City Council - Regular Meeting

Okay. All right, everybody, let's go ahead and get started with the City Council Conference for Tuesday, May 26, 2026. We have one item on the agenda, and that's a discussion regarding data centers and a possible moratorium. And we have a city attorney here to help answer any questions if we have any. I think given the discussion several cities in Oklahoma and around the country have been having about data centers and Some have put moratoriums in place while they try to figure out local policy to respond either to ones that are actively coming or potentially so. This is an opportunity for us to discuss that. Council Member Grant?

I just wanted to get staff's opinion on Norman's ability to even support one. As I understand it, we don't have the land mass. nor the capacity for water. Is that a correct assumption?

Yes. And so we have Jane, our planning director, can speak to that as well as well as Chris with utilities.

Dramatically, would you like to come over here and answer that question?

As far as the land available, my understanding is typically they require large amounts of acreage.

deferred to jane hudson it's my understanding that they can start on something as small as 10 acres i was in a discussion today with another council member and but i've also heard that they go up to 100 acres 60 acres at this time as far as the zoning is concerned the only place that they would be able to go would be in some in the zoning district i-2 Under the I-2 zoning district, it specifically says it can be used for anything but, and there's a list of prohibited uses, and a data center is not currently under the prohibited uses. That would be the only area that they could go.

So we could put it under prohibited use for I-2? We could, with your direction. Could we be preempted? Could we be preempted in our attempt to do that?

You could always be. You could be preempted by the state, but given what you've seen in the documents that you were given about other municipalities, the concern I think would be really more from the perspective of not doing something to reasonably regulate, but doing something to totally sort of prohibit them from actually existing. What we've been talking about from the staff perspective is My understanding is data centers require a lot of water, they require a lot of electricity, and they require some level of IT service, which there really isn't anywhere in the city where all those three things exist, such that currently, if you were to come in tomorrow and say you wanted to do a data center somewhere out in East Norman, you don't have the infrastructure for that. I think we can think about it forward-looking in terms of if that were to happen, what would we want to see? And go ahead and start thinking about what you might want to put in zoning on those lines.

Could we say what our preference is? I'm aware that there are other styles of data center that run on more green energy, like solar, wind, and they also, in other countries, don't exactly look like American data centers. Their technology is a little more condensed, so the acreage is not the same or up to 100 or 160 or larger. I do worry, though, about them not having infrastructure, because in other places they have brought out generators and other things to run these in rural communities. So I wouldn't want to see that. That's an air quality issue. And then also hauling that stuff out there is not great. So if we didn't want to say it's a total prohibited use, we could outline the ways we would be supportive. They hit certain environmental tick boxes. We could also say a number of jobs, maybe. I don't know. Right.

I mean, that's one of the things I think that people do get a little bit upset about in terms of data centers is they don't really require that many employees. I guess, land usage and resource usage, but they don't generally have a lot in terms of employees, so they're not necessarily creating a lot of jobs. My understanding is Stillwater is getting one, and their big issue is they're going to get a lot of revenue from the franchise fee that they're getting from the electric part of it.

And they make their own water.

What's that?

They have their own water, too. Right.

So those are some of the issues I think we can think about going forward that probably would be helpful to get input from council on how you would like to see, if those were to develop, how you would like to see that occur.

Okay. And then on the water side of the equation, Mr. Mattingly, what are your thoughts about data centers as they currently operate in our capacity.

Yes.

Looking at Stillwaters, their full build-out, they would be wanting to use 8.1 million gallons a day. That's 3 billion gallons a year, and that's about what we use out of our lake in a year, 3.08 billion a year. So that's a lot of water that I don't – wouldn't be easy for us to get to that.

So use all our allocation.

Right.

And if that was the lake, what about wells and us buying water that just...

The only way we could maybe give them water would be if they wanted some of our wastewater, our water reclamation facility, if that would be clean enough for them to use as a cooling source.

And then what about the water that's discharged from one of these?

Yeah, the temperature. There's regulations that they'll have to meet to make sure it's cooled down to a temperature that the environment can take it back and not

I think a little bit of a well problem is you have to get a permit from a water resources board, and your allocation from whatever aquifer you're drawing from is based on the square footage of your property. So depending upon the size of the property, they probably would not be able to extract enough well water for their purposes. Unless you buy like 1,200 acres. That would have to be the issue. I found this online. You would have to buy something like that, but then you would have to go get that permit from the Water Resources Board. And again, they're supposed to be doing a hydrological study on the Garbo-Rowington, and this goes back to a time when we had another issue that was well-related but not anything to do with this. I can't remember if they were actually able to complete that because that also impacts how much water you're going to get allocated Okay.

Well, just my surface thoughts, because I feel like I'd like more data, and I'm still thinking about other things like an AI policy as well. I would support a moratorium until our zoning and the policies that we want to see that would support a specific type that could be beneficial for Norman were in place. I don't think we could support one now, but, you know, The technology evolves, and so I think it would benefit us to consider what we would support.

Chancellor Kerber?

Here's my deal on it. I'm 100% against them. I mean, moratorium or not. You've got Councilville, OKC, Seminole Nation, Chandler, Muskogee, Yukon, Sand Springs, Stillwater, and we can keep going on all the places in Oklahoma who are currently vital. You have the AOC on talking about the ones that were built two or three years ago in Michigan, and all the wells are now mud. She's on there every day on the news talking about it. Even a small one, like say in a facility, an old grow, where they have an extreme amount of power, like 1,600 amps, is enough that you could start off a small data center. That small data center, even just on the 1,600 amps on a closed-loop system, will still have the ability of pulling 300,000 to 400,000 gallons a day. And then it also gets their foot in the door to where they're able to expand later because they have their foot in the door. I get messages constantly about OG&E members whose power is constantly surging and blowing out their devices and we don't have that kind of power in Norman. A 75 megawatt facility is going to use the same amount of power as 50,000 houses. Norman has 52,000 houses. You could even make a 10,000 square foot facility or a 30,000 square foot facility 75 megawatts. So, I mean, you have that potential of allowing that kind of water, which, like he said, is about a million and a half gallons of water a day for something that small that they could actually fit into Norman. So you would literally flatline our electrical period. We just had to use eminent domain through WFEC to take somebody's land. And that's only like a 14 to 15 megawatt plant. So it wouldn't even come close to touching a data center. I call it brine that they would be releasing. They call it something else. They take the water and they suck all the minerals out of it and they evaporate most of the water. That raises our heat. So you go to Utah because Oklahoma just passed a bill saying that we can make our own power. Companies can bypass the power grids by making their own power. Well, in Utah... Right now, one that they're fighting, if they allow it to go online, they're going to tap into the Ruby gas line, go straight for a main gas line that crosses this country with the excuse of only like 7% of us being used. The type of unit they're going to use to power it will raise the temperature at nighttime in that area by 26 degrees and in the daytime by over 8 degrees. So think of what you're going to do to our economy and our ecosystem if you raise the temperature by 26 degrees at nighttime, not to mention people's energy bills. And then you circle around into the competition for water. And if we're looking for affordable housing and we want Norman to be affordable housing, the last thing we need to do is bring in data centers because the amount of power and water they use will drive the cost up for the rest of the customers in town, making it way less affordable to live here because now you're competing with a data center. Most of the data centers that pass in regulation are passed as research centers. So they don't pay taxes, even though they're making trillions of dollars, and even though they're considered, I mean, they're a storage facility. They store people's data, but yet we allow them to pass as research centers where they dodge taxes, even though it's no different than me renting a self-storage unit and storing my boat in it for $150 a month. They get to skirt around them taxes. So when it comes to why do we need a data center, there's absolutely zero reasons why we need a data center here. We have more than 5,000 in the USA. Everybody keeps saying, well, we've got to keep up with China. China has 500. We have 5,000. If you look at Julia Brockovich's website where they've had everybody go in and put where a data center might be, there's over 15,000 projected to come up in the United States. So I say Norman should be different. Let's be somebody who sets the standard for the future generations. And let's say no data centers, because we do need affordable housing. We do need to take care of our future generations. And we do need to preserve our water, our natural resources. Because even if it ain't just using water, the amount of gas they're going to take, the amount of pollution they're going to put off, we're still burning natural resources at a rate that no other industry can burn it. And technically, they have the power to cool all their stuff without a single drop of water. They could use gas to cool their systems, and they choose not to because of the cost. So they're skirting all the taxes, making trillions of dollars, and dodging every single bit of financial or economical responsibility that they would have. And I say that we be the ones who stand up and just say no. That's my pitch. Thank you. Sorry.

Thank you very much.

That's good.

Thank you. Thank you, Council Member. Council Member Bruce, and then Kanter.

So why put a moratorium in place when it can be handled if a request comes in, that spot request? Why do a three-year moratorium when you can handle it on the table with, you know, through the Planning Commission and then to the committee on that spot request?

comes in and it's they do acquire an i-2 tract but then it wouldn't be coming to planning commission or city council right now what we have in the zoning code is under i-2 it says any use except and it lists out five things right but under those five things a data center is not one of them so if they find combine enough properties within an industrial zone district I-2, then they would not come to Planning Commission or City Council for approval.

So I can understand the concerns on water usage, particularly if it's not a closed-loop system. I can understand the concerns not using wastewater from the treatment plant, find that wastewater and stable it and go. I can understand those concerns. I can understand the concerns of the energy if they're not. I understand that. But if someone came to enormous, hey, here's my footprint, I'm on 10 acres, I'm in a data center, I've got a closed loop, I'll buy your wastewater, and I'm all, I'm self-sufficient. But why I wouldn't, because I don't have a choice to ensure that happened. What you're telling me, I don't have a choice to make sure that happened during a council session related to... So there's no mechanism to influence that behavior.

This would be the mechanism. Because right now, if they buy the land in a zoned property, then they can build anything by right. So we wouldn't have to approve it any further. There would be no spud discussion or anything like that. So technically speaking, like what Helen was saying, they can be 10 acres. So as the market changes, and maybe they can do them in five acres. and maybe they do $400,000 or 400,000 gallons in a day and it pops up by right and we don't have any control over it, then that would be what this would seek to... What I'm getting at is not the method.

I mean, it's not the business we disagree with. It's the method they do their business. So if they didn't... impact power, it was a closed-loop system on water, particularly if I'm buying water from the city that's wastewater, why wouldn't you consider it? So it's the method of how they conduct business that we object to.

Okay. Let's see that we need land use that either generates sales tax or has jobs, is the way I kind of see it. like if Bosch as a manufacturing plant, which has like 1,500 jobs right now, and the amount of space it takes up and the resources it uses, but imagine if only 50 people worked there. What good would Bosch plant be to normally nobody work there? I don't know if we'd get any sales tax from that. That was one of my questions, too, about was the tax revenue, like a data center, does it doesn't generate a product, a taxable product, and the franchise fee thing, is that because Stillwater has their own utility, or would OG&E having that customer And that customer being in the Norman City limits mean that we get more franchise fee from OG&E? Is that what? The latter. Okay. But it would just be a question of what is that actual amount, and is it worth it to our community, I guess. Some, I guess, think it is, but that would be my question. Yeah, if it doesn't have any jobs and doesn't generate any tax revenue for us, the franchise fee thing would be the only thing that might be a consideration with that.

with us for electricity.

So that's, it could be different if it was going through a statewide deal.

The other issue that we have to think about from the moratorium perspective has to do with the issue of a taking because we can't take people's property, we can't take it physically and we can't necessarily regulate them out of existence. Potentially being a taking, so we'll have to be careful. I think what you're saying is consistent with some of what other municipalities have done. They have imposed temporary moratoriums to give staff the opportunity to evaluate those impacts. And it sounds like even now, that's what I'm hearing is, if you made data centers in those areas of special use, then those special uses would have to come back to council. So council would get the opportunity to evaluate things like how are you creating your power, where are you getting your water from, What impact is it going to have on the surrounding area?

That's kind of where I was going, because there's businesses we require a special use permit to operate, and it has to go through the whole process.

One of the ones

I definitely think the clarification on the I2 zoning and everything probably is needed to put that in there for right now about no data centers. You know, if we ever changed our mind, we could always go back and reverse that and everything. But this OML leadership I'm taking, I'm in class with tons of other cities around Oklahoma And there's a bunch of people in those classes that are dealing with data centers right now. And some are dealing with the initial startup, you know, like their council just approved it. And they looked at their council justified it by saying, we'll give you this big payment up front just to be able to have it and everything like that. But the ones that already have it said, there he is. wait until the checks clear the bank, you know, that they'll promise stuff up front, but then they'll say this or that once they kind of get the footprint in there. Also, once they're in there, then they realize what the true impact of the water and electric are in their towns. And a lot of these people are now struggling and trying to find a way out of this data center after signing. And he goes, one guy said, there's a reason why they want you to sign as long as you allow them to sign. That way you'll be with them forever, basically, at that point, you know. So I don't think, you know, Three billion gallons of water possibly for an average size one and we use three billion as a city and we're buying it from all over the place. I mean, I don't know where we could go buy three more billion gallons of water from anybody around us. to even equal that out every single year guaranteed, you know, and everything like that. It would be really, really hard to ask. And who comps that price, you know, that we're paying for all that extra $3 billion worth of water then, you know? Who has to eat it? I still think there's a lot of questions. I think that, you know, a bunch of things I've studied too is we know technology will expand. What happens when you put one of these in your neighborhood and everything like that and let them have all your resources and then technology in five, ten years outgrows them you know, that there's something bigger and greater and everything that takes up a lot less whatever, you know, but yet you still have this eyesore in your community that you allowed in for 40, 30 years and things like that that might be sitting there still. So I just, I'm with him that, you know, we're trying to preserve a lot of Norman and we're trying to get definitely sales tax in Norman. If we find out there's no way at all to get sales tax from them, then that would definitely be a no-go for me for sure if there's no way to get any money from them.

AND NO JOBS FOR PEOPLE TO BRING HOME MONEY.

EXACTLY, TO BRING HOME THE SPEND ELSEWHERE.

YES, SIR.

I'LL JUST START WITH SAYING THAT I DO SUPPORT A MORATORIUM But there's just a couple questions. Director Hudson, how many total acres of I-2 do we have in Norman? Do you know that off the top of your head?

I don't. I'm sorry. No, no worries. I looked at the map today when we were talking about it, and I can tell you that, you know, it's along the east, the majority of it's along the east side of I-35. There's some decent chunks. Descan and... something like that but there's like I said a minute ago if they came in and they gathered multiple parcels then they could have a decent sized chunk that doesn't mean that they wouldn't have to come back and do a new final plat if they were changing access streets having to vacate some easements or something like that so then that would come before you but it could be more hard pressed on the plat than you would be

And then, Director Mattingly, do you know what your max, like, water user per day customer, roughly, like, what? One. One million gallon a day. A million?

Is our current biggest?

Yeah, OU. Roughly. That's rough.

They provide a few jobs. So, OU provides a few jobs, so... Kind of on the power deal, when we went to D.C. before I ran into my company of errors, I was able to meet with the Assistant Secretary of Energy for Hydrocarbons and Geothermal and ask him specifically about data centers in towns and stuff. And it was a real... He works for the administration, so I got the administration's take on it. He mentioned the 2026 State of the Union Address and that Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI, Oracle, and XAI, they did sign a pledge to pay the full cost of all required power generation and transmission grid upgrades. So he was selling it to me as power's not your problem. Like all these big companies said, it's not going to be on the rate payer to upgrade OEC, OG&E. But as we've seen out in Ward 5 recently, when Western Farmers needed an area for transmission or whatever, OEC had to provide it for them. So I don't think it's... I don't think all those companies are going to pay the full cost. I think some of our citizens are going to pay the cost too, whether it be money, whether it be having to give up land. But the big, big, big sticking point for me is water. I don't know if we can require them to put a cooling tower in and have just a truly a closed loop system, like we'll sell you six million gallons and that's all you get and you got to keep it in your system and i don't know i'm not a cooling tower person i don't know but it's the water that's the huge huge huge um issue for me and that's why i'd like a moratorium until we can really figure this out best way to paper it up and to kind of stop. And I do understand why they want to be around here, you know, when the center of the country, so the latency to each coast and both borders, north and south, is fairly minimal, but I don't see any benefit the city of Norman gets out of this. Like the mayor and a few others mentioned, might have one, two employees when it's all said and done with. If the county wants the property tax increase, they can them out on county land, unincorporated land, I just, I don't think it's in the City of Norman's best interest to have one. So if we can find a moratorium, figure out a way to work, still work on all that, all my words for tonight. So, thank you.

So I would, I'd support a moratorium too. Obviously the water is a big issue. Properties that are zoned I-2 currently sound like they would have a much better use than potentially being parceled together if they're I-35 frontage for sales tax generation and things along those lines. Also, just knowing how private industry moves and evolves. It could be anything from a 10-acre site to a 100-acre site. We could require them to provide their own water and provide their own electricity or whatever it is, but there's always going to be some way around it. that I think us exploring a temporary moratorium I mean even if it's through the end of the year is a wiser way to go I think if we have properties that are available for these to pop up by right right now then we need to be able to have a mechanism there to block it because as other communities start to tell data centers know they're going to be looking for places that they can pop up and exploit and so while we get our ducks in a row if we You know, ultimately, at the end of the process, if we figure out that data centers are okay and it's got all these rules and regulations and things, extra things that we need to put on it, I feel like now is a time where we can stop and really take a breath and look at it and approach it in a more responsible way, especially if we already have properties that are zoned that can be used for that. So that's my thoughts.

Yes. Council Member Kirby, and then Bruce.

A few things that caught my... There's no such thing as a true closed-loop system. You're going to have to... You're going to have to do glycol or something in it, and minerals are going to always have to be deposited one way or another, so there is no such thing as a closed loop. That's just fancy words they use to try to get us to let them come in, because it's still going to use the million gallons a day, even when they're going to, well, you know, some evaporates, well, you know, some. At the end of the day, when you ask the hard questions... They use a butt-ton of water. Secondly, you brought up him saying that they would build their own power sources at the same time that Oklahoma just passed legislation saying that power companies can now put that cost on the customers and get their money back. So if a data center goes in and they have to build something to justify it, how do we know all customers ain't getting charged for that? And then when they get their money back, however long, they told us years ago we'd pay the turnpikes off and we're still paying for them. So with the new legislation Oklahoma passed and making it to where we can be charged before the actual substations are built, that makes all customers vulnerable. Google and Amazon already here have plenty of places. The land that they can come and get to build data centers, I'm pretty sure is owned by OU, and we see how partnership with them goes. They own a lot of that land over there off of Industrial Boulevard, so even if we weren't the ones who sold it to them or a private individual, they could go in and gobble it up from OU. OKC did a temporary moratorium, and they broke it last week, upset a lot of their customers, got a lot of people calling for their heads. So I want to know particularly is can we do what we need to do on this particular thing, and instead of kicking the bucket down the land, can we just take into the fact that for three years, four years, data has been done, and we are seeing the aftermath daily on TV, even with AOC holding it up for Michigan ones, we see what happens, that there is no more research that can be done on whether they will be good or not when we can tell all the aftermath. And if you look at Chandler, they did kind of like what you're talking about, where they just made it that it makes it so hard to get through zoning, If you can even get through zoning, it's easier just to go elsewhere. So instead of a moratorium, I'm like, David, can we somehow get it into the current coding to where It slows them down and makes it almost impossible. I mean, personally, I think it should be impossible considering that we're talking in the next nine years, we could be drinking our own human recycled wastewater. That by itself should be enough to detour bringing in a data center that could speed that up by four or five years. I mean, if we use that water now, we're going to be doing that sooner. And I'm pretty sure we probably don't have the water plant and the technology we need to do that type of filtration right now. So, we're trying to work on it.

Thank you.

Yeah, I just was basically going to agree with what most of y'all said. It's all been great. I especially agree with Council Member Hinkle whenever he said that since there is already land zoned for I-2, then we definitely need a mechanism in place to where it needs to come to us first for approval. But I absolutely support the moratorium. I just would prefer it not to happen at all. So that's where I'm at on that.

How much is

So, you know, it's all about the methods of production, methods of sustainment of a plant, right? I mean, that's what's important. Not that you have a plant. Not that you have it. It's like a storage building, right? It's like down 240. See how the storage building's up to 240. So it's not the building itself or the, you know, but it's the methods of production. That's what we're concerned about. So if you can't handle methods of production through some type of specialized, you know, it's specialized. You've got to come back to the city. Then I can understand the moratorium.

Just to speak on that, kind of to speak on your point, too, I think that's why the more we want to put something in place that may prevent them from ever happening. You're correct, and the research has been done, but we don't know how it applies to Norman exactly. So by providing this moratorium, it gives us that time to do the research, to correct, to make the right zoning, to make the right codes, to make the right ordinances, to be more effective whenever we are at the end of that road. And then my other question, if OU is our biggest water consumer today, and they decide to put a data center on campus, would that

We don't have enough available now. I mean what we'd have to do is increase our purchase from Oklahoma City Which I can get another five mgd right now with that connection we have any more over that we'd have to Build another connection to Oklahoma City somewhere and tie off their big line to go bigger Let's run no, why would you sell them water from except for affluent I

I mean, people drink that stuff now.

And we've considered selling effluent to OG&E power plants, which some power plants have approached us before, and we thought, well, we might do that. So that's not off the table if they want to use our wastewater and make some revenue so that we keep our costs down. Freshwater, a little tougher. We have a plan to step into getting more water, but not one to just double our usage. No.

Council Member Grant?

I was going to say, the indirect potable reuse was at least a decade away, if memory serves, and that will require a lot of funding. And just to circle back to the effluent idea, so they do, whether it would go to OG&E or some other customer, it has to return paint back into the system? Like, how is that effluent discharged once it goes through their process?

That would be between them and the DEQ.

So DEQ would regulate?

There is a part that I don't know is this river is used to having our 11 million gallons a day, so the fish and the wildlife know that water, that amount. And DEQ has, I don't know if they know the exact answer. If we could just reduce it or turn it off, I think they would want some minimal flow to continue to go to the river. But I don't know if there's a law in the books that says we have to. send so much to the river.

Yeah, I'd like to dig down into that as well because I always think about the very end of the line as well. You know, we have great ideas but some of it's like what happens to the PFOS when we trap it? How does that get handled? So I would like to know if effluent was on the table how that gets handled and then also the part about how much goes back into the river and and what would be ecologically sustainable.

It's interesting, too, because the water we're putting into the river isn't natural. I mean, if the city of Norman wasn't sitting here and it was just open land, there wouldn't be 11 million gallons a day of water being pumped into the river from this area. So it's like we're not, the fish have come to rely on it because it's evolved into that, but it's like they're not. The whole ecosystem is based on the city of Mormon putting 11 million gallons of treated wastewater in the river every day. That's interesting. It is, though. Our water is so clear. Well, and yeah, if you go down to the end of the line, which if any of you haven't been to the water reclamation plant and seen the end of the line, one of those fish, the giant, I was like, they look like, yeah, alligator car. Swim all the way up that whole creek. Unbelievable. Anyway, I had a question about the, so my one question I had was, I was thinking of like currently developed industrial property in Norman. It's really large. And I was thinking, is Cisco, but on the, I think that's some commercial property. But I was like, what if Cisco closed that plant? Could that be turned into a data center by right? And then I was thinking the same thing about Southwest Wire at Tecumseh 935. And that is zone office, apparently. So I was like, because I was thinking, well, what if Southwest Wire moved? Could a data center be put in by right? on a large existing, so we may not have any large undeveloped industrial property, Norman, but do we have any large developed industrial property that could be, if something happened where it was like, oh, well, we can put a data center there by right because it was already industrial. So that's one question that I had about existing spots. And then, I mean, it seems there may be some legal issue about outright banning them, potentially. but requiring a special use permit and any that came forward have to go through planning commission to council vote, I think is something we should definitely work on as part of the moratorium process.

One of the things that we talked about in this context is we've effectively banned strip clubs. Because we have the provision that says you can't be within 500 feet of a church or a school. The only one that was in existence at the time was Sugar's, which is within 500 feet of that church that's on University. Now, we gave them, we grandfathered them for three years, and they were supposed to go to not full nudity. They kind of sort of did for a little bit, and then they didn't. But now that they're closed, if you pull up our zoning map and look at it, there really isn't another place that's properly zoned

Council could find a way to allow it if we wanted to, right?

It'd be hard. It'd be difficult. Or we'd have to change the order. It has to do with the location.

It'd be very hard.

Even if we have a zoning provision and Council allows something that's a violation of our zoning provision, it gives those property owners the ability to sue us to say, hey, make them comply with the zoning provision, which is why sometimes we kind of sort of get on you guys when those issues come up. But it'd be difficult. So there is that possibility. But I think you would have to do it on the front end. I think what Jane is talking about is currently if I came in today and filed a, if it was an area zone A2 and I came in today and I wanted to put in a data center, it's kind of like if an area zone R1 and I want to build a house on a lot, I can build a house. I don't have to come back to council because it's already zoned appropriately. If it's currently not one of the uses specifically prohibited in that industrial category, If somebody came in today and said, this is what I'm doing, and they went over to planning to get a permit, they have the ability to do it as a matter of right. That's why it may be, if we're concerned about it to that extent, it probably would not be a bad idea, before you do a moratorium, to amend that ordinance to require, to make that a special use.

I just wanted to bring up, it's been many a year since I've been at OU, so I can't speak Was it 2019 when we switched over from OU to City of Norman Water because of the wells at OU? 2006. OU has about 22 wells. 2006. So if OU decided to do any business with a... AI data center, they have about 22 private wells that they're not able to use for anything outside of their irrigation system. They've had them wells. It's a very well-connected system. All the pipe works, they switched over to Chris to get a safer water for the students and the workers years ago. So technically, if OU had it come on, they do have a very... I don't know if their pumps are still going, but they do have a network of water wells, about 20 of them, that they could... That are high in arsenic and other not drinkable stuff. So, I mean, they would use an unwanted water is what they'd be running on for that. So, technically, if they did do it, we wouldn't have a lot to say, but they would be using their own water. But it still wouldn't help with the OG&E or nothing and the power supply. Because even if you make your own power, you're using natural gas or you're creating heat or you're creating the pollution into the air. Nothing good. And that's where I keep coming back to, like, with Councilman Bruce is they offer nothing that is profitable to Norman or offers anything to Norman. They bring nothing to the table. I mean, and we say they don't have a service, but they are renting space. No different than if you were renting a physical storage unit, of which I'm pretty sure we get sales taxes off of, do we not? Or is that under the ad valerum? How does that? I'm sure Norman probably makes some kind of money off of these self-storage units you see everywhere. So if they're working, is there a way to write it in there that if they're going to come in and sell storage space, they should at least have, they can't be under research? I mean, I don't think being allowed to slide in under research, what are you researching? guess would be the question can we question them on what the research is and also we passed laws that if it's anything governmental then it can't it has to be all American-made products so who's going to make sure the code that they're using American-made products I mean, there's a lot of little ins and outs. I mean, I can find you a thousand reasons of why we don't need them. I will stay up for the next week and find you a thousand reasons.

They're researching us. I think those are some of the issues.

When we go to the tinfoil hats, yeah, we can go to that, too, that they're surveilling us.

Those are some of the questions I think we would want to drill down.

Because my whole thing is no way, shape, or form is this going to benefit my kids or my grandkids. At no way, shape, or form is this okay or good for Norman. So why do we even consider it when we have a thousand other things that can be great for Norman?

There are two supercomputers on the OU campus, but I don't know how much water.

We've had them for years, though. They was North-Base and South-Base.

If we're going to go through this exercise, I want to to see if it would be possible to go back and look at maybe some buildings that are currently zoned for just commercial use that might have been retrofitted as data centers and they don't really house any people anymore either. I have a couple properties of mine that we can discuss offline, but I'd be curious to see if there was a, we're looking at all of these things and the impact that they have, if those already exist in our city, kind of stealthily be worth reviewing.

Just in response to your comment, Cisco is actually zoned a PUD. I'm not sure what they did, but they're zoned a PUD.

Are we talking about new Cisco?

So that would require council approval or somebody can redevelop Cisco. Any other questions? I think the director.

the moratorium action while we change possibly changing the word to that I to yes there's also the on the table that you could get there through a specialized use you know and once again yeah yeah I understand moratorium I understand that if you don't have any other check You've got to check here, and I'd be interested in, okay, this guy, this entity is interested in using effluent water, and he produces his own energy through natural gas, and his footprint is an acre. And he employs up to 30 to 200 people. That's what your data centers usually employ. They're on the side, yeah.

But council being able to consider things that may happen down the road, you know.

So if you miss an opportunity, you miss an opportunity.

If we were to do a more, if we were to pursue a more tournament, is there a time that, like, for 30 days, for 60 days, for six months, that council would prefer or staff?

I prefer if we're going to do it, we do it to the end of the year.

Especially if you're going to come back and if we're going to do a special use.

That gives us enough time.

We need to figure out what specific requirements you want to attach to that special use. We've got several special uses right now that have additional qualifiers that an applicant has to meet, whether it's SIP, nice and rain, just any general things.

So we could consider a moratorium action on the June 9th council meeting if That is what was preferred by everybody.

Could we get it added to the current list before then? Or, like, is that, are we going to do both or just do the moratorium?

Well, we do the moratorium, and that gives us the time to figure out what policy we want to put in place. What policies?

Could we not add that while we do the moratorium to keep people from coming in and trying to?

If you did the moratorium, you wouldn't have to

That halts all of it until we lift it more.

But from now to the 9th, they could. And then however long it takes to publish that and get it into the paperwork, they could. Whereas technically, she could, within the next few days, run it and add that to the already existing list of the I2s, could she not? No, we would have to vote on that, too.

So a moratorium, though, would that be something that goes into effect immediately, or would we need to do an emergency to make it . So that's what we consider an emergency clause, again, to enact it immediately, if that's what we wanted to do.

I was hearing to the end of the year, but just having been a few seasons on council, I know things don't go that fast. So I would be comfortable with a year.

From today or the 9th?

The 9th.

Perfect.

And council could lift the moratorium if they chose to at Mason anytime.

Policy's passed. All the ducks were in a row. And everything's ready. Last moratorium that I remember. This is in the 2000s because it had to do with.

We did it for Center City for like six months.

It had to do with the wastewater master plan. We had a moratorium on development until we finalized the wastewater master plan. That had some provisions in there. I mean, the big issue was, if you guys know, there's a ridge that runs from northwest Norman through southeast Norman. Everything on the north side of the ridge has to have a lift station to pump it over the ridge so it flows by gravity down to the south plant. Ashton Grove, the reason I know this is because it was an Ashton Grove issue. He wanted to develop, notwithstanding the fact that this moratorium was in place, he agreed to replace existing lift station and have his new lift station handle the flow from that lift station and the flow from Ashton Grove. So he was able to get to develop his property, notwithstanding the moratorium. So a lot of times there are provisions in there that say if you meet this certain criteria, you can go ahead and develop or whatever, notwithstanding the moratorium. I think what I'm hearing from you guys is you don't want any of that.

You want the ability to say until this is over and done with. We don't want anybody coming to the table and telling all

The important part of that, and this gets us out of the taking realm, is that's why it needs to be temporary. I think a year is fine. But there needs to be some specific direction to staff as to what it is you want us to look at. Again, for that particular moratorium, it was, we were in the process. We had engaged Camp Dresser McKee to draft that wastewater master plan. So we were in the process of doing that. You couldn't, for example, just say, we're going to do a moratorium. So what I'm hearing is a moratorium, about a year, but you want staff to be answering some of the questions that you guys are talking about and bring that back to you so you can make a determination as to how you want to do it.

Yes, sir. That's what I'm hearing as well. Any final comments, questions about any of that? Okay. Well, then let staff know if you have any other comments or things to add to that, and we'll plan for the 9th to have an item on the agenda for consideration.