Plan Commission - Regular Meeting

All right, we'll call the meeting to order, the July 27th meeting of the Data Center Advisory Committee. We'll start with a roll call for the minutes.

Your microphone's up, by the way.

Call the meeting to order. July 27th, meeting of the Data Center Advisory Committee. We'll start with our roll call for this evening for the records. Oh, Maria's not here. I'll call the roll. Michael Long here. Renee Oldham absent. Mary Zurbach.

Here.

Derek Adams. Here. Phillip Hayes. He's absent. That's what I thought. Okay. SAMUEL GALIAN. HERE. KYLIE BLAYLOCK. HERE. MELISSA JACKSON. HERE. PAUL OVERHOUSER. HERE. JULIE SEDAM. HERE. CLARK SMITH. HERE. JEANINE GRAY. HERE. LACY WILLARD. HERE. ALSO PRESENT IS KAYLA BROOKS, MARIA HENRIQUEZ IS GOING TO BE IN HERE IN A MINUTE, AND RONDA COOK, ATTORNEY FOR THE PLANNING COMMISSION. All right, I'd like to advise you to please turn off any cell phones, electronic devices this evening. All testimony that we would take, well, we're not taking any testimony this evening, but it'd be taken under... OATH, WE WON'T BE TAKING ANY OF THAT, NONE OF THIS. OKAY, 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. OUR MEETING THIS EVENING HAS BEEN PROPERLY NOTICED IN ACCORDANCE WITH INDIANA CODE 514.1.5. HAS KAYLA RESURFACED? She has not. So a quick recap for what we're doing this evening. Originally we had scheduled our. The last meeting we scheduled our first meeting to be our next meeting to be on August 18th and we've inserted this meeting this evening, so we do need a motion to accept the meeting minutes from last meeting that were submitted electronically.

Motion to approve.

All right, all those in favor signify by saying aye.

Aye.

Same sign, motion carries. Okay, so just a quick recap again. This committee was formed to study and inform the plan commission with any recommendations to siting of data centers in our county. Prior to that first meeting, the planning commission and the board of commissioners adopted an overlay ordinance, which would help give us some direction on these recommendations that we were going to be making, which would be kind of some redlining of that ordinance regarding development guidelines zoning district ideas and enhancing that overlay while that was still a little bit overwhelming and on how much work we really needed to be doing and detailing we decided to um I guess from there we had an awful lot of discussion and we had speakers and all that. So we decided to appoint a scribe committee to summarize our meetings to date. That would be a summary of all of the discussions, the speakers, et cetera, and essentially what we have learned. And that's what I think Kayla is printing right now and bringing that out because that was prepared by that committee. So then about that time, our county leadership felt that they needed some input sooner from the planning commission. And so we asked the scribe committee to also consider how that summary could be formatted as sort of an important topics list that this committee could use as sort of our first level, or it could be the recommendation of our first level of recommendation. And so that is this other document that is called data center questions. So they did that, we'll be perusing that, we'll be presenting that and we'll be discussing that this evening. BEFORE ALL OF THAT HAPPENED, WE WERE KIND OF TALKING ABOUT HOW THIS WHOLE TIMING AND THE PROGRESS WAS GOING TO WORK FROM THIS POINT GOING FORWARD AS WE ARE KIND OF CONSISTENTLY FROM MEETING TO MEETING FIGURING OUT WHERE WE'RE GOING AND WHAT WE'RE DOING HERE. AND SO RONDA HAS CREATED A KIND OF A PRELIMINARY SCHEDULE WHICH SHE CAN PRESENT TO US THIS EVENING ON HOW OUR COMMITTEE FITS INTO THIS OVERALL SCHEDULE OF WHAT THE PLANNING COMMISSION NEEDS TO DO AND WHAT THE BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS WILL BE FACED WITH WITH OUR OVERLAY ORDINANCE. SO AGAIN, THIS COMMITTEE IS SO AGAIN, THIS COMMITTEE IS MAKING NOTES, SUGGESTIONS, AND MAKING NOTES, SUGGESTIONS, AND RECOMMENDATIONS FOR AN ORDINANCE. RECOMMENDATIONS FOR AN ORDINANCE. AND THIS IS THE ORDINANCE WORK AND THIS IS THE ORDINANCE WORK WILL BE DONE BY THE PLANNING WILL BE DONE BY THE PLANNING COMMISSION AND THE BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS. COMMISSION AND THE BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS. THE ORDINANCE WORK IS NOT DONE BY THE ORDINANCE WORK IS NOT DONE BY THIS COMMITTEE. THIS COMMITTEE IS JUST MAKING THIS COMMITTEE IS JUST MAKING RECOMMENDATIONS AND BRINGING RECOMMENDATIONS AND BRINGING CITIZENS' THOUGHTS AND Any additional influence that we would like to have beyond what we're doing here this evening with recommendations and questions and just trying to learn and forward our information on would need to be done in the normal course of talking directly with your elected officials and commenting in public meetings and all of the normal hearing items. So with that, what I'd like to do this evening is we'll have Rhonda talk about how that schedule might work, and then our scribe committee, which was Lacey, Derek, and Paul, Renee's not here, will kind of walk us through their summary that they did, and then the data center questions summary, which is nothing new. That's just questions that they pulled from our meeting minutes and discussions that we've had and things that our speakers have talked about. So with that, Rhonda, do you have that list of that schedule to talk about?

I have it in print form too. I don't know if you want to pass it around or not. So tonight, July 27th, Citizens Committee meets to discuss questions prepared by the scribes. Draft recommendation is prepared based on that discussion. So I'm going to be doing my best as you have this discussion with the questions to try to start getting that into format for a formal recommendation. Tomorrow night, the Planning Commission meets at their regular meeting. The Planning Director provides a status update of the work done by this committee, the Citizens Committee, and shares a summary of the July 27th Citizens Committee discussion and, if it is ready in some type of form, the draft of the committee recommendation. On August 18th, Citizens Committee has another meeting to take public comment. Also reviewing the draft recommendation which should have been circulated by that time and make any final adjustments to the recommendation either that you want or that it's based on comments that you hear by the public and adopt the final recommendation to send to the plan commission. At the August 25th, 2026 plan commission meeting, the plan commission will consider your final recommendation, have discussion and direct staff and attorney to prepare an ordinance to amend the Hancock County Code and then to advertise for a public hearing on that ordinance at the following plan commission meeting, which will be on September 22nd. September 9th would be the deadline when that draft ordinance would be out there for the public to review and we would advertise notice of public hearing by that date and make the draft ordinance available. So on September 22nd, Plan Commission holds the public hearing on the draft ordinance And at that time they can take action to make a recommendation to the board of commissioners. The recommendation then following day, September 23rd, 2026 would be certified and delivered to the board of commissioners. And then the commissioners could take take up that ordinance either at their next regular meeting, which is September 29th. That happens to be a joint meeting of the council or commissioners, or they could take up the ordinance at one of their other meetings or hold a special meeting. So that's kind of the steps outlined to get this committee all the way through its process.

so i think when when we started this process with this committee i think what our hope was was to generate lists of topics and concerns that would be important to be considered in the ordinance but also to start talking in depth about development guidelines and hopefully we can still do that at some point but i think that the county leadership is anxious to get some information fed to them so i don't know that this would be this recommendation that we would be putting together will be the end of this work but but it's a piece of it that we can start feeding some things to them so they can be better prepared in any conversations that might come up immediately here in the future. So I think that this evening's purpose really is to discuss like Rhonda said, this document compiled executive summaries of the committee materials, and then these data center questions that might be some guidance for the plan commission and the board of commissioners as they're talking about projects like this. So a lot to read here. So I think we'll ask Lacey and Derek and Paul, I don't know who wants to go first, but just sort of kind of walk us through the summary of the summary, I guess.

I think I was going first.

Yeah, I was just gonna go over, we kind of developed some assumptions to operate under as we went through the scribe committee here. First and foremost, we were only scribing the documents that were made publicly available through the website, so we're not generating anything new, we're not adding our own, we're not compiling anything from any other source, it's just things that have been presented in this meeting and that are publicly available through the website on Hancock IN, not any other website. We're assuming that the scribing will take place after every meeting, so as additional information is brought forward, discussed, what have you, the scribing will continue so that we can continue to take our executive summaries, their living document, we add to them so that there's just one cohesive document for all of the things that we go through so you don't have to go to every single thing. We kind of split up the work. That was another thing that we did. Rather than everybody working on everything and then coming back together and checking notes, we just kind of divvied things up. So, for example, Lacey would take the lead on one thing and then she would bring that back to the group for all of us to consider for quality assessment, to ask any questions, to go over anything and amend anything as necessary. And in doing that, we did not put anything in the document that there was not a consensus of the scribe committee on. So everyone or at least three of the four had to agree that what was being put into the document was accurate and that's what we wanted to put in the document to make sure that the quality of what was going in there was being controlled properly.

So we generated some executive summaries of all the content on the site. We did decide that we should have a character or account limit in doing that. Otherwise it's just going to be regurgitation so we Put caps on it. And we do think this is going to be a living document. For example, anything presented or posted to the site after this meeting, we would probably want to incorporate into version two of this document after this meeting. And we did not all, there's several videos that are linked. We didn't as scribes sit and watch them. We did use the transcripts that are located within there, but we didn't have like live sessions reviewing them again since a lot of us participated or had viewed those. I think that is about all of the notes on the executive summary for now. Again, this will be a living document extending as we go. And Paul did the questions for us.

Yeah. I put together the list of questions, and this is the document they have before you is, I don't know, third or fourth iteration of them. I put it together by starting by looking at data center ordinances that had been provided by Kayla. She provided the ones from Loudoun County, Virginia, the one from Iowa, who we had a speaker for, the one from Wisconsin. I think that all of those are probably, maybe you could characterize them as pro-data center or big data centers going in there. We did not look at any ordinances that provided for moratoriums. It seemed to be outside of our scope for now, but who knows, maybe the committee will come back to that later. We listened to all the presentations, especially the one that I thought was helpful was the one from the professor from Purdue. IT WILL PROBABLY COME AS NO SURPRISE THAT SOME OF THE MAIN ISSUES IN THE DATA CENTER QUESTIONS CONCERN THOSE THAT HAD BEEN REPEATEDLY RAISED DURING THE PREVIOUS PRESENTATIONS, SPECIFICALLY THE ISSUES OF DATA CENTER ELECTRIC USAGE, WATER USAGE, AND THE USE OF NONDISCLOSURE AGREEMENTS AND MAKING SURE ANY PROCESS IS TRANSPARENT. Another issue that we touched on briefly was what do we do if a data center wants to come in to the county and for whatever reason they get approved but they don't build their building or it's not completed or what happens to it then? How do we go through decommissioning? So those are the issues that we discussed. We went through perhaps this document to provide some guidance to those who are more experts than certainly me or perhaps others on the Scribe Committee at drafting a zoning ordinance. So if we'd like to move to Mike, did you want to go through and look at the data center questions document or?

Yeah, I know a lot of you are seeing this kind of for the first time, but if you if you read through it, what you'll you'll notice is that none of this is really new to you. It's these are all questions that came out of our discussions essentially. Just in. On paper and clearly and concisely. So I think what we have here are two documents that could could begin to form. maybe not a recommendation, but a transfer of some information to the Planning Commission so that they could, and the Board of Commissioners, so that they could start to see what, in a concise document, what is being produced here and as a planning tool at this point. So I don't know if this evening if we want to, We could do a lot of different things and we could start to try to put together some sort of a recommendation to the Planning Commission as to what should show up in that overlay ordinance. If some of these questions need to be part of that findings section of the ordinance or if we want to recommend that this document be ADOPTED AS A REFERENCE DOCUMENT BY THE PLANNING COMMISSION AS THEY REVIEW OVERLAY ORDINANCES YOU KNOW SOME OF THE DISCUSSION ITEMS I GUESS THAT WE COULD WE COULD DISCUSS HOW WE WANT TO DO THAT BUT ESSENTIALLY WHAT WE'D LIKE TO LEAVE HERE THIS EVENING WAS SOMETHING BEING PASSED TO THE PLANNING COMMISSION WHETHER IT'S JUST THESE DOCUMENTS OR THIS DOCUMENT TRUNCATED IN SOME WAY OR IF YOU WANT TO START ADDRESSING, WELL, DO YOU HAVE THE ORDINANCE, THE OVERLIGHT ORDINANCE YOU COULD PUT UP WITH THAT FINDINGS SECTION ON IT? IF WE WANT TO START TALKING ABOUT THAT SECTION SPECIFICALLY AND HOW WE WANTED TO MAYBE FOLD SOME OF THIS STUFF INTO THAT AS A RECOMMENDATION.

I THINK IT'S AT THE TOP OF PAUL'S QUESTIONS, THE FOLLOWING CRITERIA. OH, OKAY.

YEAH, THAT'S THE SAME THING THERE. So yeah, so this document, if you look at it, I guess it does kind of help lead. So if a project were to come to the plan commission with the overlay and they needed to pass a recommendation off to the board of commissioners, they could look at this document. And then these are the questions that this committee has found that are important for them to consider that need to be in a proposal from a developer for a data center type project. SO I ACTUALLY WAS QUITE PLEASED WITH THE OUTPUT HERE OF WHAT WE HAVE AND I THINK THIS WOULD BE A GOOD TOOL FOR THE PLANNING COMMISSION TO USE IN EVALUATION OF ANYTHING THAT WERE TO HAPPEN IN THE NEAR FUTURE AS THIS COMMITTEE CONTINUES TO DO RESEARCH AND LEARN MORE ABOUT THESE TYPES OF PROJECTS.

CAN I ASK A QUESTION? WHAT AI TOOLS BEING USED OR WHO IS USING AN AI TOOL TODAY? ANYONE? An AI tool to put together any of the documents here? Anybody using anything AI? Chat GPT? As a summary tool?

In my practice as an attorney, I have for several years used AI mainly to proofread my briefs and submissions for court because I'm a proofreader.

Okay. I was just curious about that. Next question was, What data center type could be coming to us now that we would have no capability of examining and or stopping that from happening? Am I understanding correctly that today we have zoning in place that would allow a data center and maybe one's already in the process of trying to have conversations. Could you explain to me what that would look like or what type that would be and where that might be coming?

I DON'T THINK WITH THE OVERLAY IN PLACE NOW, I THINK THAT ANY DATA CENTER, DEFINED AS A DATA CENTER, CORRECT, IT WOULD HAVE TO BE AN OVERLAY. SO IT WOULD HAVE TO GO THROUGH THAT WHOLE PROCESS OF THE PLAN COMMISSION, THE BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS TO GET AN OVERLAY APPROVED TO HAPPEN AND IT'S ONLY IN THE IG DISTRICTS.

That would include a public hearing component?

Yeah.

That was already passed, wasn't it? It can still come in as a PUD. No, it still has to. Planned unit development? I thought if they come and submit a planned unit development.

Let me pull up the ordinance again, what was passed. So just give me one second and I'll read the steps because so let's just start here. If the ordinance initially changed the zoning districts where a data center could be located without a zoning change. So it can be in the industrial general location now with subject to the overlay. That ordinance removed all those other zoning districts from that same treatment where if they complied with the zoning for those districts and they didn't want anything like a variance or they would never have to go to a hearing, that was changed in that ordinance. So the PUD is a zoning change in itself. And that's subject to a public hearing. That's more scrutiny if you go that route. So there's a hearing process involved with this. So let me pull up that ordinance and just kind of explain to you that process now if a data center would want to come in to the IG zoning district. That's the only zone that it's permitted in. If they wanted to go somewhere that was not zoned, they would have to apply for a rezone. And that's a whole process and a hearing change. And there's, you know, steps to go through in order for that to happen. But let me pull up that ordinance. One second.

Well, she's looking at that. I think in a nutshell, I think the simple answer is that a data center project that would come now would have public hearings. Right. It'd have to go to the Planning Commission. It'd have to go to the Board of Commissioners. So the elected officials would have a final say in the approval of a project.

Prior to that ordinance, if they went somewhere that was already zoned for data center, the commissioner had no input.

Thank you for clarifying. I've been hearing different feedback in different venues and forums that suggested that might not be the case. So I just wanted to clarify.

There is a lot of nonsense going on social media right now.

I'm trying to avoid it as much as I can, but it's hard because we also have our group that helps or attempts to help channel conversation correctly.

I think that was a lot of the reason to form this task force as well, so that, you know, we could have some legitimate information posed to us instead of everyone getting their information off of TikTok and Facebook and X and all that other stuff. So there's really, you know, with... The doctor from Purdue that spoke last month, he did a fantastic job.

I do want to share one thing. I've been involved in artificial intelligence and knowledge-based systems for many years. Systems being what they are, they are programmed by people. So I'm just cautioning you to say, when you do use an AI tool, take a minute to look at it and make sure it's not generating bias because the AI tools are developed by the people that want to use data centers. So I'm just suggesting that you need to be a little careful about that and kind of like give it the old human once over to make sure it's not leaning a certain direction in summarizing what you've asked it to summarize or what you're pointing it to to compile, if that makes sense.

To go through the ordinance that was passed, there was a change made to the definition of communication service exchange, which was really a definition for like a telephone switching station. And then it also included data centers. And we separated those two definitions and created a standalone data center. definition that says, a facility used primarily for the storage, management, processing, and transmission of digital data and that houses computer or network equipment systems, servers, appliances, and other associated components related to digital data storage, processing, and related operations. Data center uses include data storage facilities, server farms, artificial intelligence training or processing, image processing, cloud computing, email servicing and similar uses. So then we changed the, this definition would apply only to the IG where a data center could go subject to the overlay. And then we really put in a process for that overlay But the overlay needed more input from this committee and to be kind of filled in with further requirements. But the general process was set up in this ordinance, which says that the overlay district is an additional layer of requirements to the existing requirements in the IG. zoning district. All data center projects that are subject to this section are considered for siting within the county's planning and zoning jurisdiction must meet the requirements of this section to the satisfaction and as approved by the Board of Commissioners. So there the commissioners have a role to play where maybe they wouldn't have before. We start out with an approval process where someone that wants to propose a data center issues a letter of intent when they're ready to do so, and then the Board of Commissioners can ask for further information with that request. And then, as I explained before, probably at the first meeting, there's going to be a lot of back and forth between the company and the commissioners to kind of figure out what information they need from them. When they feel like they're ready to go forward, they adopt a declaratory resolution by the Board of Commissioners that says that the data center project substantially meets the criteria in B3. And that's the criteria that Paul has at the top of his questions. And then the criteria is listed. Then the pre-application review process starts with the planning director. And then the planning director has to make a determination if there's a complete application. And then there's a project review. at the technical review committee and any variances that are necessary go through the board of zoning appeals and then a public hearing after tech committee by the plan commission. The plan commission shall certify to the board of commissioners that a public hearing was held and the certification can also include any suggestions or recommendations in regard to the project. Then the Board of Commissioners adopts a confirmatory resolution once they're happy with all of that. Or they could send the project back to Tech Review if they get comments that need further adjustments are needed. Once all those concerns have been addressed, then the confirmatory resolution is adopted by the Board of Commissioners. And they may require written commitments by the data center company. And then they proceed on with the improvement location permit in that process. So it really does put in quite a few steps where the commissioners have more say in there and can have some more back and forth.

Thank you.

Yeah, so during that process, I think where the commissioners are probably coming from, and Janine can correct me if I'm not... Assuming correctly, but I think that they just felt like they needed some tools and they needed something to look at if something were to come to them and Kayla's office as well. You know, there's in the overlay ordinance. There's the five items, six items to consider. But what this does is it takes what we've discussed here and elaborated on that quite a bit. So to me, this list of questions with the backup of the summaries here is a pretty solid document for a planning tool, I guess I would call it, to forward to the Planning Commission to then maybe make a recommendation on that to the commissioners. So if you'd like, we could go through this this evening, item by item, and discuss it and make sure that everybody's comfortable with it. Item number one would be, it's the development review framework, basically selecting the right planning tool. So I think that this is something that Kayla would use, I think, or her staff would use as to whether or not, I think what we're talking about here is whether or not we want to use the overlay district or if we want to possibly use a PUD. And then it talks about development agreements and the PUD plus development agreements and all those types of things here.

Would we just look at a PUD? Oh, I'm sorry. Would we just look at using the PUD if the PUD was only for the site that that data center, if you will, would go on? Or if they come and they buy 500 acres and they're only going to use 200 acres, is that whole thing going to go under a PUD?

Yeah, I think that that's where, you know, each project is going to be different. And that was where the struggle was, is every one of these projects is going to be hard to really write guidelines and development standards for data centers because they're all at so many different tiers and levels and difficulties and things. And then, like you said, that they'll come and they'll say, we want to use 200 acres, but we want to rezone 500 acres. IN THAT CASE, YEAH, THE PUD KIND OF MAKES SOME SENSE BECAUSE THAT GIVES THE COUNTY THE ABILITY TO HELP PLAN THAT 500 ACRES. SO IF A PROJECT LIKE THAT CAME, THEN I WOULD THINK, YEAH, THE PUD IS PROBABLY THE RIGHT MOVE BECAUSE IT'S GIVING US THE OPPORTUNITY JUST LIKE THE ONE THAT DID COME LAST YEAR THAT IT GIVES YOU THE OPPORTUNITY TO EVALUATE AN ENTIRE AREA AND PLAN IN SOME BUFFERS AND SOME UNIQUE ITEMS. THE THING WITH THE PUD'S IS YOU NEED TO HAVE A UNIQUE DEVELOPMENT. THAT'S WHY THE PLANNING COMMISSION I THINK OFTENTIMES SHIES AWAY FROM PUD'S BECAUSE A LOT OF THEM THAT COME DON'T INTEGRATE THAT UNIQUE PLANNING COMPONENT. IS THAT THE RIGHT TERM? UNIQUE PLANNING COMPONENTS? YOU WANT TO TALK PUD? COME TALK PUD. We'll let the planner talk PUD, I'll sit back.

Since we're establishing this overlay district and writing some ordinance work that goes into it along with all of the recommendations and discussion we've had here, I would suggest not using a PUD for a data center. At this point, this is the valuable work that needs to be put into an ordinance for that overlay district and that is really what a PUD previously would have covered. So PUDs from a planning perspective are a nightmare.

But there are wonderful outlines on PUDs of all the different things that they address. So they do give whatever we call it. It doesn't have to be a PUD. It could be data center overlay or whatever we want to call it. but it does outline all the components that this group may, I mean a lot of these questions talk about what those components are, but the PUD might give us a good outline of what this overlay, what the issues and the submission needs to look like if we do that, right?

Potentially as far as the submission goes, but our ordinance already shows how that submission needs to look with the letter of intent. That overlay district then can help to establish some of those development standards and things like that. So I think we've really got the framework we need in the overlay district itself. I would also point out that our zoning ordinance overall was drafted in the early 2000s, and at that time PUDs were in place pretty much specifically for residential subdivisions, so it wasn't really a guideline, I guess, for drafting a PUD that had to do with something industrial.

I totally agree with Kayla on this particular subject.

I mean, I was thinking just, you know, we don't want to diminish what we're doing here, but if you do put every, if you close one route, and I think every route should have a public hearing, no matter what, whatever route's available, each one should have a public hearing. So since the PUD does have a public hearing, I wouldn't want to completely close it just because I've experienced a completely different type of regulation. But when you do put something down one path, you run into a scenario that you never envisioned. And I ran into that recently with an operator in grain that. The legislators never envisioned, I never envisioned we would have this situation, so I wouldn't want to cut off any route that had a public hearing.

This would not cut off. I mean, anybody can apply for a PUD for whatever they want. We also are, Mike, the plan commission and the board of commissioners, Janine, are allowed to say that's not what our vision is for this community, things like that. I would also say what we should do, rather than go immediately to PUD, is adopt recommendations that are specifically getting at the types of data centers and the areas we foresee them going into. So while the ordinance we have in place today roughly sets out, here's what we define data center as, and we see it going in IG, industrial general, which is a heavy industrial district with a, sorry, talking to the microphone, with a data center overlay, there's nothing that says we can't get into that ordinance again and amend it so that actually it's got four subtypes of data centers, ranging from very small accessory type uses all the way up to your hyperscale AI, big scary one that we're kind of concerned about. So That's your computer. Siri, something I say.

Funny the AI talks back to the AI.

we can define data center subtypes as we need to and say a smaller data center, and actually, Kylie, you had developed a document that Maria and I went and ran with early on in this. So like an enterprise data center, I think, is what the smallest kind was defined as, oftentimes incorporated into like a government building or a hospital. That might be something to consider in commercial zoning districts or institutional zoning districts as accessory uses. Maybe it shouldn't go through all the same steps as a hyperscale data center that definitely needs to be in that IG zoning district. So we can get a lot more specific, and I think that might cut out some of the need for PUD as well.

But I thought we were trying to put something together here, and maybe I'm off track, that requires them to submit information so we have a better idea of what they're building, what utility usage those will be, so that we have more control there. But that's the overlay, correct?

That is the recommendation I believe that we're trying to establish right now. I'm saying that in that ordinance document, we'll probably need to define out what types of data centers there are and who all that level of analysis applies to.

That's my concern. What you just mentioned was

with the overlay right now we don't really have a way to require I guess we I guess the plan commission can always require a development plan so to actually see what's being but what I'm saying is the PUD ordinance requires all the same information our development plan would be so these questions are great but I think that we have a guidepost with the PUD we're not going to call it that But we can use some of those same requirements of information we'd like to gather in this overlay instead of recreating these categories all again.

Yeah.

That's all I'm saying. We can use it as a guidepost and see which ones. But I thought Purdue's, the gentleman that was here last time, gave us those categories of those data center sizes that you're alluding to. Okay. But you're saying that we have to define those in the zoning ordinance under each... What's an IT closet or an IDF room different in a building? I mean, we don't require a size of those rooms. They may be data centers. You know, I know one office building in Fishers at the entire 10,000 square foot is a data center, but they call it their IT room.

50% of the challenge of planning and zoning is in the definition section.

I just don't know how we categorize, do we square foot it? Is there a certain amount of BTUs that come out of it that we're concerned about? I mean, I don't know how you define defining those sizes in your ordinance.

Lynn County, Iowa's ordinance how to start at it. So that would be one document to look at. Some of the other communities that have been going through this process have been defining different types of data centers. So we could certainly look to those examples.

So we did encounter the tiering definitions in some of the sub-documents when we did the summaries. And so it's like a tier 1, 2, 3, and 4. And it's not based upon any one measure. It's anticipated electrical demand, water demand, floor area, acreage, backup generation, and then there's an associate schedule. So it's not just one item. And we did encounter exactly that. And that might be appropriate to adopt into an amendment. That might be a recommendation out of this committee to tier it. And then the development standards associated with each of those tiers would be a little bit different and considered differently with whatever route they come in. What would be a big miss is if we consider these questions only applicable to the overlay district with an IG. That would be a miss for us.

Not a what?

So it would be a miss if we say this only applies to the overlay district on an IG because if we tier it, this would allow for the minimum items in this to apply to anything that we would see as a data center project or campus. And be it a PUD or anything else. It might take a little bit of work with Rhonda to get that reach, but these questions would be asked in any of those tiers.

Okay. I'm not necessarily advocating for the PUD route, but if a project came as a PUD, then that application comes to your office. And if you don't understand it, you send it back, right? You just don't accept it as a submittal. I mean, we've had this before where it's like the projects come in, they kind of lightly check all the boxes. We think everything's there, so we move forward with it. But if there's information in here that says, we're building a campus of, IT buildings, of technology buildings, and you don't understand what they are, then you can request additional information. Like, explain what each building is, almost like a development plan. You know, define each use, and then we can start to compare it to the information that we've now kind of compiled here. It's like, what tier do we think this is? What is the impact of this building and that building, and how does that relate to the surrounding areas? I guess where I'm going is that we can sit here and try and create all these definitions and all these guidelines, when in reality we just really need the developer to tell us what they're wanting to build, and then we can see how that fits.

Certainly when I accept something in my office, and I know I've been learning, I'm learning, so I know first talk to Rhonda and make sure everything is definitely... all the boxes are properly checked. But I am required to still accept a bad idea or a project that's not great. It's you then who has to take that and say, oh, you know, Kayla, what are you doing? Why did you bring this to us? And say, well, this needs to actually go and try to be in a data center overlay IG deal. Or no, this is a terrible idea for our community. You have to make that decision, not me. I just make sure they've got all of their papers and their filing fee and their public notice. So of course the staff recommendation eventually, but you guys are really the decision makers.

We can take a PUD and say that this needs to go in some other kind of development process, right? Like just because they submitted a PUD doesn't necessarily mean that it needs to be a PUD or it should be a PUD.

It follows the process that's in our Hancock County code. It's 156.050. So a PUD is if you want to build something in Hancock County and you're in a certain zone, you say, okay, I either need a rezone or I'm going to go into this zone. I'm going to look at what my standards are for that development zone. And that's what you follow is what's in the, in the code. In this case, we, what we just were talking about is we now have a little one more layer overlay. If you want to have a PUD, you're gonna write your own code right then and there. So it's, we will not ever go back to the Hancock County Code to look at what, we'll look there for the process, but when we wanna know the standards, we have to go to a separate document that was created for the code just for that project. Now one of the things in the code For PUD, it requires a final detailed development plan. So to answer Janine's question, if they came and they had no idea what they were going to build, we couldn't move forward with the PUD. We have to have all the final details. We might be able to say, okay, you've got this 100-acre parcel, and you know what you're going to build on 25 acres, but you don't know the rest. then I would say we're going to rezone the 25 acres because you know what you're going to have there. And when you get ready and you know what the rest of it's going to be, then come back to us and we're going to do another PUD. Does that make sense?

Wouldn't a letter of intent clear a lot of this up? We previously talked about that. They submit an LOI and then Kayla would see it and be able to say this actually is going to fit into an overlay district. Would you send it back to them if they said I want to do a PUD and then it actually fit more in like a category for an overlay?

That was kind of like my question. Like if they came to it and they wanted to do a PUD, do we have an opportunity to look at it then and say this actually should go into the overlay or vice versa, you can do either one?

If they want to do the PUD and they apply for a PUD, then it comes in as a PUD. We can try to talk to them and say we think you might go this other route, but that's up to them.

Whether someone applies as a PUD or overlay or rezoning or whatever, if it's a data center, it seems like there are going to be a lot of questions we want to have answers to. And whether those questions are answered in a letter of intent or an application form or some other document. Could we make a template and attach it as an appendix to the zoning ordinance and say, if you want a data center, you have to answer these 100 questions along with your submission?

Well, all those questions get kind of asked in the PUD process. It goes to tech review. There's all these steps, right, for let's see here. Let's see your plan, your detailed drawings. And through the PUD process, those questions are going to come out, be asked. Because remember, it's all subject to approval of the PUD. Did you want to say something, Kayla? Sorry.

Separate out to if something goes through being rezoned to IG and being in a data center overlay, that's going to be one process. The PUD is a little different than that. So PUD for anything has its own separate process. So I don't know if I want to get into that so much right now.

Rhonda, can I ask a question? Yeah. And I'm just going to give a quick reference that some people rolled their eyes. But when the chicken coop started coming to us originally, we didn't know what questions to ask. We didn't know what standards there were. We had to go through a couple of them, and then we had to develop a a process review, which to this day we keep in our binders. So is there an opportunity for us to keep a similar administrative procedure as relates to data centers if they were to come into another pathway? Mostly because, I mean, these are not answers to questions. So is the generator going to be low emitting? Is it going to be standard or is it only going to apply with state air requirements, right? Those types of responses aren't given here. But it's okay because maybe you give and take on some of these when you're doing a PUD. So is there an opportunity for us to take this under advisement in a more administrative or something with staff, like we do the chicken coops?

I don't know. Yeah, I think it would also be good for the company to have remember they're trying to save money as well. They want to get cut to the chase as well. So anything you can give of kind of like, well, we probably would consider, our general rule is that we like you to have a closed loop system. You know, anything you can provide that's kind of guideline related will also help them so they can decide we can live with that or we need to negotiate on that or that won't work at all.

I would assume that by the time any type of data center that approached Hancock County government would have, we would, the commissioners would have their own list of guardrails to help protect.

And the guardrails, what we're trying to do is perhaps get at least some of those big ones in the overlay. language in the ordinance. So that's what this committee is kind of charged. Like what would those guardrails be? And the ones we know that we want, let's put them in writing. That way it's very clear to the company what the guardrails are.

I do suggest though, so we're not back here in two years doing this again, that we keep some things as flexible as we can, because as everyone said, technology's really moving. the way these things are coming together and what their needs are with utilities and such and land use, that we just ask the question, but in more broad tense than trying to get real detailed. I just assumed we were helping create guide rails for the overlay, for the commissioners to help them move forward. I mean, I may be confused. I thought that that's what we were doing here.

Yeah, because what if they answer a question that we don't like or we don't agree with or whatever, you know? Does it matter? They answered the question, so does it matter? It should. I know it should, but does it? Really? I think that's part of the decision process. Without a rule. Without it being a rule.

If you get a letter of intent that has all of the questions answered or that presents a development plan that says, here's the data center we want to build. We're going to have X number of diesel generating backup plants. And we're going to have X number of buildings. And we're using the following chipsets. And we're going to need this amount of electricity. And we're using closed loop system, et cetera, et cetera. And we're going to have berms. And we're going to have sound reductions. And we promise we'll have daylight hours and so on and so forth. They can supply all that information, but I still think as a constituent in Hancock County, we would want to have an opportunity to say, they've answered all the questions, they've provided all the details, but we're not happy with that type of a system, that type of a thing here in our county. And then that's the part that I look at and think, I would hope that the commissioners or the people in charge who make the decisions could have an opportunity to listen and also understand. And then there's some that are going to be like, okay, well, this has got a concern, but we're going to allow it. Then I would like to see a plan for making sure that they toe the line and that they do the things they've said they were going to do. And if they don't, that there would be an appropriate consequence to fix it or stop it or mitigate it. That would be my desire. Might as well.

So haven't we touched on that, that with the overlay there would be public meetings for these? Would those be public comment or would they just be open to the public?

The public hearing.

Okay.

In front of the plan commission.

So then the public would have the opportunity to go ahead and voice their opinions either way. So we can cover that one. And then part of our job here is to assist in talking about those clawbacks, talking about the things that we want to see as the citizens committee for the guardrails of we want these benefits, we want them to use these systems, we want them to use that for the plan commission and for the commissioners to then update the overlay, how they see fit with those duly noted. So I think that covers a lot of our concerns by the fact that we're going to have the public hearings. They're taking our work here under advisement. It's not like we're just sitting here talking into the wind. So I think that that takes care of a lot of things.

Well, and that's why this task force was formed.

Right.

Because you might want to have the community engagement. So it's here that a lot of people sit on this task force. So I know I... I can't speak for Bill and Gary, but I'm pretty confident that they're going to take everything this task force brings forward very seriously. And even though Clark and I are not voting members of this, we're here to learn too. So I don't think that it will fall on deaf ears. It will not. That's why we did this to start with.

So one approach you could do, maybe, I'll throw this out there, is take the criteria, A, B, C, D, E, F, go through each one of those, and then for the committee to kind of chime in is what do you think we would, the commissioner should look at when it says we'll promote the public health, safety, comfort, morals, convenience, and general welfare of the citizens of the county. And then, you know, maybe throw out some of those ideas of what you think that would consist of and what they should consider under that topic and then kind of go through each one and along with these questions I think you could probably pull out and use some of this also to answer those questions and what this committee wants the commissioners to consider under each one of those criteria. That's a great process right there.

Well I think I think that's what this is. So when we started this committee, the idea was to read, have speakers learn, and then generate some, I thought, development guidelines, you can call them guardrails, to assist with these, the items A through F to generate those guardrails, to enhance that overlay. That was the idea. So our next meeting, August 18th, was the next kind of phase. Like I said, we've been making this up as we've been going along, but on the 18th, we were going to take public comment, which was going to add to this body of knowledge to help with the task of enhancing A through F. received a phone call last week that we needed to accelerate so that's where we ended up with this document here is you know I just thought the only way to really I kept asking myself what's the deliverable you know what what do we deliver from this committee to the Planning Commission what can the Planning Commission deliver to the commissioners there's a there's apparently a need for some of this information to find its way to the commissioners quickly and so That's what the scribe committee did here was to try to create those list of questions. These are the things I think that we've learned that we think are the questions that the plan commission and the board of commissioners need to ask of a developer in their submittal.

What is the urgency? Why do they need it quicker than what we're doing?

I don't know the answer to that. I think it's just because these, you know, if we were looking to have something by October, you know, what if a project showed up next week? You know, they want to have something. I don't know if, and that's why I wasn't sure that it's the final deliverable or if it's just some guidelines, some information, some knowledge passed along, kind of passed through the process to the various people involved in those decisions.

I did at one point, and I see it's mentioned here in the summary of where I had compiled a document, my attempt to give you all of the information that you would want to consider as part of the overlay called the Suggested Data Center Overlay Components. And in doing that, I did all the things I talked about. I outlined the various possibilities and things that I thought you would need to know in order to make a decision. I also put in some claws into it, if you will, of things that they needed to say they would do, and if they didn't do them, then the consequence would be X, like a fine, and even going into enjoyment. Because, you know, you could get into a situation where the developer of this facility is not complying with the things they agreed to do, that I think we should have the staff available to make sure to be able to inspect and know that they haven't done that. And then we should also have the right to say cease and desist. And or going, I even went so far as to say, plan decommissioning and what kinds of things. Because if a data center operator walked away from a building and left you with all that stuff, just like with solar farms, it's a huge expense to try to get rid of all and recycle or just be thinking about that. That could be down the line, but you better be thinking about it now because it's going to happen.

A procedural note from the scribe committee. We created the summary first, and then we created the questions based upon all the information we gathered, and then we did red lines back and forth several times. So it's likely that Ed, it's welcome. That's why he's presented. But if you find any gaps, that's kind of what we're doing tonight. Is there anything you want to supplement in? Were we careful, though, to take a real moderate view of the questions? We didn't answer them. I didn't have a chance to look. As a scribe committee, we weren't answering. It was just collecting all the questions that are out there.

The other thing, too, is we have to be really conscious of the terms we use. The developer may be involved, or the contractor may be involved, but the end user may be who we're really after. So when we're doing all this, I just want to make sure that we keep some of these things loose so that we're not putting ourselves, because I'll tell you, some of these guys are pretty sophisticated and hire good attorneys, and they're going to cut through if we make a mistake and call something a development or during construction, or we're really looking at the long-term use of the status and how it's affecting our community. So we need to kind of maybe get above the terminology, because it may not be a developer. Meta does not use a developer. If they come here, anything we say developer wouldn't really apply to them. Google uses them Amazon is using some but they're doing some direct deals to right now I use the term developer in a kind of a loose fashion I'm just saying their attorneys may not they may tack you to the wall with it So I just want to make sure that we are keeping that out of this and I mean you guys know We just need to keep it open so that we can get the information. We want to make the best decisions I know the County Council

has a form that when a company wants to come into Hancock County and seek a tax abatement, whether on property tax, real property or personal property, they have a form to fill out, which they say what their business is about, how many people are they going to hire, what are their revenues going to be. So there's some precedent for having this type of questionnaire or application form You know perhaps one of the things our committee or the scribes could do would be to help create that type of a form that would be specifically just for Want to come in and build a data center?

The comment about the definitions was also a big concern because you know if we We start defining things and saying specific things and using specific words, then what's the shelf life of those words? You know, they can change the next day, you know, or a clever developer would change it themselves and say, that's what we have, you know.

But Lacey, doesn't most legal documents or things like this have a definition that we can like say what we intend this word to mean? Like a terms portion. Is that something we would do here, or is that getting too detailed? It can and should.

Yeah, our code has a definition section.

So you have a terms, like what the terms mean.

So if there's anything that comes out of here, we can go back and make sure. Sign it.

Yeah. Okay. And maybe that's what we do to keep away from those issues.

The only thing I think we didn't include is the end user, like you mentioned, like is it a speculative development or not directly? I think we indirectly referred that was something that came up as a thing.

But maybe that's the Would that term be utilized though with what he's saying as it relates to real property? Yeah, because most of the real property in the building would be used by the operator inside the building, right? So would it already be defined in the, for tax abatement? or real property. It already has to be defined.

The definitions you mean? Yeah. Definitions can be tricky. It kind of depends on... Well, tax abatement is state statutory, and there's a form that the state of Indiana provides. So those definitions apply to that. Your code, your local code can be the same word but different definition.

We might have done the worst job on the economic development and taxation section. we talked about that actually and we just we think it's appropriate to hand to maybe pick up some themes but that's something more economic development or some we we've struggled with that like licensing it so other entities we think we can just refer to them uh we didn't do We thought that maybe that wouldn't even be an exhibit, so we put it very last. Although it was referenced pretty extensively in our review of the scribe items, we just think that we might not be the best equipped with the language to talk about economic incentives.

I think that's something that council would probably look at. and when we receive a letter of intent so you know This will I think would be a whole different ballgame than just your regular economic development agreement or your tax abatement or you know anything that we're used to working with now currently it could be a whole different ballgame and

So I guess maybe first question, would the committee advise that a data center should not be a PUD or should or should not? That's, I guess, one threshold question.

Super situational based on the project that comes. And I know we keep circling back to that.

To allow both? Yes.

Yeah, like Clark was saying, you know, you close one path, you open up another, and anything can happen that you, you know, nobody foresees it, it happens. So I think allowing both paths to be open.

So first recommendation might be that both pathways should be open for a data center?

I think the path of least resistance would be the overlay, right? Because the PUD, they're recreating their...

PROBABLY SITUATIONAL LIKE YOU JUST SAID, YOU KNOW.

I THINK A P.U.D. GIVES A PROJECT THE ABILITY TO START ANYWHERE IN THE COUNTY IN ANY ZONING.

YEAH, REGARDLESS OF I.G. WHERE THE OVERLAY RIGHT NOW IS JUST FOR I.G.

SO YOU'D HAVE THAT EXTRA STEP OF REZONING TO I.G. BEFORE YOU EVEN START.

I WOULD VOTE NOT TO HAVE A P.U.D. IF THAT'S THE CASE.

MY CONCERN WITH THE P.U.D. IS ANY any requirements that we put in an overlay, they don't have to shift with the PUD?

They're going for IG zoning, they have to, right? Isn't that what we're doing? So if the PUD submitted and wanted to rezone IG, that falls within the overlay, right?

No. They don't have to. PUD is the IG. The zone is PUD. Or you have a zone IG. There's one or the other. The zone...

The PUD is their own zoning. They're not categorized as anything.

They're their own zoning district. And when you want to look up the rules for a PUD for that zoning district, you go to their own plan that was approved. Okay.

That would eliminate I mean what we talked about before was you know there were four different zones where a data center could conceivably come in if they wanted to we get with the ordinance change 20 20 26 6 e We went with the overlay which would then be only IG so do I understand correctly then if you also?

Allowed a data center to use a PUD we would lose the guardrails no because a PUD is all negotiable so As you're negotiating that PUD, you can come up with whatever is in the overlay and that much more. You can add things. It's all negotiated.

That would be an ordinance. That would be to say that a data center by definition can't be filed as a PUD. That would have to be in our ordinance. Yeah.

Rhonda, if we said that a PUD application would be required to at least consider these guidelines, is that a change as well? Is that an ordinance change or is that just a procedural change at the staff level?

I think that would happen anyway. We would probably pull from, you know, you've got a blank sheet of paper. What do we want out of this project? And so we want to see a plan, and we're going to probably borrow some things from the overlay when that makes sense for this petitioner. So you can kind of make it up as you go.

So it's nice to have this committee and the minutes associated with it. Recall back when we have questions about where we're going to put a sidewalk, because we had committee minutes that we were able to reference. So very similar, this type of work will allow for that guidance to be referenced in a PUD. Great.

reference would help for the negotiation process for that PUD. So if the developer's looking like, well, what questions do they have? They can cite this and say, okay, they're probably prepared to ask these questions. Let's include that. If the commission comes up with more questions, all the better. But that's just a baseline of what to expect to receive out of that PUD.

At what point in a PUD does the public GET A HEARING? IS IT AFTER IT'S ALL NEGOTIATED THEN THEY HAVE A PUBLIC HEARING?

THAT'S A REZONE. SO IT HAS TO BE REZONED. THERE'S A PUBLIC HEARING WITH A REZONE.

BUT THAT'S THE P.U.D. IS A REZONE, RIGHT? SO DO THEY COME FORWARD AND MAKE NEGOTIATIONS AND THEN ASK FOR IT TO BE SUBMITTED FOR A PUBLIC HEARING OR THE DEVELOPER WOULD COME FORWARD WITH A P.U.D., HAVE A PUBLIC HEARING AND THEN NEGOTIATIONS.

KAYLA, CAN YOU WALK US THROUGH THE PUD PROCESS? TO DO THAT WITHOUT LOOKING AT YOUR NOTES. I WILL HAVE TO PULL MY NOTES TO GET ALL OF THAT.

THE MAIN REASON I ASK IS BECAUSE I'VE BEEN THROUGH THIS PROCESS met with developers and you get to a point where there's not a back and forth with the developer it's a this is what we're doing and then it goes to a vote so this piece right here is nice because we get to have a say in this and help outline some guardrails for the public where if there's if if the public just has a say after the fact it loses its transparency. That's the point I'm trying to get at. So the public likes to feel like they're part of the negotiation instead of, JUST COMING TO THE MEETINGS AND HEARING THE NEGOTIATIONS, THEY WANT TO FEEL LIKE THEY'RE MORE PART OF IT BECAUSE IT IS SO IMPACTFUL AND IT IS IN SOME PEOPLE'S BACKYARDS. THAT'S THE POINT I'M TRYING TO GET OUT OF. WHAT POINT DOES THE PUBLIC GET TO BE PART OF THE NEGOTIATION IF THEY WOULD AT ALL?

I PULLED IT UP. IT'S ACTUALLY IN A PICTURE IN OUR CODE. STEP ONE, APPLICATION, PRELIMINARY PLAN AND PLAT IS FILED BY THE PETITIONER. Next is tech review committee. Next is public meeting notification. Next is the public hearing by the plan commission. Then there's different pathways. Plan commission could make a decision, could be continued, could give a favorable, unfavorable, or no recommendation. At that point, petitioner could withdraw. Next step is public hearing by the legislative body. Could deny it or certified and adopted could certify and adopt. Then submitted to the planning director for submitted approved plan to the planning director. Then the application with final detailed site and development plan is provided by the provider. Then that goes through tech review, administrative staff review. It could be denied, modified or approved, and then it's recorded and approved as a final detailed plan. So it never gets to the end of the whole process without a final detailed plan.

Did I hear the milestones right? Minimum public hearings, planning commission, maybe tech, and commissioners or legislative body? Minimum three?

Yeah, there was a public hearing by the planning commission, public hearing by the legislative body, In there, there was at least two tech review committees, which could be continued, like a project this big could have to go to tech more than once to get those things worked out. And so at least two public hearings.

An example of a living PUD is the Hancock Gateway on Mount Comfort Road, south of I-70. That was approved as a PUD. And it's a mixed-use development, so that whole area there, however many acres that is, is its own zone. And so any time that they want to do something different than what is in the development plan, they come to the Planning Commission with a PUD amendment. What happens, it's a lot of work for the staff. That's why the staff doesn't like them. It's just, it's burdensome, you know, so it's kind of tough.

But they're very transparent.

But they are, and it's very, it does give you the opportunity that everything that happens inside of that becomes... PUBLIC HEARING ESSENTIALLY. IT'S SOMETHING AS SIMPLE AS, WELL, WE THOUGHT THIS BUILDING WAS GOING TO BE THREE STORIES BUT NOW IT'S GOING TO BE TWO STORIES. IT'S A PUD AMENDMENT. EVERYTHING THEY DO COMES TO THE COMMISSIONERS. SO THAT MAKES IT, WHEN YOU TALK ABOUT GUARD RAILS, IT'S NOT NECESSARILY GUARD RAILS BUT IT'S A VERY TRANSPARENT PROCESS.

think also we need to not forget the first step in all of this is someone willing to sell their ground which is firmly between the current landowner and whoever they're selling to and i mean the first best thing is not selling if you don't want it in your neighborhood and so knowing your neighbors, supporting your neighbors. I mean, like our farm, we're never selling, no matter what. Now, once we're dead and gone, and hopefully it's on the 10th generation, I can't speak for them, but this is a process, and everything we're talking about is good stuff, but let's not lose fact of, first, that ground has to be sold, and so there's a lot of work or work that could be done in advance of all of this, and so just not losing sight of neighbors supporting neighbors and

Knowing your neighbor of having those conversations and supporting each other say would there be a way to write in to specifically not allow for eminent domain to be taken for these specific projects might I mean yes you say with the sales and stuff, but you know as People start to worry all the you know that he's gonna just eminent domain your problem in Indiana.

You can't do that It's against the law perfect as well. There was a there's a US case on eminent domain that allows it, but Indiana has a reacted and said that for private use, you cannot use them in a domain, even if it's for a greater public purpose.

Thank you, because I didn't know that. Good to know. Thank you.

So for this committee to make recommendations on guardrails, where we were starting to head was really deep into the weeds. So as you start to talk about things, we started getting to the point where we were talking about development guidelines. So we're going to talk about what is the building going to look like, what are the setbacks, all those things. So the step back here is something kind of like this, which, you know, if you look in here, it's like, well, is noise an issue? NOISE IS AN ISSUE. OKAY, WHAT DOES THE PLANNING COMMISSION NEED TO LOOK AT FOR NOISE? THEY NEED TO LOOK AT THE LANDSCAPE ORDINANCE, THEY NEED TO LOOK AT SETBACKS, THEY NEED TO LOOK AT BUILDING MATERIALS. SO IT'S ALL THOSE THINGS IN ZONING. SO I DON'T KNOW HOW YOU BUILD I guess I don't know how you define a guardrail in those topics without actually getting into the very details of a zoning ordinance and the development guideline as opposed to just saying these are the topics, these are the things for the Plan Commission and the Board of Commissioners to pay attention to.

Or just request the info. What's your plan? Here are a list of 57 questions. We want to know exactly what you're doing. I think that's, I don't know, I don't know. I just think that that's the simplest way to do it.

Well, and that's kind of where we're started here. And maybe this document's just not done. Maybe it needs more refinement, you know, because how's the electricity used from the grid? What's the cost? You know, is it generated on site? Is it wind, solar? You know, all of those questions are starting to find form in this document here. And so that was the... purpose of this and maybe maybe it's not ready maybe our maybe our outcome here this evening is just to share this information with the plan commission and the board of commissioners but we still need to refine it after our august 18th meeting where we take in more public comment i think if nothing else it's a really strong skeleton to build off of it's definitely going to need some refinement as would any version one of something but i think

having read through these and having talked through them amongst ourselves, it's a really good scaffolding to kind of flesh out and turn into what we want to see as our final recommendation.

I agree 100%. I think the scribes did a really good job. I think we've pinpointed a lot of things. May not capture all of it. There may be some tweak of something that we haven't seen or heard of yet. We need to have the ability to be able to ask for more if we hear something that we need more info or the commissioners do, right?

If I can maybe make a comment on, so when drafting this, we drafted it according to what all the other feedback that we got. So all the presentations, all the reviews, we know that some of this cannot be done because we have existing ordinances that might not allow it. We know that some of this cannot be done or should not be done because it's administrative burden to staff. We thought it was appropriate to show this as version one, but it would be excellent to get a review from staff and from council. Things like should a data center applications be posted to the planning commissioner's website? or planning commissions, we wouldn't want a separate administrative process for this. We would want to follow it as much as possible because if we overburden staff on administrative items, it just doesn't, and things should go during the normal due process. We should just have it in the due process. So some of these things need to be stricken out, absolutely, but it's a capture of what everyone else is doing out there. So yes, it does need staff and legal review.

But at this juncture, what we're talking about now, since we're kind of under this time push a little bit, this is an overlay with these guardrails or questions or inquiries that we want back from some data center that comes using IG zoning, right? So wouldn't everything go through whatever IG zoning's staff requirements are anyway?

Yes, and the overlay is one more layer we were putting on top. That's right. It's the IG minimums, and then it's this on top. Okay.

So what you're saying is not to add anything additional. Let's just do this overlay to gather info and then go through IG as it relates to the execution through staff.

I THINK THERE'S ALWAYS CLAUSES OF NOTWITHSTANDING THAT WE'VE ENCOUNTERED, BUT IT'S ALL JUST BOOTSTRAPS AND SUSPENDERS TO THE BASE ORDINANCE THAT WE HAVE NOW. OKAY. AND THIS PROBABLY JUST NEEDS SOME REFINEMENT TO SEE WHAT'S CONTRADICTING, WHAT QUESTIONS WE CAN AND CANNOT ASK, BUT MIKE PUT US ON THE RIGHT PATH.

I'VE BEEN GOING THROUGH IT THIS ENTIRE TIME, JUST MARKING LITTLE THINGS HERE AND THERE.

I'M STILL GOING THROUGH IT. WHEN THE OVERLAY WAS DRAFTED, to allow data center developments in the IG district and require it to have an overlay. The overlay ordinance as it exists today doesn't really have any requirements, right? So that was what we were wanting to do. And that just was an overwhelming task. So, you know, that's kind of where we were heading with this questions list. But ultimately I would love it if we could come out of this process with a list of development guidelines and some planning tools. And I don't know, from what your conversations that you had, and I can ask Janine too, you know, what would be a good outcome now? Would the sharing of this material be good at this point, or do you want us to...

It would be. I think the scribes have done a great job. Paul, you've done a great job with the questions. I know, you know, the Board of Commissioners, you know, we've been down this path back with the surge project. We learned... What not to do and what we need to ask for, if this should ever present itself again, we are better prepared as a board of commissioners to hit it head on and where our negotiating skills would be much more defined this time around. And we decided this a long time ago as a board of commissioners that we're in charge here. going to benefit our community no matter what we do, whether we're talking about a data center or a factory or anything else. So we learned a lot that first time around.

But we need to also remember that different types of uses in our community will provide us different kinds of paybacks, different types of things that will help. Some will be job creation of jobs that bring in a higher demographic. Some will be data centers that maybe we can get long-term sustainability for parks and schools and fire. You know what I mean? So I agree with you, Janine. I think we need to understand that the paybacks from these different uses are different.

Absolutely.

And we know what we can ask for.

And, you know, we've had other projects that have come in front of us. I wasn't on the commissioners then. I was on council. But other big projects just weren't right for us. And there wasn't going to be enough benefit to the community to face that at the time. So, you know... But now we know what, I don't want to say we completely know what we're doing, but we know what we did wrong, we know what we need to change, and the negotiations will be there. Guardrails will be there. If this presents itself at any time, I think we're more prepared.

Quick thing to add about overlay districts. So we have zoning districts, which you all are very aware of. Overlay districts, like a data center overlay, can exist over multiple zoning districts. So should we amend the ordinance so that different kinds of data centers are allowable in different zoning districts, there can still be a data center overlay district, like a cloud, kind of sitting over multiple zoning districts. So you could have a data center overlay that sits over currently just IG because of the way it's written in code, but it could also ultimately sit over IBP, IL, things like that. So it can be expanded in that way.

I really think the key to that is to just like you talked at the beginning about the different types and intensities of data centers for when they would be allowed in the Industrial light or a little bit.

You know not heavy use Then that would probably make sense when we get to that point The only thing to hinder that on is not making it too hard for people to build and do business here you don't want to add another step if we don't need to and

But I think we need to be careful. I'm risk averse, okay? Long-term type person. We'll be selected against because so many of other Indiana counties have direct moratoriums. So many of other states have already established moratoriums. So that makes us more of a target. So I think it's important. And I get what you're saying. And I do agree that we should be selecting projects that will benefit.

I'm just saying if there's an office use and they've got a large component that's an IT room but falls under our data center.

Sure.

Do you know what I mean? Yeah, I work for a company where we have that. We want them here, but we're competing with Hendricks County, and they're one step less, and these guys have a time frame. We may not get that development. So we just have to be mindful of adding too much when we really want something.

Right. I just think, I mean, the... I think the purpose of the overlay is to protect us against the data centers that are not, you know, like, oh, you get a company with, I'm going to make up a fake example here, 1,500 employees, and they're an IT shop. It's a company that develops software for something, you know, and they've got 1,500 employees, and their data is, IT SPACE IS THREE FLOORS OF THEIR BUILDING. THAT'S PRETTY GOOD SIZE, DEPENDING ON THE SIZE OF THE BUILDING. THAT'S A DATA CENTER, BUT IT'S USED FOR THAT COMPANY. IT'S NOT LIKE A HYPERSCALE DATA CENTER OR A CLOUD COMPUTING DATA CENTER. TO ME, THOSE ARE TWO DIFFERENT THINGS. IF YOU HAVE TO DO SOMETHING TO ZONE DEFINITIONS SO THAT YOU DON'T PROHIBIT THAT? BY ALL MEANS DO BECAUSE THAT WOULD BE A SAFE, IN MY OPINION, A MORE SAFE USE OF IT SPACE THAN A HYPERSCALE DATA CENTER.

THAT'S AN INTERESTING POINT ABOUT THE WE DON'T WANT TO PROCLUDE. WE DON'T WANT A PROJECT THAT MIGHT NOT HAVE OTHERWISE EVER MET WITH ANY KIND OF RESTRICTIONS NOW HAS RESTRICTIONS IN OUR COUNTY BECAUSE IT MEETS OUR DEFINITION, OUR NEW DEFINITION OF A DATA CENTER AND NOW IT ONLY IS ALLOWED IN I.G. AND IT'S A PROJECT THAT MAYBE THE COMMISSIONERS WOULD LIKE TO HAVE IN THE COUNTY, SO.

SO COULD I, THERE'S A CHANCE COULD WE GO OVER SPECIFICALLY LIKE SECTION BY SECTION FOR THE DATA CENTER QUESTIONS JUST TO GO OVER. I ASSUME SOME PEOPLE MAY HAVE BEEN LOOKING AT IT. very thoroughly specific sections of it that may not make sense or some stuff that we should amend out of it.

Before we go into the detail, maybe a procedural note. Do you want us to pick these up from minutes or would you rather circulate a red line and we all red line it together?

Yeah.

Red line.

The whole group would do that?

I don't know that we could do that by tomorrow evening.

Yeah, it would be tough.

Okay.

There's just so much through here, going through.

I saw all your notes, that's why I'm asking.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Who's taking notes?

Right, right, right. And I wouldn't go through every single thing. It's just like, what do you guys think? Okay, quick through that thing.

So that's where I was, I kind of started as our conversation started to accelerate. But, you know, so item number one, I just thought maybe if there were, ultimately maybe this evening, if, I THINK THAT OUR GOAL WOULD PROBABLY BE TO DRAFT SOMETHING TO SEND AS AN INFORMATION SHARE TO THE PLANNED COMMISSION. THEY COULD THEN SHARE IT WITH THE BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS WITH ANY OF THEIR COMMENTS. YOU'RE TRYING TO WRITE A RECOMMENDATION AS WE'RE TALKING, I KNOW, BUT MAYBE THAT RECOMMENDATION FROM THIS EVENING IS THIS COMMITTEE WOULD LIKE TO SHARE THIS COMMITTEE WOULD LIKE TO SHARE THIS COMPILED SUMMARY AND LIST OF COMPILED SUMMARY AND LIST OF CONCERNS, CONCERNING TOPICS. CONCERNS, CONCERNING TOPICS. AND SO OBVIOUSLY THE SCRIBE AND SO OBVIOUSLY THE SCRIBE COMMITTEE HAS DONE A GOOD JOB OF COMMITTEE HAS DONE A GOOD JOB OF PUTTING THIS ALL TOGETHER IN A LOT PUTTING THIS ALL TOGETHER IN A LOT OF DETAIL. OF DETAIL. IS THERE ANYTHING WE NEED TO IS THERE ANYTHING WE NEED TO STRIKE FROM IT TO MAKE IT MORE STRIKE FROM IT TO MAKE IT MORE CONCISE?

CONCISE?

OR IS THERE ANYTHING YOU DON'T OR IS THERE ANYTHING YOU DON'T FEEL AS ACCURATE B WE'LL JUST START UP HERE WITH ITEM NUMBER ONE. IS THERE ANYTHING IN HERE THAT IS NOT CONSISTENT WITH OUR DISCUSSIONS OR NEEDS TO BE ADDED OR DELETED? WE HAD A LOT OF DISCUSSION ABOUT PUD.

Yeah, and I got a text from my husband who's watching online. He said, and we live pretty close to the Gateway Project that you mentioned. If they had a PUD and it looked a certain way and they came in and made a change, there was no public meeting. Is that the case? Like, if they, I mean, if I were a person, I'm a development corporation, I'm going to have a planned unit development, I'm going to have 597 acres, and these are the components. And one of the components is a three-story office building. But then later I change my mind. I've got new people coming in and I want it to be five stories. Do I just send something in and it shows up in the meeting minutes and it's done?

No, it's an amendment to the PUD at that point. I can't think of anything that they would have done. Is there anything that they would have ever done that was not in a public meeting? Any changes that they would have ever made?

Minor amendments have gone just through my office, yes. So they'd be very, very small things.

Like a change in a road alignment or something like that?

Moody King wants a drive-through. Originally the PUD didn't allow drive-throughs. Things like that. I'm sorry if I shouldn't have mentioned the name of that company. Oops, that's who's gone. I saw the smoothie signs.

We'll edit that out. Sorry.

Things like that were like the, I think there was an apartment, some apartments that ended up a little bit smaller than the original PUD had hoped for them to be. And so stuff like that where it was like 20 square feet difference. That stuff is considered minor, and so we didn't bring it. for a public hearing, but something like, hey, the original height was gonna be 50 feet and now it's gonna be 70 feet. That's the kind of stuff that would require a major amendment or use differences that were not allowed in the original PUD. Like, yeah, mixed use office and residential things, things like that.

I think my concern with a data center type PUD thing is that you may not know why they're doing what they're doing. And with the new chipsets that are being created that are like, I don't even know for sure what NVIDIA is doing, but it's something big. So it could actually wind up, just because of computing differences, suddenly what you think is, nah, that's not that big of a deal, might be a big deal. Because suddenly it's consuming much more electricity than what you originally thought. Just a thought.

Every commissioner meeting and every community council meeting are public. So if you want to know what's going on, that's at those meetings.

Believe me, I watch and I look at the agendas, but I can't say that every single time I see something on the agenda, I think, oh gosh, I really need to be there. Or someone pointed out to me today is like a lot of the public meetings are advertised in the newspaper and they're like, well, we're not subscribers. So I'm just saying there's sometimes things might happen that don't get, aren't publicized in such a way that people have an opportunity to voice concern.

When I get deep in the weeds, there was some good hearings at the State House last year on whether meeting notices should be in newspapers, online, wherever. Just a side note of if you really want to get deep into public notices.

I'VE BEEN GOING THROUGH THE LIST OF QUESTIONS AS WELL AND MARKING OFF WHICH ONES ARE THINGS THAT WE CAN INCORPORATE INTO AN ORDINANCE THAT WOULD BE IN THE ZONING ORDINANCE AND WHICH ONES WOULD BE MORE APPROPRIATE AS PART OF THE LOI LETTER OF INTENT PROCESS AND THINGS THAT REALLY THE COMMISSIONERS NEED TO TAKE INTO CONSIDERATION IN THEIR PORTION OF THIS WHICH OBVIOUSLY YOU ARE ALL INTERESTED IN THE WHOLE THING. BUT FOR ME AS PLANNING STAFF I'M JUST REALLY LOOKING AT LIKE You know, what's going to go in my zoning ordinance? So stuff like the electric grid stuff and a lot of that, heck, the electric companies make their own decisions outside of my department.

Actually, we could probably do a subpart 1B4. Should minor amendments by staff be handled by the Planning Commission? Minor amendments be handled by staff or the Planning Commission on PUDs? So we can have a question that can address the procedural issues.

Which one was that, Lacey?

So we're talking PUDs and some amendments, just deeper into PUDs on Section 1, page 1, subsection B. There would be a new subsection 4 about amendments, minor amendments. Major amendments will always go to the Planning Commission.

Well, I mean, years ago we, I think, put into play that, what was it, secondary plans? I don't quite remember now. It can be approved by the staff. And so, I mean, but are you comfortable with that, Kayla, on your shoulders, or would you prefer it come right to the Planning Commission?

The way it's written right now, minor amendments are in the UD section of our code and are, yeah, staff approved. But once again, if there's any question on whether it's minor or major, just let it go to Planning Commission. So, yeah.

I don't know. The whole Section B was, I don't know that you would ever necessarily consider PUD together with an overlay district, but I mean, I guess it's a valid question, but that was one item I wasn't sure about.

We could relocate Subsection B to Subsection 2, which would be, or sorry, yeah, 2. SUBSECTION B WHERE WE DO TALK ABOUT FEW OF THESE.

YEAH, THAT WOULD PROBABLY MAKE SOME SENSE. YEAH, BECAUSE THE WHOLE SECTION ONE ABOUT SELECTING THE RIGHT PLANNING TOOL, AND MAYBE SOME OF THAT JUST GETS FILTERED INTO ITEM TWO. instead of being its own thing.

And it might be the next version of this has a highlighting key where, you know, we already addressed it in our ordinance. We already addressed some of these. That's a good idea, yeah. Yes, it's talked about, but we already have a provision for it.

Zoning to on a section e for the fees and impacts assessments. I don't think it should be necessary specifically tailored towards data centers because that would be a Business incentive not to come here and I feel like with the right negotiations the right people sitting in the chairs We could really benefit from these and we're targeting specifically data centers. I feel like it should be an all-or-nothing thing and for businesses coming in. I don't think it should be specifically.

I just thought that the amount of the, I think that might have come out of something I put together initially, but the amount of effort that it goes into evaluating a data center would be much higher potentially than it would be for like an apartment complex.

We could always have more than apartment complexes coming to, that could be added stuff to more hospitals. It could be another community network building. Those come.

planning as well we can hit all that in the community benefit agreement I mean we can pick up reimbursement fees in other areas here we don't I agree with you if there's fees here it needs to be fair for everybody right now I feel and definitely the any type of fee or impact fee would need to be under the last part yeah economic that's my only a bit edit to section 2 personally everything else

So the equivalent of impact fees would not be available but in a PUD, and it wouldn't be called an impact fee. There would be like a traffic or other infrastructure impact. We probably can't say impact fees technically because we haven't done the studies at this level to do it. Right. At the county, we would need to strike that probably.

That would be my recommendation, strike.

And just as a note, We reset our fees just recently for the and we did so by studying the amount of time that it takes to do some of these Applications and is absolutely time-based we incorporate as well costs for counsel for these because it's been our time for the larger project so The the biggest head nods on that are probably coming from someone from who handles budgets for the county And it can only be done every five years is that correct?

five years

You were recommending striking to ye?

Yes. That's your only job. All or nothing. If we're going to do one data center, then all businesses should remain it, so it's not predatory specifically at data centers.

I can see how a data center that wants real wells or something, would it be appropriate for the county to understand What's the hydrologic plan of the aquifer? Should we get someone to study that, and is that going to cost $1,000 or $5,000 for us to We'll find some consultant to do that. Good question.

I addressed later inside us that aquifer drilling should be banned outright, no on-site drilling. That's why I agree. That's one option.

I can see other technical aspects of a data center, whether it's pollution, whether it's forecasting energy usage, whether it's forecasting disposal of nuclear waste if we have Action.

Some SMRs actually use nuclear waste to power. I hear where you're coming from, though. Valid questions, though. Yeah.

The question, I don't think the Hancock County Planning Department has the technical expertise to evaluate these on its own. Right. And I think we want to study that before it can even decide if it wants to recommend it.

Well, couldn't that be a part of the CBA as well? Part of the agreement that you have with a developer to make them do an aquifer assessment or a forecast power use?

Yeah, I think a community benefit agreement is like the last stage of the process. After it's been approved, then you sign a community benefit agreement.

What would be their reasoning for ever signing a CBA if it's after it's been approved, though?

There are two pathways. Approval would be conditioned upon signing the CBA.

So you would have already had to have figured out what the CBA would have been, ostensibly.

Right.

Because if your approval is contingent on them signing the CBA, you wouldn't give them approval before you would figure out what you're getting, what you're giving. Yeah. So it wouldn't make sense to have an approval floating around out there in the ether and then try to figure out what you're getting and what you're getting. Because what would be the incentive for them then to negotiate in good faith if there's already an approval out there and all they have to do is get what they want on paper?

No, they wouldn't. What I'm saying is that for the approval process, the county is going to incur substantial costs just to evaluate an application. And if we don't have that existing expertise on staff and we have to go out and hire it, Well, why should the county pay for it if it's the developer that wants us to evaluate?

So just as a, if it's a requirement, we would request that to be submitted and the application process and staff would review that. We're not paying someone to study it. Though if we're lacking knowledge at the tech committee, we can ask for testimony to, but we're not hiring aquifer studies, though we might require the developer to submit in order for approval. So that payment's never coming, hasn't yet come. And we've seen some controversial noise, radio impact with radio. So we always ask the applicant to shoulder those costs. I don't know, always?

Don't we have some on-call agreements, so Kayla, with outside engineers and technical support? So if we had to go that route, she's got a method to do that. And some of those firms that are already procured can reach out to firms that they do business with that specialize in some of these one-offs, right? So we have the ability to protect ourselves. They're already set up.

Okay. I got this idea from listening to the presentation by the Loudoun County supervisor or wherever he was. He said they charge $1,000 for...

Outside reviews are always required to be paid back for the applicant, right?

We don't have that any department rarely has to put that into place But we do have a section in our zoning ordinance that does say use is not specifically referenced will be subject to the hourly rate as determined by the planning director and building official so we've got a catch-all of in our fee schedule that, hey, this was not the usual. We need you to reimburse us for our plan review fees.

What is the impact assessment, though? Define that. What are we talking about exactly? like different studies that we'd ask them.

Could be environmental, could be water, could be road impact, could be civil matter, like how fast the roads would deteriorate when the construction starts. It could be a number of things. So it'd have to be very specific on what impact are we targeting.

Is height in there at all?

It could be if you're affecting with like the migratory channels for birds, if there's towers that could that birds could run into, then I could see that happening.

I just think one big economic factor we have in this county that we should be thankful for is having that regional airport. And I know they have height restrictions in their flight patterns right now, but I wouldn't hate to restrict them. their master plans that they do every five to 10 years on changing those runways to get bigger planes and bigger economic incentives there. So I'm wondering if height should be added here at all, or if that's even, and I'm just throwing that out here as we're talking impacts.

I don't think height should be added solely for the fact that when people think of height, they usually think of windmills when they're worried about height or massive skyscrapers. And I don't think Hancock County is going to build even.

Really? Seven. 74, 64 to brain height. So for the FAA, so not really. I mean, I think Walmart, if I remember correctly, had to alter their layout to get away from any paths because they went up really high. They're higher than any warehouse in the industrial that I thought we had. If I remember correctly, it's been seven years ago. So I'm just saying, I think height could be one that we could add. I didn't even know.

Yeah.

I just don't, we've got some good things going in this county. I would hate for us to not, I would love to give that airport the ability to grow and create more there and not hinder that. If anything would go close, I don't know.

Would our reference probably be our courthouse? Is that the tallest building in Hancock?

Let's leave it that way for right now, yeah. Yeah, facility size and campus scale addresses heights.

This this document as I'm listening to you talk. I'm kind of wondering if. Item 123 and. 4 up to through be our kind of process. How we're accepting the application. I think. maybe starting with 4C on, or you could leave 4C alone and just 5 on. That's your, you know, one of you made the comment about the LOI. That's really LOI questions about what should be in the LOI. So I think that we could probably break this document into two headings, application process and then LOI. QUESTIONS. IT STARTS TO BECOME LIKE YOU WERE SAYING THE SKELETON OF THE LOI Guideline I guess or my suggestions.

Would you just strike most of that because our ordinance deals with a lot of those questions? notice periods We don't want to we don't want a special process for this. Okay.

Well, I'm not saying that we have a special process I'm just saying that these items are these questions that you talk about zoning process the questions about what should the process be? Yeah, maybe maybe we already have the process for one two and three but I mean they're good they're good questions for staff I guess maybe they're guiding principles for the staff to say well maybe maybe this is a PUD or they could suggest to the developer that they might be better off with a PUD or they might be best with a rezone to IG or something like that and maybe the biggest question in items one two and three for the planning commission is this discussion about whether or not there should be more than just the ig and and why Alright, so I so I think we made it through item one and did we decide I think? I didn't so item 2E we said we would strike that from our list here. Items 3 strategic compatibility. Again, these are probably things for for staff or the Commissioners as they're evaluating.

I do have an issue with striking 2E, the impact assessment. If we're going to look at these as categories, then maybe we just look at like the highest impact data center. There's nothing, no industry that really compares to this. So how do we ask the planning commission and the commissioners to truly assess the impact that it's going to have? infrastructure-wise if they don't have some type of study done beforehand. That's the issue. It's not like adding a Walmart super center or something. We're going to have to go to some specific places in Indiana to look at the impacts that they've had. So that's kind of not asking for those up front is just relying on these developers to tell you this is generically what we plan to do. That's my big concern with not having an impact assessment prior to that.

Well, the discussion was to apply it across all the developments, not just to have one specifically tailored for data centers. So that way we're not treating data center developers or companies differently than we are like a biotech company that wants to come in. They should have similar impact studies and fees related to all of them, or we should apply it to none because we don't want to be predatory against one specific industry.

And the Walmart super centers do have a lot of impact in regards to logistical analysis where you're dealing with truckloads every single day. They even have a tire center. That stuff's not light. It damages the roads. I get where you're coming from. Obviously, data centers can have water consumption. That's an impact. They can have size, you know, environmental impact is how large they can be. That's an impact. Very valid. And, you know, Walmart Supercenter, they are very large. They take a lot of logistics trucking to and from.

These are not the same as a data center. A data center is totally different. That's why we have to have a whole committee about it. So comparing it to a Walmart Supercenter or something is totally different. So the questions that she has or the things that we want to know or the fees that we want to charge so that we have the studies, because all this time that we've been here, I have not once heard a speaker come in and talk about the impacts that it has on our communities. We're just talking about what we want to get out of it. how we're going to benefit. So nobody's even addressing the impacts. So I feel like with the fees and them doing this stuff, impact assessment is legitimate for a data center.

Does that turn into a moratorium too with how long that impact study could take?

We wanted a moratorium in the very beginning. That's what we wanted. And that's the path of least resistance. It would have been easier and we wouldn't be still talking about it.

I don't think that speaks for everyone. What was it? I'm not speaking for everyone. I'm just saying in general. Maybe a middle ground instead of having a generic reference to fees would be to have an asterisk with each of these heavy uses like onsite generation of power. And that says we expect in the guidelines that that is associated with some sort of a study. Because those of us who serve in this and see these studies and these supplements coming out of the tech committee members, they're used to seeing these types of things. So it might be good for us just to asterisk where we expect a study. That way, we don't have a generic reference to an impact study. We're not having to pay for it. But we do expect some of these items to be proven. Maybe. Sure.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's a suggestion on studies. I think that kind of to Paul's point, you know, I'm thinking back to how different things happen. You know, some much simpler projects, of course, but a lot of times a developer will come to the plan commission and they'll say we're going to have all these trailers or whatever. So a lot of times the planning commission will require them to come back with a traffic study that they've paid for. So that's kind of what I'm seeing here with these impact fees. It's like, what are some things that the planning commission should require the developer to do? I mean, should they test the aquifer? Should they, you know, I don't know what I'm just grasping at things, but like what kind of studies should they have and present with their project? AND THE COUNTY DOESN'T PAY FOR THOSE. THE PLAN COMMISSION REQUIRES IT AS PART OF THEIR REVIEW. I DON'T KNOW THAT WE'VE EVER HAD ANYTHING BEYOND JUST THE TRAFFIC STUDY, BUT THAT'S THE ONE THAT I CAN THINK OF OFF THE TOP OF MY HEAD.

I THINK OUR COUNTY ENGINEER HAS A PRETTY GOOD GRASP ON WHERE OUR ROADS ARE TODAY, AND I'M SURE THAT HE WOULD HAVE GREAT INPUT. What it would take to maintain roads during the construction period thereafter so I that doesn't that's not a concern for me at this point as Gary knows what we've got and That is something also that we would negotiate a letter of intent

data center that i'm working at solely responsible for grounded that any truck could remove for any repairs just in that it goes beyond that they they subsidize the neighbors around them to pay for their needing take care of the vehicles from dust control there's a multitude of things that they're covering on their own wallet and just like i mentioned earlier we have learned a lot we learned a lot

during the last go around with the data center project that was out by, so we will know how to negotiate all that, I'm confident.

Are we going to specify that they can only use roads that are at a certain level, like, you know, there's, I can't remember, the intermediate use or whatever, and I'm thinking in terms of if you go down West 200 North right now and you have two semis going down the road, it's not built for two semis to go down the road. So they're off the edge, and then you do see the dust Because they're into the gravel part.

I fully agree with you. Or if they want to use a specific road that they upgraded on their dime. Thank you. That's kind of what I would like to do. I'm with you on that 100%. Because fixing a road that's not made for a specific purpose is not fun to pay multiple times.

Well, even beyond that, if electric is going to be ran, that's when eminent domain comes into play. And if you're going to run across a farmer's land and condemn part of that, you could be putting a farmer out of business because they wouldn't have enough acres to farm anymore. But isn't that the utility company? It's the utility company, but we should know that up front. People want to know if their livelihoods are going to be impacted. The commissioner should know that up front because there's no sum of money if one person is displaced because of that. Tell that one person, tell that one farmer. You know, I mean, that's why these impact assessments are going to be very meaningful to the people that live near or that are impacted by water lines coming through that eminent domain. We've seen them reach 50 miles away. So that's why I'm adamant about the commissioners and planning commission knowing a lot in advance because it's far reaching. It's more, it's a regional impact. that is beyond this county.

Yeah, I think it sounds like, you know, fees and impact assessment, you know, that's a broad term. So I think we should probably just leave it in our list of questions here just for all those points that, you know, it could be. THERE'S A LOT MORE THAN JUST THE APPLICATION FEE THAT I WAS ORIGINALLY KIND OF THINKING OF AND JUST SOME IMPACT ASSESSMENTS, SO IT SHOULD BE PART OF THE QUESTION LIST OR THE LETTER OF INTENT. WE'RE GETTING CLOSE TO OUR TIME HERE THIS EVENING, BUT QUICKLY BROWSE THROUGH. I think items three and four are all pretty straightforward.

I'd like to add in for four that NDAs are completely barred from the negotiation whatsoever. I don't think any of our officials should be signing non-disclosure agreements for these projects specifically.

I can tell you that I would not.

THAT SHOULD BE THE ELECTION OF THE, WE SHOULDN'T, I DON'T THINK, WE CAN ASK THE QUESTION.

WE'RE LOOKING AT QUESTIONS THAT THE PLANNING COMMISSION AND THE COMMISSIONERS SHOULD BE CONSIDERING. THESE ARE JUST TOPICS, YOU KNOW, SO THEY CAN MAKE THAT DECISION. PUBLIC NOTIFICATION AND HEARINGS THIS, YEAH, I SUPPOSE IT'S A FAIR QUESTION, BUT WE'LL PROBABLY JUST DEFER TO OUR CURRENT PROCESS.

THAT CHANGES A LOT OF ORDINANCE STUFF THAT WE'D HAVE TO LOOK AT.

And then you get into operational transparency and public reporting. This is where I think we kind of start with these are the items that need to go into the LOI. So that's where I think we're looking at maybe a formatting thing here. If that could be done before tomorrow, that we should maybe group some things here as to whether or not they should be landing in what I would consider LOI guidance, I suppose.

Is that five moving forward or four?

DEFINITELY FIVE MOVING FORWARD, BUT MAYBE THAT'S FINE. ITEM C, WE START TALKING ABOUT SOME OF THIS PUBLIC REPORTING OF THE DIFFERENT TYPES OF RESOURCES USED. SO IT KIND OF FALLS UNDER BOTH. I MEAN, I THINK OPERATIONAL TRANSPARENCY AND PUBLIC REPORTING IS A TOPIC THAT SHOULD BE CONSIDERED BY THE COMMISSIONERS. NOW, YEAH, THE RESOURCE USE IS A HUGE TOPIC, AND IT STARTS TO FALL UNDER ITEM NUMBER 6, SO MAYBE WE DON'T NEED THE SUBSECTIONS, YOU KNOW, I THROUGH VI, I SUPPOSE, BECAUSE WE'RE STARTING TO GET INTO THE DETAIL IN ITEM 6.

AS LONG AS THEY'RE ALL ADDRESSED. SO STRIKE WHAT ONGOING INFORMATION ABOUT THE DATA CENTER'S OPERATIONS WILL BE PUBLICLY AVAILABLE. all of those subsections are addressed somewhere in five and six and beyond that we're saying as a, what are the plans for? Okay. Yeah.

All right. Just to clarify, I think that, um, that item C came about as a result of saying, what's one thing for the letter of intent to include all this information, but then after the fact they should be required to continue to report or make available so that you can make sure that they actually followed what they said they were going to do when they did complete their letter.

right the forceful agreement is a big thing because they can say everything all these things but if it can't be enforced it's no yes i was thinking that we had that then yeah that's yeah it yeah maybe if you could just

RETURN THAT AS ONGOING PUBLIC RETURN THAT AS ONGOING PUBLIC REPORTING AND SEEK. REPORTING AND SEEK. I GUESS IT'S NOT FURTHER IN I GUESS IT'S NOT FURTHER IN HERE. HERE. I WAS THINKING IT WAS DOWN IN I WAS THINKING IT WAS DOWN IN THE CBA. THE CBA.

EITHER WE KEEP IT AND SAY AND EITHER WE KEEP IT AND SAY AND WHAT ARE THE PLANS FOR OR WE WHAT ARE THE PLANS FOR OR WE JUST NEED TO TRANSPORT THAT JUST NEED TO TRANSPORT THAT SECTION TO A NEW.

SECTION TO A NEW. I THINK EITHER. I THINK EITHER. JUST AS LONG AS WE MAYBE TERM public reporting considerations for ongoing public reporting could just think the application to report things on an ongoing something that should be in the zoning ordinance why are them to do it yeah because it says how frequently should each type of information be reported so that that's a question that should be

This is a point of, I mean, not all this is going into the ordinance, right?

No, no, this, I don't.

Good, all right, we're good.

I can see some things being in an ordinance, some being in a letter of intent or application form, some being in a community benefit agreement. Giving up these issues and finding out which one, which document is the most appropriate.

I MEAN, I HONESTLY DON'T REALLY KNOW WHAT CAN AND CAN'T GO INTO THE ORDINANCE AND HOW IT SHOULD GO AND SORT OF, AGAIN, FEELING MY WAY THROUGH THIS, BUT I'M KIND OF WONDERING IF THIS DOCUMENT CLEANED UP, PUT IN FRONT OF THE PLAN COMMISSION AND THE COMMISSIONERS, MAYBE THIS COMMITTEE COULD GET SOME FEEDBACK FROM THAT GROUP AS TO YOU KNOW, THE PLANNING COMMISSION DEALS WITH THIS MORE OFTEN, SO MAYBE THAT GROUP COULD SAY, HAVE A DISCUSSION ABOUT WHAT SHOULD GO INTO THE ORDINANCE, LIKE WHAT LEVEL OF DEVELOPMENT GUIDELINES AND WHAT LEVEL OF RESTRICTIONS SHOULD LAND IN THAT OVERLAY ORDINANCE BASED ON WHAT THEY READ IN THIS DOCUMENT. THE RECOMMENDATION OF THIS GROUP IS THESE ARE THE QUESTIONS, THESE ARE THE THINGS THAT WE'VE HEARD AND ARE THINKING ABOUT AND THEN THE PLANNING COMMISSION NEEDS TO THINK ABOUT WHAT'S GOING INTO THE ORDINANCE. BASED ON THIS INFORMATION. ENERGY INFRASTRUCTURE AND GRID IMPACT, AGAIN, THAT KIND OF GETS INTO ALL OF THAT STUFF IN ITEM C AGAIN. BUT YEAH, THAT'S SORT OF THE BIG THING ON THE LOI IS ALL THE RESOURCE MANAGEMENT. ITEM NUMBER 6, WATER RESOURCES AND ENVIRONMENTAL QUALITY. THIS IS WHERE SOME OF THOSE REPORTS THAT WE JUST DISCUSSED WOULD PROBABLY BE HELPFUL. ANY QUESTIONS ABOUT THAT?

On the recommendation for that, Mike, would you like to see it at the primary or the sub-level? It's just sourcing consumption for water would be, okay, great. Yeah, sub-level.

I think these are all of the topics that we've heard and discussed, source cooling, rates. CAN'T THINK OF ANY MORE THAT WE'RE OF CONCERN. WE'RE OF CONCERN. ITEM NUMBER 7 WAS CITIZEN ITEM NUMBER 7 WAS CITIZEN PROTECTION. PROTECTION. FEELS LIKE IT NEEDS TO BE MORE FEELS LIKE IT NEEDS TO BE MORE ROBUST BUT I THINK A LOT OF THE ROBUST BUT I THINK A LOT OF THE CITIZEN PROTECTION GETS TAKEN CITIZEN PROTECTION GETS TAKEN CARE OF WITH PUBLIC SAFETY CARE OF WITH PUBLIC SAFETY DECOMMISSIONING AND LONG-TERM DECOMMISSIONING AND LONG-TERM PROTECTIONS AND THE COMMUNITY PROTECTIONS AND THE COMMUNITY BENEFIT AGREEMENT. I THINK THE SECTION STAYS BUT IT ALSO GETS FURTHER ENHANCED BY SOME OF THESE QUESTIONS THAT COME UP IN THOSE FURTHER TOPICS. LOCATION AND LAND PROTECTION IS A BIG QUESTION FOR I THINK THE PLANNING COMMISSION AND THIS GETS INTO THAT DISCUSSION ABOUT WHETHER OR NOT OTHER ZONES SHOULD BE CONSIDERED. But then this is this is really the this item 8 is really the development guidelines section and I think the Planning Commission needs to have a discussion as to whether or not they want to create development guidelines in the overlay ordinance That might not be a comprehensive list so we might just want to check with staff to see if Be added to that.

I don't we don't have the a lot of overlays a lot of other right and

Public safety, emergency services, that's important, but that does get a lot of attention in tech committee. But the questions are definitely good ones for the commissioners to be asking that tech committee. And decommissioning and long-term protections will be a topic that needs a lot of study by the decision makers as well. Item number 11, then... LIKE I SAID, I THINK THAT SINCE WE'VE BEEN ON 5 THROUGH HERE, THIS IS ALL LETTER OF INTENT. I THINK ITEM NUMBER 11 WAS REALLY TALKING ABOUT SOME GUIDANCE ON THE LETTER OF INTENT. IT CAN STAY JUST LIKE THIS, BUT I THINK THAT IT'S THAT LETTER OF INTENT GUIDANCE. AND THEN ITEM NUMBER 12 AS WELL BECOMES VERY SPECIFIC TO COMMUNITY BENEFIT AGREEMENT. Should it be a thing and that that's something that the commissioners will have to decide as if they want to actually do a formal community benefit agreement like those communities that we talked to or heard from have done Yeah, and then likewise the economic incentives and fiscal safeguards Do we need to cure out some of the duplicates because this is duplicative to what we're talking about in the technical definitions But we're talking about it in the application

If that whole section becomes the LOI, which is basically the application, should we rehome some of those sub-bullets to where they belong? Okay.

Which of the sub-bullets you're referring to?

Page 8, number 11. So we talk about water consumption and discharge, water cooling elsewhere. I think the question is, are we talking about, if we relabeled that to be in the LOI, which is essentially the application?

Yeah. Then we're talking about it twice. Where's the second place where it's discussed?

So if we're talking about water cooling, for example, we cover elsewhere.

Section six. Section six on page four?

Yeah. Okay. B1.

So?

We'll just get rid of the duplicates.

Oh, okay.

I don't think we talk about things like saving tree area under environmental, so if we rehome that, we just need to go through those individually.

Okay, community benefit agreement. I felt like this was a good summary of what we heard from the folks in Iowa. That'll get kind of beyond the purview of the Planning Commission and be more a commissioners and county council piece as will item number 13 is more a board of commissioners and county council.

Would it be possible to gather that as an exhibit instead of a direct document? It's a little uncomfortable for us to get into that with given our expertise here. And it's just an exhibit of items that need to be considered with the right group. We're an appointment of the Planning Commission here. TALKING ABOUT LAND AND TECHNICAL ITEMS.

YEAH, YOU COULD KEEP IT AS A, I GUESS YOU COULD TAKE ITEMS 12 AND 13 AND SAY, YOU KNOW, FOR OTHER BODIES.

YES, EXHIBIT A. THAT IS BY NO MEANS COMPREHENSIVE OF WHAT WE SHOULD BE INCLUDING. BUT THAT'S OKAY.

So all of this formatting, Ms. Lacey, you were taking some good notes. Are we going to be able to update this?

I saw you taking notes. We'll collaborate. I guess the scribes can get together tomorrow to represent.

So for this to land with the plan commission, are you guys okay with it being distributed?

THE PLANNING COMMISSION HAS A WORKING DOCUMENT.

Okay, do we have any other, any concerns about our direction here as I think we're going to update this, distribute it to the group. The Planning Commission will see it tomorrow night as a work in process and the Planning Commission can decide if they want to share it then with the commissioners with any kind of, but it's probably always going to come back and get further refined after our meeting on the 18th. And then hopefully we're meeting the expectation of the commissioners and the council and the planning commission with this. Any additional thoughts? The next meeting on the 18th, going to hit the website. There's this QR code so people can sign up to speak. And so what I think we're trying to do is see if we're going to be overwhelmed or underwhelmed.

I'll just give a quick update about that. So today in this meeting, we had the QR code. So if anyone that came in could just scan this and they can sign up. On the website, in the data center section, there is a section under the meeting for August 18th where they can sign up. We'll just ask for some general information and that will come to my email inbox. And I'll just create an Excel sheet to have a list, ongoing list, and then it closes August 10th just to give us some time if there's a lot of people, gives us some time to kind of plan for that. So yeah, that's a little update to that.

We decide after everyone has signed up how much, how many minutes can be allocated.

And that's why we have it for August 10th because that gives us about a week to plan for if we need to change location or how much time we're going to give to people who want to speak.

Is that posted outside your office as well?

Got one at the in the entrance of our office when you come in the counter and then I will have one posted up here as well with the public notices.

Any further thoughts? Any concerns? Everybody feels decent? Not great, but decent, OK. I have a motion to adjourn.

Second.

Okay, moving second to adjourn. All those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye.

Thank you.