not sure if it's available in the comprehensive plan or not. Mike, do you know?

The comprehensive plan, I believe, if you go to the full document, has some estimated numbers. They're not actuals. You did ask that question last time and I apologize. I meant to ask the GIS director if he had the ability to extract that current zoning, which I think he can. It seems like he should be able to extract that from the GIS.

I would love to see that.

Yeah, because that question came up earlier about IG zoning and how much that was and I think we got an exact number on that. So he should be able to. I don't I looked and it didn't seem like it was super easy, but, you know, he's got it. more data behind the curtain data, I guess.

I'm hoping there's a database somewhere that someone can query and come back and tell you exactly what that number is.

Let's put that on our task list for the week and see if he's got that information. Because that is good to know. Because even when we get down to talking about our ordinance that's in play right now, it would be nice to know what our numbers are for IG and IL specifically.

And just to flesh that out, part of the thing that concerns me, as I've kept my ear to the ground in the past week or so, just the number of municipalities, states, and other places that are declaring data center moratoriums. And I'm concerned if we don't move quickly enough, if we don't know exactly what we're dealing with, that we will become a target. And that's not a good thing. Thank you.

Okay, this might be the, okay, here we go. Existing land use. All right, as of 2022, the county had, I'm showing it up on the screen here right now, so I'm not gonna read it over, but these were the acreages or the percentages that were in different land use categories as of 2022.

Existence. That's what I was referencing, but I don't know if it's 100% accurate as of today. But it's close, I would imagine. Because I don't think that they actually got very specific numbers. I think they just kind of clicked through and added up.

Let me see if I can get, okay, maybe that was it. That might have been as good as we've got. All right, I will let you know if I find anything.

That's a good starting place.

Okay, future land use, here it is, it's in a different spot actually. It breaks it out into how much is in the future seen in different categories. So for instance, the future land use category showed most being shown as

Conservation open space and I think it means or AG rural And very little really shown in some of the other categories planned neighborhood was a large larger one that was looked at All right, and during that during this process the 92,000 acres of agriculture that got a lot of attention and that is the number that Is probably going to get a lot of attention when we talk about data center development That was a very important number to keep large.

What was it about these specific areas that determined their future land use? Location to utilities?

A lot of it was, yes. Location to utilities, growing jurisdictions, roads that were prepared for this kind of thing, things like that.

SOME, LIKE SHE SAID, JURISDICTIONS, SO SOME ATTENTION WAS GIVEN TO WHAT WERE MACORDSVILLE'S PLANS, WHAT WERE NEW PALESTINE'S PLANS, WHAT WERE GREENFIELD'S PLANS, AND TRYING TO MAKE SURE THAT THOSE WERE INTERMIXED CORRECTLY IN THE BASIN ZONES.

DID WE HAVE ANY OTHER QUESTIONS?

With the future planning again, when we looked at that, did we go out like a certain set of years for planning to start in advance and start building out roads, moving abilities out as it expanded? Was there a set, a budget set aside for that? What type of planning went into that?

So the vision was for 2042. So it was looking forward about 20 years into the future. As far as expanding infrastructure, things like that, I guess I'd probably refer to county leadership a little bit more. I was barely on board at that time. I was brand new. But yeah, a lot of this is definitely growth that is occurring. We're trying to limit how much sprawl is happening. I know that was one of the main takeaways was we're trying to fill in gaps and keep growth, especially in an agricultural community, more together, less sprawling outward without thought or planning. As you guys might know, and Phil, I'm sure as you know, as we're expanding utilities, it's harder if a utility line goes out and has to leapfrog properties that don't need it or has to go miles and miles where it could get the same number of connections within, say, one mile. So dense development is more efficient and tends to be better planned. utility-wise, infrastructure-wise, public safety, all those things.

TO THAT QUESTION OF WHERE DO WE THINK THAT THESE THINGS WOULD PROBABLY BEST FIT IN OUR COUNTY, I THOUGHT IT WAS INTERESTING MR. NICHOLS MENTIONED THAT IN THEIR COUNTY THEY WERE WANTING TO GO ON AGRICULTURAL LAND AND I SUSPECT THAT THAT'S BECAUSE IT'S CLEAN SLATE AND THEY'RE HAVING TO BRING UTILITIES ANYWAY BECAUSE THEY HAVE TO UPSIZE EVERYTHING SO WHY NOT JUST START COMPLETE CLEAN SLATE. So that's kind of one of the things that I think that we need to pay some attention to as this future land use map there was a lot that went into it and to just start to pinpoint out here in these big green areas. Yeah, I think that's what we're trying to avoid is to make sure that we're directing where this type of development goes and not like what Mr. Nichols was saying that they just go and find somebody that owns 800 acres and they're willing to sell it in the middle of wherever, because they're gonna spend the money to bring the utilities because they have to do something anyway, so. That's sort of my hunch. So we were sort of looking at as we'll get into the data center ordinance stuff here towards the end. But do you want to go through those industrial zoning districts like you did last night? I think that would be helpful because that's obviously the one that you would defer to. I think if a project were to come as you'd want to stay industrial, I think is the place to start.

Yeah, we can kind of work backwards from industrial general. That works. So, and just so you're aware, too, so Kylie had sent us a kind of categories of data centers in an email the other day, and Maria and I had, you know, an hour to spare today before the meeting, so we split it into a little Word document and then added some thoughts on what zoning districts, different categories of data centers, as she described them, might fit, just based on our quick understanding of land use. Definitely something we would love for you to take a look at and give us your expertise on, but something to look at too as I'm reading out these descriptions of zoning districts. So that's the data center categories. Industrial general. General industrial manufacturing, production, assembly, warehousing, research and development facilities, and similar land uses. This district is intended to accommodate a variety of industrial uses in locations and under conditions that minimize land use conflicts. This district should be used to support industrial retention and expansion in Hancock County. This is our heaviest industrial district. Maria, do you have that page that shows the minimum square footages and the lot coverage pulled up? I actually got it right here, so don't worry. So it's a minimum of five acres. You can cover up to 75% of it in any other industrial district. 125 feet of road frontage. 100 foot front yard setback for a building. 50 foot side setback and 100 foot rear setback. and a 50-foot max height, and that's the same for all industrial districts, though there are some exemptions from that in our development standards. But generally 50 for the main body of the structure.

One question, Kayla. Yes. Based upon the 100-foot setback, could the data center overlay then expand that and make it larger? Absolutely. Okay.

Industrial light, production, assembly, warehousing, research and development facilities and similar land uses. This district is intended to accommodate only industrial uses that are completely contained within structures and do not involve the outdoor storage of materials or the release of potential environmental pollutants. This district should be used to support industrial retention and expansion in Hancock County. So inside, a little less dirty. Industrial Business Park. Small scale manufacturing, construction, production, assembly and other light industrial uses. This district provides appropriate development standards for small scale businesses, entrepreneurial and similar operations. This district is intended to permit a mixture of compatible land uses, close to transportation routes, and other necessary infrastructure and utilities. A lot of that one's in the name, Industrial Business Park. And you can see here, too, it goes from the five-acre NIG to a two-acre minimum NIL to a one-acre NIBP. And that's really the key difference. The front setback drops from 100 feet down to 50 feet. For some reason, we require a 250 foot wide lot in IBP where we don't in IL or IG. I'm guessing we wanted a true park-like setup, maybe. Wide lots, big expansive lawns around buildings. But I really can't think of why else we would do that. And yeah, those are the key differences. But yeah, the descriptions really tell a lot there. Do you want me to go on into institutional or any of the commercial districts?

That'd be good, yeah.

The next category, as I'm working backwards, is institutional. large-scale public facilities, educational facilities, religious centers, and other institutions. This district provides development standards that are responsive to the unique scale and other considerations common to these types of uses. The district is further intended to reduce land use conflicts and ensure that institutions are appropriately integrated into the community and well served by transportation routes and other necessary infrastructure and utilities. So the airport, I think, is probably our favorite example. Commercial regional, business and institutional land uses that serve a regional market or require convenient access to high volume transportation routes. This district is intended to permit a mixture of compatible land uses close to major transportation routes and other necessary infrastructure and utilities. So think of this as an interchange exit. That's CR zoning. And then we start getting down into some really light commercial. Commercial community, which is like, I'll just go ahead and read these two while we're at it. Commercial community is small to mid-sized businesses and institutional facilities that serve a wide area of the community. Your grocery store, that kind of thing. This district can be used alone and in combination with other zoning districts to create areas for community shopping, entertainment services, and public gatherings. Commercial neighborhood is our lightest commercial, and that's like a downtown area. So CN zoning is convenience goods, services, and amenities close to residential areas. So think of that as the corner store downtown with a residential neighborhood around it, very similar to where we are right now. This is CN zoning type. We're in Greenfield, so it's not.

Quick question. As you go through the commercial community, commercial regional, commercial neighborhoods, compare it to the comprehensive plan. I do not see matching categories. Yes. On the comprehensive plan I see town commercial but I don't see any other commercial future land uses.

So this does not line up exactly with this. So if you look there's another page in the comprehensive plan that shows what zoning districts might align with the categories and that was a little bit by design so it is it you're right that's a good catch but we might see like a CN or a CC in town commercial in village center or even maybe town residential things like that thank you mm-hmm and I think that when you say that's kind of by design if I remember correctly it was

so that the future land use map doesn't look like a zoning map, because otherwise it would become a zoning map, right? It would be showing exactly like, oh gosh, my property, they're wanting it to be this. And then here's a description, here's the actual legal definition of it. So that's kind of why it happened that way. All right, everybody good with, zoning and comprehensive plan except please as it applies to my current property yeah so please read this and then that next meeting i'm going to give you a blank one i'm going to add some crayons and you're going to color it in what if you're colorblind see how that works we'll have to talk to the accessibility consultant about that Okay, a little kind of out of order, but in order of our agenda here was our meeting minutes from last month, which is very detailed.

And I think Maria probably did that. So thank you for that.

So I'd like to take a motion to approve those as long as there's not any changes, anything that you liked or didn't like about it.

MOTION TO APPROVE.

I WOULD NEED A SECOND.

SECOND.

OKAY. IT'S BEEN MOVED AND SECONDED TO APPROVE THE MEETING MINUTES FROM THE MAY 18, 2026 MEETING OF THE HANCOCK COUNTY DATA CENTER ADVISORY COMMITTEE. ALL THOSE IN FAVOR SIGNIFY BY SAYING AYE.

AYE.

MOTION CARRIES. ALL RIGHT. THE OTHER THING I MEANT TO TALK ABOUT LAST MONTH, BUT I DID, I TOUCHED ON IT A LITTLE BIT, BUT I JUST WANTED TO MAKE SURE THAT I did that again is that And I kind of quizzed Rhonda over this a little bit too. So this body is a citizen's committee. So you kind of get a, we kind of get mulligans a little bit with some of the rules and procedures and everything, but it is a committee of the planning commission. So we wanna make sure that maybe just to be as above bar as possible is that we'll work under the same kind of rules and guidelines that the planning commission does. And by that, I mean, ORGANIZING IN A QUORUM AND ORGANIZING IN A QUORUM AND HAVING PUBLIC MEETINGS AND HAVING PUBLIC MEETINGS AND THINGS LIKE THAT. THINGS LIKE THAT. SO I DID SEND AN EMAIL I THINK SO I DID SEND AN EMAIL I THINK THAT YOU ALL GOT SO IT WAS KIND THAT YOU ALL GOT SO IT WAS KIND OF IRONIC IS THAT I SENT YOU OF IRONIC IS THAT I SENT YOU ALL AN EMAIL THAT SAID DON'T ALL AN EMAIL THAT SAID DON'T SEND EMAILS BUT THAT'S NOT Emails are great. It's a great way to send out information to the group. The little trick is to blind carbon copy everybody because where we get into some trouble is if somebody hits reply all, now we've had a discussion that's not public. So we want to make sure that we don't fall into those accidental traps. If we do, not a huge issue, happens a lot, unfortunately, but that's sort of the little trick. So if you do have information that you wanna send out to the whole group, please do, but do the blind carbon copy on the email so that nobody accidentally replies all. Or you could send that information to Kayla and Maria and then they could put it on our website and we could disseminate it that way. Same thing goes if you're attending other community events, If you get there, what are we, 11 members, 11 people here? If you get there and there's six of us there, don't congregate, don't have any discussions or any things like that. So again, it's like just an overabundance of caution, but those are just some of the things that we wanna make sure that we stay conscious of. Did I miss anything important? So, all right. SO THEN, WITH THAT, WE'LL MOVE ON TO AN OVERVIEW OF SOME LEGAL MATTERS AND AMENDMENTS. SO WHAT RONDA'S GOING TO DO IS TALK A LITTLE MORE DETAIL OF THIS DATA CENTER OVERLAY ORDINANCE THAT IS IN PLAY RIGHT NOW THAT THE PLANNING COMMISSION SENT TO THE COMMISSIONERS LAST EVENING WITH A FAVORABLE RECOMMENDATION. AND I LOVED YOUR QUESTION BECAUSE THIS IS AN OVERLAY. IT'S BARE BONES RIGHT NOW, WHICH RONDA WILL TALK ABOUT. IG only for right now, but that means that if a project like this came to IG that really we have the ability through our normal planning and zoning process and even with the influence of this committee to make that, bake in the requirements that we want for the project. And that makes sense, so. that you have something prepared to talk about?

Just kind of a recap. I don't know if you, up there or I can talk from here, if that's okay, if you can hear me okay?

From there, yeah.

Okay. So last evening the plan commission held a public hearing on the data center proposed ordinance. uh... i don't think we have that in your packet it looks very much like the one we circulated last meeting and we can get that linked up but i'll tell you a little bit of the changes that were made really from discussion at this with this committee and then some other comments we heard we did make some tweaks from the draft that you had seen previously uh... so last evening there were three people that signed up to testify Two actually did testify, and one gentleman had more questions about the ordinance, and then there was an attorney that testified that's representing a company that is interested in a parcel of land. And he had three different comments to make, and I'll share those with you. So what the ordinance does, as we've discussed before, Singles out a definition for communication service exchange for its own definition and then creates a new definition for data center. And I read that to you last time. We borrowed that definition from an ordinance out of Lake County that we thought did a pretty good job of defining data center. But as you'll note, it doesn't talk about tiers or size or anything like that. This is bare bones and we're gonna need to go back with the input of this committee to make some of those adjustments. We're just trying to get this one in place. Then it sets out a data center overlay because in this ordinance, data centers would be limited to the IG zoning district. Currently with the definition of communication service exchange, the data centers were permitted use in the industrial zoning districts and then a special exception in the commercial neighborhood, think it was commercial community. So the overlay really spells out a process that a data center applicant would go through to allow that vetting to start with the commissioners. We really felt that in drafting this and with what the commissioners asked us to prepare at the planning commission level was a way that I think also helps companies that may be wanting to propose a data center to kind of know right up front what the commissioners feel about the project, how they feel about the project, so that they're not spending money unnecessarily if there's not a desire to move forward with their letter of intent. So the process starts with their letter of intent It's part of the date the overlay process and then it would go straight to the Board of Commissioners and I would imagine really in a real life the way this would play out is that there would be quite a bit of discussion already with commissioners and perhaps executive session where they are meeting with the company and discussing you know some of the things that they would like to see as far as in the information that they would like provided by the company with this letter of intent because it does clarify in the in the ordinance that the letter of intent is some is submitted along with information that is helpful in allowing the Board of Commissioners to make its determination on whether or not they want to move forward with a declaratory resolution. So after the Board of Commissioners do that, look at the letter of intent, the information provided, they can adopt a declaratory resolution stating their findings. If you'll remember in the last ordinance, we were asking the commissioners to make a finding that a data center would provide a substantial benefit to Hancock County. And that language is kind of where we've tweaked to actually provide criteria about what the benefit would be. So let me read that criteria because that's the real change. So in making its determination under Section B2 or B7, the Board of Commissioners shall consider whether the data center project will promote the public health, safety, comfort, morals, convenience, and general welfare of the citizens of the county, whether it's consistent with the county's comprehensive plan, whether it's consistent with the current conditions and the character of current structures and uses in the IG zoning district, whether it is the most desirable use for the land on which the data center project is proposed to be built as adapted for the IG zoning district, and whether it conserves the property values throughout the county's planning and zoning jurisdiction, and if built, would be considered to be responsible development and growth. So you may wonder how I came up with that language. And I actually pulled that right out of the Indiana Code of things that the Planning Commission and the Board of Commissioners are supposed to be looking at all the time when they consider projects either before a rezone or whatever the zoning matter may be. So this is kind of moving that study up front at the front of the project and having the commissioners really examine that closely and make a determination of whether they want to adopt that declaratory resolution. So if they do adopt the declaratory resolution, then it starts the pre-application review, which would be done by the planning director. And if the planning director determines the application is complete, then the project goes through all the stages with the tech review committee. And it's possible that it would also go to the Board of Zoning Appeals, which if they need some type of variance or something of that nature. There would then be the public hearing by the Planning Commission, which would give the community the ability to come forward and make their voice heard. And then, if there were any changes or revisions before the Board of Commissioners that they wanted to see, they could actually send it back to the Tech Review Committee. So at the end of the day, the Board of Commissioners would adopt a confirmatory resolution if everything was in order, and then the project would be eligible to have an ILP, an improvement location permit, issued. So the questions that were raised last night in the hearing with the way it's drafted right now and Keep in mind this is bare bones and as you are working on this and making recommendations to the Planning Commission, these are some things you might want to take into account. So, limiting data centers to the IG. The point was made that there's not a lot of land in the county that Is vacant IG available for data centers at this time? So we pulled up the map last night. We were looking at all the dark blue color on the map and just how many parcels we have within the county that would be right now vacant land for a data center. Keep in mind that you can rezone other land that might be ag at this time to IG, which would then allow a data center to be built there and they would go through the overlay process. So that was one comment made. The other comment made was that there was not a lot of information about what is to be included in the letter of intent and what kind of additional information might be required by the Board of Commissioners. That would be something that we could talk about here. Maybe what kind of information you would recommend that they see and that they look at in order to meet for their consideration of that criteria that we've built into the ordinance, what might be helpful in helping them make their determination. The third thing that was raised is that the criteria that we added in Section B3 was that it's really a restatement of the existing conditions in the Planning and Zoning Indiana Code. And I think the answer is we know. What we're trying to do is move that up front so that there's no waste of time by a company. That dialogue happens up front. And then, as I said before, this is bare bones, and we're trying to just kind of fill this ordinance out as we move along. We do think that this ordinance will probably be on the agenda for the June 16th. Board of Commissioners meeting. They don't have to have a public hearing there. It's just a matter of consideration. But that's the next eligible regular scheduled meeting that they have coming up is June 16th. Happy to take any questions.

And I don't know that we want to try to send any recommendations directly through the Planning Commission from this committee to the Board of Commissioners prior to their consideration of that ordinance, although we could. But those couple of questions that Rhonda brought up was what I thought we could have a little bit of time to discuss this evening, although we probably don't have enough information, but maybe we could start to have some open discussion about it. And one is the... THE I.G. ONLY. THE NEXT LEVEL OF INDUSTRIAL THE NEXT LEVEL OF INDUSTRIAL WOULD BE THE I.L. WOULD BE THE I.L. THAT KAYLA DESCRIBED. THAT KAYLA DESCRIBED. THAT WOULD OPEN UP MORE ACREAGE THAT WOULD OPEN UP MORE ACREAGE TO BE BY RIGHT SO IT WOULDN'T TO BE BY RIGHT SO IT WOULDN'T REQUIRE A REZONE. REQUIRE A REZONE. IT WOULD GO STRAIGHT TO THE IT WOULD GO STRAIGHT TO THE PROCESS SHE DESCRIBED OF THE PROCESS SHE DESCRIBED OF THE OVERLAY. OVERLAY. THE OTHER DISCUSSION ITEM THAT THE OTHER DISCUSSION ITEM THAT GETS TO BE A PRETTY BIG BUCKET, GETS TO BE A PRETTY BIG BUCKET, IT'S THE WHAT'S IN probably will spend the bulk of our time with this committee because I think that that's the opportunity to ask a developer to go ahead and define what they're gonna build. What are the development guidelines that they're going to do? So the big question is, do we want to tell them that or do we want them to bring that to us and we evaluate that? So that's kind of the two ways of doing that. And if we're going to have them bring that to us, then we need to probably have some sort of a checklist or guidelines so they know what to expect. They kind of know what our decision criteria are going to be.

Michael, don't you think that what we just heard from... WAS IT CHARLES? YOU KNOW, HE LAID OUT A REALLY GOOD PRESENTATION OF ALL THE THINGS THAT THEY'VE ASKED FOR. I ALWAYS LIKE IF SOMEONE WANTS TO COME IN OUR COMMUNITY AND DO BUSINESS OR BUILD SOMETHING, THEY PUT THEIR BEST EFFORT FIRST. BUT YOU'RE RIGHT, WE NEED TO HAVE A CHECKLIST TO MAKE SURE EVERYTHING'S INCORPORATED. AND I THINK THIS PRESENTATION WE The other two counties, if you guys have seen those, they put together a lot of stuff that we need to consider. That could be a really good first draft of this checklist of maybe discussion points that we vet out how it works in our county.

ONE OF THE THINGS I THOUGHT WAS INTERESTING IS THAT THE DEFINITIONS SEEM TO BE KIND OF ALL OVER THE PLACE AND THAT'S WHY I ASKED MR. NICHOLS THAT IF IT WAS GOING WELL TO HAVE SMALL SCALE AND LARGE SCALE, YOU KNOW, BECAUSE I KIND OF, PERSONALLY I KIND OF LIKED THAT BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT WE DID WITH SOLAR, YOU KNOW, IT'S JUST WE HAVE LARGE, WELL, WE HAVE THREE SCALES IN SOLAR, BUT, YOU KNOW, MAYBE WE COULD DO TWO. BUT THEN ALSO ALL OF THESE VARIOUS CATEGORIES THAT KYLIE PUT TOGETHER, THEY'RE ALSO VERY GOOD AS WELL. I thought maybe one of the things that we could discuss is do we want to accept some categories, define some categories as a committee, as have the planning commission make those definitions? And what do you think of these? Or do you think we want to get this detailed? Or do we just want to go with something like what he showed us tonight, which was the small scale, large scale, 50 gallons per minute being a threshold and the 20 megawatts being a threshold?

Well, you have small data centers like acreage-wise and megawatt usage-wise that use more than 50 gallons per minute, that they're not large, but under their definition would be considered a large scale. And I don't think it'd be very fair to consider what you see with Kevin O'Leary's data center would be in the same category as something that you could reasonably be like double the size of this room. I don't think putting those potentially in the same category is very fair. So I think expanding on that would be our next...

maybe adding more to it than just one or the other mm-hmm I also want to caution us to understand and realize that development corporations are constantly developing new things video for example is in the process of coming up faster bigger different data chips and set if they want to sell and make available to data center So I guess what I'm trying to say is we have to almost stay ahead of them because they're developing so quickly that if we're considering things based on something that Mr. Nichols did a year ago, we're already out of date. We need to address the things that are being created now so that we don't back ourselves into a corner.

I think that's a benefit in looking at defining it through the metrics of electric use and then water usage. Because those are the two big ones. Right now it seems like the higher the megawatt, the larger the square foot. The same with the water use. But that technology is improving. They can still use a lot of megawatt, and that water usage is going down. But that would give us the ability to ask for more favorable of that newer technology that uses a lot less water. It's available, but it is more expensive. I understand that. But we don't know our water availability at this time.

As technology improves, like you mentioned, where the water usage is going down long term, I think we should just stick with megawatt because there are other cooling technologies that don't necessarily require just water. So like you said, traditional ones can use either fan technology, closed loop, or they use a lot of water. But as we see in technology improving, water is going to go down.

And then I would also question if we're looking at these, you know, based on any set number of metrics, what if they meet a couple of those metrics, but then they meet metrics in another category? Do we go with the most restrictive category? Do we go with the one that on a case-by-case basis is going to meet that particular project, even though it doesn't fall into all of the buckets that we set forth? Because I know in my general line of work, we always use the most restrictive data point that we are given to move forward with a project. That's to protect us. It's also to protect the builder team. and the homeowner in my particular line of work, but in something like this, they may use, I don't know, 100 megawatts of power. They may use no water. They may be able to do that on 50 acres of land, just speaking hypothetically. So how do we look at that as it falls into one of these categories and into these different buckets?

I also think we have to caution just a little bit, like I said, the new chip development that's going on. They may not know. They may tell us what they think, but it's not been tested or proven. So we have to be cautious about that too.

And we also have to be cautious about the speed at which that goes forward, that by the time I finish this sentence, we're already more advanced than we were 15 seconds ago. So whatever number we do set out is probably going to be outdated, you know, like that, because technology advances so quickly.

True. My hesitancy not... to take out water and only go with megawatts is water is a big issue right now. If we don't include that, then we have no way to restrict that. If we're in a drought, to prioritize residents, we wouldn't have any basis to say, well, you're using too much water. We've never set forth anything. So that would be my hesitancy with not adding in water with megawatts. So if they eventually have technology where they have high megawatts, low water use, that's great. But if we go with whatever, if they have high megawatts but low water, let's put them in a category with the higher megawatts. Don't want them to pass a threshold that's going to harm citizens.

I think Charlie touched on that a little bit in his presentation where they've got the emergency action plans or the contingency plans that they put in that they require them to have basically I forget exactly how you put it the letters of commitment that you know in times of X drought or Y drought you know what is their contingency plan to not utilize as much water to be able to do that so that might be a separate thing that we have you know we have bucket that says hey you use five megawatts of power well then there might be a contingency plan tied to that particular category that you have to be able to meet these things in times of emergency or times of drought or what what have you i think he touched on that a little bit if i'm recalling correctly i want to

Now, one thing about water. This is just from my knowledge of working at the General Assembly and working around legislation. It used to be, I believe it was 2012 when this bill passed, but there was some Supreme Court case law that was dealing with the town of Avon, and it dealt with aquifers and who had the right to control the water underneath the ground. Locals used to have the That case law said that locals had the ability to regulate water and withdrawals of water. However, right after that case, right after Avon won that case, the General Assembly reverted that. And since 2012, the state of Indiana hasn't really had a water policy at all. Locals don't have power at all to regulate water, and the state really hasn't done anything to also regulate water. The only thing that we have at the state level is the DNR can regulate large withdrawals. There's a certain gallon tied to that, and I can't tell you what that is right offhand.

I think it's $100,000, but I could be wrong.

Really, locally though, we don't really have the power without some, maybe we need some state legislation is what I'm saying. If this is coming up and it's an issue, maybe it's something we need to talk to the General Assembly about what we're experiencing.

And Kayla, real quick, I know you have something to say, but touching on that, there is, I'm still trying to figure out some more background information, but I know that there was a local ordinance passed in 1988 for Hancock County that disallows the use of any groundwater for heating and or cooling purposes, unless that water is then returned uncontaminated back to the same depth in the aquifer that it was pulled from. And I gave that to Kayla.

And I've looked at that. That's not in our law anymore. Okay, it's been written out. That was from 1998. There's some similar language in our existing code, but it's not that exact provision. It deals with, it's our wellhead protection overlay is actually where you'll find that in our Hancock County code.

Okay.

So similar language, but that's where it is now.

In Indiana, a significant water withdrawal facility has to be registered with DNR, and that is the capacity to withdraw more than 100,000 gallons of water per day. So Farm Bureau every year puts out a notice reminding farmers that if you have a pivot, the draw has the capability. It's not that you do, it's you have the capability. So anyone that has the capability... to withdraw more than 100,000 gallons already has to report to the DNR.

Is that only from aquifers or is that surface waters as well? That's all waters. All waters, okay.

Yeah, I know the Farm Bureau, just to follow up on that, has really gone out and tried to work, when there's a drought condition, they've kind of gone out to work with their members and to try to get things settled so that there's water for the town because they really don't have a way of dealing with that at this date.

Do we even have a report that's done that shows the water usage rates? Is it kept up to date? Do you know? Statewide, you mean?

Specific to our county. I know there was a water study done, like, in 2015. I participated on it with a lot of other people, and... There's a guy named Jack Whitman, Dr. Jack Whitman, who's done some water studies in Indiana.

I think we probably need to look at that, and the reason I say that is because there's another case, and don't ask me which state it happened in, where the water reports stopped being produced after the data center was built.

Okay. I guess one of the questions that I have, and Kayla, I don't know if this is available or not, maybe it's just too simple, but There are places in the county that I know water isn't as plentiful, so to speak, as others. And they have issues with that, with their wells or other kinds of things. So is there a way to be able to look at our county map about places that probably are less likely that we want to drain any kind of resource from that, so to speak? Versus, you know, I don't know, say the east side has a plentiful amount of water, but the west side doesn't.

Phil and Derek, stop me if I'm wrong, but older homes have shallower wells.

Correct. Yeah.

they are the ones that we're struggling with right now. They're basically going dry and need new wells.

Yeah, prior to some issues in my department, and I was still working in the environmental side, I was working with a gentleman, his well was dug 40 feet deep. So not very deep for a residential well. And yes, a lot of the older homes do have a traditional shallower well. So in times of drought, those are going to be the ones that you find out where your water table is. More modern wells are dug significantly deeper than that. They're dug to a different depth of water. Whether or not we ever get to a drought condition where those have problems is yet to be seen. We haven't yet on a more modern well.

Also, a lot of the problems are DNR has a requirement that the pump should set 20 feet or 15 feet below the water level. And there's a lot of older homes that pumps are much higher than that. They run out of water because the pump's not deep enough and the well may not deep enough to accommodate. It may have silted up and... There's a lot of issues in Hancock County with wells.

And then the well burns up from running dry?

Right. If it runs dry, then the pump burns up.

I have a question. So that gentleman addressed the issue of water, noise. They didn't say anything about light pollution, which it does a lot of light. My other thing is once these data centers aren't useful anymore to them. What kind of cleanup are we going to have them do for our land and where they were? Is that going to be addressed in all of this as well when they go to present their stuff?

It definitely should be through a decommissioning plan and that will be whatever we make it. So Rhonda, do you have any more to add on that?

Not other than we have some existing decommissioning language in our and so it would be something similar for data centers.

And how did that, could you please summarize what you recall about how that was worded or what it made the owner of the property do? Give me a minute, I'll pull it up. Okay, all right.

I don't think that's the same kind of pollution. Solar isn't putting out the same kind of pollution or putting the same pollution in the soil as a data center would. So when they're not useful, I feel like we should think about the future also and what...

Decommissioned solar panels absolutely do put that pollution in though.

You can't recycle them.

Yeah.

Well, you could, but not in a cost-effective manner. Definitely not.

I would be curious what kind of applications for reuse of structures after a decommissioning of a data center would be. You know, is it possible that if the data center is no longer... usable for its purpose and they need to decommission it as a data center, is that structure still capable of being used for some alternative purpose? Maybe not exactly a warehouse, but is the build out in such a way that it could be turned into some other like just throwing stuff out here to see what sticks to a wall, right? Like housing or an institutional use or something like that. Is it possible to reuse that for some other category of use rather than data center comes in, builds data center, data center leaves, tear down data center. Because then you have soil structure issues. You have all kinds of other issues for that lot. And if that structure can be left in place and reutilized for something else, that would be a very interesting point to consider as well in the decommissioning plan.

Just out of curiosity, show of hands, how many people here have been inside a data center or to a data center in the recent past? I've been in a few. And I think one of the things that I could stand up here and preach about for a little and I won't, the reason they're building so many is because it's cheaper to them to build new than to go in and upgrade. And by that same token, it makes me think, I think they're abandoning them. I don't think they're decommissioning them properly. I think they're literally abandoning them and building new because it's cheaper.

That's why I think we should put that in there somewhere about how they decommission. Because it may not affect me in 20 years. I don't know if I'll be here, but our children will be.

So they talked about where, you know, I think in the presentation today where it was projected at 1,000 megawatts and they only used 300, all the utility that just came in, you know, that they just paid for goes onto the rate payer that we're paying for, and the same thing would apply to a non-decommissioned, abandoned data center.

So, yeah, I'm following, yeah. One other comment on the water issue, too. If you go to air-cooled cooling systems, the fans get very large and the noise level goes up.

Yeah, I took note of what he was talking about, the difference between the DBA and DBC frequency noises, and, of course, the whole diesel backups, which they are still using, and it is an incredible amount of diesel that they will truck in and tear the roads up. Just pulled a horse trailer today. I'm just going to tell you right now that there's places where two trucks don't fit together, and you see a semi come in, or even a big farm truck, and I'm sitting there going, oh, my God, oh, my God, oh, my God. So imagine adding all those fuel tanks to the roads.

Yes, I wonder, we're talking about the decommissioned piece. I guess I relate it to like a brownfield, you know, where there was a lot of industrial sites at a period of time. I know in the community I came from, there were. And so it had to be mitigated and incentives were given to companies that wanted to, you know, Work, the state had funds that were available to mediate some of that as well. So, I mean, I guess I think that we can obviously put that language in there. Moving forward, I think it's important to do, but I mean, it's just a different type of industry. You know what I mean? Like that high level, I mean, we had a boundary that they said they could never build anything on. that was 120 years old that burnt to the ground. They said it was a brownfield, you could never, and it was mitigated, and now it's the county jail and a bunch of other facilities. So I guess I'm just saying, I don't want us to be so stringent that we box ourself in, but protective of the future aspects as well. That kind of concerns me. You think that's less concerning? Is that what you're saying? No, I just think that we need to think not only about, all these things, all these industries, all these businesses are evolving, and how do we evolve with them and think ahead about how we want to protect them, but in a reasonable way and not be so extreme that you can't attract any kind of investment into our community at all because we've gone to extremism versus being moderate about being Treating it like any other type of industry that would come to us with those things. And we've had those.

They're not the same kind of industry, though. What they leave behind is not something that, you know, something else would leave behind. It's different.

But I've heard that about a lot of different industries over the years, that they've left things behind. We didn't think they were bad things at the time, and they turned out to be bad things. I mean, we only can deal with the things that we know and things we can anticipate happening. We can't be no to everything.

I have a friend who works for the IDEM, Indiana Department of Environmental Management. That's exactly the thing that they do. Maybe we should reach out to them and ask them.

That's not a bad idea. I do have a quick comment on that. This might be a great spot to look at different classifications, both with size and land use of data center types. Because like Charlie pointed out too, we've got the smaller data centers that are already here, or a lot of times are an accessory use to an existing hospital, municipal center, something like that. They're seamless, they fit in, they do their job. They serve us well like that. But it might also be a good point to look at, say, the hyperscale, the big, big, big campuses and say, you know what, there might just not be a spot maybe in our community given that it's mostly green fields, not a lot of existing brown fields that might be reused in a way for data centers, which might be a good way to look at that. It might not be a great fit here. Now maybe in an area that has maybe an old leveled car factory or something that's just growing up weeds and concrete already has all those utilities to it, hey, this might be awesome. But it just might, it's hard, you know, it depends on the community. Yeah.

With some of the zones, and I think it kind of depends on, at least from how I'm looking to approach it on the letter of intent, what it's going to do, what it's going to serve. And depending on that letter of intent, I think it could expand to more than just IG. I mean, like you said with the hospitals, if it's like a privately owned data center for Hancock Regional, obviously it's going to be serving them specifically and that maybe could go to commercial regional or commercial community because it's serving the community or serving that regional hospital network. But if it's enterprise where it's going beyond our community and going much further, maybe it can go to the industrial business park because the roads there obviously can take construction traffic to build said data centers or any other type of business. But, you know, if the megawatt usage is low, it doesn't necessarily have to be just industrial general. It could be light or just business park because it's a smaller scale or less draw on it. So that's all. That's what I'm thinking.

Just looking at the decommissioning language for solar. So for solar, we had removal of all solar energy systems, including structures and equipment from the site. and plan to recycle, remove structures and equipment, disposal of all solid and hazardous waste in accordance with local, state, and federal waste disposal regulations, stabilization or revegetation of the site as necessary to minimize erosion subject to the direction from the planning director, any additional requirements imposed by the county It also put in place in case there was an abandonment situation that the county could step in and pursue all legal means to recoup the costs for decommissioning if that fell back on the county. Additionally, restoration and reclamation requirements, which included restoration of the pre-construction surface grade and soil profile after removal of all structures, equipment, gravel areas, and access roads. Restoration of soil areas with revegetation, which may include crops, native seed mixes, and or plant species suitable to the area. For any part of the solar energy system that was on lease property, existing agreements with the landowners regarding Leaving access roads, fences, gates, repurposed buildings in place, all of which must be in conformance with existing ordinance regulation. Also having bonds and financial assurance requirements so that the company would be bonded in case decommissioning was required. You'd have that financial backing to help you.

So with everything that was listed there, definitely make them pay for that. That just sounds very expensive for the taxpayer or rate payer to pay for all that.

We need to consider where it goes to because if it's built amongst more warehouses, would we want to ask that to be decommissioned or we really want to look at what other use it could be? But if it's in the middle of ag land, probably be best to tear it down and try to restore what we could, but Looking at future use, veterans' hospitals, maybe veterans' housing is one of the first things that comes to mind. Something along those lines. So maybe we should also consider what it's going to look like, if it's something that's going to be there permanently and what uses we could have in the future for it. It would be beneficial to people here.

Ron, I'm just curious. Do you know if the companies that put in the solar farms, did they post decommissioning bonds?

It would be required under our ordinance that they would do it.

So they did do it?

We haven't had any here. We were proactive with our ordinance because solar was talked about a lot, like data centers, and so that's why the ordinance was adopted proactively.

I think maybe... taking some good notes, but it might be good to try and create, maybe start a draft of what would be the things that we're asking for in the letter of intent, and we could maybe come back to our next meeting and talk some more. Looking at this Linn County and some of the other ones, I think that we're touching on a lot of the same things, but I think that the Planning Commission, the commissioners, they probably are going to want to see

It seems like it keeps coming back to resources.

Like you said, it could be a small building, but it could use a lot of power. Or it could be a big building and use a very little bit of power. So it's kind of like, how much power are we using? How much water are we using? What's our traffic? All those things, almost like a development plan, right?

So we're basically asking for a development plan as part of that submittal.

And maybe we're starting to talk about PUDs now. I don't know. I mean, we're at an overlay stage right now, but the PUD gets kind of tossed around as well as a good way to address these things. And then the next step is do we have then our personnel resources to evaluate that? Do we have people that can evaluate and say, okay, if you're going to use 150 megawatts of power, That's okay. How do you find that out?

Well, the HEDC answers LOIs all the time for site selectors. So there's folks out there looking for sites for manufacturing, pharmaceutical, things of that nature. We want to track that type of stuff. Those categories are on those responses. I think we start, I know data center is why we're all focused here, but There's these broader categories that all these site selectors look for, these different types of things. So we could start there to make sure we don't miss anything. One area to look. We could talk to HEDC because they answer, I want to say, 10 or 12 LOIs or requests for information on different sites. We have the mega site up at 200 and 300 that they have been answering tons of requests on. But I also think once we move past that, we get this data. That's where we maybe outsource an evaluation for people that are technically savvy with electrical use or maybe environmental or the things that maybe this board would need some help or advice on.

Is the HEDC site selector information public? Or is that something?

Hancock Technical Development Corporation. Usually site selectors are usually hired by big companies to go out find sites That hit all these categories we're talking about do they have enough power? So when Lily went and looked to do the Leap District up office 65 they did site selection everywhere They were looking in a lot of different locations But they found what they needed up there and the state worked with them. So incentives are important and You know, maybe not things that are specific to data. These are just broad categories to make sure we don't miss anything. Um, so it's almost like a reverse. What, how, what do we need to have to attract economic development? Now we're almost on the defense because we want these data centers are coming. So we want to make sure we fully understand what they're bringing. So why don't we use the categories that site selectors would use to evaluate is a municipality have what we need to bring our economic investment to their county.

Okay. Mike, to your question about staffing, I heard Mr. Nicholson say they hired three consultants to manage their... And a 15-member staff. And a 15-member staff, yeah.

Kayla fell out of her chair when she... Currently, too.

I was curious, too. Nick talked about this is all proactive, but it would be nice to be able to find a community that actually had LOI that they used a benchmark that they've gone through it, you know, to see do they make any changes or modifications or how did it work? Is it working now?

We have Allen County, Monrovia, Hebron up north by Valparaiso. Fort Wayne, Allen County is on their second expansion to this area. going to be pretty big. So we can certainly reach out to them and see what their LOIs look like, what their scrutiny was. I always wonder too, are the states helping the counties at all? Are they helping them with resources? Are they helping them look at anything? I know the states want to attract data centers, but what are they doing to help educate the communities and helping with resources in small municipalities and counties that don't have them?

I know in Monrovia, I went over there personally just to see what it was all about. Google was hosting a, like a... Outreach. Yeah, it was an outreach, and I talked to a lot of people there, and there was a lot of engineers that were there willing to talk into the depth about everything, and I like seeing that where they're willing to work with the public.

I talked to a guy that lives across the street from there, and he said that they put a prison fence around that entire site, and it's absolutely horrible. Really? And then my brother lives across the one up in... in Allen County, and it's beautiful. I mean, it looks so much better than the nasty field that was across from there. I mean, some farm fields are beautiful, right? But some just are weed infested, not cared for. And he just, and his was next to a wetlands that was overgrown and had a lot of drainage, but they took it and There's setbacks over 150 feet, mounds, trees, different types of fencing that's like ornate stone type stuff that they put in there. It's just decorative.

It doesn't look like a prison yard.

You can't even see it from the road.

Are you talking like while it's running? I'm sorry? Are you talking like while the data center is running, while it's in use? You're talking how they're doing it?

It's already done. This is just me driving down the road. This is me driving down the road. Yes, it's in use.

Have we had any, do we know of any, because we talked to the people who are doing what we're doing or ahead of us or have data centers, but have we talked to anyone that are in the phase where the data centers are no longer useful? Have we had anything about that and what's going on with them? Anything that they've found that we should probably look at and maybe...

address before I mean I kind of made this into a little project and I sat down and researched and that what I was telling Kayla was I did I ran out of time and I wanted to try to summarize and say here's all the ones I looked at here's all the categories that were either areas of concern or whatever, and then links to all those different things that I saw. But what I wound up doing is staying up way too many hours and realizing that, first of all, it's a moving target. They're changing so fast that even looking back two to three years, what you're looking at is not what they're building today. So it's harder, except to say that... being the devil's advocate, the Google engineers are going to tell you all the great things because they're all gung ho and real happy about it. Unless they're being used to train AI to do their job and they're going to lose it. And they may not even know that. But it's really tough to summarize it. I tried and I gave up. It was just too much. There are examples of, yeah, there are examples of data centers that look really good and are running really well. And I think that there's right now in the, well, Erin Brockovich, I think is her name, she summarized a whole bunch of things. Her site has a lot, but there's a lot to digest too.

Not in Europe. They've been doing this longer in Europe, right? I wonder if there's any examples in Europe.

Question? Building data centers longer?

Okay, so I was like we had the first one here, but fair enough first data center that I ever went in was in South Bend and it's a was a reuse of their old Union Station and train station. I don't know if ever you guys have ever been through that one or I was on a redevelopment tour and so it was a reuse project and really quite amazing what they did with it so as we're thinking we're always thinking of the one the big ones you know but there are other ideas for reuse as well because I know they did it there.

Okay so to sort of recap all of this I think What I'm hearing is we need to work on some sort of a checklist, obviously, or figure out what we want to see. So our homework will be for the next meeting with staff is to get some of these goals, look at the different things from these examples that we think we want. Kayla, can you or somebody at the staff get with... I asked to see if we can get those. Zoning acreage, yeah, and then thank you and then. State assistance that comment was good. I I was curious myself if there was anything if IEDC has any. Information available to offer to counties so maybe we can do some research on that as well. AND THEN MY LAST THING I HAD NOTED DOWN WAS IF ANY OF THESE AND THEN MY LAST THING I HAD NOTED DOWN WAS IF ANY OF THESE EXAMPLES HAVE ANY GOOD DEVELOPMENT EXAMPLES HAVE ANY GOOD DEVELOPMENT GUIDELINES. GUIDELINES. BUT ULTIMATELY THE OTHER THE BUT ULTIMATELY THE OTHER THEME I'VE MADE A NOTE TO MYSELF THEME I'VE MADE A NOTE TO MYSELF IS THAT JUST THESE PROJECTS ARE IS THAT JUST THESE PROJECTS ARE ALL DIFFERENT. ALL DIFFERENT. MAYBE NO TWO ARE THE SAME. MAYBE NO TWO ARE THE SAME. SO IT'S JUST GOING TO BE REALLY SO IT'S JUST GOING TO BE REALLY IMPORTANT THAT ANY PROJECT THAT IMPORTANT THAT ANY PROJECT THAT COMES TO OUR CO WITH THAT, WE'RE GETTING CLOSE TO THE END HERE. TO THE END HERE. OUR NEXT MEETING IS SCHEDULED FOR OUR NEXT MEETING IS SCHEDULED FOR JULY 1st. JULY 1st. AND IT WILL BE MUCH LIKE THIS AND IT WILL BE MUCH LIKE THIS MEETING. MEETING. WE'LL START WITH A SPEAKER AND WE'LL START WITH A SPEAKER AND HE'LL ACTUALLY BE IN PERSON. Roberto Gallardo and if you go to that website that Kayla and the staff created there's a Farm Bureau link there and he's in there so he'll probably be that's probably a sneak peek of what he's going to talk about so you might watch that just so then you're ready for questions and things but um I'VE GOT HIS INFORMATION HERE. HE'S VICE PRESIDENT FOR ENGAGEMENT AND AN ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR IN THE AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS DEPARTMENT AT PURDUE UNIVERSITY. HE HOLDS AN ELECTRONICS ENGINEERING UNDERGRADUATE DEGREE, A MASTERS IN ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT AND A PH.D. IN PUBLIC POLICY AND ADMINISTRATION. HE'S WORKED WITH RURAL COMMUNITIES OVER THE PAST DECADE CONDUCTING LOCAL AND REGIONAL COMMUNITY ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT INCLUDING TECHNOLOGY FOR DEVELOPMENT. SO HE'S KIND OF A REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT PLANNING TYPE So if you're ready for some good questions for that. I think he'll be a good resource to help us with the question of where should these things land? And he'll probably have a lot of reasons for all those different things.

Mike, on June 24th, Farm Bureau, I'm attending, it's a webinar, but Ryan Hoff is government affairs team and he's leading that so I could neither talk to him and See if he banished it or if I can get some of those resources. Okay our Bureau shares I'll be happy to share those with the group, but that's June 24th Okay, I don't know anybody else's Farm Bureau members, but I am and so I'll try to share what I can I

That's the one that you have to be a member to attend.

Yeah, you have to be a member, but whatever I can glean from it or they'll let me share with you all, I'll try to do that. Sneak it out.

I used to work for them. Maybe I can find someone to let me get in. Sneak it out.

But I can easily get a hold of Ryan, too, if we want to have him come speak.

Thank you. Mike, one quick question. Is there any topic for the next meeting, which is July 1st, following Dr. Gallardo's presentation, that you would like us to cover? Any topic area we should focus on?

I think we probably want to maybe have a cleaner draft of everything we talked about tonight to discuss, but development guidelines will probably be a topic that we probably want to look at a little more in detail.

Kind of keep fleshing out sort of a draft. I think what we're starting to formulate is a draft.

For this letter of intent, yeah. AND THEN MAYBE SOME, WE'LL HAVE THIS INFORMATION ABOUT HOW MANY AND THEN MAYBE SOME, WE'LL HAVE THIS INFORMATION ABOUT HOW MANY ACRES WE ACTUALLY HAVE IN IG AND IL ACRES WE ACTUALLY HAVE IN IG AND IL AND THAT WOULD BE A GOOD DISCUSSION AND THAT WOULD BE A GOOD DISCUSSION TOPIC AS WELL AS TO SEE IF THAT TOPIC AS WELL AS TO SEE IF THAT RESONATES WITH ANYBODY THAT RESONATES WITH ANYBODY THAT MAYBE WE SHOULD EXPAND OUR OVERLAY MAYBE WE SHOULD EXPAND OUR OVERLAY BY RIGHT TO ANY OF THOSE BY RIGHT TO ANY OF THOSE ADDITIONAL. ADDITIONAL. I THINK WHAT DID WE LAND ON ON I G? I THINK WHAT DID WE LAND ON ON I G? IT'S ONLY LIKE 130 ACRES OR IT'S ONLY LIKE 130 ACRES OR

ESPECIALLY ONCE YOU LOOK AT WHAT'S VACANT.

YEAH, THE VACANT IG.

WHICH IS A LITTLE BIT THE GOAL. WE DON'T WANT A WHOLE BUNCH OF IG JUST SITTING OUT THERE FOR ANYBODY TO PURCHASE WITHOUT HAVING TO COME TO THE PLAN COMMISSION AND THE BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS.

SO IF THERE'S A BIG EMPTY WAREHOUSE ON THE OTHER SIDE OF I-70 AS AN EXAMPLE, IS THERE ANYTHING, COULD SOMEONE TRY TO REPURPOSE ONE OF THOSE AND MAKE IT INTO A DATA CENTER OF ANY SORT WITHOUT COMING TO ANYBODY.

THEY WOULD HAVE TO DO A CHANGE OF USE FROM WAREHOUSE TO COMMUNICATION SERVICE EXCHANGE TODAY.

AT A MINIMUM THERE'S SOMETHING THAT WOULD CAUSE THEM TO HAVE TO COME.

WAREHOUSES ARE A GREAT PLACE FOR ABANDONED WAREHOUSES BECAUSE IT'S ALL THAT OPEN SPACE.

Well, that's one of the things I've asked is, you know, I think it was in the newspaper not too awful long ago, is the number of square feet of built and occupied warehouses, number of square feet of built unoccupied warehouse space, the number of square feet that is approved and maybe under construction or not under construction yet, but approved and could be.

I have heard there is going to be an update on this topic tomorrow at the council meeting.

Those numbers are released by what's vacant in. I can get those for you if you want. It's really not as bad as you think. And nobody's really building right now because there's too much vacant.

All right. Anybody have anything else? We've got a few more minutes before the bell rings. Anybody? Anything? Nothing good?

Do you dismiss us or does the bell dismiss us? Well, the bell will hang.

The officer will probably fire his gun. Yeah, so if you're all good, we can take a motion to adjourn.

I make a motion that we adjourn.

Second.

Moved and seconded to adjourn. All those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Thank you all very much. Thank you. Good discussion. Huh?

Do we keep these or leave them there? Probably leave those.