City Council - workshop

Okay, it is Wednesday, August 5th, 2026. The time is 5.32 p.m. We started a little late due to some technical issues. The Tooele City Council is meeting in a work meeting that is being held at Tooele City Hall in the Council Chambers located at 90 North Main Street in Tooele, Utah. We're also streaming this electronically on the Tooele City YouTube channel. We will start with the roll call. Councilman Gossett. Present. Councilwoman Gochis. Present. Councilman McCall. Present. Councilman Hanson.

I'm present by phone.

And I'm Councilman Brady, and I'm also present. We'll move on to item three, which is the mayor's report.

Thank you, Council. I just have a couple of things today. In case you weren't aware, we had a change of command at the Tooele Army Depot, so we have a new Colonel Fortune there. He's going to be a great addition to Tooele. And we have some upcoming changes at the Dugway Proving Grounds, too, some changes going on there. I'll report on those once we attend to those. We've had a couple of meetings with UDOT in regards to the Mid-Valley Highway and our corridor access agreement with UDOT. So we're working through some challenges there and trying to work with UDOT to get what's best for Tooele City and moving forward with that. And then I was able to attend also the senior center across the street. They've become the first ever center of kindness. And they invited me to their celebration. Councilman McCall was there as well. And they are moving forward, just like we're a city of kindness, with the kindness initiatives. And they were pretty excited about that. They had a great turnout. There were hundreds of people there to celebrate. And Mr. Somnani from the Somnani Foundation came out to celebrate with them. Then one just last, we had a pre-disaster mitigation meeting with the county and some people from the state and just talking about our disaster mitigation plan. And so in the near future, there will be some surveys online that come out through the county emergency management website. just getting some pre work done so that we can complete our disaster mitigation plan and of course that's done countywide and Participate in that with them.

So that is my report for today Thank you We'll move on to item 4 which is the council members report. We'll start with councilman McCall.

Oh I attended the senior Event as well and that the mayor said that was pretty good and For some reason, I can't think of the other couple of things that I did. I should have wrote them down, but I didn't. But that concludes my report. Thank you.

Councilman Hanson.

I think I'll just wait until next time when I'm there in person to report on them. There's a few things, but I'll just save them.

Okay? Okay. Thank you. Councilwoman Gochis.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I also attended the Tooele Army Depot change of command ceremony, and it was very dignified, and we welcome the colonel and his family to Tooele. Also, I attended an RDA executive board meeting on that day. and then also went on a tour of the water reclamation facility. So I just want to thank Troy Myers and the staff down there. He's the water reclamation supervisor. And they have an enormous amount of work. They process millions of gallons of wastewater daily. They use advanced treatment stages to produce reuse water. And of course, we know that we did upgrade the headworks building at a cost of $6.9 million, but there's a lot more to come. So we really appreciate Troy and all the work that they do. On the 17th, I attended a flock training at the Tula City Police Department. It was very informational. I also attended my monthly meeting with the mayor, Mayor Manzione, on the 27th. And then on the 30th, I attended spokesperson training at the Tula City Police Department. Good information there. And on the third, I attended the Growth Summit meeting with Tooele County at the Tooele Technical College regarding the nuclear life cycle campus. And that concludes my report.

Thank you. Councilman Gossett? You know, I was sitting over here thinking, what did I do? Had my meeting with the mayor as well. Took a tour with Nathan of the wastewater department. telling you you think when you flush the toilet it just magically just disappears it's amazing the amount of work that goes through that facility just to take care of the wastewater for twilla i was i felt like i got a phd in it nathan so thank you i mean that was it was pretty amazing and uh My wife thanks you, too, because I came home and told her all about it, and she's, you know, that much more impressed now. It is.

Really. And I can't think of the other thing that I did.

You know, I went to another meeting. It may have been the one that was at the county health department for the communities that care. I can't remember. But, yeah, it's been a good couple of weeks. Okay. Thank you.

I attended many of these same meetings. The tour at the reclamation facility was great. It's always good to see firsthand the things that we're voting on, and we know that there's a lot of work to do there, but we're up for the challenge. And then the weekly staff meeting with the mayor, the staff continues to do great, and they always have great ideas and really care about the community. So thanks for all you guys do.

We will move on to our discussion items.

Our first discussion item is a discussion on a fee schedule discussion for records and police department. This is presented by Matthew Johnson, the city attorney.

Thank you, chairman. Thank you, council. This is an issue that staff wanted to bring to council's attention early in the process. You'll see that there's a draft in tonight's packet. It's a first draft. It's a very rough draft. City Attorney's Office met with the city recorder and with Chief Day regarding responses to records requests under Utah Government Records Access and Management Act, GRAMA. What we're seeing is that... The fee schedule that we have in place does comply with what's allowed by grandma, but it doesn't completely incorporate maybe what the city could impose as fees for these requests. We're not trying to raise fees, but we are trying to make sure that the costs to the city are covered by the fees. Grandma allows the city to charge a reasonable fee to cover the actual cost of responding to her record. And I feel old saying this, but it's getting more and more to where it's not the cost of paper and toner and stuff to copy it. It's a lot more the hours to compile electronic records in a way that we can actually forward it to someone else, especially if we have public records combined with protected or private records and trying to separate those or redact those. So we're looking at a few options to change. The current fee schedule basically has two ways to account for that, for that compiling and redaction. One is if anything's redacted, the record is doubled the price, which a lot of times, if it's a paper copy, is a few cents. doubles that price. It's a little more if, for example, if a police video has to be redacted. It is a little pricier. And also, and this covers the police video situation, it allows for a compilation fee of $15 per hour for the compilation. Like I say, that doesn't conflict with the state code. The state code allows for... If a city searches, retrieves, compiles, or anything, and that record is not in the form that the city keeps it in, then we can charge an hourly rate at the lowest salary of whoever's qualified to do the work, regardless who actually does it. So we're working on some of the language to make it more consistent with that. It is convenient to have, okay, it's just $15. We always know what it is. But we'd have to update that, and it also might be a situation where someone else with a different salary has to comply with it. We're also looking at keeping language in there to have some discretion for the records officer, whether it's the city recorder's office or whether it's the police department, to say, well, for this particular case, it just doesn't make sense to charge an hourly rate. We'll go back to either the redaction, the double the fee charge, or something like that, just because administratively we're going to cost more resources, more city resources to do that than to just do what we're doing, or just to waive the fee in some circumstances. The state code does allow the city to to waive fees and in some circumstances actually encourages the city to waive fees, in particular for media requests. But I feel like I covered a lot. Are there any questions? Like I say, we're just kind of looking for, we wanted to alert the council, see if council had any input, any questions, any direction for the city as we work through some of the details of this.

I don't have any questions. I know that the police department gets a lot of grammar requests, and they spend a lot of time going through the records and redacting where they need to. So I think it's important that the city's not losing money doing that. We're not trying to profit off of it. We're just trying to pay for the person doing that. So I don't have anything else. Does anyone else have questions or comments?

No, it is a time-consuming task.

It is, and it seems to be getting more and more so, whether it's the, well, I think it's both the greater number of requests and the more expansive requests that we're getting. So it is getting more and more time consuming for the city.

Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, we'll move on to our next discussion item. It's a discussion on data centers in Tooele City and whether city ordinances should be amended to appropriately respond to these potential uses. This is presented by Andrew Agard, the Community Development Director.

Thank you, Chairman Brady, members of the City Council. I appreciate your time tonight to discuss this item with me. The impetus behind this and why I wanted to bring it to your work session for discussion tonight is we as a department and the community development department, we are fielding requests in regards to constructing data centers in Tooele City. And our current code, the current conditions of our code do not permit, define, or otherwise regulate the land use of data centers. My job as the community development director is to make sure that Title VII, the development code, is maintained and updated and corrected as necessary according to how things exist at the time. So I need to identify deficiencies in our code and bring those to the council for discussion and possible correction if we need to. The use of data centers, especially as they exist today, is a relatively new land use. Data centers have been around for a while, as long as you've had the internet, but typically they're obscure and nobody really thinks much about them. But with the advent of artificial intelligence, there has been an explosion in the need for data centers based upon the immense amounts of data that are being Requested by the users of cell phones computers and everything else and so these things are proliferating they are Growing and there is there are a lot more requests to construct these things So mayor Manziano and I agree that this does bring this to the council and talk about it with you and see what you think and get your get your ideas in regards to what we should or should not do in regards to this proposed land these new land uses and I do also want to point out that data center technology is advancing and changing rapidly. So what exists as a data center today may not exist as a data center in five years. Four years ago, I couldn't tell you what AI is, and now it's everywhere. So things are constantly changing. I mean, who knows? Maybe a data center will fit in a briefcase in 10 years, or we'll all have one in our basement. Don't know. It's changing that quickly. But I think we need to look at our code and decide, we need to update our code and decide how we want to address this particular land use. So I'm not an expert in data centers. By trade, I am a land use and development planner. So as Paul would always say, I don't even pretend to be one on TV. So I'm gonna do my best to do this presentation. I did take some time to do some research. I read numerous reports and information about data centers, find out what they are, how they operate, why we need them, why they're proliferating, and what other cities are doing in regards to data centers. And I'd like to present to you a summary of my research, my findings, a summary of what other cities have done or are doing, and then possibly some options that we can consider in the future. And so I'll just jump right into it. You probably all know all this. You probably know more about data centers than I do. So if this is repetitive or boring, I apologize.

But it doesn't hurt to look at some of the information.

What is a data center? A data center is a purpose-built building that runs large numbers of computers reliably, securely, and around the clock. Inside are the servers, storage, and networking gear that do the work, plus the heavy duty cooling, backup power, and physical security that keeps them running. One can be as small as a server room or as large as a windowless campus the size of several football stadiums. They can be wrapped in cooling, batteries, generators, high capacity links to the internet and the grid. The software runs the show, spreading out the workload, flagging failures, and handling security. These are some images that I found showing the inside of a data center. It's a big building with a lot of computers. What does a data center do? A data center stores data and runs the software behind the services people use all day. If you stream a TV show, send an email, tap a card at a checkout stand, back up a photo, or ask an AI a question, somewhere that data center does the work and sends it back almost instantaneously. There are various types of data centers. There are enterprise data centers, which are built and owned and run by a single organization for its own use. A good example of this is the Facebook data center. Well, they call themselves Meta now, but the Facebook data center down in Eagle Mountain that is owned and operated by Meta and is exclusive to their services. You have co-location data centers, which rent space, power, and cooling to many customers, who then bring their own servers to the facility. I would imagine that that type of data center can be of various sizes. I don't think those have to be huge or small. They can be any size. The ones that gain a lot of attention are the hyperscale data centers. These are the giant, enormous campuses run by a handful of tech companies that deliver cloud and AI services at a massive scale. These are run by Amazon, Microsoft, and Google. And I would think that probably Facebook and Eagle Mountain would also be considered a hyperscale. It's a large facility. You have data cloud centers. These deliver computing as an on-demand service. Customers rent server storage software over the internet and pay for only what they use. And then number five, you have edge data centers. I like to refer to these as modular data centers. These are smaller sites placed close to users to cut delays. Time-sensitive work is handled through these. These are usually for gamers, live streaming, often no bigger than a shipping container. Here are some images of some data centers that I was able to find on the upper left corner. That is a large hyperscale facility in Northern Virginia in Loudoun County, which is actually the database or the data center capital of the world. They have a lot of data centers in Northern Virginia. The one on the right, upper right, that is what we consider a medium-sized data center. It's just a single building. Lower left, that is the NOVA data center in West Jordan. So kind of showing you what a data center would look like, what that one looks like from the road view. That is a large facility. And then the lower right, that is a modular data center. In regards to Tooele City and the information that was requested from me, those requests have been largely for those modular type of data centers. We've had discussions of converting existing structures to data centers, but largely it's the ones that are interested that I know of in coming to the city are those small modular facilities. So why are so many of these being built? I really like that picture on the left-hand side. I go to Vasa Fitness for my lunch break, and I'm amazed at watching people lifting weights on machines while downloading stuff on their phones. It's everywhere. People can't put down their phones. The way it's described here is many data centers are going up because demand for computing is climbing on every front, and AI has poured on fuel. Cloud adoption, streaming, digital payments, remote work, business software, and cybersecurity were all growing steadily before generative AI added fresh wave of demand. So AI has really piled on the fuel for the need. The amount of data is immense, and they need the facilities. So why are these controversial? Data centers are controversial because they can be a tax windfall for a city, but also a grid headache at the same time. They bring great construction-related jobs, tax revenue, and fresh infrastructure, but they also lean hard and heavily on electricity, water, and land while employing relatively few people once they are running. Enterprise data centers are estimated to use between 300,000 to 500,000 gallons of water per day. Just to give you a visual of what that is, an Olympic-sized swimming pool uses 660,000 gallons of water. So that gives you a kind of a visual of what 500,000 gallons of water is per day for an enterprise facility. This can vary significantly based on the size and cooling methods. Large hyperscale centers can consume up to 5 million gallons of water per day. So there is a significant burden on a city in regards to these types of uses, especially Tooele City where you're very well of our water situation here. So what have other cities done in regards to these data centers? Now for the most part, most cities prohibit data centers in Utah. I could only find a handful of cities that permit them. And as I was doing this research, I was quite surprised in what I found. I thought there'd be a lot more regulation. Cities really don't have a lot of regulation in regards to these data centers. Eagle Mountain's the first one that came to mind. When I worked in Riverton, Facebook tried to come to Riverton, and the city council at that time did not want them in the city. So they went to Eagle Mountain, and Eagle Mountain permitted them to do that. Eagle Mountain's zoning codes All they have is they permit it in one industrial zone, and they have additional 50-foot and 60-foot building setbacks when adjacent to residential zones. There is no other design criteria or development criteria in Eagle Mountain's codes concerning data centers. The picture that you have on the right here is the MEDA facility. It occupies about 831 acres. You'll note that it's constructed immediately south of Eagle Mountain City's wastewater treatment facility. So I wonder if maybe there's a little water sharing going on there with the data center. There is a new data center being constructed immediately west of the Facebook. That one has about 131 acres. And then you can see the residential areas located north on the top of the picture gradually creeping south towards the data center. Bluffdale City is probably the most liberal city that I've found in regards to data centers. They permit data centers in two commercial zones and two industrial zones, and there was no other regulatory language found in the city's codes. The image shows the NSA data center located just west of Camp Williams, there next to the Mountain View corridor. That is a data center that is administered and owned by the federal government, not by a private entity. West Jordan permits the use in one industrial zone, and like Eagle Mountain, requires greater building setbacks when adjacent to residential zones. The facility that you see there is the Nova Data Center facility. That is a large hyperscale facility. There is a residential development located immediately north of the project But there's probably about 200 300 feet between the homes and the their entrance to that building That's the one in the picture that I showed you before Salt Lake City permits one or permits the use in one industrial zone They did have one qualification in their ordinance that requires a closed-loop water cooling system so all I could find for Salt Lake City and Delta City, you're aware what Delta is. Delta is that little town located out in the West Desert. I was surprised on Delta. They are currently building two hyperscale data centers. One of them is, I think, 14,000 acres, and the other one is 5,000. Delta City could probably end up being the Loudoun County of the West. They have the space, and apparently they have the water, but... I searched through their code and I could find not a single reference to data centers. I don't know how they're permitting them in Delta City. They might be using development agreements or something of that nature, but there was nothing codified in regards to those data centers. Provo City, they recently had an application to convert an existing two-story warehouse into a data center. The City Council ultimately denied a rezone and ordinance amendment necessary to enable the conversion. They cited that they didn't have sufficient information to enable the zoning change. Nephi City is an interesting one. Nephi City created a fourth industrial zoning district that permits only data centers. What I also found interesting is in their code, they prohibit data centers from using wind power generated inside the city. So apparently they don't want windmills in their city. Interesting. Santa Quinn permitted the Summit Ridge Data Center And the requirements on this one requires closed-loop water system and on-site power generation. The image that you have there is a rendering of the facility. It is not yet constructed. That facility is anticipated to generate 20 megawatts of power right there on the site using natural gas. So what are Utah counties doing? I want to tread water lightly when it comes to talking about counties. Counties are not the same as cities. They have entirely different considerations when it comes to land use. Consider Tooele County, for example. They have land extending from the peaks of the Oakers all the way to the Nevada border that could accommodate a hyperscale data center. We don't have that much property in Tooele City. Most cities don't because of their incorporated boundaries. The other difference is a city is required to provide certain utilities, such as wastewater treatment, water, that counties are not required to provide. So it's bananas and apples, really. We're just kind of a different animal. And what the county is doing right now is something that I don't think the city needs to worry about. But just for your information, Duchesne, Iron, and Box Elder counties are all considering large and hyperscale data centers. very large. The one up in Box Hill, there's a 40,000 acres, bigger than the island of Manhattan. So we're not going to get that in Tooele. But that's what counties are dealing with. So they look at things a little bit differently than the city does. So in order to keep our code updated, I wanted to run by the city council some options and get your input and possibly some direction as how to proceed or where you'd like me to and start investigating or working towards. One of the options you have is do nothing. As I mentioned, our code currently does not permit data centers. Our code is a code that is structured as a permissive code. So if a use is not listed as permitted in the code, it's automatically not permitted. And so right now, when people come in and they ask about data centers and if we can do them here, my response to them is no, the code doesn't permit them. Now, after I made this slide, Mayor Manzione raised an interesting thought that I had not considered, and I wanted to bring this to the council's attention. Could a data center sneak in under another use? And I was looking through our definition section, and there are some uses that could possibly enable a data center without having to go through any kind of an amendment. We have a research facility, and the definition for a research facility is a facility that conducts research and development work. Pretty vague. A warehouse is defined as a building used primarily for the inside storage of non-hazardous goods and materials and including accessory office facilities. Again, pretty vague. So if someone were to come in and make some arguments about putting a data center as a research facility, how is I, the community development director, tell them that you don't qualify? So we may want to look at, if the city council's going down the path, if they don't want to have these here in the city, we may want to look at amending some of these definitions. I appreciate the mayor bringing those to my attention. That's a very valid point that we need to consider. I also want to point out that these do not include MITA properties. The MITA properties are out of our land use control jurisdiction. So when I'm referring to these things, I'm referring to our zoning districts that are not part of MITA. Another thing we can consider is do as other cities. We could limit the use to specific zones of your choosing, likely a zone that is separated from residential areas, and set regulations such as closed-loop water systems, self-power generation, so forth. We could do as Nephi City did. You could create a fourth industrial zone that's specifically for data centers. And that way the city council, as part of a zoning map amendment, would have absolute discretion as whether or not it's going to go there and whether it's an appropriate place to go. But for the most part, like I showed you, cities don't regulate these. And I think the reason being is it's such a new land use and it's an ever-changing land use. So it's really difficult for cities to get a hold of these things. This is the zoning map. I wanted to show you the location of all of our industrial zones. They are highlighted in red. We have industrial zones on the very western extremes of the city. They are shown in the purple. Those areas are largely isolated from residential zones. If there is residential zoning nearby, it's separated by the light industrial zoning district. We did that intentionally because, as I've explained before, the industrial zone is a great place for our locally unwanted land uses. So that gives you an idea of where our industrial areas are, if the city council was wanting to consider that. Another consideration is to go all out You could follow the Tula County approach and adopt a new 28 page ordinance regulating the development operational minutiae of Development centers. I think that would be overkill for the city. I do not anticipate we'll be getting much more than modular data centers here in the city or maybe a conversion of Existing warehouse into a data center. We just don't have the the available real estate for a hyperscale facility If you decide to go down that path, I am not qualified to write that ordinance. I don't know that much about data centers. So we would probably need to consider an outside consultant or something of that nature to help us write that. Again, this is just a discussion. I want to make sure our code is updated and current with the times. And in this regard, it's something that I need your help and need your advice to decide what to do. So I'm open to any questions, comments, rebukes, rebuttals, or feedback.

OK. Any questions, comments, feedback?

That was a really good presentation. So thank you for that information. I do know that we had discussed going on a tour of a data center. And I would be interested in being able to physically go and see one that's operating. And that would probably help me to

I would like to go with you. I would like to go to one as well. Because like I said, we don't know a lot about these land uses. And I think other cities are grappling with the same problem. And that's why there's a lot of vaguities in the codes.

So if we had a code allowing a data center, how do we limit the amount of water and power? Because we have other users that are not data centers that they told us they wouldn't use as much water as they truly do. And then there's really nothing that the city can do to go get the water back.

How would you limit it? I think the only limitation you could do would be to limit the size of the facility. Limit it to modular facilities or to existing structures where water is already being provided to the structure. I don't know how you could otherwise limit the water use other than having Shannon's guys go out there and turn off the meters at a certain Inforcibility in that regard would be very difficult. I think the ultimate enforcement would be to limit the size.

So I've got a question. So there were a couple of those cities that mentioned closed loop systems. So I just want maybe everybody to understand. If my understanding is wrong, tell me. So you have like a radiant heat floor and it's got tubes of water that heat your house, right? Right. you're not adding water to that every day. It stays in that loop. So some of those cities were saying it had to be a closed loop system if it was in the city, so that would control the water use because it would be a one-time use, correct?

I think it would limit the water use. Water in the closed loop system can go for a while, but then it gets to a point where it's degraded to a point that it has to be discharged.

Okay.

Nathan probably has some information on that. He actually has some information from a situation in Cheyenne where they had something like this, so...

Evening, Council. So we don't have a lot of information on the closed loops system technology as of right now. It seems like every time we ask for it, we get told, yeah, yeah, we'll go take a look at it, and then we never get any response. So as of right now, we have one news story out of Cheyenne where a closed loop system was being worked on, and they discharged, and the sewer plant was able to detect a high amount of a certain bacteria that they weren't used to seeing in their wastewater effluent. So there's some issues with this. The water can be reused for a time. Sometimes, from what we understand, it's up to a year, could be five years. We've heard varying levels of time. But it is a big flush when they have to reset it. So whatever their system can handle, they're going to discharge that at a certain rate, which would probably be too much for our sewer plant to handle. we'd have to regulate that. And then again, it would be a big draw on our water system to fill that water system back up.

So does it evaporate within the system?

No, it's mostly just that it loses its ability to cool. There is a glycol additive or some other additive that they use to kind of preserve it, but it does lose its ability to cool the machines, depending on how hot it's running and other factors. So that would make the water usage less, but it still is going to continue to need more water. Yeah, it'd be significantly less, but again, it'd be impacts downstream in the sewer plant or in other ways, especially if they have to add an additive to the water. We don't know what that would do to the sewer treatment plant, the bugs and the other processes that we have to go through. We'd have to work that out and work on our permitting process to be able to accept that water. Perfect.

My only other comment was I want to thank the people that are in attendance tonight because I went to the county meeting and that was kind of wild. And so I appreciate everybody having the signs and being respectful.

I'm glad they're here as well. We encourage the involvement.

And then you had mentioned that if we do nothing that a data center can't come because it's not in our code. But a while back we had a company who had lithium ion batteries or something like that that were being stored in Tula City and our code didn't allow that. And then we had to make a change to the code that restricted that. So that's my question. Is it enough just to not have a code restricting it, or do you have to specifically say, we don't allow this use at all? So they don't work, you know, find a loophole or whatever you want to call it.

I would recommend that if this is a use that you're not inclined to want in the city at this time, that we do an amendment that outrightly prohibits them. And it could be as simple as just including it in our table of commercial uses and then not including the P or the C for permitted or commercial. That way it's clearly there. Right now it's not. And as I mentioned with warehouses and with research facilities, people get very creative with how they define what they're doing. And it's very difficult for staff to say, no, you're wrong, you're not doing that. And we are obligated to approve things if it can meet the parameters of the ordinance. So it would be very beneficial from my perspective. If you don't want them in the city, in the areas that are not MITA, let's prohibit them. Let's put something in the table of commercial uses. Let's amend the definitions of warehouse and so forth to clearly mean that they're not talking about data centers. I think that would be beneficial. Because you're right. I mean, people get very creative in how they interpret things. Yeah.

It's one more question. So you said you've had people come approach the city.

I have people call me from time to time, and they have a vacant piece of land that they want to do something with, and they'll ask, can we do a data center there? And you just say it's not permitted. I say right now our code does not address them.

I think we probably should do what he's recommending myself for now. And if we change our minds later, just take it out. But for now, until we know exactly, because I agree with him about the, with AI, it is evolving so fast until we don't know what it's going to be next month. I mean, we've already, I mean, we've seen it on the TV. that AI has advanced so much now until it's already started doing things on its own that it's not asked to do. So it's just a matter, it's just a matter before it gets really wild. So I honestly think until we are certain we want a data center, we probably should use that suggestion, put it in there and say no. Until we know for a fact that's what we wanna do.

And like Andrew said too, I mean, The technology's changing so quickly, maybe some of the problems that persist today aren't going to persist.

Yeah, one of the reports I read stated how fast it's changing, that we may not need data centers in 10 years. They don't know. That's the issue, is nobody knows. Are there any other questions or comments? So would you like me to begin putting together an ordinance amendment and bringing that prep back to the council for consideration in another work session, or how would you like me to proceed?

I think we need more discussion on it. This is the challenge that I don't know if anyone wants to say this out loud, but it's hard to make an ordinance when we don't know what... the potential benefit could be to the city as well. And people don't like to hear that because they hear data center and it's an automatic no, but there is an economic impact to the city Just as many people are out there right now when we raise taxes There's five times more people yelling at us because we're raising taxes And so that's the challenge of the City Council has is how do we set the city up in a position where? Economically, we don't have to raise taxes on our residents But we're still trying to make sure that we're using the land the best way possible using the resources that we have best the best way possible so I was going to allow a data center, which I'm not saying I am It would be a very small area in the community and we would have to be able to restrict water We'd have to make sure that they have their own power like there would be so many things that we would have to do to Protect our citizens and make sure that it's the best thing for our community So it's hard to just flat-out say no when maybe the best thing comes along. There's better technology and we're behind on that. I see both sides of it. I think with our water situation, it's easy right now to probably say now is not the best time because we know that they're likely high water users. I think at some point we have to have an open mind to change and change isn't easy for a lot of people. I was a little kid when the internet came out and I I remember seeing that change, and my kids, to my kids now, it's just every day we use the internet. But when I was a kid, it was this new technology that was coming out. I remember Y2K, the world was going to shut down when we hit the year 2000, and here we are. We're still here. So I'm open to having an open mind about things and discussing things. But if the council decides that it's in the best interest of the community right now to To specifically say no data centers, I would be willing to do that as well.

And don't get me wrong. I said we can do that because we can always change it. But for now, until we get our handle around it, I'd assume we'd say no until we figure it all out ourselves. I agree. We should talk some more, a lot more. Because, I mean, there's places where water is there that we can't use because it's unfit for human consumption. And I think that might be something to look at. If we got water that we can't use without taking it to a processing plant or building a plant that will clean it, that might not be a bad place to put one of these things. If we specify that that is the water that they would use, something that we can't use, and... I would go so much as saying, like the other company told them to put a power plant on their property, we can ask them to build a plant that will clean some of the water, and what they don't use, we can use it ourselves. Because right now, we can't physically clean the water because we don't have the funds to clean it, to make it drinkable. So I'm just saying if we do that for now and we meet and work with these guys and just find some other... I agree with what you're saying. I really do.

Yeah. I'm just saying if someone... I've seen some of the numbers. Someone from MIDAS spoke with us about a potential data center, and the numbers are insane, the revenue that it brings to your city. That's why these cities are doing it. Let's be realistic. They... It makes so they don't have to raise their taxes on their residents. And when we raise taxes, we get so much pushback. The room fills up. We're told we're stupid. We're idiots. We don't know what we're doing. But then you're saying no to something that can greatly impact your community as well. So that's the challenge that the council has. Even on the county, I'm sure they have that same experience. I don't know where the council wants to go with this. I mean, it's sufficient to leave nothing right now, and then if we had someone who wanted to present something, but I also don't want to be behind the eight ball either. That's why we're having this discussion today is we're proactively trying to make sure that someone doesn't loophole us, sneak in.

Well, if I heard right, correct me if I'm wrong, but you had said the ones that are coming in and asking are very small ones.

Yeah, they're the modular varieties.

So I don't even know if those are the same numbers as what the others. Obviously, Box Elder was huge, right? But if they're small, they may not have the same economic impact anyway to justify doing it. I don't know. I think we need to hear more for sure. But I'm fine leaving it, like Dave said, leave it closed until... until such time that...

I'll just leave it the way it is.

Yeah.

If you add something to the code that says no data centers, then you don't even have the option of... No one's going to come, right? And just say, oh, you don't... We want you to change your code. So either say no, and it's a hard no. And I agree with you that the scale that we would have would be so much smaller than anything anywhere else because we don't geographically have... a lot of places to put it.

Maybe one of the best things we do right now is leave the code as is but go in and amend the definitions of warehouse and research facility so these facilities don't sneak in under the radar or sneak in under a colorful interpretation. That way I think we can tie up some loose ends in that regard. I'm happy to do more research and throw some things together and bring them back to you for more discussion and problem doing that at all. I actually enjoy doing the research.

I'm open for more discussion and information. As I mentioned, a tour, a site facility tour would be good. What Nathan presented to us about the closed loop system is that when they discharge, the impact that it is, that was new information to me. So I really think that we have a lot more to learn and a lot more to discuss before making decisions.

I drove, I can't remember where it was in Salt Lake. I'm driving around town trying to find this restaurant and I drive past this eBay data center. I had no idea it was a data center. It looks like a warehouse. And so I don't think it's what it looks like that we're concerned about. I think it's what it can do to our water and our power and our environment and things like that. So I don't know that seeing one for me is really going to... change a lot because I think seeing it, it just looks like a building, the picture you saw us. It's the resources that it uses. And that would be my biggest concern if we ever did approve anything like that is how do we limit what they can use? And I question if we can truly do that without them just saying we're going to do this anyways kind of thing. Because we've had that happen with different businesses and it's difficult to enforce a lot of things. So yeah.

One of the things about data centers that I have learned in my reading is once they're established, once you've worked out the water situation, once you've worked out the power, once the construction is done, they generate very little impact to surrounding properties. They don't have a lot of employees. They don't have a lot of truck traffic. They are utilizing technologies now that keep them quieter. So once they're established, like you said, it's nothing more than just a big warehouse with computers inside. But those issues that you mentioned are the critical ones, especially for Tooele City. So it's an interesting land use.

I would think for now, if we tighten up some things that... With our research, what's it called, the research and development area or land use?

Yeah, the research and development zone and then the warehouse use. I would feel comfortable about doing that. Just clarifying what the use is. Just clarifying what they are.

Yeah, I think that's good.

And then later on, if you're more comfortable with things, we could then consider another ordinance amendment for specifically for data centers. That's a great way to proceed. Okay.

And for the public... We have these discussions in public so you can see kind of what we're thinking and that we're not just, we're trying to be as transparent as possible. We don't want it to look like we don't listen. We do care about what our residents think and if it ever came to changing the code in any way, even if we change this research and development zoning, it has a public comment period and that's the time for the public to come up and speak with the council and we're also happy to speak with you outside of meetings as well. Okay, is there any other discussion on this topic? Okay, thanks, Andrew. Okay, our next discussion item is a demonstration garden. This is presented by Nathan Farr, the Public Works Director.

Hopefully this is a little more of a positive discussion. We have the opportunity to Well, we ran into the opportunity to do something positive with some of the space in our community that is not being utilized. It's mostly Tooele City property. We have detention basins and other city infrastructure that houses tanks and well sites that could be used better, I think. And so we found a grant through the Utah Department of Agriculture and Food We applied for it on a whim. I didn't understand that it was mostly for homeowners and small uses, and so I applied for as many kits as they would give me and they gave me 50, which is about 1,600 plants. If we can go to slide number 1. The Utah Pollinator Habitat Program was created in March of 2021 as a pilot program for three years. It was extended through 2025 and then made permanent. It is an opportunity for Utah homeowners and businesses and communities to plant native pollinator-friendly species in gardens to encourage bees and butterflies and hummingbirds and other pollinators to thrive and to restore natural habitat. We felt like this would be a good use and a good opportunity for us to educate the public in Tooele on how to landscape without making it look like Mars. We want Tooele to look more like it did when the pioneers and the indigenous peoples were first here. And so we hope that by doing this demonstration garden on one of our bigger properties, we can provide an opportunity for people to come and see what a responsible native landscaping would look like, and at the same time provide opportunities for a large portion of the native flora and fauna to thrive in our community. That's kind of hard to read, it's up close, but there are more than 900 species of native bees alone that call Utah home. That's in addition to the butterflies, moths, hummingbirds and other insects that pollinate the food that we enjoy and the flowers and trees that we have come to rely on. Go to the next slide. So the impact for the 2025 report for the amount of plants they gave out and the gardens that were created, they believe that of the 502 applicants and the 382 awardees, they had 87,000 plants that were grown and a total of 37 acres covered. which contributed to saving 29,204,000 gallons of water in the year 2025. These plants know how to live in Utah. These are native. They understand what it's like to live in a high mountain desert. And so planting these in areas like your backyard garden or in an area that can be used as a walking trail are good opportunities for us to use little water and still create beautiful spaces. So this is the lot that we chose. It currently houses one of our tanks. This is one of our water storage tanks. And you can see from the top right picture, it's a big circle, and you see the three light colored areas kind of around the edge. Those are areas that will need to be protected. Those are access hatches to the tank. So they will have some kind of fencing around them. But the rest of the site is just right now surrounded by a chain link fence. You can see it in the bottom two pictures. And it's weeds that get mown down twice a year and pretty ugly. and kind of an eyesore in the community. And so we thought, why not make it beautiful? We'll tear the fences down. We will do some walking paths through there and make it something that the community can use. So the next slide. So this is a plan that was put together by Andrew, actually. Andrew has a background in landscape design. And so together, we talked a little bit about what the thought was. And he put together this design for us. And we think this is... what we want. We want to have something where people can go and reflect, possibly sit and relax, and kind of see what's possible in a Utah backyard or a Utah front yard. And so some of the plants that he's listed around the edges are some of the plants that we hope to be able to get. We're not guaranteed the plants. They plant what they have, and then if it grows, we get it. So the next slide will show some of the options that they say have grown this year. So you can see the nodding onion, the sticky geranium, I love the names, the names are fantastic. Antelope horn milkweed, sulfur flower buckwheat, the fire chalice looks gorgeous up close. The side oats grama is just one of the examples of a native grass and the Wasatch penstemon. These are all examples of flowers and plants that we might have the opportunity to pick up and have in this garden. And so we would augment that with some of the things that Andrews suggested. And again, this is only a portion of what's possible. And so the rest of the list, we'll be able to flesh out the rest of that park. We did, like I said, we got 1600 plants, individual plants. And so we have the opportunity to make this a really awesome space. We're excited about the opportunity and we've had some interest. Let's go to the next. We've had some interest already from a local scout troop and even a number of the city employees expressing an interest in helping to make this happen. From volunteer work to putting aside time to do it after hours. We would... We would hope that we could get this out on the JustServe website and other areas so that we can invite many more of the community members to come and participate in this. We really think this is going to be something that we can use here and then develop and use other areas of the city. Like I said, we have a lot of these retention basins and other areas in the city that are either using a lot of water to water grass or are being unused and just have to keep mowing the weeds down to keep it from starting on fire in fire season. So this is the plan moving forward. We're hopeful that once we pick up the plants, this will be something we can kind of show off and have a ribbon cutting for later this fall. Our pickup date will be Saturday, September 12th, and I'll coordinate that. We'll go up to Ogden and pick up our plants and bring them back. And then hopefully by October, we'll be able to kind of celebrate this as an awesome achievement. So we wanted to make you aware of this. This is something that we hope to be able to do in the next few years. We're going to apply for the grant again next year. We'll probably scale back a little bit. I didn't realize how many plants came with 50 kits, so maybe a little bit off a little more than I could chew on this one, but it was a grant and it was free. So hey, I saved us some money. Dave, how's that? So any questions that you have for me at this time?

So are you installing a drip system?

Yes, we will be installing a drip system. We know that in this case, it's not going to be a zero water use. But if we install the drip system, we'll be able to get the water where it needs to go and give the plants what they need to thrive.

And your plan is to have this whole thing complete this year?

Yeah. And we had talked about possibly not doing concrete paths and maybe just doing either dirt or some kind of mulch or rock path throughout just to kind of... make it more inviting in that way. But also, it seems like the bees and other insects and things would do better if we didn't make it hard travel. And we would probably discourage more people from riding their electric bikes through it, which we don't want that either.

I'm excited to see this. It'll be great.

We're excited.

Where is the West Meadows subdivision? I wasn't sure where that was located.

So if we go back to that, can we go back to that slide that has the... So yeah, you can see on there it's about 900 south and about 700 west, or 800 west, is that? So it's down near north of Settlement Canyon and Elementary. So yeah, in fact, we were down there working, and a police officer said, we had a student whose shoe got thrown over the fence. And when I went and helped him retrieve the shoe, I thought, boy, this is a waste of space. And then we saw this grant and thought, we could use that space better. So I think this is a good use for that.

OK, thank you. Thanks.

OK, item six is a closed meeting. We do have a closed meeting tonight to discuss litigation and or property acquisition. I will entertain a motion.

Mr. Chair, I'll make a motion to move to a closed session.

I'll second. We have a motion from Councilwoman Goetjes and a second from Councilman McCall. We'll take it to a vote. Councilman McCall? Aye. Councilwoman Goetjes?

Aye.

Councilman Gossett? Aye. Councilman Hanson? Aye. I'm Councilman Brady, and I vote aye. That passes 5-0. It's 6.33 p.m. We'll recess here and reconvene in the large conference room.