During last night’s Memphis City Council meeting, two ordinances regulating data centers passed their first reading, and must pass two more readings before they are enacted.
Said ordinances would reshape the zoning codes for data centers in the city.
The city council did not, however, address the proposed one-year moratorium during yesterday’s meeting and instead moved the vote to October 20th, following Tuesday’s meeting that saw the presence of nearly 200 disruptive activists and residents.
Commenting on the above events, Councilman Chase Carlisle said, “Nobody in the audience wanted to hear anything that was happening up there. They were ramped up from the moment they came in. It was a yes vote, or this thing’s going down. Like, that’s not democracy. That’s not the facilitation of the exchange of free ideas. That’s intimidation.”
Beyond the data centers discussion, Memphis City Council also passed an ordinance Thursday that would deem short-term rentals in the city a public nuisance after three violations.
