The Oglethorpe County Board of Commissioners voted unanimously to approve a 90-day moratorium on data centers at its meeting at the courthouse on Monday.
It will temporarily halt any data center applications while county officials draft an ordinance to regulate them. The motion, introduced by District 5 Commissioner Tracy Norman, wasn’t on the original agenda.
“Right now, if somebody came in and put (in) an application for a data center, we have no way to stop anything,” Norman said. “We’re going to need to put something in the zoning to be able to control what’s done here.”
District 4 Commissioner Will Brown also suggested that the moratorium include restrictions on major computer processing centers, like bitcoin mining.
The amendment was approved by the board.
Norman has researched data center ordinances and has spoken with industry experts since February, but intentionally delayed pushing for an ordinance until Jones County — which is northeast of Macon — approved its heavily restrictive one in May.
While the ordinance wouldn’t ban data centers entirely, it will focus on mitigating the local impact of the facilities by restricting noise levels, water consumption and their proximity to homes and buildings, Norman said.
He said there’s one in Athens-Clarke County that is owned by a power company that can’t be heard from the street.
Norman added that a “Google or an Amazon would not be (able) to build (in Oglethorpe County)” because of their size, but a smaller company could, with the “right zoning.”
About 20 people attended the 33-minute meeting, the second consecutive one at the courthouse.
ADA compliant websites
Planning assistant and permitting director Teresa Campbell presented a proposal to partner with CivicPlus, a software development company, to align the county’s websites with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).
Federal guidelines require the county to update its website by April 2027 and Campbell urged quick action, noting that website redevelopment takes roughly eight months.
“Maintaining compliance through our current platform has been very difficult,” Campbell said. “We are very limited in our capabilities outside of just making links more easily available.”
The update will introduce video captioning, streamline agenda building tools for county staff and simplify the process for residents to locate information and make open records requests. The county’s emergency alert system — CodeRED — will also be replaced by a CivicPlus mass notification system.
The transition will consolidate various county websites into a unified platform, allowing them to share the increased cost that accompanies the update.
The initial implementation cost is $79,802, followed by an annual fee of $65,832. The county spends $348 annual on standard web hosting through the Wix Core plan.
SPLOST renewal
Oglethorpe County voters will decide in the general election on Nov. 3 to renew the five-year, 1% Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax (SPLOST) for 2027.
If approved, the tax would continue without interruption when the current cycle expires on Sept. 30, 2027, aiming to raise $9 million to fund roads, bridges and transportation, public safety and general infrastructure.
The board also unanimously approved an intergovernmental agreement with Crawford, Maxeys, Lexington and Arnoldsville to outline how the proceeds will be allocated.
Under the agreement, the majority of the funding will be split evenly between roads, bridges and transportation equipment, and public safety, each receiving $4.05 million. The remaining $900,000 will go toward sewage infrastructure, technology improvements and park facilities.
Emergency services requests
The board unanimously approved $69,899.38 from the 2022 SPLOST fund for equipment upgrades across three volunteer fire departments. The funding requests were approved by the Emergency Services Committee (ESC) at the end of June.
EMS director Joshua Robinson presented the requests, which included:
Wesley Chapel: Funding for a grant match received from Georgia Forestry for turnout gear.
Crawford: Funding for updated battery-powered extrication tools and two sets of replacement turnout gear.
Devils Pond: Funding to replace two sets of expired personal protective equipment.
“We had two months of discussion over this to look back at our strategic plan for ESC,” Robinson said. “All of these requests match that, with recruitment, retention, updating our outdated equipment to keep us going and make the service we provide better.”
In other business, the BOC:
Unanimously approved Emergency Management Administrator Douglas Spencer’s pre-disaster hazard mitigation plan, which is drafted every five years.
Voted 4-1 to approve a Temporary Use Application for Danielle Burgess, allowing for the 11th annual Bark & Wine to be held from 5-9 p.m. Aug. 15 at Countryside Manor in Winterville. A special event Malt Beverage and Wine sales permit was also approved for the Bark & Wine. District 3 Commissioner David Clark voted against both of these public hearing items. The Bark & Wine is the Madison Oglethorpe Animal Shelter’s largest fundraiser.
Unanimously approved an Indigent Defense Agreement among the Circuit Public Defender Office of the Northern Judicial Circuit and Elbert, Franklin, Hart, Madison and Oglethorpe counties. The agreement outlines how the counties will split the costs to staff and operate the centralized office, which provides free legal services to defendants who cannot afford an attorney.
- Delayed voting on the Cooperative Extension Program Assistant funding.