Well, good evening and welcome to our regularly scheduled council meeting for Monday.

And there's

service.

Amen.

The United States of America.

And to the Republic for which it stands.

One nation under God.

Indivisible with liberty and justice for all.

Thank you.

If you're going to be speaking tonight for any reason, if you would uh stand to be sworn in by our city

attorney.

Sam?

Thank you, Mr.

Mayor.

Yes, again, if you will be making any kind of presentation or comment before the council this evening, would you please raise your right hand?

Do you swear or affirm that the presentation or comment you'll be making tonight will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?

If so, say I do.

Thank you.

You may be seated.

All right, thank you.

With that, the uh floor for public comment is open.

This is for anything, this is public comment that's anything on the agenda.

Hearing none and seeing none, the floor for public comment is closed.

Item 8A is uh resolution for the uh data center moratorium, and I believe this is yours, Anthony.

You're gonna respond uh

Sam.

Chanel will be making the initial presentation.

Um

good evening, Mayor and Council.

In light of the ongoing review of the impacts of data centers on surrounding communities, as well as related initiatives at both the local and state level planning and zoning is in support of the request to implement a temporary moratorium on data centers.

LEDA legal has recommended six months temporary moratorium, which staff supports this time frame would allow staff to thoroughly thoroughly research the implications of data centers, including concerns related to potential noise pollution, air quality impacts and impacts to local infrastructure.

The moratorium period will also provide staff with time to consider and develop as necessary zoning and land use standards related to data centers for recommendation to Mayor and Council.

As staff begin our research and work on the ordinance update, we will monitor the timeline closely.

Should additional time be needed to complete the analysis and propose updates to the UDC, we will ensure that all procedural requirements are met and staff will return to Mayor and Council with a request for an extension.

Okay, thank you very much.

May I have a motion to approve the resolution for the moratorium of uh data

centers?

Uh before we do that, could I just ask a quick question from Legal?

So originally the uh original time frame was 12 months, you're recommending six.

Could I just get a little more information on to why that was the recommended length?

Absolutely, and that's a very good question.

Yes, we had uh discussed initially a uh 12-month moratorium in looking at this evolving area of the law.

Um legal decided that we wanted to not reach that far out into the future because of the definition in the uh case law about what a zoning decision is.

Uh the statute in Georgia requires that if uh a local governing authority is engaging in a zoning decision or considering a zoning decision, uh there is must be a hearing that is conducted before the mayor and council uh or whatever the local governing authority is uh with certain notice and publication associated with that.

If those requirements are not followed, the moratorium can be invalidated.

We certainly didn't want that to happen.

In addition to that, it's important that the city, as uh Chanel has done so well, uh state what the purpose of the moratorium is.

And as she stated, it's really a pause in the city accepting and considering any applications for a data center.

Now, to my knowledge, there are no uh applications pinning in front of the city uh for that use.

However, because it is such a uh hot topic uh throughout the country and certainly in Cobb and in the State of Georgia, uh, we felt it was necessary to uh revisit the ordinances of the City of Kennesaw, the uniform development code, and determine how we are going to define and regulate data centers if there ever is a situation where uh an entity would like to put in an application to construct such a facility in the city limits of Kinnesaw.

So the longer you go out with a moratorium, pardon me, the more it begins to look like, well, we just don't want data centers.

And that's not a legal basis in order to deny an otherwise legal business to come into the city.

There needs to be ascertainable standards if they do want to apply for such a facility in the city.

So we decided that the recommendation from legal would be a six-month moratorium.

We can certainly come back and extend that if staff and planning and zoning decides that they need more time to do a thorough analysis of all the pros and cons of such a facility coming into the city.

And we can certainly uh deal with that at the time if that becomes necessary.

So it's really to protect the city and to make sure that everyone realizes that this is being done for a legitimate reason that there are going to be ascertainable standards in the code, that this was not an arbitrary and capricious decision by the city to impose a moratorium.

Again, that's intended to simply be a pause to allow the city to do an analysis that's necessary in order to deal with this issue, which again is obviously very, very important for many, many people in the state and in the country.

We will actually be holding a hearing pursuant to the statute, which will be uh scheduled at a later time, and there will be notice requirements that must be followed.

So that will be an opportunity, Mr.