Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

To the actual law cases, you can go ahead and read them yourself, all of that. I'm finishing up the studies. I got that pretty much broke down and formatted. So we've came across a whole bunch of studies from air, air quality, noise, the heat island, all of those things, all those different studies will be on that project hub. And again, that project hub is the purpose of this, where all the information will be in one spot. So everybody can go to there and get it. Again, there's not a lot on there because I've just been deciphering through. It's all coming in. I will get it out as soon as I can. It's just getting and ciphering all through that. Because we do want to make sure the studies are legit and it's not something just out of the blue that wouldn't be of any value. Peer reviews, scientific journals, anything from EPA, that's kind of the big list there. If you guys have something, please feel free to submit it to me. I'll take a quick glance at it, and I have no issue putting that up as well. Again, I just want to make sure it's not just out of the random and not really overall factual, I guess. Not random. Yeah.

I don't know if it's considered rambling.

The research paper that I was checking you, that I wrote,

I don't remember. I'll double-check because I've had a couple years. For some reason, if you send it to me and Nolan, it'll come to me. If you send it directly to me, it wants to put it in my spam folder. For whatever reason, I don't know. So I will check and make sure if you did send it, it didn't go to my spam folder. But if you want to send it again, I will absolutely get that on there. So, yeah. Yeah, like I said, for whatever reason, any time Nolan sees it, I will get it. If you send it to me directly, it's gone to spam every time. I don't know why, but I guess Nolan's the key to that. Somehow, I'm not sure how that works. But yeah, so I wasn't avoiding your emails. I obviously did not see them. I only check that spam folder every so often.

I've got a question. Is the city and the county both working hand-in-hand in this, in this zoning and all of it?

Not overly. The county is looking at going a different route for theirs, and so it's really not playing in hand-to-hand because we're going through zoning because we already have zoning adopted, so this is an easier measure to change that. The route they're going to be going is something completely different. Now, they may be looking at zoning, they may be looking at different options, but it doesn't, from what I'm gathering, it doesn't seem that way.

We're currently looking at, we already have fire codes in the county, so they're looking at adopting the updated fire codes that are going to have the AI data centers included in the new fire code.

So 2027, the ICC codes come in every three years, and then there's also, I know Cole spoke about this, that the county was referred to as a G12. That is not in and of itself of a code. Okay, so just so that's clear, that's a guidance document. And what that's being, there's obviously is 12, so there's 11 others. Okay, any ICC code will always be international blank code. It won't ever say G anything, except for the Dream Construction Code, but it's the International Dream Construction Code.

Okay.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. With a private act, yeah. With a private act.

Yeah.

We don't know what that private act would look like yet and how far it would reach.

But part of it is the Morton County, Terry Dole has asked for community input. So that's really important.

Yeah. Yeah, so we're really not, because like I said, they're looking at different legal routes to go than what we're doing.

Is that in the best interest of the county? If you're not working hand-in-hand?

It's difficult because, again, we're working under zoning and what we can do as cities and they're working under what they can do as counties. Now, we are a little bit unique in one perspective because we are a regional planning commission. We're a municipal regional planning commission. So with that, we set that up some time ago. There's just been some new state law that's gonna change that as well. Mostly what we do with that is subdivisions. So we can regulate zoning outside of the city limits within the urban growth boundary. So every city has an urban growth boundary. You go out so far from your city limits into this end of the county. Again, what we mainly do is subdivisions, but we can zone property that's in the county, but within that regional boundary. But that's just, again, that just changed with the state law. I'm still deciphering through that to see what effects that's going to have. Outside of that, we can't do anything. But even then, we're still limited because we can't issue the building permits or actually verify on the zoning because it gets submitted to the county. So it's... What state law are you talking about? It's under Title 13. It's the Municipal Regional Planning Commission. We've had it for, we've had as long as I've been here. Um, and then sometime before that, I don't know when we adopted that. Um, there was at one point we've looked at getting rid of that. I'm going through what the new state law is going to have effect on that. Cause it just changed a bunch of the annexation things as well. Um, where basically the County can stop us on that.

So, um, you know, it's not fair. The County and the city operate under different forms of government. And so. You know, it's really different levels at which they could stop that. And, you know, again, I think it's about 45 counties in Tennessee have some zoning regulations. Warren County does not right now.

No. And there's this typical. And it seems most, I think most of the counties that do are a lot of the bigger counties. Like I know Knox County has a lot of the smaller ones. It's not typical that they adopt zoning regulations. And a lot of them. A lot of them don't necessarily want to get into that nitty gritty, um, and, and regulate everything that people can do. Um, so that's kind of part of that too. You got to weigh out the pros and cons of each way. Um, so, um, I'd be happy to meet with them and discuss, they can have any information we got to tie onto that too. I have not talked to, spoken to any of them a little bit. Not, not that I'm aware of. Yeah. Not that I'm aware of. So. And then I'd speak with Cole off in the building official over there. And so with that, we'll be looking at going to the 2027 codes as well. And then we would we would adopt by bread momentum that that G12 And again, the D-12 is just taking this expert from this code, this part from this code, this part from this code, and putting it into a guiding document to help ease with building and fire code officials on that. Because each occupancy classification within the building code can change everything from how many bathrooms you've got to have, how many water closets, how many this, how much of that. your fire rating on your walls, your distances, what type of construction it is, that comment can swing very far on how each of them are.

Is that enough to provide all the protections that a zoning regulation would?

No, so that would be in addition to. So that would be the actual construction and design thereof, where the zoning will be the outward and maximum size of the building, setbacks, distances, all that type of stuff. So they'll work hand in hand, but there's a lot. Yeah, yeah. And then we'll also look and go through and adopt any other NFPA codes that we need to further support that, like NFPA 855, which is directly for energy storage systems. That one regulates just that. Most of the time when you adopt the International Fire Code, any NFPA referenced in there is adopted by default. Okay. So and I know some people said we got to look at doing higher fire readings on walls and that type of stuff. So building code adoption, which falls under Title VI, I think Title VI Chapter 54, there's a process that we have to do that. So the state fire marshal determines all that. They have their thing. If we adopt a code, we have to be within seven years of the most recent code. So currently that's 2024. So we're on the 2018 codes. I want to go to the 2027 where we don't have to adopt a code. Three years down the road, adopt code and constantly be paying catch up. So we'll do that. Any amendments we do to that code, we have to send to the state fire marshal and they have to approve them before we can adopt that ordinance. If we skip that part and they don't approve it, then that ordinance adopting those new codes is null and void. That rule just came out. i don't know remember what rule number that is but that's the new rule our zoning code is the absolute most effective way that we have and again we cannot ban we cannot de facto ban so we can we can do the best we can and address everything the best we can there's some things we can there's some things we cannot address yes It's no harm if they can return. And that's it. And with it, too, is technology is going to change with these design, construction. All those factors are going to change as things progress. So it could be a possibility. Ten years down the road, they're not as impactful. They've got it figured out. Right, so we also don't want to be so restrictive that there's never any way that that could be done. And again, as I said at the last meeting, we'll look at our zoning code about every five years and adjust two things because just as how quick the world changes these days.

When it comes to this, let's say you're zoning for commercial versus residential, and it's really close together where a project's going to go. Do you look at the infrastructure strain it could take on the residential as part of your studies?

So we'll have them submit stuff, how much water they're anticipating to use, and a lot of other things. Okay, that's going to be part of it. So we can't... And I'm diving more into this, and again, I'll be reaching out to people who are far more experts on utility and that type of stuff. That's not my big world. But you can't necessarily say, oh, well, you can only have X amount of gallons, but then this guy over here can have X amount of gallons and that type of thing. So you can limit, obviously, if there's times where we're in a heavy drought, you have all these other factors and you can say, okay, residences are going to be the priority if we get on drought or this or that or the other. So you can't do that. Any infrastructure, if new water lines, new sewer lines, any of that has to be built, that falls on the applicant. That does not fall on the city or you as the taxpayers. That falls on the applicant. Any infrastructure cost falls on them. So if they have to build a big pump station in order for any use to work that fall on them, if they got to put a new water lines or extend water lines or sewer lines that falls on them. Um, just like if a subdivision came through, they got to submit that engineering. We have all that. And then that goes through the planning commission for approval. And so normally with like subdivisions. not necessarily on a lot of other uses but subdivisions they were responsible for maintaining that for a year and then the city will take over providing this built to our specs and as approved and that they maintained it for that year we can draw that out longer if those requirements were met same thing with roads that type of stuff that would all fall on them and if they say that they need to expand more how do you handle that they would have to come back So the way the zoning code would be written is any modification to any approved plan, if they are expanding anything of that, you just start the process over, you're back at review again. Just for that reason, so we can address that. Yep, that's exactly how that would be set up. Any modifications, you're back at square one. So again, the city overall wants to protect his people. That's what we're here for. We're on your side. We just got to do it wisely and legally. That's the only thing I can stress. As long as we keep in those parameters, we can get to do our best to address these. Yes, sir.

You know, I've been looking into this, uh, say take care of the residents. What about if a lot of health issues arise because of all the chemicals and contamination? after bringing it in, what's going to happen then? Is it going to be where they can't sue them because it's legal for their damages to their health and all?

No. So as a private property owner, if your owner is doing something that's detrimental, you can proceed in court. That's completely at your discretion.

No, we would not be able to. But if you were in that area and that did occur, that is something you could do. If this is the problem, you go before these judges...

And they play the judge's song, and they throw it out of court. What do you do then?

So with court, what they look at and go and refer to is known as case law. So case law is where a law has been developed on prior court decisions. So this judge made this decision. It can go back to 1927. They made this decision. The courts will look back that far and, OK, this applies to this direct thing or this part similar to this of what we're reviewing at this point. And so that's what they're basing that off of. That's case law. And then you have your common law, and that's old England days and all the fun stuff of that and everything else on that.

I mean, that's a whole bigger conversation that the city could, you know, that's... We're out of it at that point.

We're far removed once it hits that point.

Well, see, the state can often come up where they can be sued and taken into court. I just say, you're talking about action like you've got an action plan. You've got to have something to base that action on. How are you going to get it to do it?

That action is your harm. If I've done something to harm you, you can take me to court for anything. Well, it sounds simple, though. Well, I'm just saying that's what the private action is. The city doesn't have that right now. The state would have to pass ordinance or law that would allow the city to have an action.

Well, that's what I'm saying right there. Come down to work. If they're doing them, putting them in a chemical salon and cause health issues for the people, you can have authority to come in instead of just saying, Oh, I've been harmed by your chemicals. Well, what are you going by, sir? What authority? In other words, they can pass where they can be sued if they cause damage with their contamination.

They can. I mean, you can be sued. They can be sued today. But again, I mean, for the zoning, right now they don't have that.

Oh, yeah, just going for zoning. But seeing the zoning, it needs to be where they're using these dangerous chemicals. And they know it. You know, the people needs protection. That's what the city's supposed to do, protect people, right?

Going off of that, is there something for zoning that could be added in? If you're using these chemicals, you have to be this and X amount of way from property lines.

Different things, yeah. So getting per exact chemical might be a little bit tricky, but overall you can. We can also require secondary containment areas. We can do all that. And we do do reviews of businesses and sites from a stormwater perspective to make sure that there's not any contamination getting in and spillage and all that type of stuff. And we've been ramping up what we're inspecting for and a bunch of other stuff just because We find little things here, little things there pop up. Um, and so we're always progressing with that. And two, we can make them submit to us annual stuff every six months, that type of stuff. Um, we can have it set up and then set up, uh, the fire department does annual inspections. of pretty much all businesses and industrial uses. We go through and make sure all the safety stuff is met. Egresses remain, exit signs, fire extinguishers, all the general base life safety stuff. So we can do that. Generally from the fire safety site to on facilities like this, we can have it written where they have to give the fire department a tour once a year, have equipment there, give them training on that site-specific thing to know how to address those things and all that type of stuff. So we can do it to a reasonable extent, we will, as long as it's within the confines of what we can do.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. You know, there's a lot of places that are saying we set off 200, 250 feet off the property line. So that's something I think we should put in

Yes, and we can set where, okay, any accessory to. You usually have a zoning, you have a primary, and then your accessory. So like your house and your shed, if you're thinking of it that way is the easiest way to put it. So you can put that distance from on that. Again, we just got to go through the sites and make sure that that distance could occur on a variety of sites.

I know there's a lot of that on there, but that's, you know, last time we talked about, too, the accessory use.

Mm-hmm. 25% of the floor area, 30% of the floor area, yeah.

So with our current zoning code, what would AI data centers be classified in? We don't define them because our code is written from 1993.

The biggest concern I had with this is if you look at C3-14-509.4A, I believe it is. Don't quote me on that. I could be completely wrong. We allow data processing service or data processing center in there. That's under C3, which then is allowed under I-1 and then I-2, right? So as I kind of did last time, I think it's only like a triangle. Your R-1 is at the top. most limited and then it goes down and builds from there right so r2 allows everything in r1 plus xyz r3 r2 r1 plus xyz so on so forth as it gets down so that's what we have we don't currently have anything that that's the closest we have to it and that's where if that went to court they're going to say well you allow what occurs inside a data center how are you saying you're not going to allow the actual place where it happens Are we going to specify? We will define each and specify each one, yes.

To build on that, are you going to group? So say a traditional data center wants to move in. Say we're 18 months down the line. We've got a new zoning regulation. We've got a new zoning district that will encompass these data centers. Would you require a new traditional data center to go there, or could they go into C or one of the others?

If it's going to be impactful, I'm going to use Lightwire as just an example because that was one that was here, was here for a lot of years. Most people they know what it was it was I I can't get a lot of information I've tried to really dig into and I can't find a lot I know there's something with data centers to where you have different tiers I think there's five tiers, but that's the read that's based on redundancy So like a tier one allow what you can shut down for 23 hours a year You get up to a tier for a tier five Tier five is they basically have enough backup power that? if grid went down or whatever, they could still operate and have that redundancy. I know they were a Tier 4, but I think they were a small co-location from everything I can find on that.

The building is 245,000 square feet total now.

yeah and it wasn't the whole building the police station was over there during that time and yeah so it wasn't the whole building and so with that we would define and look at those and again that's just kind of this little base sheet on that is a smaller low co-location if it was up to I'll just throw a number out here, five megawatts or something. We might be able to do that. It may make more sense to do that as a CUP in I-1 or I-2 rather than this new zone district because you don't have those large-scale impacts like you are with a cluster or an AI or a hyperscale or any of those types.

So, yeah.

And I think that we would want to do that to be from a fair perspective as well. If they're not going to be impactful, we don't want to. throw them you have to rezone to this when they're not any more than anything else that could go on those two zone districts i'm looking right now currently about 10 acres because what i'm doing is i'm looking and i kind of got to break down we got to have about 100 lots that are zoned either i1 or i2 Um, they range in different sizes. We have some that are less than an acre, some that are 40, 50 acres, that type of thing. How many of those lots would fall within that 10 acres? So we have at least a decent around 15%. It is kind of my goal of potential viable lots where that is new zone district could apply to. So that way, if we got about 15% of our, our current zoning on that, then if they try to challenge it, well, we can't meet this, this is ridiculous, we can say, there's enough viable lots here. If you can't make it work, that's a you problem. And that's just kind of what I'm looking at. I'm still, hold on here, I got a little bit of that breakdown. Yes, my question?

The danger with being hyper-specific is that it makes it really easy for players. Very easy. Because you can say, I'm not an AI, so I can do this thing and I can do that thing. It's better to look at it from a larger scale perspective. And I've got over 30 years experience with every data center you can imagine everywhere across the contiguous US. And there's ways that you can classify what happened in the places it needs to be. You do make sure there's protections in place. I've worked in data centers that were right next to neighborhoods and it was horrible what happened to them. And then I've worked in other places where we had boundaries of 10, 20 acres between and it was fully forested, and you never knew. There were 15 diesel generators around the corner. So I know everybody wants to pick out and say, well, this is the one that's currently the issue. We don't have a 2026 problem. We have a 2026-plus problem. And who knows? In five years, these are all going to be in space. And we're going to have a whole new technology problem on Earth, because Elon's already launching micro data centers into space in the next few years. So we might be attacking something and have a solution for something that's only a two-year problem. where if we look at it from a larger scale, we can embrace the change that needs to be there in a way that everybody truly benefits. And it's funny, because I've talked to a lot of people about this. I've been out of town until a couple days ago. And it's very important for us to spend as much time on what do we want, because if we spend a lot of time on what we don't want, we're going to end up in opposition to people that we want to work with, people that we want to work with and not really getting somewhere. We've got a short timeline. We've got a legal process. We've got bureaucracy. We've got noises and voices. We've got people publishing information that's going to cause more noise in our communication. We have to be very clear on what we want. And I think this is a great guide. I didn't even know this was going to happen. So this is a great guide for us to start thinking about what we want. I don't necessarily. I live in the city. I have a beautiful historic home built in 1903. I don't want to hear something. I don't want to smell something. I don't want to feel something. So how do I make sure what I do want and put that together? Because I've got the mix. I love history. I love my downtown. I love my coin town. And I love using AI. How do I balance that? I don't know the answer. I don't have an answer for everybody here.

No, and with that, zoning has its purpose and it's great. But it's never been designed to just say we don't want development. It's not set to be an anti-development tool from the larger picture. Okay, you narrow it and you say, okay, these type of uses isn't great in this area. We want this separation based on these impacts. And you can justify that, and that's the purpose of it, and that's good. But it's never been set to be just we're saying no to development across the board. Cause that's, that's the exact opposite of what the city wants on the other end of the spectrum on that as well. And so what I've always said is you've got to have balanced reservations. That's what I always strive to meet where you're allowing this, where you're not saying no, because things are going to progress. Things are going to change. Things are going to do all this. So you're not saying no, but you're saying if you're going to come, you're going to do it. Right. Right. That's, that's the goal we want to reach. We're not going to say, no, none of you can come. We're not allowing anything here. It's okay. If you want to play. by the rules that's what we want to get to whether that's lot sizes any of that that's the broader picture that we want to get to is that that that balance and again as as the last meeting the most beautiful thing that we cannot forget is this is a living document it can be altered at any time so something new comes up in two years we're like okay here we go right and i try to i A lot of my time is the state's constantly changing things. I'm like, all right, now we got to change this. Now I got to do this. Now we got to do this. So that's a big part of the job. But I do try to keep up and look. The American Appliance Association is great. Tennessee APA is great. And I'm looking at these, OK, what are emerging fields coming out? What are new things coming out to try to get ahead of that rather than being behind the eight ball? And unfortunately, that happens for most cities. It's like, oh, well. We live in rural Tennessee. We ain't going to see those things, you know. And then, bam, here we are. And so you want to try to get ahead of that or at least keep up with it the best you can. You're never going to get ahead of it because it changes too quickly. I mean, that's just an impossible task. But if we can stay with it and address these things, come up. We can't we don't regulate utility so we cannot so so that's gonna be the next part so we can we can address things like noise Okay, we can set a decibel level at the property line and I know there is some factors with noise where we can't Because there's no way to measure it, we can't really set a level, right? So we can do performance standards, and we'll have those in the zoning code, right? That's legal. We can do it. We're absolutely going to do it. But they have to be measurable. They have to be justifiable. We have to set something. They can't be vague. very very vague okay so like noise we can say you can't see 65 60 whatever we decide that's going to be at your property line and you can change that from daytime to nighttime as well okay so you can set that we cannot regulate air emissions that's outside our scope right that's going to be t-deck and then the feds now we can require that they show that they got their air permits and the title five and all that stuff and that they're following all those rules We can request that documentation, but we can't regulate air emissions, right? That's outside the city scope.

Who's scope is it? So out of curiosity, who's scope is it? So if some of us need to like splinter off and advocate differently, does that make sense? So if it's at the state level, if something's at the state level, how do we know so we can start working that too? Does that make sense?

yeah um i'm doing a breakdown of what we can and can't and that'll be on that project hub and that hey this t-deck regulates this um t-deck and mpa or this falls under this category i'm trying to give that breakdown so that you can do that and say okay this is outside the city scope the state would be involved in this that type of stuff from environmental standpoint zoning regular non-environmental rigs all right so we can't go down that That will. I will say there's kind of one exception with that, which is stormwater, and that's because we're a title, we're a class two city, right? Yeah. So with that, there's different classes, and if your city has population this and that, then we have to, right? So CineSea codes annotated is kind of broke up in the easiest sense to do is can dos, have to dos, right? So zoning is a can do, but then we have to follow this process. This is the limited scope. You can do that in all that type of stuff. Other ways, like we have a general noise ordinance, construction hours and noise from a general level, that's in our city code, because that's under Title VI, which is municipal powers generally. So we can also have nuisance laws, which we have quite a few, animal control, all those type of things falls into that. Title VII is utilities, and that's kind of the makeup for our water and sewer department, how we got to do that, how we can do billing, all that type of stuff. If you get into TCA 654, Chapter 2, there's 33 things listed of municipal towers generally. That's business license, taxation, property taxes, yada, yada, yada, yada, all the general stuff that we can do. And we are a Dillon's rule state. That's an important key factor, too. So Dillon's rule, simply put, is we can do what the state says we can. Nothing more. If the state says we can regulate this, we can regulate that. If it's not under that, we can't do it. That clear? That's exactly how Dillon's rule works. Because I know I've seen some posts, well, California banned them. So if California can do it, we can. California Constitution has it written where they can do that. That state works completely different. And so we can look at, okay, well, how does Virginia address things? How does Arizona address things to an extent? And we can maybe pull some concepts, but the way their laws are set up versus ours are completely different. Zoning from a theoretical and a generalization concept is universal across the nation, but it's all dependent on what state you're in. I'm originally from Colorado. What we could do in Colorado, that's farly different than what we could do here. It's a whole different world. And you have that. Marijuana was a great example. That was left up. That went to the vote of the people. And then each county or each city could decide if they were going to allow medical or recreational bowl. And then you could put that up to vote. That's how that state law and constitution work. We don't have that here. All right.

We're going to give it to the state.

One of the great examples is they just passed a regulation where if the base is over 50 megawatts, they have to provide for their own electricity. It can be passed on, but that's 50 megawatts of this data center that was proposed for 25 megawatts would have been under that. There would have been no prohibition on the electric passage.

And with that, again, we could say, okay, you've got to show to us that this isn't going to overly burden the power grid or anything of that. But outside of that, we can't regulate that. I've had a little bit of conversation. I think MS has said they're not going to be able to provide more of one of these. TVA would have to provide the power, or they're going to have to do their own. I mean, I don't – we don't have the current infrastructure to do that. Now, maybe if a small light wire came back in or something, yeah, that could maybe be done. But from a larger scale, 20 big megawatts, all these big ones, do what? I think it's close, yeah. I mean, they're just putting in that new substation to help out with things. So, yeah. And again, it's also important to understand, When they're throwing that megawatt around, that's output, not necessarily electricity that's going to be needed to do that facility. That's an output thing. And that's every second, every day, 365.

That's why the law that was required is about output, not consumption, right? So when you're looking at it in the light of what the law is saying, you have to look at output, not consumption.

Yeah. So on the placement, there's not

So, wetlands we can do a little bit on, streams and waters we can do a little bit on. Again, we gotta look at the sites and see how many are viable. Most of the zoning is fairly far from the river. We have some down south of here that there is some in the floodplain. and then we have floodplain regulations to address all that. They'd have to do a whole bunch of stuff, and for that type of facility, trying to get it above flood level and a whole bunch of other things would be such a nightmare. I don't ever foresee that. Yeah, yeah. I didn't see, I might have just missed it when I was going through the zoning.

Is there...

Yes. Yeah, so we do have a zoning map that's available online. If you go to the city website, go to the community development department, and then go to... On the left-hand side, you'll see GIS zoning, I believe is what it's labeled. If you click on that, then it breaks down. There's a bunch of different layers. You can click on and off on that. The different colors represent the zone districts. So like the yellow is going to be R1. The kind of pinkish color is C1. You'll see some orange, which is downtown. That's the C1 in historic district. Yes. So we have that. Yep. So the dark purple is going to be your I2, and the light purple is your I1. So this is all the I2s only that we currently have, and then that lighter is going to be I1. And so this is one thing. And I know I have the distance on here, and this was just trying to kind of educational standpoint. As you'll see on this map, unfortunately, because of the way the city was done, built, all that different things, we don't have any industrial zoning besides like a very few lots right here that don't touch. residential zoning. So we're not going to be like, oh, you have to be 2,000 feet away from residential zoning. We just did a de facto ban because we don't have any zoning that can do that. We don't have any laws that can do that, unfortunately. It'd be great, but just the way we feel. And so what happens a lot of times, how this map gets crazy, you hit your zone changes, you get all that. Whenever a new zoning code comes about, they start looking at, okay, what uses are going on here? That fits more into this. And so a factory could have been started, but it wasn't originally zoned industrial. But because that use was there and falls in that category, we're going to put this in industrial. And so that's why you get all these hodgepodge's You have a random R3 here in the middle of this and everything else. And because it's bigger, hodgepodge.

So are we allowed to choose specific blocks within those zones to accommodate for a new zoning?

Yes. So the only two that would be able to do would be, like, they could request from an I-2 or I-1 zone district. If it was a commercial zone district, try to go to the state.

accidentally or just adjacent. That's interesting. There's an IT right across the street from where I live. I don't even know that. It's rural. I mean, there's no factory or anything there.

Yeah. And a lot of it hasn't been used for industrial for a long time. It's just in there. So at what point? I'm sorry.

No, I was just going to clarify. You said 15% has to be?

I'm trying to just keep in within that 15%. As far as we say, okay, it's got to be 10 acres or larger. Whatever we get that in, just where there's a good amount of potential liable loss, where we just avoid them trying to throw that back at our base. Where if we only had three lots, from a legal standpoint, if that guy towers, that's going to be a lot more stringent on that than if we had a broader thing. Now, again, that's just a potential, and that's just, okay, this is 10 acres, but then again, they have to submit that site plan and all these other factors that tie into that. So just because we have about 15% of the loss that could potentially meet that doesn't mean it can occur. Okay, that's the other thing. Don't think that. You want to make it possible, not probable. Yes. It should be possible, exactly, but it may not be probable because they have to meet all these factors.

So, like, if there's a zone that's not being used in X amount of years, can somebody position the city to get that rezoned? Or how do we go about getting that rezoned?

Yes, so you can request a rezone. We typically, we've had a couple other... The property over there?

The property over there.

So, theoretically, the city can't rezone properties. Very cautiously. Because with rezoning, there's two types. You have an upzoning and you have a downzoning. So an upzoning is you're generally going to more intensive uses or you're going to a higher density. So you're going from R1, 15,000 square foot lot, detached single-family zoning, to R3, you can put 70 apartments in there, just in the example. So that could be considered an upzoning. A downzoning is where you're going from high-intensity use, I-2 to C-2. right that could be a down zone now people can request that and we can look at that and you got to be in compliance with the master plan and make sure it's not spot zoning and all that other fun stuff but they can request that if the city does that then we start opening up a different realm for liability because we start diminishing their economic value of that land they can challenge us and that was that new thing that the one attorney came and said the state was looking to pass that's essentially what it was it didn't ban us from regulating things what that said was if you diminish your property value so you put this new zoning code in right if the market value of that property decreased from that new zoning taking effect then and they could prove that then the city would be liable for that cost so if we decrease their value of their property by 50 000 and that law was in effect in the past so then we could be liable if they could prove that. And so going to a down-zoning, we gotta be very cautious of the city initiating that. Again, if somebody else wanted to. So like, if you're talking along here, the reality is, from a zoning standpoint, that would make them want to force us to demonstrate, right? It's a lot of case for an investor looking for stuff that you're more pragmatic than this to that. All that type of stuff was, Let me zoom in a little bit.

All right. See where the purple switch right there? See how you have the housing, the R3 on the right side of it? We've got to update this.

This one right here just went to R3. So this was rezoned a couple years ago, R3. Oh, that purple block? This purple block, yeah. Oh, it's just not updated on the map?

Yeah, it's just not updated.

Okay. We'll be trying to keep up to that as much as we can, but we're going to get tied up in other things.

What kind of zoning do you have when it comes to rail spurs for properties?

It's kind of up to the... We have a mixed commercial investor. Mostly investor is a little bit different, but it'll be more central investor. And what happens with investor zoning too, and our zoning goes this way, you start getting these oddity uses, this whole, we don't know anything about this, or we don't think this is going to happen, we're going to throw it in the dust or something. We'll figure it out later. It'll be fine. Just put it over there, and then we'll be still with the thing. That's why if you look at most zoning codes, it's such a hodgepodge of uses, it really makes no sense. Because it just becomes kind of a collect all, just throw it in the dust or something. If you look truly for Mars, and this is how we can also justify a new zone with history, If you look at I-1 and I-2 and you start breaking down the uses, they've always been geared towards manufacturing. So you're taking raw products and creating a new product. That's the true overall opinion. They're called industrial, but they're more manufacturing. And so that's something we're looking at, too, on the broader reason. I was starting that, but that's kind of it. Shuffle up to the side. of doing that, that okay, we have not just I-1 or I-2, but manufacturing, light industrial. It would change the names, not necessarily a lot of the uses, we could look down on that, but from that perspective, because that's truly what they were more intended for. But the typical zoning is residential, commercial, industrial, agriculture. we have agricultural zone district in the city and a single I don't think there ever would be but we have it in our zone so you know obviously the expert number about all this what is your biggest concern about regulating for these types of uses that's a tricky one making sure that is that's possible that's going to protect the property. And that they're reasonable as far as if somebody came in and really had this and could do it right, could do it, but that we don't end up with something very negative.

Well, and to the gentleman's first point, you know, it's about what do we want. We want safe air, safe water. We want low electricity, low water rates. We want all these things. How do we get them? Unfortunately, you do have to be restructuring. Because it's not just an ID center. If you wanted to bring some massive manufacturer, a car manufacturer, you really can't plop down in the middle of McMinnville and not have that.

No, no. And again, that's why I'm kind of looking at the broader uses of the student-owned district to incorporate a lot of things on that potential. It's for that so that we can then start breaking those down each individually, right? So, like, we'll have more forums and that type of thing. Best systems is another big concern. from an explosive standpoint, from a lot of different things. Fire standpoint. Fire standpoint.

Talking about that system, the emergency management, is that something that we can put into place about if you're going to use this, you have to pay for the training for our fire department. Yes.

Everything that I've come across, we can't do that. And if we can't do that, we absolutely wouldn't do that.

Because, I mean, right now, neither the city nor the county, which I know that's the county's But we don't have, we have to hire third parties or have the state come out to handle anything with hazardous materials.

And so we actually got to consider that. What is our capability of our existing fire department? There's a lot of those things that we got to look at.

What is the city's hazardous waste plan right now?

A lot goes back to where we don't have a direct . So we have some emergency management factors, and we're trying to revise that. A lot of that is right through the county, and then we work in conjunction with them, right? Like, I actually believe that the, there's something the county said, there's something we're starting to . is kind of the broader emergency manager. Jim Hillis, yeah. Of his family. And so we work in conjunction. Well, we're looking at that. And again, there's a lot of NFPAs, which is the National Fire Protection Association, that has has been adopted that addresses maybe not everything, but will address a lot of that. So hazardous materials, the limits on diesel generators and the fuel source. Containment, there's first containment requirements in there, secondary containment as well. And so a lot of that is kind of addressed through those. And so we can do it. The trickiest part is gonna be just,

i guess it's always finding the middle ground to make sure we're protected but we're not going to be hiding liable from the other side so you mentioned about we have our general city ordinances which comes from title six versus the zoning ordinance at the same time that we're working on these i don't mean ordinances working on these can we beef up our title six restrictions so there's not a whole lot in there that

for this particular thing, because the main part with states is like broader. So you have your noise ordinance, which is noise in general. It's not related to a particular . And so you also gotta be cautious of not trying to do something under Title VI nuisance that would end up acting as a zoning, because then you'd exceed what you can do over here. So I'm trying to shuffle them through that and see, okay, what may be better if we adopted a new city code on XYZ versus this one.

As far as I know, noise ordinance studies, is it better to help heighten our noise ordinance than what it is today?

That would then apply broadly to everything, and so we've got to look at that. We can do some of that zoning and that type of thing.

Are we able to do a landscaping?

Yes, we can do buffering, landscaping requirements, all that.

Because that would tie in with the light pollution, too.

Yes, and we can absolutely do light pollution, all that type of stuff. And so we have general government requirements now. Most of it is you can plant this type of tree and it's got to be so tall when you plant it and then in five years it has to be this and so much coverage. That's typical. We have that now, but we can tighten that up if we have that. And natural landscaping is too. And like with the heat island, we can do, they got to do lower color roofs, different color paving. We can require some different things there that will help out with that as well.

The concern, you know, keeping with that 15% or 15% of applicable lot usage, lower limit, don't get so far. You can have things set off from the nearest residential.

I mean, it kind of limits you on how long.

Yeah, that's where busing requirements become a big part of that. landscaping only mitigates so much though i mean you know no it's not perfect but that's a big part of that and if you can do noise walls burn rooms there's a bunch of different things on the noise side that you can do as well yeah that's the way the big part is yeah and so like something that's typical of zoning is You have your height limits, your setbacks, all that type of stuff. The general term for that is bulk distance requirements. So you can't exceed 30% of lock coverage, 40% of lock coverage, whatever it is. Your height, if you're building, you can't exceed 45 feet, 35 feet, whatever it is, whatever that set means. That's all generally classified under that one term.

Do we have current height restrictions?

I don't know what it is off the top of my head. I know most churches are 35 feet for the vast majority of churches. We do allow some exceptions in C1 downtown if you do some standing points or standbikes from a fire perspective. You can get a little bit. I don't know if it's 35 or if it's 40 feet industrial off the top of my head.

yeah we have our restrictions on everything all zone ministers so i i know it's very important i think to address the zoning i think you know mid 90s is obviously a different world and it's like it's a rubric that doesn't necessarily work with the current you know homework we're getting turned in right um let's say all of that's complete all that's taken care of it's buttoned up there's no ambiguity it's clean the one thing i know that's been discussed and i haven't really had a good discussion about it with folks is enforcement is obviously an important thing. I think in a rural town, you have a lot less enforcement. You have a lot more community trust. You have a lot more spot checks. But it's not like when you get to a much more tightly controlled municipality where you've got, you're afraid of the code enforcement guys driving around kind of thing.

So what does that look like? So like under that, so like take Title VI, 54, right? You can adopt property maintenance codes, which we have. We've adopted international property maintenance codes. So you've got to make sure your building is up to X amount of standards. You're asking, can I see eight inches in... non-developed areas, 12 inches and non-developed areas, all that type of stuff. That also allows for abatements, nuisance abatements, right? And so we also have that other one where we didn't have to adopt it, but it made it clear, and we didn't say we didn't adopt it, right? We went through that process. So in certain circumstances, if you have junk, if you have these things, we can give homeowners any amount of time and then go with it. We also have zoning enforcement, and under that zoning enforcement, we can pursue court action through that. So if we get something that, okay, we told you you can't do this and they continue, we can seek injunction relief, right? That's going to be the court term that's supposed to be. So we can do that injunction relief. So if we get one that is, let's say we get all this trigger and we have one come in and there's problems, we do have enforcement so that we can pursue on that.

Does that change with the additional volume and or complexity? Does that change from your perspective how you would want... specifically your organization to operate? Does that mean more?

It's not going to be more. Like I said, we're starting to ramp up and doing more checks on business and industrial sites, at least. Just unrelated factors. And just going through that. Something else we've been working on internally, too, is breaking down all the businesses we have in town. excluding the little home offices and that type of stuff for a development standpoint. Here we had X amount of restaurants, we had this, we had that. What does our building look like, what do we have on this, right? And so that's something I brought up in the last meeting too, that when you're looking at zoning, you have a lot of cities that do, well, we need, we want 50 zone districts and we're gonna limit the uses. You can do that. And then you're gonna have a 500% increase in zone change requests. Because every time someone wants to do something, it's not going to be used in there. Or you can have less zone districts, and then you put a lot of things under a conditional use permit. And so it's kind of found in that balance, too. Like, we have three commercial zone districts. There's not a lot of changes in them we could have, too. It kind of only makes sense. So looking at that from the broader perspective. But enforcement, those options wouldn't change. We have those now, and that would continue. Unless something changed in state law through everything into a recall which is always possible yeah but i wouldn't foresee that now there was something too it didn't pass um but it was being set up where like we ran into a zoning issue with the business and they couldn't do it we could contact the state and then the state would step in and pull licenses and different things that particular law did not pass

So just check the high protection for I-1 or 2, which is I's at 50 feet or four stories.

Okay. Industrial is generally higher than most, yeah.

Yeah.

I figured it would be, but I don't know all the time. We get so little on anything industrial zoning, I don't get that much. So I don't get that much into that. We don't get a lot of requests for it, so...

What's the thing that you would like residents to take away from the zoning process? If you have one message? One, be involved.

Yes, pretty much so. Right? It's your city. Plain and simple, folks. It's your city. I want you to be involved. Just understand, and I think this is great, and it's been good, and the feedback is more complex than what people think it is. And that's what I hope everybody's taking away from this is it seems simple. Just say this, say no. And so it's just understanding those complexities and reaching that middle ground where we're protected. Again, it's a possibility, but not necessarily a problem.

And just to reiterate something you said last week, the city would be, of course, coordinating with the city attorney, but also seeking an opinion from the outside law firm on what is and is not possible.

So there's two SAMs that do stuff with the state and always get their last name confused. So I don't want to say the last name of the people. but he did stuff in lebanon i believe but he teaches a lot of courses he's a land use attorney he is his only guru timothy hands down a thousand percent if i have a question he responds like that and i'm gonna run it by and i'm telling you if sam says you're good We're good. He's honestly that good. He's fought in a lot of his own cases. So he's very, very involved. Yeah. And I constantly reach out to other planners and they do different things and try to keep up and see what they're doing and that type of stuff. I'm looking at a lot of what other cities are doing. And it's always difficult because he's zoning. These cities don't even make up smaller towns are gonna be this typical, whereas high residential or larger towns, their industrial may be 20 miles away from any residence and so for them it's like well this isn't going to be impactful because you have this and so it just varies so much and how many zone districts they have what their titles are what they're committing it can just rain so much and so again what what would work in nashville or workersville wouldn't necessarily work in a smaller group and often you'll find like this not so natural carved out as they all say or you know they're carved out to say that they have a different set of rules

because of their size.

Yes, and that's it. So Nashville gets a sort of old Chattanooga we can't do, I wish the state would let us do it, it would be wonderful, but we can't. So they can actually do contracts only in our conditions.

And they have a big regional zone, so like they have Hamilton County and Chattanooga have a joint zoning board, so their zoning regulations are unified, so they can get together and they vote in that way and make sure the uses in the county and the city are always going to be the same.

Unfortunately, we cannot do contracts only in our conditions. I thought that we could, but we can't. They're making the job so much easier. But we can't. There was a state law I could propose.

Those are good things to keep in mind, that just, you know, when you read things in the news about Nashville did this radio call, just claimed eminent domain over the data center land. They have a lot of different rules. I'm not saying that he's using a different rule. They have carve out different rules. They can do different things that we can't.

The functionality changes. And then you get so much too on the makeup of the city. Like we're doing the law made on the map. So what we can do versus if you're a homeless city varies as well. Homeless cities get some flexibility than we do. But it's a lot harder to set up your trigger, and then any time you make any change, that has to go back to both of the people, and there's good and bad with all the different setups. But Home Rule can be good in some ways to get a little more flexibility from regulations, but then on the other hand, it's a nightmare to actually get through it.

And then a lot of the land in both Memphis and Nashville is state land, right? So they're going to have different use cases.

They're not going to be subject to zoning restrictions, much like federal land is not subject to zoning restrictions. Yeah.

I mean, it's just... We have, like, for example, we got a story. We got a post office, national register, federal name.

Can you name that?

I ain't got a name to it, but here's what it is.

They wanted to build six extra stories. I don't have six extra stories.

Like we just recently took over the electrical inspection last October. We got that . And that's the other part with the building . So for a city to be able to do any type of inspection, you have to apply it to the state and get an exemption from the state park. So we currently have two of those . The third one is for bigger apartment complexes and certain uses over an X amount of . So I want to get that one, too, but we have to . So right now, we've got a few projects where the blue building, where that was redone, that was state fire marshal authority. We could go in and still inspect it, but they only had to apply to the state, and they go through that process right here. So, like I said, we just took over the electrical and that's how that worked. We applied and he had to be granted that. He had to have certified inspectors, all of that. So I'm also the building official. Marty White is the fire official. Clint Walker is the deputy fire official. We work in conjunction with all of the views, commercial buildings, industrial, all that kind of stuff. i'll be getting involved on this with them as well and so we've got an inner department inner city workings as well as these type of forums with the public and so with that i'm also a master pro professional which is the highest level of icc you can get um and so we get to build those entire views and i said you got a lot of them and then it's constantly changing so again we didn't really get through take these pick an extra one if you want to work through it send me i'm glad to say hey yeah this is good or hey we didn't pick this um i'll get all the sites posted how many sites we have on the industrial the average lot size all those types of things um and then also what we're doing is from the distance from from a building to a house concept on here, if we're measuring from the middle of property, the reason we're going from the middle of property is taking the setbacks, that's the likelihood where everything would be built. So when you see those measurements, just know that's very rough from the center of that industrial property to where a house could be built or a house exist. just because that's the likelihood of where things would be. And so we'll have for each site, it'll have an address. If it's not addressed, it would be like 0 Red Road or whatever street it's off of. Yeah. And so it'll have the acre size. the distance from the house, and then at the end we'll have the average acre size, average distance, that type of stuff. So then they say, okay, we only have this much, so yeah, maybe we want 1,800 feet, but we can't really get 1,800 feet. don't think on that so we can look at maximizing that number as much as we can again but there's got to be that you know how soon you'll get these maps updated you know how soon y'all will get that change up up soon so because i'm looking at two because i know i think we have one other little change that well i think that i mean it's a property that like it's pulling from a few years old and versus the state maps when you go look at the uh property assessors maps there look they're marked today but i don't know if you could use Yeah, and we've had a couple subdivisions that's come through, and this little lot's broken. So yeah, we've got to get that. So yeah, we try to. We're all busy. Lennon helped out quite a bit with the GIS, and he's been very busy.

I do love how it says official website now twice. The way you know it's really official.

Yeah. We're constantly working with that, and we need it better. Yeah, please, give me your feedback. Email me any time. Again, I'll try to check my spam maybe a little more often in case I get in there. We'll be calling. I'm happy to answer.

Out of curiosity, what benefits do you think this data center would bring? I mean, over long range.

The biggest argument that's always been about the benefits of data centers is the property tax revenue. And that's about the only one that I've heard. Because unlike most industries, right, you get, so take the auto manufacturing. if you get that and they were outside and far away from people then you could get support industries that supported them so these guys make the starters these guys make the wheels whatever the case is you can get that you're not going to get that with the data center it's that one facility that one building there's nothing else that's going to come in that tags to that for the most part. There used to be some, I think it was in the county of Virginia that's got the million data centers or whatever they have. They used to have a big center and it used to have walkways for all the employees and all these things and that's all been changed now. But that's always the biggest because it's, well, this is a $5.3 million valuation, but then you get into it and okay, you may have high for the first year or two and then it dips. That's been the only thing that I came across is, oh, this is beneficial. Now, the county or counties in Virginia, because they have so many, yeah, they've all been in flux with that, but they also have so many and they're huge, so that's a big

And they're not big employers like a lot of times where manufacturers or other industries would be.

all the contaminants that's going to come with you. And all the possibilities of sin.

And there's always a lot of what ifs and there ises with everything.

Just remember, you know, there's a lot of fearful things around them. When you read into these things, don't be ruled by fear. Read them. See what you actually think. How would you feel about living next to them? How would you feel for your neighbor if they had to live next to them? You know, some of the issues... You know, there are a lot of fearful comments, and I've always said it's like the internet, the TV, the radio. There were fearful comments in those, too. It's not just about eliminating the technology, but about making sure you use it wisely.

I mean, we can put them all in the beginning.

We can try. So, which claims on Hickson's website are incorrect, and how do we filter through that?

Do your research.

Are you part of the Facebook page? There has been a lot of breakdowns of what they claim and what they've said and what they have posted and what's actually factual. But how do you find that research? I'm doing it, but I mean...

Now, who you're talking to. Yeah. So they have a vested interest in telling you the best possible case, right? An advocacy group that's against the AAPA has the best interest in telling you the worst possible case.

That's just from their point of view.

Well, so part of it is also knowing who you're talking to. But also, for me, I talk to people who deal with data centers. I talk to people who deal with technology, who understand the output of the megabot. So I have to talk to people. who've done that and I've done the research with third parties. It's not just relying on just what they're saying and just what one person is saying, it's reaching out to multiple sources. And not only just going by verbal, but going with what's been published out there. There's a lot of peer review articles on the different aspects of AI data centers. I'm reading all of those.

And I will say, too, and so with all the articles, too, what I am, I'm breaking them down in certain ways. So, like, there'll be a list of, okay, this is about noise and the heat island index and things we can regulate. And then there'll also be a list of a whole bunch of articles. Go in and read, do that type of stuff. But it's not going to be, like there's a ton of them that are intermissions that we can't regulate. So you can go and view that for your knowledge if you want to, but it's not something that we can regulate. So I just want to make sure everybody understands. So they'll all be listed there, but some we can do things with. Others are there for informational purposes only. There's not a way we can regulate that. So just take that when you're reading through those and go through that list. It's in context just for that reason.

Think about it like in a court. You know, a court doesn't accept your state arguments. You know, word of mouth, voice, these things people are telling you. They accept articles written by professionals in the area, peer-reviewed journal studies. And a lot of the journals are free online. You can find a lot of the scientific journals online. And you can trust that if something's posted in a scientific journal, it usually has had a lot of rigor and review put into it to make sure that the information in it is correct.

Also, some universities have online libraries that are free to community members that you can access. And they probably have a lot of articles posted about it as well.

With that too, always taking the scale too, right? So if you've got a data center that's covering an acre of land, obviously that's different than 50,000 square foot. Especially your heat index, your cooling, your noise, all that type of stuff. Because maybe they got four units from an HVAC fan point rather than 60 or 100 or whatever. All that's going to make a factor in that. So you do got to consider that scale because how much noise is made from these three big ones isn't necessarily... accurate for what a small problem is going to be. The general noise impact, yes, but the actual levels and all those things is just, just keep that in consideration. Because there's so many varying sizes and then if it's AI, if it's hyperscale versus this type, there's just a lot of factors in there, so. So do your research. They have a lot of stuff posted on that. And again, if you guys have anything similar to me, there will be a bunch posted on that project. So we want to make sure all the information is out there and accurate information.

One question I had, I don't know if there's any other counties or cities that have looked into it or if it's even possible, but is there a regulation of some sort that could be put into place where it has to be US-made products and materials due to a security concern?

I, not that I know of. I know some have tried that. I would have to look into it more. I really can't even answer that.

I honestly just don't know. So the one example I heard about where a data center was kind of stopped in Australia.

Yeah, the East National Security Act.

The federal government using that. The city would be able to enact that. So I think that's a good route to go. They are using Chinese-made.

And I think there is some stuff federally on that. I just don't know if you're familiar. I don't know if there's anything we could do on that, or if there's anything with the state. There could be. I honestly just don't know.

Usually probably not. That usually falls under interstate commerce. The federal government usually does that.

I just wasn't sure if that was something that we could look into and possibly adopt.

No, that's a great question. Like I said, I honestly don't know off the top of my head.

I would have to research. I'd be happy to, but yeah. I really just don't know. But great question.

I'm concerned about the trust of science. So we're asking to look at the research, and we're looking at universities and other corporations. It's like, I don't know that we can trust them. So if anybody has any ideas for independent studies, engineers who have gotten together, like engineers and architects for ,, whatever, was outside of.

there is some and then you can also kind of get into that more from an aspect by aspect breakdown um so like the actual is going to have studies on noise and different things and mechanical equipment that would be independent just for that one perspective not data centers as a whole but there'll be a lot of that breakdown between the different ones too that's actually

That's one thing that I've done before. It's actually a really good idea if you break down each of the pieces. There's a lot of Interestingly enough, there's a lot of studies around noise, but not only noise, but specific frequencies in certain areas. And so a noise ordinance is one thing, but if you said, how are you measuring it? What are the durations? What are the time frames? And there's things that just can be missed, and you don't know. And that's why we read about all these weird sci-fi things that go on. Well, that's just people freaking out when frequencies are not meant to feel or hear. So yeah, noise specifically. There's water studies. um we actually have within the city i know that there's a lot of published data on the water that goes back into barren fork and all that like there's there's data that we study just on our own water that's available so there's yeah breaking it down i think is a really great idea because that helps you to be a lot less overwhelmed i'm looking down to the infrasound range which is usually below 20 decibels

You're right, there's a lot of discrepancy on how to measure it and what to do.

And I'm looking at that, and that's kind of the problem with those kind of things is if we can't measure that, we can't say that you can't be over this level or it's a violation and have no way to say that they're over that level. Right, because you've got the tonal noises, and you've got scones, you've got all these different factors on that. Like a scone is just, think of a bathroom fan, that's how you're perceiving that noise. That's essentially what the scone is.

Well, and you can go two routes. How does your ear perceive that noise versus how does... What was the actual vibration frequency? Usually it's what places link to if you're going to the personal range. What's the vibration frequency at the property line? And then you've got to have a way to measure. Which way are you going to be measuring that? Are you going to maintain those standards? Are you going to apply those standards to other businesses in that zone? And that's it.

It can be measured. Is there equipment out there and that type of thing. And that's kind of the tricky stuff on some of that noise stuff is Do we have the possibility to measure that and truly settle it?

I've got some stuff to send you, but I'm trying to see what the most, what the meaning is that a lot of municipalities and states are doing across the country.

Because that's one thing that you can look to, how much things you're dealing in.

because there's not there's nothing since the tca right now that talks about regulating specifically that information so we probably couldn't do that yeah so i looked at some of them there's some that have like on the formal level a plus or minus five type thing that is violation of different things i'm studying that more i'm not a noise expert so but looking at that and again just seeing it i'm not against putting something in the regs we just got to be able to make sure can this or can this not be measured can we enforce it right because i always pull off a lead too right any regulation legal logical of course That's the first thing. If it doesn't meet those three, throw it off to the side, you're wasting your time. If it's not legal, what are you doing? You're done. That's that. It's got to be logical. If it doesn't make sense, why are you bothering? It's got to be enforced. If you can't enforce it, you have a paper law. AAU, good job. You've done nothing.

You mentioned about how you trust the experts. At a certain point, you have to trust that, I mean, they have to use, they can't just use a lot of the independent studies in their, in their, you know, take their orders on you. They have to use a lot of generally accepted peer review studies when they say, this is the logic for why we would deny this. And so, you know, at a certain point you have to say, okay, this group of people have put enough work into it.

You know, we can trust and verify, but those people usually have more experience in the area.

They've done the lead work. And, you know, peer review really is the standard. You know, you have people from all over the world, not just in the United States, review the information in the journals, in all the journals.

And I'll try to get a list of, like I said, all those independent studies of the different aspects, like I said, HFQ-ness and all those things. It could be very good to break it down, like, per aspect and look at those independently and then look at the whole picture. Right? Because a big picture is always made into the small picture. So you can focus on this, but if you're listening to the little ones, you can miss out on that stuff too.

What option would we have Once everything is set, we've got our regulations, our zoning is all set, but because we didn't know about things like the frequency and things that can happen to your sleep disturbance and neurological issues and so forth, we don't know that until after it's been approved, it's built, it's in place, then what?

Change in two years, right? We change it in two years, like you said.

And a lot of it, yes, there's a lot we're not getting done. I mean, that's just the facts. I kind of discredit that. You're never going to know where the impact until something occurs. Because when you're looking at it from the impact perspective, too, you've got two times. You've got the ones that are going to happen, and you have the ones that don't. Now, it doesn't mean that perceived is invaluable or that they're not worthwhile looking at, but you can't always regulate from perceived where you can't know about it. And so it is difficult. And again, that's every industry. And every type of investment we use, you can have a lot of impacts. We can only address them the best way we can. But again, that's where I constantly look. And having on the building site, too, helps me out because I'm used to engineering practices and designs and being able to look at that and separate that as well. And so that kind of gives me a little bit of advantage. I can look at both aspects of it and see more and more how they're working together.

What's the next step?

We're going to continue this. We'll have a few more of these. So I did have, I got a reach out. It's very helpful. The best systems in firefighting, it starts with that. Someone happened to come in and do a presentation. And so we'll go over some of that. We're looking at this, and then we'll start getting into it in the science development phase. So I will say this, we got 18 months. That's what the moratorium is. But we don't want to drag this out. Also, we'll drag it out even longer than we need to. If we get rolling on this and we have enough and then we can move forward, the sooner we can move forward, I think the better off we are. There's no point in dragging this out for the full 18 months if it's truly not necessary. And again, it's a living document. So even if we get something in and then some little thing pops up, oh, hey, we missed this little thing. A couple months, we have a zone change done. Or a rate change done. Right? We have that process. Again, it's a living document. It can be changed quickly. It's the minimum problem. Do what? What is the minimum problem?

You're looking at about two months.

So the time you get written up, you gotta go to Planning Commission. Planning Commission meets the first two days of the month, and then the part. They'll make the recommendation, then we gotta put it in the paper, at least 21 days before the public hearing. Have the public hearing, have the first reading over the elements, and then the second to catch up. Generally speaking, the second reading of an ordinance is a formality reading. That's how I refer to it. I think there's maybe been one or two things where it passed first and then it passed second, but it's an oddity. It's not the same. And that's why a lot of times the second reading, the second reading that put under that consideration, the first reading is done, they don't maintain it in their mind. Get it approved.

Yeah. And so that's kind of that set up on that. And then even with the consent agenda, if it got put on there, maybe one of the aldermen decided they wanted it.

Yeah, if they had something, I don't want to discuss this, but they can remove that item and get it discussed. Absolutely.

Is it Austin Fletcher that you're going to have present?

I believe that's me, yeah.

is that going to be um something that you will publish online or yeah to just the planning department or they don't present to like no i'd like to set up something like this

Yeah, we were kind of talking about it, and I'm like, this form isn't necessarily the best thing right now. So, like, this was just a broader, hey, this is what we can do, this is what we can't do, here's what to look at. Then we'll start dissecting the individual aspects as we proceed forward. So, like, we can kind of do the same thing on this system. We can do the same thing on this, we can do the same thing on this. Because, again, that zone district's going to be very broad. So I don't, data centers kick it off, right? That's just the truth, let's get into it. So, but there's going to be many other aspects that we want to work through, too. And so there's going to be more of that type of thing.

If we end up doing a presentation like that, instead of a TV, can you get a projector and a screen? When they do the presentation, can you get a projector and a screen? We can try to figure out something like that. Yeah, instead of the TV up there. Yeah.

We obviously have other places we can use. Again, I just chose this because it's easy to serve. A lot of the other places we can't stream, so those that can make it can at least hear the conversations and get feedback and do that stuff from there. So that's what I'm just trying to do here is just, we have that capability, it's easy. We got the Park Theater, we got places in the Milner Center, but again, the ability to stream there and let it out for everybody to see is just more difficult.

I don't think this is, obviously, it's enough room for people to show up. This is not what it was last time. But, you know, it's just, if you're doing that, it's easier. I don't know, for me, it's hard to see what's up there very well.

Yeah, no, we can look at that, too. Because we can adjust the cameras, too, when we're streaming, to where it'll focus on the TV, so anything that's up there can then be seen by the cameras. It's been a long enough day. About 13 hours for this one. all four pages for me so yeah i said i just i really want to show that i get there's a lot of concerns but there's a lot of complexities so yeah hey we can't do this we can't do that and do that type of stuff yeah i think the whole thank you sir appreciate it you got it thank you for coming i about figured the same thing you the only thing is

The benefit is the revenue, but is that going away?

That's really, that's honestly the only thing I see, and does that outweigh putting $2 million back? You definitely got to look at that. That's the one I've been looking at.

You know what? The long run effect don't sound good. I'd rather the firm stay in Virginia. But like you say, it ain't like you're just going to add up right and ban it.

We honestly can't. Like I said, I've seen so many cities try to do it. I never came across a court case where they tried to do it, and it worked out in their favor. I will say that, okay. Well, what it boils down to is the regulations.

Yeah. If they're actually causing people damage, where they can sue.

AND THEN NEXT LEVEL OF INFLAMMATION, THE STATE COULD CHANGE A WHOLE BUNCH OF THINGS, AND THEN WE COULD ALMOST BE BACK AT SQUARE ONE. THAT'S OF COURSE HOW, ESPECIALLY IN MY WORLD, THAT'S HOW IT GOES. I'VE MADE A LOT OF CHANGES, BUT WE'RE GOING TO DO THIS. THE STATE SAYS, AH, HA, HA, NO MORE. ALL RIGHT, HERE WE GO.

I hope I'm as smart as you want me to be.

Yeah. To me, once I got through, got the degree, I'm like, whatever. It doesn't stop there. Yeah. They always change it. Absolutely. Again, I want to address everything the best we can, but I'm limited. We're limited in the city.

Well, that's why the message that, you know, I tell people when people ask about it is, you know, think about what you want your neighbor to be exposed to. And two, you know, we don't want to We may want to band them up, right? But we want businesses to be still able to come through and thrive. What do we want? We want protection. We want good water. We want electricity.

And again, it's really setting up the ranks where, okay, if you want to do this, do it. That's really the goal. That's the whole zoning on the big one. Absolutely. It really is.

Thank you guys for coming.

I know it's a lot, so take that. Like I said, I'll take a couple others, go through it, so I'll get that right down there. Are you on Facebook group? No.

If we have some questions on this, don't even ask.

It'd be worth it. Get on there just to read about that. What's it called? Yeah.

Just like hot areas and the facts and stuff like that. I've got a website.

Oh, for the dinner with the women?

Yeah. Okay.

If you go on there. that leads you to the Facebook group.

Do you, by chance, meet with Cody about the firetrucks? Is that any way that I... Is it Cody? The county firetruck?

Oh, with Cole?

Cole. I don't know why. It starts with a C. I'm not the greatest with names. I do better with faces.

I'm with you.

If I see someone in person, I know their name. But if I don't see them, I don't register their name half the time. But is that something that I could potentially listen in with?

Yeah, depending on how the setup and stuff is. Like I said, a lot of times we'll just call each other and, you know, they'll run in or something.

They'll be like, hey, have you ever been to this place?

I've had that this week. And they don't have a link to the Facebook group. So once. The new codes will come out about December as well. And again, I'm going to look to go to the 2027 . It'll be about mid-next year. The ICC, the way it works is when the first version comes out, then all of a sudden there's a million changes. So you never adopt the first version. It never plays out too well.

My dad's a building inspector.

You always wait and go, we're going to go the second version. It's a little bit better. So, yeah, we do that.

I grew up hearing him complain about it all the time.

Yeah, so he always is about the second one. And that's a good issue. As these technologies and these things start coming out, the ICT is pretty good about it. short of six months fat we need to figure this out so yeah yeah so they're pretty good about that so and again once we adopt those there'll be public hearings in the last couple of years and i'm going to look and say okay do we want to be able to provide the states that we can so yeah and it's important to still remember to talk to your state legislature you want to make sure it's multiple strings at the same time state regulations as well and legislative session is january to may yeah voting's coming up soon and it's hard because they fly through bills as well because like i'll be tracking something and it'll be inconvenient that all of a sudden we got public chapter yeah and if you ever see that like a public chapter that's been signed into law then once it's been signed into law by the governor it becomes public but just know if you type in that number make sure you put the gear in because, like, you can have public chapter 565, but that's every year. So it can bring up, oh, well, public chapter 565 is relevant to intoxicating liquors and has nothing to do with what you're looking at. Always make sure you put that year in. Because otherwise, you're just going to come across much random. What was your name? Joe.

Jeff. William. Nice to meet you, Jeff. Nice to meet you, man. Are you in the Facebook group? I've browsed them. So we have a Facebook group.

Yeah, we have a dedicated Facebook group. And we invite everyone who, especially if they have experience with data centers, to share their experience and what they've learned.

I think it's still public, right? Because I've been reading it.

It is private because we did have some issues.

So at one point in the beginning, I thought it was public. It was. That's why I stopped seeing it then.

And then we had some issues. And we made it private, and we try to focus more on Warren County residents letting them in. We have some people from surrounding counties who have asked to be let in because I think it was Lawrence County, they asked to use my petition wording. And so they've asked to join the group, a few of their members, so they can stay up to date in. And they've asked for the research paper that I wrote and stuff like that.

against AI data centers.

Yeah, it's Warren County, Tennessee against AI data centers.

And if you go to warrencountyagainstaidatacenters.com, it'll take you right to the Facebook page.

I've had several invites. I'm infrequent on social media.

Yeah.

I don't blame you for that. I was, too, at all this. I don't either. All I do is Facebook for Marketplace. That's it. Yeah. And I have to... Facebook can be very fun for me. I'm sure. That's...

He sends me stuff that I'm like, it'll be a couple days until I watch all 50 of them But see how I'm in between classes right now.

Yeah, all I got is time to look at these reels my I don't like watching these but I don't really have anything else to do at the moment. See I get I get harangued at bedtime look at all these. It's like, look at all these. I showed you. I sent this to you. Look at all these.

Look at all these. He's like, did you watch the video that I sent you about such and such? And that's like 10 videos up there? Yeah.

I was like, no. I was in a meeting. I did not get a chance to look at it.