Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

I call this June 30th meeting of the York County Planning Commission to order. Are there any questions about the agenda or changes? I move that we approve the agenda. Is there a second?

Second.

All those in favor? We have one order of new business. I'll read that to you. It's sort of long, bear with me. The planning commissioning to review and provide a recommendation to county council regarding an ordinance that establishes a temporary moratorium for a period of nine months on the consideration and issuance of special exceptions and issuance of special exceptions or conditional use approvals the acceptance of site plans and on all other land use or development approvals for data centers within the unincorporated areas of York County in order to provide an opportunity for the county to study and examine the impact of data centers in I'm sorry on critical resources adjacent in and nearby properties and or infrastructure, thereby enabling the county to properly amend the York County zoning and land use ordinances with regards to data centers to provide for an extension of time by further resolution of county council if after proper notification to council, it is determined that the extension is necessary to complete the studies or examinations contemplated herein.

So we don't have a formal PowerPoint presentation like we normally do. Attorney Laura Dover here will be able to answer any of your questions and lead you through this agenda item tonight.

Awesome. Do we have any questions starting off? Or would you like to provide general background? What would you like to do?

Yeah.

Certainly. I'm happy to start with providing feedback for you guys. I know that you all were last involved in this process when the pending ordinance changes were going forward and county council had looked at those items. Those had gone to committee for further review. During that committee review, they brought up a few points of concern, some of which may or may not have been touched upon by the Planning Commission. Those involved things like looking at the impact on the energy grid, looking at other critical resources and how those are impacted by data centers and looking at potential impacts to adjacent and nearby properties of data centers because they are considered to be a high impact use. And so what that committee determined was that it wanted to recommend that county council put a moratorium in place. Since County Council moved forward with that, they wanted to ensure that the Planning Commission had an opportunity to look at it, review those points of concern, and to have any feedback that you all would give or get a general sense of your feedback for purposes of a moratorium.

One question I had, Laura, was did they look at the environmental concerns that we brought up, also the water use, or the potential water use, and the impact on the environment?

So that's a good question, which helps reframe this for me a little bit. What I gave was kind of the overview, and what you're asking are some specific questions, which is the issue we ran into with the committee. Some of those things that the committee wanted to look at, and some of which I think came up when this was before the Planning Commission, involved rather specific questions two or three of those you just named, one of which is rate making and to what extent the data centers impact rates of other utility customers. So those are things that are outside the expertise of staff. So what the county will do is retain independent professionals who can engage with us and assist in looking at ways the county can actually regulate those through its ordinance. So rate making is something that would require expertise from the utility industry and a legal analysis, because rate making is a legal process in South Carolina. But understanding exactly how that process works from the utility perspective and what, if anything, can be done through a county ordinance is something we would certainly need an independent outside expert to look at. A moratorium essentially pauses things and gives you the ability and the timeframe to retain those folks, conduct your studies, work with your legal department to be able to craft your ordinances so that they appropriately regulate those items you want regulated.

Would that include the Utilities Commission representatives?

What do you mean by the utilities commission?

Well, you usually have utilities commissions for Duke and other utilities.

So we would certainly get feedback from them. Rate making in South Carolina is a process that occurs before the Public Service Commission. Office of Regulatory Staff is involved in that. South Carolina Department of Consumer Affairs is involved in that. I know enough about that process, having been involved to some extent or another at the state with it, that I can tell you it's highly technical. So we would want to get feedback from those folks. But as far as retaining someone independent to look at it, you would look to retain someone with utility experience who understands how the process works in South Carolina and could give us What if any feedback that would be helpful, right? So some things you're going to look at, and you're going to potentially determine that this is not really something that can be addressed by ordinance, but you have those answers. And that's really what you're after. If it's not something you can address in an ordinance, if it is something you can address, you have this expertise to be able to go in and draft those ordinances in a way where you're actually resolving the thing that you want mitigated.

Another concern I had, and I don't know if it was one of the three or four points that we brought up to council, is the noise.

Noises in there.

And I have been really concerned about that. Yes, sir.

Noises in there.

Okay.

So can we add things that can be explored in the study? Is that...

yes so so the recommendation from you all would be um here are some additional things that you think should be considered during the moratorium period and county council can take those up and consider amending that ordinance at third reading to include those items as it's drafted right now the moratorium ordinance is intended to be broad so that those different areas of concern that have been identified have been done so in a way that is intended to have broad applicability and give us that latitude to go in and get the experts to study those. But if there are additional things that are not covered by the ordinance that you all think need to be considered, include those in your recommendation.

So I heard you talk about the grid. Was it in there for them to evaluate the age of the grid, what upgrades would be needed to accommodate the energy that the data center would need?

So the way that it's in there is to look at the impact on critical resources, and one of those things is the grid and the energy usage. You would take into account all of those factors you just said if you're going to look at this. So you're looking at the life of that system overall, How does the company who would be providing energy go about the rate-making process? What kind of things do they build into that? And how those factors are considered when they go to the Public Service Commission, which is where your energy companies go when they want a rate increase. to get the public service commission. So how those things are built into that are all factors that they already take into account when they're doing those rate making requests before the PSC. So the language here is broad enough that it certainly would include analyzing all of those factors and looking at whether the county can address those things in its ordinance.

about from real estate adjacent real estate perspective you know property values are they going to look into that on how much there's possibly to lose value in your property if you were adjacent have they looked into that too i know we didn't bring that up but i just wanted to ask the question i don't know that the

impact on real estate appraisal is something that has come up. Because this is more about, I guess, those very direct impacts. But that's not to say that you can't look at those. And it's something certainly I can bring to county council. However, to go back to the point that that I hope I get to keep making, which is where it's very hard to make this language broad. So the way it's phrased with concern to other properties is impacts to adjacent or nearby properties.

Yeah. Yeah, because I've heard there are impacts. And yeah. noise and that kind of thing that noise not only would it be hard to sell but it's hard to live you know the quality of life and everything so but yeah i i know we didn't bring up the real estate stuff or the appraisal that you had brought up uh last time but it is a concern

So I have an overall general question. So are they wanting us to provide recommendations to county council as to other things to look at and consider as a part of the moratorium? And I'm asking that because if we're not experts, we can hear from the community that says, and in general, environmental impacts, which would include water, air, you know, if you have trees around. but not being experts. If we got an expert and said, when you do a study on data centers, what all do you look at? And we look at some of their analysis, reports, et cetera, detail them out. And then we say, OK, here are things that they may not have looked at. And then I'm sure, as experts, There are things that they look into that we probably have no clue or idea. I never would have thought that, because that's not our field of expertise. So I understand it being broad. You want the latitude, even in reading it, trying to understand how they talked about severability, where if it went to court and one section of the moratorium were challenged, say if there were 10 sections and they challenged one. Yes. the other nine could still be applicable.

Yes, sir.

Right. So I guess I'm just trying to better understand what exactly are they wanting us to do tonight that I think that's twofold.

I think one to get a general sense and feedback of the commission's sentiment on the moratorium, since you all were part of the pending ordinance process and to um, have me take back anything that, that you all think want to make sure here's one thing we've noticed, we've heard, we've thought about, um, that we don't see in, in that draft ordinance that we think is something that needs to be studied. Uh, what the county is doing right now is putting together a plan for those nine months that lays out, um, separates out these different areas, where we're going to need to retain experts, where the legal analysis is, and then where the actual analysis of those issues is. And the legal part of that, a lot of it, is just drafting of language and different ways that local government can approach these things. And also, of course, keeping up with any changes in the state law, because there are several things pending there. work in coordination with with management to get this experts pertain to ensure that they have time to undertake this studies and and look at those there's different issues and certainly one of those things is would be talking to other counties where these issues have come up getting their feedback on things they've had to look at things we haven't thought about and understanding okay, here are some critical items that we haven't considered. We need to retain an expert to look at this. Or getting feedback from where do you find some of these experts, right? It's quite a process.

Because one of the things that I've heard and you read about, there's always a discussion of just how much does a data center benefit a local community. working in IT, understand we have data centers, and I've asked the question, how many people do we actually have? Most of those people aren't in the data center. You work remotely. You VPN into that data center to do whatever it is you need to do, but you have a small number of people who may be very well compensated, but they're not bringing jobs to a community that's gonna change that community. But I think for me, a question I would want to ask or add is making sure those studies address typically what types of jobs, how many jobs, but then other impacts. We think of water, air, noise, but... you know are there other infrastructure impacts to roads things like that where if they're not going to bring many jobs but they're going to impact the community then what really do we get out of a data center being allowed into this community 20 jobs that's not changing you know a community But if they're gonna come, you're gonna give them a tax break, they'll bring 20, 25 jobs. Are there scenarios where they pay into a general fund or something that says, hey, we're not just gonna take from this community, we'll add to it? They make money off those data centers, they really do. But how do you balance that out? If you know how they impact from a negative standpoint, What good, how do they benefit the communities? These are just things I thought about coming in here tonight. What are the positives of having a data center? We know there's really not much appetite. And the reason why I say that, in case someone interprets that differently, once you put it on paper, pros, cons, we see all the cons in two, three pros. It should be a no brainer. Why are we bringing this here? You've got three cons here and you got, I mean, three pros and 50 cons. So who does this make sense to? And you've made your argument in your case. So, you know, we can get as technical, but sometimes you just make it simple and simplify it out of all the technical jargon, the noise decibels and all of that. What's the simple, Why would we want this here? We know it's benefiting a company, but how is it benefiting us? So Joe Q or Mrs. or Mr. Joe Q Public, from the most intelligent to the folks who say, hey, I didn't even finish high school. Why does this benefit us, this coming here? So in addition to all the technical details and the sound, the water, the environment, what's the economic impact? What do they bring to a community? So I would think we wanna make sure we do that as well as a part of all of that, there's someone there to make the case independent to say, here's what they bring, here's what they cost. So kind of like a use case analysis or business case.

So I have to be very careful in responding to that.

I may have the liberty of asking it, and you may say, well, I don't want to respond, which is fine.

Whether I want to respond to something or not is typically not a consideration in my role. It is whether it's appropriate for me to respond to something and whether it's appropriate to do that in open session. So some of those are policy or philosophical questions. Those are outside my purview. The impacts of this use is what is being looked at in this moratorium. I will point out, though, that something that came up at the county council meeting was, can you prohibit something? Can you just decide we don't want these uses in a local government setting? And the answer is, if something is allowed under South Carolina law, no. Local government does not get to bypass the law and the state set laws and just say, we're banning this use. Now, you can get into the nuance of that, and certainly there's some legal analysis to be done there, because different laws have a floor or a ceiling sort of approach. They set a floor for something, or they set the ceiling for it. And what that means is, like some of the environmental laws, you can be more restrictive It's local government. They can say, here's the baseline. If you want to be more restrictive on this local government, go ahead. Or they can say, in this particular area of environmental law, DES is in charge of it, and you're preempted. You don't get to intervene and act as the regulator. The state holds that authority. So there's a lot of nuance in that, and so that's part of the reason I say I have to be very careful and and how i i would approach answering that but those cost benefit analysis or anything along those lines that that that would occur think that's outside of the moratorium itself you have a use we're pausing that use and here are the ways we can study and look at those things and find ways to make sure that our ordinance mitigates what the county determines are negative impacts of this use. And I know there was some discussion by county council that you have data centers and those are considered a high impact use, right? We have other uses that are out there or are anticipated to be out there in the very near future. And so do you want to start looking at those things? right because you have this use you know the issues here you've identified at least the majority i think of the issues here undertake these studies do everything you can to make sure this ordinance is appropriate from a regulatory standpoint for this use and then in the future

other high impact uses we we need to have a baseline for how we approach those and i think that's the closest i can get philosophically to answering it laura i um yes um i i wasn't able to listen to county council last night but are any of the council members or delegate from your county ever going to go visit a current data center that's of similar size in order to get feedback during the moratorium.

I do believe that is, I don't know about county council, but I believe county staff is certainly considering that as one of the things that they need to do to go find something that is kind of operationally an equivalent and find out how that works and look at the government there and see what kind of regulations they have in place and whether they think those are enough and what issues they're encountering. Because you have a site here that's, you know, under construction. So you have the construction side of things and then you're looking at the operational side of things. So if you could find one that's in operation that's kind of equivalent, it would be a good thing to see.

It wouldn't hurt, and I'm just bringing this up, it's not a question, it wouldn't hurt to get public what the public has gone through at those sites, too. If there's any impacts that they've experienced with a data center. So I would hope- I didn't catch the last part of that. If you had a specific site, say it's in a different state, and I think you'd have to evaluate also or get public input locally. one impacts that they have noticed since the facility has been put in.

You mean where one is in operation? With safety and... Yeah, I'm trying to understand if you mean where one is already in operation?

Yes, yes.

Okay, yeah, so you would work with that local government to find out what kind of public comment period they had, what FAQs they developed, what are the things that they got from...

from the public on that and then certainly i think they would be willing to share that information and most of it would be freedom of information act data so i don't think that would be a problem okay great i think he's also talking about feedback after the fact not just in the process of building but after it's implemented and up and running in the community right it's up and running yeah he's wanting to say the operational part yes the operational as well as construction so you mean cases such as

If they've seen their utility rates spike and things like that.

Well, it could go both ways. I mean, it could go both ways.

Well, but not just spike. You're just asking. I phrased it that way, but you just want the data. Just the data. The data speaks for itself, whether they went up or down. You're just asking. We want to look at that, too.

Certainly. And when you're talking about things like energy rates, I think that's part of what you're looking at is how do energy companies plan for those things, right? When do they get notice that these sorts of things are coming? And I know that energy companies in South Carolina have been looking at data centers and other what I would call big users for several years. So I don't know what point they begin to build those things into their rate making requests, but certainly that's something that we would be evaluating as part of this.

Laura, I had a question. I understand the rationale of looking at a broad number of topics, but how do we ensure within those topics that specific points are addressed? Is that something that we're relying on a third party expert for, or is that something that's coming out of our group to council or the subcommittee? Exactly how is that, do you see that working?

so the topics are broad because county management and and legal staff are going to look at those broad items narrow this down first so you talk about the energy grid right you have the rate making process impact rates and then you're going to have the question about what if any role does the county have in being able to regulate that at the local level so

So that's the first filter?

Yes, that is absolutely the first filter because you have to do some narrowing to categorize those things and determine what are the parts of this that county staff can work on and accomplish some of those in coordination with other local governments who are dealing with these same issues and then What are the components of this where you need an expert to sit down and look at this and say, here are the appropriate ways to look at this problem with respect to data centers? And so you would want their independent feedback on that, and then you want to get those studies underway.

OK. Go ahead, please.

It just seems to me that it feels like there's an undercurrent up here of concern that we won't be specific enough.

That's just kind of what I'm hearing from people around me.

So I guess what I think we want to know is if we get into this process with this broad, I mean it is broad, you're right, I mean there's absolutely, it's very broad and I think that's a great thing. If we get to month six and we have some sort of report, or some sort of- It will be before month six. I'm sorry? It will be before month six. Okay, if we get to month three. Yes. And there's some sort of report, will there be a way for us to potentially add additional items if for some reason they are not addressed in the way we feel like they should be addressed and maybe don't know how to articulate at this point?

because i could imagine once you read a report that could include things that you didn't even think to ask about sure there would be follow-up questions and at that point you have your experts engaged and that's why you want the broad topics right because you're going to identify things in there that you can't think of at the outset i'm not an expert on many of those items but an expert's going to sit down look at that Point out some areas that they're considering in their study. Hopefully they've specifically dealt with those things before. That's the goal there. And when they point those things out, some of those you're going to say yes. These are things we consider critical, and we want to continue to study that, keep following that trail. Um, so regular reporting of how those things are shaping up and where those reviews need to go next. That is all part of that process.

Okay. I think, I think that was kind of a big question.

Some of it narrows as it goes.

And would that be reported only to council? Would that be something that we would be included in? Do you have any thought as to how that would play out?

Are you open to a little more discussion? What I think is happening from a very broad perspective looking at the entire situation is we're taking a pause. We're looking to do research and evaluate the impact of this and possibly other things. During that pause, information's being developed in what I can only assume is moving towards some type of modifications to our existing ordinances. If that is the case, those would come before us at the time that the ordinances are written with us having an opportunity to look at the detail at that time and provide feedback of, we think this part of it's really good, but we feel it falls short a little bit here, this or that, as recommendations to county council before that ordinance actually became finalized. Is that an accurate description of the process we see ahead of us?

Yes, that sounds correct.

Okay, and so with that, I think we're getting a little bit in the weeds tonight for where we can be because we're trying to evaluate a ordinance that hasn't been written yet. What we're being asked to do, I think, tonight is... We're looking at a moratorium. Do you all kind of agree with the fact of a moratorium? And I think there's some broad brush type things that we all have mentioned in one form or another tonight, but I want to go back to some things I made some notes about. There was some discussion with county council last night about singling out and what other businesses could come in the future. And I think that part of what staff should be doing during this process is considering beyond just data centers, but how businesses coming into the county are partners. And how are we defining what a partner is with a business? You know, if, as an example, okay, we have somebody that comes in and they're gonna need to use 5% or more of the existing utility capacity that's available. And that triggers a, okay, wait a minute, that's a pretty big chunk. How is that gonna happen? What do we do? What are the evaluation criteria? So forth and so on. Because the concern is that capacity gets taken up and the burden for the cost of that gets passed along to the individual taxpayers and not by the entity coming in requesting that additional capacity. We've heard in all these different times that we have talked about impact fees, growth pays for growth. Now, I don't think that we're willing to charge families moving into the area an impact fee because of what them coming to the area will mean for schools, infrastructure, police and fire service, all this stuff. I'm sure a business impact fee would be a complete non-starter. I have no doubt in my mind that if we said, hey, we're going to have a business impact fee, that anybody would be in favor of that. But I think what is needed a little bit more is how we structure that effect and impact with what we do with a philo. And so we offer a philo for 40 years and here you go and that's it. And nobody knows what this place is gonna look like in 40 years. I think that those time frames on the FLO are a little bit too long. You know, what are the consequences? I heard a couple council people speak last night of, you know, transparency is important. Doing what you said you're going to do is important. Where do we have teeth in these relationships that we're developing, these contracts and things, memorandums of understanding that we have about what's going to happen, and then if the business does not fulfill that, where is the other side? So we're always handing out the carrot. We don't have a lot of the stick. And so from my perspective, as I thought about this and considered everything that they said last night, I think what I would like to see is a way that we evaluate businesses coming in, how they're going to partner with the county, how the county can have that business become a benefit for the community and not turn this into a, hey, the business is coming in, here's all your great benefits, and oh, by the way, 10 years from now, you only hire 25 people that really didn't do what you said it was gonna do. So there was a lot in what I said there, and I'm not necessarily looking for a response from you, Laura. I'm not trying to put you on the spot to answer all of that. I'm saying more in general, I think, what this has pointed out to all of us is the evaluation we need to do when we're looking at bringing a new business. How do we set realistic incentives that are appropriate and still reinforce the partnership and that the businesses that we are bringing into the area are not going to become a difficulty for the residents due to the type of business they perform, what things are involved in their particular business and noises and chemicals and whatever it may be and that we're zoning things appropriately so that when we do have those uses, they're not right up the back next to other communities that are looking to have more of a residential feel to them. So very broad bunch of comments and I'm not necessarily saying that there's any specific one thing I'm trying to get to there other than the sentiment of I think this process over the nine months should not be limited to a data center review, it should be a, but that we keep in mind as we're doing that How, as we're learning this, how do we apply that to other businesses so that we take advantage of what we've learned and carry that forward?

Yes, sir. So as I mentioned earlier to Mr. Williams, there's a lot of that that it would be inappropriate for me to respond to. There's a philosophical policy, and to the extent you're talking about belows or tax-related issues, I think outside the scope of what we're here looking at tonight. However, I did take from that meeting that... county council is asking staff to do some analysis of different types of uses and essentially what types of uses would you look at and what are the things you look at for different uses that if you're looking at those from a categorical standpoint you would say these are factors that if you see these things this should qualify as a high impact use and here's the way that those things need to be thought about and approached moving forward for any use that would fall into that category. I say that during this moratorium we're dealing with data centers because that is the ordinance and that's what it addresses and that is a legally defensible standpoint to take on that. So on that point, I have to be firm and say those are the parameters.

I want to make sure I was clear. I'm not saying that the moratorium should extend beyond data centers, but I'm saying the research that goes on in the background could extend beyond data centers. And that's what I'm trying to pass along as a recommendation that, yes, we're saying we're going to put a hold on data centers at the moment. But while we research that and learn about these high impact things and make these determinations, while we are doing that, we need to consider what other uses we should be having those kinds of stricter evaluation criteria for.

Yes, so using that information as sort of a building block for other things, that is absolutely something that I'm taking from this process, that I think planning staff are taking from this process, and based on what I heard from county council, that they are taking from this process, and that is when you go through this, you're going to run into things that You're going to hire an expert to look at something, and they're considering it for purposes of data centers. And they're going to say, well, you know, this other industry does this other thing. And there's no better way of phrasing that for me, because it's a hard example to give if I don't know exactly what the other thing would be. But you're going to run into those situations. And so the question for staff is, are you flagging those things? And are you doing that in a way where later when other uses come along that have those same characteristics, the same tendencies, are you making sure those are getting categorized as a high intensity or a high impact use? And then what is the appropriate way for addressing those things in the future and or What are some things that the committee or county council can take up in reviewing its ordinances for ones that you can go ahead and categorize as high impact or high intensity? And what are some appropriate ordinances you can put in place to address those?

Right, and for me, the biggest challenge is, someone mentioned last night in the meeting, I think it's we don't know what we don't know. And so how do we put things in place to clearly raise the flag that everybody says, yeah, that sounded really good, but we don't know what we don't know, and we need to get some help to really understand this before we move whatever X, Y, Z is forward. Okay.

Mike, as of April this year, there are 222 communities that have instituted moratoria across 30 states. So we're not trying to reinvent the wheel.

I understand that, yeah. What I'm saying is I think it's important that we have a broad view of what happens. below that next step down, right? The moratorium is okay, we don't know what we don't know right now. All those are put on hold. While we're going over here to do this research work, let's not have blinders on that we're only looking at data. We should be looking at a lot of different things and come out of that with some good solid, clear gates, thresholds, evaluation criteria that we could apply to anything and say, yeah, that one's getting close to that red line and we need to look at how we handle that differently. That's all.

I agree with you. Thanks.

and there there are other counties of the local governments who are doing things right now and then the other thing we're balancing here is that you do have a state legislature taking this up and you have a couple of um pending pending legislation proposals there and so the the other thing that will be part of the the legal focus is is making sure that we keep up with where those legislative items are and how far they make it, and if they end up becoming enacted, to what extent, if any, do those impact the ultimate product that we would be able to do for purposes of an ordinance?

Yes, sir. I guess the biggest point, and even mentioning when you mentioned we don't know what we don't know, so to me that means we all have to be educated. on what to look for. And I think if county council will hear it from me, I would ask and say, it sounds as though the wisest thing to do at this point is to find some experts who can look at all of the different areas where this specific issue was at hand. Have them come in, since we're a part of this process, making recommendations to county, they come in and educate us and them. It could be whatever. So we know now we're not operating from zero. We have some level of knowledge. It's been broken down, explained, these are things you won't look for, these are things you, and they're not telling us what to do. They're just telling us from an environmental standpoint, here were the impacts. He was a benefits, just a dad. And from there, if there's something they didn't cover that we think of, that can be added. But now we're not operating from a total deficit. They don't know. We don't know any more than they do as far as what are all the impacts we're just going and hearing and finding and googling just like they probably are but who's going to come in and help us make a better or more informed um recommendation and them to make a better and more informed decision so how do we get to that point there's only one way to get there some expert has to come in and educate us all

Actually, I think the first step is to vote on this, because it sounds like that is the plan if this goes through. So with that being said, I think we've kind of covered most of the questions, I would assume. Are there any additional questions that are different than what we've covered?

Yeah, I would like to point out if you look at other South Carolina counties that have implemented these moratoria, the majority of them are 12 to 18 month terms. So the question I have is do we think that within a nine month time frame we can accomplish what we're trying to set out to do? Is it better to start with a 12 month period with a sunset clause than it is to have a nine month with an extension? That's kind of the two questions that I had. How did we determine nine months was sufficient time and how do we handle it if it's not?

To the extent you want to talk about the specific way we got to a time frame, some of that involves legal advice, and I'd be happy to go into executive session and discuss that. OK. But to the extent you're asking about the different time frames that folks look at, it's really the best you can do as far as sitting down, mapping out how you would be able to get these things underway and how long you anticipate they would take. And it is a good faith estimate, sort of an educated estimate of here's how long we anticipate based on how long these types of studies might take. But that is why you build into your ordinance the ability to extend it by resolution if you need to. And that's why you give those updates and reports to county council and let them know where you are so that if you need extensions, they can approve a resolution and get those extensions.

Really, the last couple sentences of this ordinance cover that, if I'm not mistaken, that it can be extended.

That is correct. I just have one point of clarity. I just want to know what impact, if any, this moratorium has on any current projects underway.

How many times have you had that one, Laura? I cannot count.

Not tonight, but I'm sure you've gotten that other places.

It's a really good one.

So it is a good question, and it's an important one. When you have an active site, when someone undertakes to do something on their property in South Carolina and they get far enough along, they have what legally is considered to be a vested right to continue a development project. on that property for that thing they are seeking to do. So if you have an active site, first thing you would look at is for this particular thing that you're undertaking, did you get a site plan approved? And what kind of site plan is it? Civil construction plan? Civil site plan? Does it reflect your layout of your project and things like that? And if it does, and if that plan has been approved, so if you have an active data center site and you have site plan approval for that, you'd be considered to be vested under South Carolina law. If you have property where you are wanting to do a data center and you haven't submitted anything yet, You do not have vested rights. This moratorium would be applicable. And if you want to get into the nuance of vested rights and that analysis, we would need to go into executive session.

I think I'm satisfied with that. Ms. Scott.

Oh, go ahead.

I just wanted to ask about the mitigation part of this. Yes. Once the ordinance is put in place, the mitigation that's required for data centers, that would be included in the ordinance, correct? Help me out a little bit. So for instance, one of the things that I think should happen is that for a data center to come into a community, they need to produce their own power to run themselves and then give back to the grid, which would mean a benefit for the community instead of this deficit. So would that be written into the ordinance if that was something that was voted on and agreed upon?

So that actually is a great question, too. And it's specific enough that I hope I can be helpful. If you looked at that particular question and you said, OK, the expert has told us if a data center does x, y, and z, that would make them kind of an even player for the grid. They're not a strain or a drain on the grid. That makes them even par. And if they do also a and b, that makes them I think you said a benefit, so let's use that. That makes them a benefit overall to other rate payers. You have that part of the analysis, and then you would have the analysis that says, is that something that the county can address by ordinance, or is that because the way your rates are structured and how that gets approved is its own process, that goes before the PSC and gets approved or modified or however they end up ruling in that rate-making case, or is that something where we're preempted? But let's say it's something that we say, okay, we're not preempted. We can't address this. We would take those recommendations, legal would sit down, and we're presuming here that we're not preempted from that, and we would say, here's how you address that in an ordinance, here is the recommended language, here's what it accomplishes, here's what the study showed, here's why the ordinance reads this way now. And then that is the thing that would get presented ultimately to county council, you guys would get to see it, and we would be recommending approval and or adoption of that ordinance. So those mitigation items that you take, that is the point of doing those studies to say, County Council, let's say they can't agree on XYZ and ABC, but if they agree on XYZ, you have already made your ordinances that are able to mitigate this thing that you consider to be a negative impact that you did not have before.

Okay. And just to put it out there for another thing that I would like to see for mitigation for this is that if data centers are gonna be allowed and allowed to use, can we, I don't know how this would work exactly, but for instance, allowing them some I don't know how we would kind of coax this and make this a benefit for them, but it would definitely benefit the community if they could go into like abandoned manufacturing plants. You know what I mean? Instead of trying to like plant themselves in the middle of a rural community and everyone's mad around them to make it. I don't know what the word is. Incentivize them. Thank you. That's a great word. What was the word? Incentivize them. Incentivize. To use those buildings instead of building these new buildings that make everyone else angry, if that makes sense.

That actually does make sense. I cannot imagine what the industry would say about that. I'm sure they would have their answer to it. But I certainly understand what you are saying and appreciate those points. Drop by old warehouses and old mills and certainly look at those things and think, how they might be rehabilitated in some way or another. But as far as where data centers can go and what process they use to become a data center and start that operation is something I think you all know that this county council and this planning commission certainly had already taken into account and we had invoked pending ordinance doctrine for that reason. uh... special exception process in the conditional use process for were two big items i mean that was a big change to data centers as a use that is the process we were still working through when we decided you know there are some things we need to study that we need the outside experts on thus came the moratorium i don't i don't know that any any of those approaches holistically are off the table as far as how you ultimately end up wanting to amend your ordinance. The moratorium part is for those items that are outlined that you've identified as needing specifically to study during a moratorium process, but that's not to say you're not looking at the rest of that ordinance and that you won't make additional amendments to it. very, very quickly after you adopt any changes that result from the moratorium process. Okay. Thank you. It's never evolving.

Laura, I've got a follow-up, kind of what Aubrey, what you were saying with the grid. And I might have to define it. Peak shaving. Usually with big power users, they could go through a peak shaving process where... they would limit the impacts on not only the grid but the environment is that something that was included i don't think we included at the first time in the comments but i i think it's a very very important thing to look at because that looks at what's available on the grid when can you peak shave when can you if you have to do it at night or whatever I guess what I'm saying. Have they considered that, or is that in the details of...

It has been several years since I went to rate-making school, but I did go. And I can tell you that when we retain a rate-making expert, all of those factors are things they will be looking at. The rate-making part of this, the grid part of this, the energy part of this is going to... That, luckily, is a field where... I know there are some fantastic experts out there who are always looking at all aspects of utility, how it functions, how power is drawn from it, and how those things operate. The legal part of the energy portion of that is what is going to be the more nuanced analysis. I think you certainly can get feedback from someone who is a rate-making expert, who is a utility expert, to say, here are all the things that are important. When you're looking at... a large project that everyone, we kind of just generally know is kind of a large draw on the grid, right? That's someone who's going to be able to say, yeah, I've looked at all of these different types of uses, how they impact the energy grid for this utility in this area, and here's how that works, and here's how you extrapolate that, and here's what's appropriate. And then the legal side of that is, At what point do you run into that state process? You just want to make sure that you're playing within the appropriate parameters there and that your expert has the experience they need to be able to make those recommendations.

First of all, I think it's very important. That's why I was asking the question if that's going to be evaluated because that's a very important part of how you evaluate the grid.

We have any additional questions?

Just one other little follow-up from other things that were mentioned here. I know there has been some change in outlook about when information is shared, when new economic development is going on. I know a lot of times we get these code words and things that are coming along and people don't necessarily know everything and there's a lot of understanding. I understand why a business would not necessarily want to reveal everything until they were sure that that was the direction they were going to go. I get that from a strategic standpoint, but as we're working through this process, I think it's important that the criteria that we're talking about for this evaluation would be happening well in advance, further down the road now, again, right? We've gotten to a point where we've done our studies, we kinda know what we wanna look for for high impact, that those evaluation criteria were taken and evaluated well in advance before a zoning change request came to us for a piece of property, to be able to move a particular large company or big business into the area. Because I know there's been several that have probably come before us that we've had nothing more than a code name for the approval and not really knowing what the full extent of the underlying business was. So I just would like to impart that as part of the process as you're thinking about this in the background with everyone that you would share that. I would really like to see these criteria happen and pass whatever that criteria winds up being before a zoning request change comes to us. And say, yeah, sorry, pass that criteria. You don't have to worry about it. That's all I got.

Any additional?

Motion to approve.

I'm sorry?

Would you like me to make a motion to approve?

I would love for you to make a motion.

I would like to make a motion to approve the moratorium request in front of us as written.

I'll second.

Is there any discussion? So we have a first and a second to recommend the moratorium to council. All those in favor? Anyone opposed? OK. um would anybody like to adjourn i'll make a motion to adjourn second all those in favor have a good night