Board of Mayor and Aldermen - Regular Meeting

Oh, it is?

Absolutely. Substantial warning.

God.

Thank you. Thank you.

All right, good evening. Thanks for everyone for being here. Huh? That should be a six. We can wait a few more minutes for a couple stragglers.

That's what I had. Question for you, Sean. Is Monday going to be more information, or is Monday going to be about?

It'll be this exact same setup. Yes.

So I was wondering this too. This Monday one is going to be the exact same information that they're going to have tonight. Yeah.

So it's not going to be here. It won't be a continuation of this one.

I know you're going to be disappointed that you can't come to that one too. Well, you can come to the website just for point of order.

It says Thursday, June 25th at 6, Monday, June 29th at 6.

Thanks, Tim. We're at 630, Tim.

I don't know, somebody might have.

So if we do have some more show up, we can get into it back a little bit. All right. So for those that don't know me, I'm Sean Garrett. I'm the Community Development Director for the City of McMinnville. So, obviously, we're here to talk about data centers, cryptocurrency, those type of facilities. For this forum, we're not discussing anything directly related to Hickson. This is the overall broader view, regulatory framework for those types of uses, not that particular project. So everybody there should be at least one copy of this on each table This is just a little bit of background on data centers and the various types This was done just so we can look at there are a lot of smaller ones that the power draw the water usage the noise the heat index all those things are very minimal impacts and so when we're developing this regulatory framework, we can put those perhaps under a conditional use permit and which is a CUP, that would have conditions that would still have to be met and reviewed. That would go in front of the Board of Zoning Appeals for approval. So for some of those smaller ones that are not going to be high impact, that may be a possible route for those. As we start getting up into the hyperscales, the co-locations, high performance AI clusters, those will have a lot more regulatory framework, multiple step process for approval, all that type of stuff. So, that's just kind of why this is in here, just to kind of, to talk and separate out those possible smaller ones that are going to be very impactful on that. Okay? So, that's where we are with that. So, yes, it's being streamed.

Yep.

Yep, yep. And I will put a link in the description. Project Hub on our website as well. So I have been working on a lot of different things. I'm finalizing it, getting it buttoned up. Part of that is going to be I have an exhaustive list. It's about 50 plus on different studies that have been done about data centers ranging from noise, air quality, the heat index, the heat island effects, all those different things. What I'm doing is one, going through theirs and making sure They're legitimate ones, and we don't want something that's just out of the blue on that. And then breaking that down into two sections. The first section will be things that will relate to stuff we can regulate or address in the zoning code. And then the others are going to be there just for general knowledge if you want to go through and look at that stuff. Because there are a lot of studies and things of that nature that we are unable to address due to limitations through state statutes and that type of thing. So I just want to... It's my understanding that we are focusing on a data center.

Warren County will have a data center

No, no, we're focusing in on the regulatory framework to see what limits we want to do, how we want that to look. It's not saying that one is coming. So if you get into this, the only viable legal option we're going to have is to write something in the zoning code. We cannot legally ban data centers. It will not hold in court. There is a slew of court cases where that has been tried, ranging from anywhere to a church being banned, to adult uses being banned. None of them have been upheld. So if we did that, and then that got overturned by the courts, which is very, very likely, then we would end up with a data center with nothing in place to address noise, water, any of that stuff. So that would be the last thing we'd want to do.

The closest example I have is one out of Illinois where the company sued the city, and the city had to end up going into a negotiated settlement with the data center. company, where the city got some millions of dollars out of it, where they could regulate part of the water consumption. They put a large amount of chance if they weren't able to place those restrictions on them. So it's important to get the zoning corrected first hand. So that before even an application is submitted, which we've got 18 months to do it, before that application is submitted, the rules of the road are already there.

And there's plenty of tendency, and so part of the stuff that's gonna be on that project hub is there'll be a big list of relevant case law to one, not only straight out bans, but what's also referred to as a defecto ban or an effective ban. And so what that is, is that's when we get into the regulatory framework of the zoning. If we write the code so restrictive that there are no viable lots where this one could potentially go, then we have banned them without banning them. The courts are going to rule it the same way. They're going to say you banned it without banning it. You just didn't say ban. So that's where we've got to get in and get to the nitty gritty and regulate and have those stipulations the best we can without resulting in that. And then a lot of the other case law will be like on CUPs. So if we do do some of the small ones under conditional use permit, If it meets all those requirements, the Board of Zoning Appeals is required by law to approve that. So we want to make sure we have those conditions clear, precise, reviewed, and that they do or do not meet so that that decision can be made based off of that. There's a whole bunch on that. Another thing we want to avoid is any ambiguity in the zoning code. We currently have one relevant to this type of stuff. We allow data processing in the C3 zone district, which is then allowed in I-1 light industrial and I-2 heavy industrial. Tennessee courts get real particular if you have any leeway in that. They will always rule towards the homeowner or property owner and against the city. There's a recent case here that took place in February. One word, exclusively. regarding Airbnbs in certain zone district in a city in Tennessee, that one word cost the city big. It went through court, got challenged. They wrote about 50 fines. All those were laid out, got overdressed. As it climbed up the court, they overruled and said that one word completely did that, and then it all went out. So everything the city did up to try to mitigate that, saying it was in violation of the zoning law, got overruled, went right out the window. It can be really that particular when the courts rule. If we don't define things real well, then they go to the standard dictionary definition, and then they'll look at the intent of it. And so if you look at that, data processing is for all purposes, and come on then, what occurs inside the data center. So if we allow the act of, it's gonna be real hard to say we don't allow the facility thereof. So that's where we've got to do that and define these.

So you mentioned you have a list of studies. Do you have any way first to provide any additional studies

Yes, if you guys have some, you can absolutely email to them, and I will look at putting them in. This is just ones I found doing a bunch of different research, so it is not every one that's out there by any means. If you guys have any that's not on that list, then this could be. This is going to be from colleges, universities, EPA, Department of Energy. It's a big list of all those slew of ones. And like I said, it will be broke down, ones that are relevant to what we can put in regulatory framework and those separated from that. And so that's just kind of the important thing on there. I just want to make that so that way I don't want to get, well, we got all these and this is showing this with air quality, which isn't something we can really address. So that's why there's going to be that separation on that. Okay. So this is just kind of synopsis from the previous public hearings. Okay. Water consumption and scarcity. Is that a majority vote concern? Okay, water pollution? Noise pollution? Yes. Okay, air pollution? Yes. Impacts on local ecosystems? Yes. Okay, infrastructure strain? Yes. Light pollution? Yes. Environmental risk? Yes. Emergency management? Yes. And economic and future concerns? Yes. Okay, that's great. All right, now we get to go into the fun part. And property values. Okay. So, everybody has one of these in front of them. So now we're going to get into a little interactive project here. Okay? We're going to let you guys, we'll go through, discuss, go through each one, kind of write a draft zoning code. What you want to regulate, how you want to regulate it, and then we'll break down each one, what we can and can't do, and how that'll work. Come on in, ladies. Now again, when we're thinking of this, like the first one, where should they go? Think about the broad, different types. So if it's a little ed center, okay, maybe we want to allow those in commercial or industrial, or the bigger ones, we could look at doing a new zone district, that type of thing, okay? So where as a collective do you guys think we want to allow them? The small ones, do we want to allow them in commercial or just in industrial? Yes. We can. We can absolutely look at that, yeah. And so that's listed, and that's just the way it currently is. And so like on the draft, there could be a rezoning process and that stuff on there. Industrial zoning has kind of always been the catch-all of zoning districts. So if its use comes up, we're not sure about it, we don't know what to do with it, I'll put it in industrial. That'll be fine. Just put it over there. We'll figure it out. And so a lot of times your industrial zone districts then get this big list of obscure uses, anything from a daycare center to a steel manufacturing plant because everything just gets thrown in there. That's the throwaway zone. So just throw it in there and we'll figure it out.

Can you give an example in McMinnville of an I-1 and an I-2?

So it's kind of a mixture. We have some I-2 right on the other side. of Main Street and Colville there. That's I-2, that's heavy industrial. There's a few lots down off of Old Morrison. There's a mixture of I-1 and some I-2 up through Red Road, a few on Sparta, in those areas. So I-1 is currently light industrial, I-2 is heavy industrial. And so the way we have Euclidean zoning, so it comes from Euclid, Ohio, back in 1926, when there was a big court case saying zoning was legal. So we basically have a reverse triangle is the easiest way to think of it. R1 is our most restrictive zone district. We allow very few things in R1. When you go to R2, everything in R1 is allowed plus XYZ. Then you go down to R3, everything in R2 and R1 plus XYZ. And it keeps going down to that. So then you get into industrial, and that's why it's allowed in I1 and I2. It's just kind of based off that triangle.

Yeah, and if you really look at our industrial zone districts,

with the overall intent and if you get into the majority of the uses, the vast majority are manufacturing related. They're not true heavy industrial uses. And that's kind of typical too. And a lot of reason that also stands from economics, right? So if you're looking at the broader picture, if you get this big business in, then you can bring these support companies to support this big manufacturer. So if you've got a car manufacturing plant, you can have somebody come in and make the tires, they make the brake tabs, they make whatever, they can support this. So it starts broadening that overall. The majority of the uses, again, are geared towards manufacturing. And really, they should be more labeled more manufacturing district than industrial district.

In some states, you know, if you had zoned it as I-2, that's not going to stop those incendiary businesses from coming in, right? Because anything that's in, you know, I-1 can't go in I-2 as well.

Yeah. Yeah. And so with this, there's a couple options. We could put this into I-2. and put it as a conditional use permit or a special exception or a special review use. The terminology is roughly the same. You can set it up in different aspects. Per state statute, special exceptions, CUPs, is pretty much written to go to the Board of Zoning Appeals. There is some flexibility if we did a special review use where that could go to the full board to approve that. The other option we have is we can create a new zone district just for these heavy, intense uses, data centers, crypto mining. There's a few others that we'll be throwing out. And so while I may say data center, crypto mining, those type of things, it's all rolled into that one broader definition at this point. So with that, if we created that new district, then it could be a two-step process for approval. If one, it would require a rezoning to be approved by the Board of Mayor and Alderman. So you have that layer, right? That gives some good strength in it because rezonings are a legislative action. So the board has discretion on that. then we can either list it in there as a special review use requiring another approval, or it can be layered multi-factor on that approval. They would have to submit a site plan, studies, how they're going to address all these things that would be tied and looked at during that. Come on now.

So if you were to put it in a student district, what does that say for our legality? What does that say?

No. We can do that because only in the setup where you can regulate incompatible uses from them, and you can do that zone district. The only thing that would get us in trouble is if we end up with a de facto ban. We didn't have any prominent sites that we can do that.

So like adult venues, mobile homes, like there's state action to back up those special districts where you limit.

We don't need it. It's under Title 13. So Title 13, especially Chapter 7, is the state enabling act for zoning, which allows us to create those different zone districts. So we can choose as a city to separate those, and we would be legally backed by that. And what we would do, too, is if we went that route and we created this new district, we would do findings to support creating that new district, which would be read in the record part of the zoning code that says, hey, we've looked at these. There's a lot of unknowns with these type of uses. We have concerns about this. We have concerns about that. We have concerns about this. So like a lot of times, the board members in here will know, all your whereases on an ordinance, it would essentially be that. Whereas we find these are going to be very hard. They don't fit into the standard industrial zoning, which is more related to manufacturing. Their impacts are not completely known at this time, can vary based upon complexity, size, cooling systems, so on and so forth. So we could do that. There's not anything direct on that from the state, but we would have backing through that.

Do we have an example?

Not in McMinnville. I know there's a few cities that do it. Because you can have six zone districts to 30 zone districts. I mean, it's really how much you want to split it, and so it all varies. I'm looking in that and looking at what other cities have. I don't know any off the top of my head, but if I come across some, I can sure let you know.

Yeah, no. I think we'll be more covered, especially if we do the findings on that as we progress.

And with this, I'll be reaching out. I'm a member of the American Plant Association, the Tennessee chapter of the American Plant Association. I know quite a few people. I know one really good guy that does a lot of MTAS training, and he's a land use attorney and the zoning guru of the state. So I'll run it by him. If he gives us the thumbs up, that'll be good enough. It'll hold. He's very, very well versed in that.

Question, do the current industrial zoning regulations include aspects that are like buffer residential areas from them and things like that?

There is some buffering requirements, but not necessarily from industrial districts. And there's not really that it has to be so far from a residential district. There in totality would probably be a handful of lots that don't directly abut residential zoning. that are currently zoned industrial, either I-1 or I-2.

We don't have any kind of heavy industry that's a noise kind of related?

Yeah. So with the buffering, we can do buffering requirements. We could say buildings and any accessory structures. So if they're making their own power, they're doing anything of that, any generators, those would have to be set so far back, one, on that lot, and two, from residential housing. again we don't have any lots that don't abut so they're directly this side this side three sides all of it touches residential zoning so if we tried to put in you'd have to be a thousand feet or 500 feet or whatever it is from residential zoning we don't have any loss that would beat that so we'd end up with a de facto ban it wouldn't hold because no loss can meet it would it be legally advantageous then to have a new zoning district

for types of businesses that have new technologies that we don't have really good, stable understanding of what the impacts and, you know, ranges of constraints should be on different

yes and and that's that's where as a planner my preference would be move forward with creating a new zone district we're not putting this in an existing one because if you put an existing one our only two options are either conditional use permit or special review use either one of those if somebody came in and even if we did a slew of conditions that had to be met if they met them all we're going to have to prove it so if if Which, and again, if we had really strong ones and they met them all, you know, it may not be the most horrible thing. You can only tell once you had an application in front of you. But the other zone district and that layer of requiring a rezoning gives us, we'd have legality back and we'd have a multi-step for that approval. And so that's kind of the benefit of that new district, rather than, OK, you could do this in I-2, from that perspective. So that's where a lot of that can get tricky on that. So roughly, we have about 100 lots in totality that are zoned either I-1 or I-2. If we're looking at an acre standpoint, You can put a minimum acreage that would be on there, 10 acres, 12 acres, something along that. We have about 16 lots that are 10 acres or larger. We have quite a few little bitty lots that are 1.26, 2.03, 4 acres, whatever, that are zoned I-1 or I-2. Of those 16, that's actually narrowed down a little bit more because our water treatment plant is one of those. The college is. I mean, a lot of them are already built, so you can kind of... throw those out and then you're down. So if you looked at that, if we had about 16 loss, that would put us about 17% of our total industrial zoning of potential loss that this could go to be rezoned and, and that type of thing. So that covers us where we don't have a de facto ban, but there's a reasonable amount of lots. Um, there was one court case that it got challenged. and actually was upheld for the city side because about 25% of the lots were available for that to occur on. So.

Sean, do any of the current zones that we have now, I1, I2, do any of them have any kind of light or noise pollution guidelines that you cannot go over?

The city code has a noise ordinance written in our city code. There's not anything where we have any decibel levels particular for a type of use. There is a statement down at the bottom of the zoning. Anyone that is going to be impactful for noise or it's a big, long run on verbiage that I can say, okay, you have to submit documents to kind of show us how you're going to address that.

requirement for landscape buffers between certain uses. So between commercial and residential, I believe there's a requirement. We have two or three different examples of approved landscape layouts for between those two properties.

Yeah. And so a lot of it lists out different types of trees, um, the height they gotta be when they're planted, how mature they gotta be after three years, five years, that type of stuff. Um, which is pretty typical on, on, on those buffering requirements. So we could do something with that very much on this too. If we get that and then into the conditions or the, the performance standards, okay. Of it, then we can have more detailed on that. And so under those performance standards, that's where we can address noise levels. So we could set, you can't exceed 65 decimals in the day, 50 at night, plus we can put in there, it's a tonal thing. I'm still diving into that more, but that gets in there. And so you can set those limits where that would be at the property line. So when we start getting into the nitty-gritty of it and you start getting into those performance standards, they have to be well-defined, they have to be injectable, and they have to be measurable. So setting the decimal limit is easy. We can go out there, we can get testers. You can do it and say, okay, you're exceeding this level, you're not. We can also require, during the process, pre-construction and post-construction what it is. So they would have to measure at the line, this is what the noise level is now. This is what it is after this has been built and turned on. So we can require that too.

Do current regs address steady state decibel levels and peak decibel levels or like?

The current zoning code does not know. In the city code, we have overall noise levels. which are for construction and different things. So from a regulatory standpoint, you got two different Tennessee codes annotated CCAs that give us police powers to regulate things. One is title 13, that's gonna be your zoning. Your zoning, planning, subdivision, all that stuff. The other is title six. Most of that's gonna be title six, chapter two, because we are mayor. or general law may or automatic. And so with that, if you go to that chapter two, there is 33 things listed out on that that essentially we can regulate, right? So that's taxation. Part of that is we can regulate through nuisance ordinance and that type of thing, trash pickup. All those type of things. Then there's a couple others that you start getting into setting up a utility set up. It's going to be a TCA title seven stormwater to 68, I believe. I believe it's title 68. Um, you get into that. And so those are the smiths, but those two title 13 and title six are the main ones in which outlines what we can and can't regulate. Right. And so. Then the other part of that is then you also have preemptions. So a preemption is going to be the state legislator preempts us. So manufactured homes is one of those. We have to allow manufactured homes in residential zoning district. State says otherwise. Doesn't matter if we like it. We don't have to agree with it. Has no bearing. The state defines it. The state says we have to allow them. We have to allow them. They just passed another one for small daycare homes, up to eight children. That's considered residential use from a zoning standpoint and building standpoint. We have to allow those. Cell phone towers, there's a lot of federal and state and stuff on that. Group homes, we have to allow group homes. Sober living, that's another one that's been coming up. That's both the state and local. So what ends up happening a lot of times is there are things that the state says, this is our concern. We're going to say, you're going to do this or the feds will get in and say, you're going to do this too. So, and that's the other thing we can get through all this. We can get a good set of regulations in place. We could do all this. And then the state passes the law and then we might be back to scrambling at square one. That could happen at any time. Right. And it could happen either way. They could say, okay, we're going to put a pause on this. if they want to go that route, or they could put some preemptions. So like in another one that specific to this matter is they just passed, they can power themselves, right? So they can set up to set up a natural gas plant, create their own electricity in whatever, which ways they can do that. We cannot prohibit them from doing that, right? That's the state law. We're preempted. We're trumped.

Well, relative to that question specifically, so like, They were going to do their own power using natural gas. You've got the gas utility aspect of it. You can't control that, right? But how do we approach that to sit there and say, how do we evaluate that the gas utility service has enough capacity to provide them during peak times and not affect the other residents in agriculture?

so that's where we would work with them and we could require that they submit that and show that that hey if you set this and you develop this plant and you were creating x much power that this is not going to heavily affect that right because we can't get into utility regulation right that's we're limited on that yes yeah and then you have the state utility commission they regulate all that stuff air emissions air controller Yes, yeah, we could require that they submit that, yes. Yes, absolutely. We can absolutely do that. And that would be what we would put in there. We could put in there that they would have to have all state, local, federal permits for air monitoring and all that stuff, and we could require that they submit those to us, but we cannot set air pollutant limits or anything of that nature. That's out of our control. So when it comes to, like, when we talk about fuel, you know, they're going to have a lot, they could have a lot of diesel generators. Mm-hmm. and they're in a double-walled container.

The outside container contains at least the capacity of the inner container.

Yeah, we could do setbacks. We can limit emergency testing hours. We can say you can only do it during daytime, not nighttime, that type of stuff. Secondary containments, primary containments, that type of stuff we absolutely can regulate.

So the natural gas aspect of that, if you're wanting something, again, the state board that regulates the natural gas and the individual companies who have their own local board, they're the ones that would be able to... approved or denied based on their regulations, not the city. The law that they said for that they can build their own power plant is only for 50 megawatts or greater.

I'll have to check. I'm not sure I know that. And I know that there was another one on the 50 megawatts, too. There's different ones, one past two, that cities and utility providers can't pay for the cost to doing the upgrades. And so there is on that. So, yeah, there's different things. So there's going to be limits. Something that's common is WUE, which is water use efficiency. And so that's just going to be how efficient the water is used. There's... You can get into a lot of other high water users that are not going to be to the full extent of these great big hyperscale centers, but can be to other ones that are relatively close to it. What starts happening with data centers versus other high impact ones is you lose a lot during evaporation during the cooling period. So a lot... The water's going to get used, but you're going to recoup most of that back. That's going to go down into the wastewater, and then that'll get treated, released back into the river, that type of thing. You lose a lot more on this. We can't set a water use limit, but that's something that we're not on that. The other is the same thing with power power use efficiency. Again, we were not the utility. We can't set that. Um, there's a little bit of rig room saying that, you know, Hey, we want it to be maximum efficient. Um, there are a lot of different ways. Um, there is some that have become very, so I don't know how many people are familiar with lead, but it's going to be the standard for the green building code that They are very good. They're very inefficiency, self-sufficient, those type of things. There has been some data centers that do have gold standard, which is the second highest. Platinum is the one above that. You get different scoring on that. You have to meet certain things.

You got to do all that to do that.

So there are some data centers that have got LEED certified. They have got the gold standard certification for LEED. So there is stuff to do it. We can require some energy efficient. We can require cool roofs, lighter cutter paving, those type of things to help with the heat island. I know that's something that Lillian and Kai and some others have been discussing on that. So that's where these things are going to generate so much heat, they can actually raise the temperature from a certain band out and coming in there. There's some things we can do that. A lot of that's going to be where it's going to be placed. Like I said, we can do this cool roof. We can do that type of stuff. Where it starts getting tricky on the energy side is then you got to switch over to the building code, right? So most of these are going to be built either Type 1 or Type 2 construction. So the International Building Code has five types of construction. Type 1, Type 2, Type 3, Type 4, and Type 5. Four of those have subsets A and B. The A and B is just how much fire rating is on the exterior walls, whether it's one hour, two hour, three hour. So a lot of these, the number one construction, a lot for high rises and that type of stuff, that's gonna be the most safe from a fire standpoint is gonna be type one and type two. So with those, you can't have combustible materials inside that building. So it's gonna be big, thick concrete walls, that type of stuff that's not combustible. When you start putting insulation, those type of things, now you've changed that. You have combustible materials in there. You're no longer this type of construction. Now you're here. Different occupancies dictate how big a building could be in the building code, how far they have to be from the front. They can get bigger based off construction type, and then how far away they are from roads, lot lines, those type of things. So that's kind of how the building codes can act. Then on the other side, you've got all the NFPA, which is National Fire Protection Association, that's where we're going to be like nfp 855 is directly to the best systems so that's going to be the energy storage system the big batteries for storage that type of stuff nfpa has over 300 codes and standards a lot of them are going to be sprinkler systems fire alarm systems you have the best systems you have the natural electrical code there's a there's a big long list um we can go on and on about that forever But a lot of those are standards for particular items in that. So that's something we can look at. We can do secondary containment. We can require them that they do once a year, go through with our firefighters, show them the system, show them all that training, have secondary containment set up for that. Because one of the concerns I know has been brought up and something definitely to consider is If a fire were to occur and you had these batteries, you had all this stuff, then you're looking at contamination on the ground from them fighting that fire. You're gonna get all that water that's gonna soak out, you're gonna have that, and then you're looking at ground contamination. So that's where looking at secondary systems and secondary containment areas to very much limit that where that doesn't spread out too far, get into waterways, creeks, those type of things that we wanna look at.

I want to go back to what you mentioned about the zones and how many, all the residential zones. In the direct regulation, you've got 500 foot setback. Now, you mentioned that basically any setback now is going back to the fact

That was just thrown in as a rough number. That was a very, very base draft. So, again, we can't come up with a big thing from residential zoning in that aspect. You can say, okay, you've got to be X amount of feet from a residence or from a sensitive sensor is what a lot of people are referring to and is now in the code, right? So you can say a sensitive receptor is going to be a house or a church or daycare centers, those type of things. You have to be as far from that facility. So we have that with our beer board. You can't be within the 300 feet. You have those type of things. There's a state law that adult use is 1,000 feet from stuff. So you can do that. we just really can't throw a number in from residential zoning itself because it all butts so so so thinking about that you know 500 which is of course that's the place where it gets in there forward do we have an opportunity to be ambitious and set that at you know for about 100 feet away from the closest residence or you know what's the upper limit I'd have to do some measuring to see how far we could get, what sites we have and how far they would be to make sure on that. We could definitely maximize that as long as to have a good, yes.

And two, instead of just residence, is it possible to, you know, target that, not just residence, but commercial zones? Because, you know, you've not got just the issue of people in their homes, but, you know, if I need to go down to the Dollar General or the Walmart or wherever I'm going at,

Yeah, we could look at doing sensitive receptors and then include certain uses. Again, I just have to get looking and do some measurement on to see how far we could really stretch that out and still be okay. So, again, I don't have any set numbers that, hey, 1,000 feet's a maximum number. We're not quite at that point. But we can look at that. Again, like I said, we just got to make sure we have enough viable sites that can... potentially meet it and that's the key is they have to potentially meet it they still have to go through the process they would still have to get rezoned they would still have to do all this stuff so just because the regs are written in that way does not mean we will absolutely get a data center at some point in the future it only be if all that requirements met it got rezoned all that I think we want to at least keep around, if we can hover around the 15%, I think gives us safe. Yeah. Yeah.

I just came back from Loudoun County. I got family up in Loudoun County. They're directly involved with there's about 400 data centers now and they're directly involved with some of the construction regulations and things that are going on in there and the biggest complaints they're getting now is not noise from power generation it's the hum noise yes and it seems like there's not really great understanding of the dynamics and what the regulations need to do to cover and how to block

So with the humming, a lot of that's going to be from HVAC units. So we can require screening and different things on those. Sound walls is another possibility. The buffering, including natural landscape, can do a lot of that on hums. So we do have some flexibility to do that.

Well, my understanding wasn't necessarily the HVAC. It was the thousands of servers in the building. It can be, yeah. The low frequency noise of the walls. Yeah.

Yeah, and a lot of that's going to be on the construction type and how that's done. And then they could have like secondary walls outside of that that could be well, again, kind of like a noise wall, something of that that could catch a lot of that and address that.

And in my conversations with them, it also didn't seem like there was, unless it was at the state level, that they had a really great understanding of what that heat plume is like and what it should be and how you should regulatorily contain that regarding buffer spaces to residential and other industrial areas like hospitals?

So there's been some studies on that. A lot of them were done in Arizona with some recent ones. And again, you always got to take in the climate to right. Arizona is going to be more flat. There's not a lot of green space more rock and that type of stuff is more common in yards there than the natural grass trees that type of thing so obviously that's going to have an effect too right so you can you can address that to a reasonable standard again with setbacks placement cool roofs lighter cutter paving all those type of things will reasonably address and help with that that heat island effect so there is some stuff we can do And you got, Wayne, you got a lot of different things. So like I said, there's some things we can get in and regulate on that and address to the best that we can. We're not, we can get and get as good and stringent regulations as we can. Trying to cover every single aspect, it's not going to be possible. I mean, that's just reality. I'll absolutely put it that way. Again, the beautiful thing is even once we get these adopted, it's a living document. So as more studies come out, more research comes out, more different technology comes out, we can always go in and adjust. We always have that option. That's not going away. Just because we get this does not mean it's set in stone. And this is the problem. Our current zoning code was written in 1993. way outdated you have to you should really be looking at your zoning code every five years because that's how quickly things are changing there's there's new technology there's new companies there's new things coming out constantly constantly constantly like um airbnbs weren't that big and then they blew up and you have this one that big and then it blew up so you've got to kind of always look and try to be ahead of that game And that's why you really got to look at that every five years. Not just your zoning code, but your master plan as well. And look at making those adjustments on a regular basis where you don't get too stuck behind the eight ball.

Question about the studies you've been looking at. There's some cooling proposals in that industry that are talking about using geothermal. And then at the same time, if you try and do geothermal, you've got the opportunity for something breaking and then having something underground in the

I have not seen a lot directly on geothermal.

Yeah, it's very small.

Yes, there's a lot. I think a good portion of the Milner Center is actually geothermal, but I have not seen a lot as far as it relates to crypto mining or data centers. And a lot of it's going to be dependent on, too, how big the facilities, how they're cooling. There are some that they're looking at doing different things and kind of recirculating some of the heat from where all the servers are concentrated to the rest of the building and using that as heat rather than a separate heat system. And so that can kind of... help mitigate at least a little bit of that heat index and that stuff coming out. So you have all those type of things. There's a lot of different cooling systems. A lot have got into the closed looped. And you've got tradeoffs on each one, right? So a lot of times a closed loop can be more water efficient, but more power is required on it. So... You've got to look, and there's a lot of tradeoffs on how one can do versus one or the other. I'm looking at them all. Again, we can't really say. We can do performance standards, and we absolutely will. We can't do operational standards. Those are separate. We can't say, you have to operate in this manner. So we can't really put your, you shall use closed-loop systems. You shall do this. We can't tell them how to operate. We can say, you've got to do it in the most efficient manner. You have to address all these impacts. You have to meet these performance metrics. That we can do. Outside of that, we can't get into the real fine nitty-gritty details of it.

Back to the sound. The direct regulation doesn't mention anything about, you know, the subaudible ranges, the low frequency ranges, what can we put in there? Are there any other examples that we can pull from around these things?

There's a few. So you can put in there like on a tonal level this plus or minus X amount. A lot of the problem is there is a lot of concern on the low frequency. The problem with a lot of that sound is technology hasn't caught up to measure it in a proper way. And so if we can't define that and say exactly what that's going to be and definitively go out there and say it is or is not a violation, that's where the difficulty comes into that. Because the other thing you have is scone, right? So most people know if you go and you're going to buy a bathroom fan for your house, it'll say 18 scones, 16 scones, 15 scones, 5 scones, whatever. That level is based off the perception of sound. It's not an actual sound measurement, right? You can do calculations and you can get over to a DBA, but that is basically based on the perception sound. This is how likely you are perceived to hear this fan running when it's in operation. So you have all those, but again, there's not a lot of ways to effectively measure those. And again, that's maybe something that progresses. We'll look and see what we can do on that. That's going to be the biggest difficulty on that one is just how do we set that limit and how do we measure it to say they're okay or they're in violation of it.

Yeah. Yeah, no, no.

And again, it's just, we'll look into that and do everything we can on that. It's just how we're going to measure it and set that level and that type of thing. Yeah. Yeah. Something else we can look at is vibrations caused by them. We can do some regulations on that, that type of thing.

Yeah.

Yeah. Again, we'll do it. We'll do it the best way we can. We just got to make sure we do it smart and we do it legal. Right. I said again, the last thing we want to do is do a ban or a de facto ban and then we got one and then We're in big trouble. None of us want that. I will absolutely say, I'm not gonna speak on half of the board, but I think they're in absolute agreeance that's the last thing we want. Yes, and a lot of those court cases have done that. One, you had all your attorney costs, then they end up paying the developer, and then it came in anyways. So you got hit, you got the trifecta hit.

type regulation. I mean, you can apply to some things. What's the city attorney's opinion on how aggressive you can go on that?

So I'm getting it, and then we'll get some drafts with him. And then, like I said, I'm also going to reach out to some other very dedicated land use attorneys. That's the next question. And I'll run it through, I'll run it by there. Um, MTAS is a great consultant that we have that we can run stuff through and have them look at it as well. So we'll make sure that we're, we're covered the best we can be. So absolutely. And as I get that and get that again, everything will go into that project hub. Um, I know there's not a lot right in there right now. Again, I'm just working on and, and formatting this and getting it where it's one easily readable easy to understand accurate we're getting make sure everything that we can get covered gets covered and put into there so so we're not not trying to keep stuff out of there at this moment just still gathering i have lived breathed in the data centers for the last two weeks so yes so i'm i'm quickly becoming uh somewhat of an expert on them whether i want to or not yeah it's uh but you know it's good for us to see what you thought about what you haven't thought about and you mentioned that about every five years you want to reduce your zoning plans

Does the city have any plans to set a regular review interval?

Or not just this, but... We can look at that. And so this is kind of hitting in the mix. We're getting ready, and I actually started the undertaking of the rewrite of the whole zoning code. Obviously, that's put on pause. We'll get this figured out, and then we'll go with that. And so that's going to be a big part of that, right, is looking at the bigger overall zoning code and updating... defining uses better and and it's typical it's not just McMinnville has this problem right a lot do you you kind of adopt well this is the cookie cutter so we'll just kind of take from here and oh this city seems haven't figured out that that that should be sufficient a lot of times they don't have definitions they have a ton of ambiguity that bites you in the butt you have all these things that aren't factored in and again from 1993 the world the economy everything is nowhere near the same I mean, it's a completely different world. That's just a fact. From a zoning standpoint, from building technology, products, every bit of it, right, it's just a completely different thing. So with it, the way that that process works is it gets drafted, then they'll go to the Planning Commission. Planning Commission makes a recommendation to the Board, and then the Board votes that in. Okay. The board cannot act as a planning commission. TCA is very clear about that. You have to have a separate planning commission. Planning commissions have certain functions. Board of zoning bills have certain functions. And then Board of Mayor and Alderman, City Council, whatever the setup is, have their functions on that. That's very clear laid out in that TCA. This is how this works. And again, the state's constantly changing things. Um, another thing that sends in consideration on this too, which I'm not thrilled about, cause I wanted more time, especially for something like this to review is a new state law has just passed. We have 30 days to review and comment. If we don't comment like on an, on a permitted use, if we don't comment that's approved, we have X amount of time to get in front of the planning commission. If not, and they don't vote on it, it's approved. So we have those things. Now, like the rezoning, that would not occur because that has to go to the board. And then we get more time on that because we have to do a public hearing that has to go on the paper at least 21 days before that public hearing. And there's all these stipulations tied to that. So that aspect wouldn't.

But could that be a vote to say we need more time to adopt this activity?

So if it's a rezoning and that type of stuff, we have to follow that process, and so that's going to kind of give some more time to work out a little bit. But on 30 days, like if it's a permitted use, so residential zoning in the house is permitted use, we got that 30 days. If I don't comment, that's approved. We get a commercial building wanting to come in, that 30 days, we don't get the review done on the building plans, whether it's us, fire in conjunction, any of that, it's approved. And then they also just passed that for utilities, too. So utility companies, if we get a subdivision or water and sewer plans that are submitted, stormwater plans, that utility, they also have a new law that just passed that's 30 days on that, too. The state wants development. We don't have any problems. We generally get them done pretty quick. Linda's great. He gets on it. Holly's picking it up. Fire does good. Ricky and her engineer get on it. We don't have really any concerns with that. That's geared more towards the bigger cities that are just really being in today with permits and hardly keeping up. And so then the other aspect on that, too, is for like a subdivision, they can hire a third party. That third party goes out and inspects, says it's good. Then we basically have to accept that if we don't get out there and inspect that next amount of days. from the building code standpoint, they can go third party under certain circumstances. So we have to make sure that we are, we have it set, it's thorough, we have a process for review, but we get those review done where we don't get bit on that side either.

So that's all the fun of my job.

It's always something changed. Just when you get one system down, you start over. So we're limited on fines to certain aspects, how much we can do, depending on what route that's set up with. So the state does allow for administrative hearing officers. which is something we can look at for certain violations, they can do a much higher fine than the city court can. If it's something that would normally go to city court on that nature, then it's $50 max. Now that $50 can be applied per day up to a maximum, I believe it's $5,000. But if I recall right, the state just passed, and I got to verify this, where now cities can adopt a tiered system. So the first violation could be hundred bucks the second violation we could go up more on that um and that's a great question i'll get you some information on that but but we're limited to state law how how much we can do on those fines so we can we can said if you did this noise ordinance and you broke it we're going to hit you with a 1500 fine that's that's not going to be possible

If somebody repeatedly broke the zoning regulations or any of those, would the city be able to take them to coworkers?

Yes, we can seek injunctive relief, yep. Yep, absolutely. Yep, if there's perpetual and continuous ones then that opens up some other avenues.

If it's determined that you're going to have to accept that threshold that everybody agrees on, but it impacts one person's health, can anything be done about that? I mean, it just doesn't seem worth it if we're hurting one person. You know, that lives nearby that's maybe getting the sound that's making them literally go insane or is causing neurological issues or whatever it might be. Do we have any recourse?

Yeah, they could proceed with action.

That again, we could set decibel levels at the property line that can be exceeded, but outside of that, we wouldn't have anything to build a set of that. I'm sorry?

So you can't protect from everything?

No, no. No. Right, so what you'll see in every zoning code, and this is pretty much national, is it is to promote orderly development and to protect the general health, safety, and welfare of the city. You're gonna find that everywhere because that's what the enabling legislation from each state says that that's what zoning's for. So one of the other things, property values came up, right? So that's a concern. Zoning has never really been set up to protect property values from, if this business comes in, this person's effect. It actually works in reverse. So you get into the court aspect, they're going to rule, did you diminish the property of that land? Right? So let's say somebody zoned industrial, and then we want to say, well, we're going to take you down to commercial. We're going to rezone you. That's a down zoning. So now they can say, you have ruined the economic value of my land. And they've got a valid court case. So it does the exact opposite effect.

That's where a lot do.

And I know there was an environmental attorney that came and I think spoke to Rotary on a state statute that was passing. What that essentially said was if we change the zoning rules and they can prove, and again they have to prove, that we diminish their property value between the market value, what it was before that zoning took effect, and the market value afterwards, then the city would be liable for that amount. But they'd have to prove that. So again, that's where we don't want to get into effectual bans. We don't want to say, oh, you can do this and really start then taking permitted uses now and limiting that and then get spit on that. All right, so there's a lot of moving pieces on that that, okay, we can do this, but we gotta factor in this. And so again, part of the larger rewrite would be looking at it as far as I1 keeping the majority of the uses, maybe switching out some to find them more, looking at some of the odd ones. But then we can take that and say, okay, Now we're going to refer to this as a manufacturing district. That change in the title isn't going to affect their property value or what they can and can't do there. So we're not going to limit their impact, their economic vitality on that land. It's just referring to what that zone is actually designed for. And again, industrial is just a common term. The most common zone districts are residential, commercial, industrial, and agriculture. And then you get a whole bunch of subsets in there. So we have six residential zoning districts in the city. We have three commercials. We have two industrials. We do have agricultural written in our zoning code. We don't have a single piece of property that is zoned agricultural. And I doubt we ever will. So we'll probably be taking that one out. But that's the base of it. And then you get into subsets. And each city, each county, each whatever does it differently. A lot will do it on, so like R1 is ours, 15,000 square foot lot, low density residential. A lot of places will say, okay, well that's R15. So they base it off a lot size. So R15 would be 15,000 square foot lot. R10 is 10,000 square foot lot. You can do it however. That makeup is however the city feels is best to define those two of those things. And then you get the oddities too from the building code to the zoning code. R1 is low density residential and zoning. That's typical. Building code is R3. Single family residence is defined as R3. Yes. So once we get into that bigger rewrite, that'll be on the project hub. It'll have the existing zoning code, the new zoning code, the breakdown of it, all the differences we're looking at, what we changed, what we added, definitions, all that type of stuff. There's going to be a lot of big changes with it. not necessarily from a use standpoint and that type of stuff, but it's going to be written much more user-friendly from a computer standpoint. So it'll have table of contents, hyperlinks. You'd be able to click, go right to this, right to the zone districts, click from there, go to parking requirements, click to go to definitions. You can click, go back to the top. All that. It'll have cumulative use tables in there. You can go in there and find that real easy. I can do this here. I can't do that there. All that type of stuff. So it'll be much more.

If it goes down this road to a new zone district, do you immediately have to identify what that new zone district is in the city of McMinnville or not?

We don't have to zone any properties at all. Okay. We can identify and have it, and then they would have to request a rezoning to go to that. So we would not go in and rezone any districts to that. No. Okay. Yes, we would have to define that, yep. And with that, it could be, too, that only, and we have to look at the lots and distances and that, but from the general standpoint, they would only be able to rezone from I-1 or I-2, whatever the menu works in there, only from those districts. So they wouldn't be able to request this from, I'm going to go from commercial to this heavy use district. Not going to happen. Not going to go from residential to that. So that that would be commenced.

They use the self-contained water and they get in here and they see they need more. How does that work? Do we have to give them water or a disaster happens? Do you see what I'm saying?

Yeah, there's some stuff we can do on utilities. It's hard to, we don't really have anything from the state perspective to regulate this particular use. You can't have more than, 500,000 gallons a day type of thing. You've got to base it on if we hit a drought, what our capabilities are, those type of things. They would have to prove and do what?

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, there's really... So that, if there's any changes to it, any expansions, any... major alterations we can have a setup where they'd have to come back through show all that stuff and then get approval for any any major modifications or expansions on that so they could be addressed somewhat through there no no

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Will you be... Could we use your site as a place where you could post for us where these other hearings are going to be held for natural gas and water and things that are outside of your domain so that we know when those meetings...

If there's going to be any of those, it's going to be the board meeting. There's really not any schedule of that that I know of. I don't know when those are. I know, like, MES has a general monthly... I believe it's monthly board meeting. I don't know if Natural Gas does or not. That'd be completely out separate from us. I don't know if they're going to have any of that nature. I don't know.

They're a lot more restricted by the state in what they can and can't do. Really, the city is where you're going to find the best regulations. The utility boards are generally supposed to be open for anybody to use.

Yeah.

Yeah.

They would.

They would pay for that. So any utility upgrade, any utility upgrade, that falls upon the developers. Yep.

So the developers, they have to, if you, like, so if you bring a new business into town now, you have to usually pay if there's an additional infrastructure required for your business to operate. Do they have to run additional telephone lines, phone power lines, water lines? Right. It's not like if I build a house in somewhere where there's not a water connection yet. $300 is not going to get paid with that. No, they shouldn't. And especially if it's over the 50 megawatts, the state prohibits any locality or board to pass these costs on.

Yeah, the costs can't be put on to residents or anything.

The important thing is that only 50 megawatts are over. So the data center that was here was under.

And so if you take, like a subdivision came in, and they have to expand, extend the water and sewer lines, all that cost falls on that developer. They have to show us the engineering, we approve the engineering, they have to install it, and they have to maintain it for a year. Then after that point, we take over it. If they fail to maintain it for that year, They hold off. So you can do that. The other option that happened with that, and they still end up paying for it, it's just a little bit different process, is they would give the city a bond. We hold on to that money until it's paid for and approved, and then we would release that bond. A lot of cities do that from the perspective of They want the subdivision to be in, and they want to hold that developer accountable. So if the developer got it rezoned and then just decided to bail, the city would have the money to go ahead and get that set up if they so choose. That's basically where the bond comes in versus the other. But all infrastructure upgrade is at the developer's cost. It will not be on ours. I believe it would be the same for Middle Tennessee natural gas, that type of stuff, yes. They have their rules and regulations on that. I'm not going to speak on that. There is. And that's kind of the point of this is why I kind of did that form. Take it, look over it, write you some general stuff. You can send it to me. I'll be glad to discuss more. That's kind of the point is, while it may seem simple, it's very complex to get into this. We have our limits. We can only address these type of things. We can't address this. We have all those factors to consider. It's not just a simple thing that can be done. And we want to address it the best we can and the most effective method we can. Again, that's legal. Do what? Yeah. If none of you guys, I don't really have any much more. We don't have really a set time. The next meeting, the next meeting that's scheduled on Monday is going to be, this is actually in format. So you're more than welcome to attend again if you want, but you don't have to. It's not a continuation of, so there's not going to be new or differential information from what there was tonight. We'll be discussing the same factors on Monday. And then we'll progress from there. And again, I'll be getting uploaded onto that project hub as quick as I can once these get all settled, all those studies and reports, all of those things, TCA. So what I'm going to do is on the Tennessee codes annotated, all the state laws, I'll have a breakdown. Here's all the planning. Here's this one. Here's this one. Everything in there will have links, so you can click in and it'll take you to Justia Law is one of the big sites that has all those codes, so you can go in there and read it, all of those things. So all of it.

Do what?

They do. Generally, if you type in, like, Tennessee TCA Title 13, Justia Law is one of the big sites that kind of breaks it down. There's a bunch of them that have it. You can go to the state. Navigating that site is a little more difficult. I wouldn't. Again, there will be hyperlinks on that breakdown, so you can click on that. It will take you right to that TCA, and then you can read it from there. The same thing with all the publications, studies, all that stuff. There will be a link to go right to that website you can read. get into all that stuff all that you want so it'll be easy and my door is always open Except for on occasion when it's shut because I'm in a meeting or the madness of living and breathing data centers. But, yeah, so it is.

We're putting this together, and thank you for these things to be thinking about.

Yes. I said there's a lot of things to think about. I understand there's a lot of impacts. We'll address the ones we can. Some of them we just can't. that's that's absolute facts i want you guys to be aware of that up front so that you understand again air emissions that type of stuff we got nothing on we can't do that that's that's state and federal we can make sure they have their permits we can make sure they're following the rules we can get reports but that's our limitations yes yes Yeah, we have all those preemptions, all those things that, again, the feds trump the states, the state trumps us. And that's the important thing. One key, and this is going to be a legal term, and I'll break it down pretty simple. Tennessee operates off of Dillon's Rule. So Dillon's Rule came back in 1863. I believe it was a judge in Iowa that said on their Supreme Court. What essentially it says is we have the power that the state gives us, nothing more. That's it. That's how Tennessee operates. Different states work different than that. Some follow the own rules, some don't. If you get into the actual of it, it's the powers granted, express powers and powers necessary. Those are the three primaries. But the simpler way to think of that is we can only do what the state allows us to do. We can only regulate what the state allows us to regulate. Nothing more. That's it. It's that clean cut. If you go outside of that, that's ultra-virus, another legal term. You exceeded what you can legally do. So those are the big factors to consideration is we only have limited powers. Now zoning is fairly broad, but it's still limited. So.

Now in regard to data centers, I remember reading something about the state took care of things that were from 50 megawatts up. Do they give you more authority from below 50 megawatts? No.

It's whatever's in zoning. Zoning is our biggest power to regulate them. Period. So if you get into the TCA Title VI, Chapter II, again, that lists out 33 things. You can do like noise ordinance. We have a general noise ordinance in our city code, which is the bigger, broader city code. You can regulate that. You can regulate some nuisances. A lot of that's business license stuff, taxation, all that type of stuff. That's all the powers under that. And that's general police powers.

the term that everything falls under everything is police powers so obviously doesn't refer to just true police officers but but that's the legal term that zoning all that fall under is police powers and there's several several representatives that are proposing state actions in the next legislative session first of the year so important you know vote and to whoever wins contact them and let them know how you

The state legislative sections is generally from January to about May, I believe. And so there'll be a slew of bills. When things get proposed, you can go on there. Anything that affects the city, I keep track of. We get updates from MTAS. I know Nolan tracks them as well. Because I'm always looking, okay, what are they going to be changing on me? If this passes, start getting ahead of the game on it rather than playing catch up at the tail end. And then they can take different effects. Some will take effect July, some will take effect January, some immediately.

Our representative, Paul Sherrill, was at the county committee, or county full court meeting of the county commission. And I think it's anticipated that he wins, he'll bring a private bill to the state assembly to help in some way.

And again, as we progress through this, it could change one way or another at the state level, and then we'll adjust as we have to from there. You guys are good. I'm good. Thank you for being here. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I saw it. Thank you. When you start off here, oh my God, it's been an hour. I'm going to get this one. They've got air rigs and... I wish I had a bathroom. I know. I wish I had. I'm here Monday, too, just in case. I'm here Monday, too, just in case. I'm here Monday, too, just in case. I'm here Monday, too, just in case. I'm here Monday, too, just in case.

I'm here Monday, too, just in case.

Thank you. Thank you. Any place that we could not provide.

And really, honestly, the places that we're working on right now are completely empty. All the counties have been done.

Thank you so much by the way I always appreciate your work.

It was really simple, but it's not.

No, you're good.

I've got more tough questions for you.

Endless questions. I know it's tough to work with them. Misunderstanding is something we can't just ban.

We try to combat that from a social media perspective. Yeah.

I know there's a few comments. The California Constitution, they leave it up to cities where voters can do that.

So you can write anything on a piece of paper until a judge has indicated it's correct. We could write it today and pass it today and it stands as the zoning regulation.