The Indio City Council Wednesday night voted unanimously to extend its urgency moratorium on data centers for up to one year to allow staff time to draft amendments to city code, present those to the planning commission and bring a recommendation to the council.
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“I do not anticipate that we will need one year to finish this up, but we’re recommending one year just to give us maximum runway,” City Attorney Steven Pacifico said at the October 7 meeting. “When we bring a prohibition forward, a ban forward, that will override the moratorium, so the moratorium will automatically end the day the ban goes into effect.”
The city first adopted the urgency moratorium on data centers and other similar high-intensity computing uses in May and voted to extend it in July following the planning commission’s recommendation for a full ban.
Pacifico said staff had been working on developing the citywide ban, but had run into some issues due to the city’s “prolific number of specific plans,” which are special zoning ordinances only applicable to specific parts of the city that override city code.
As part of this process, Pacifico said it also brought up the question of whether the council wanted to move forward with amending the city code and every single specific plan to include a section of prohibited uses that would make future updates easier.
“I don’t think that data centers are going to be the last citywide prohibited use that the city has a concern with,” he said. “So we might as well, since we’re doing it, fix it and make it easier the next time when we have a situation like that.”
After a brief discussion, the council decided it would be in the best interest of the city to go through the process of updating the city’s unified development code as well as each of the specific plans, which Pacifico said would require tribal consultation, even if it took a little longer to get the permanent ban in place.
“I’d be more comfortable fixing the process once and for all rather than having a surprise…thinking we banned something when the reality is the specific plan overrides it, and we get ourselves in trouble,” Mayor Elaine Holmes said at the meeting. “That’s just not where I want to be.”
Jonathan Becerra, candidate for the District 4 seat who was the only member of the public to speak at the meeting, said he supported the council taking the time to ensure there were no loopholes developers could exploit in the future.
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