Perris Becomes Second City To Ban Data Centers In Riverside County

Applause erupted Tuesday night after the Perris City Council voted unanimously to ban data centers citywide, becoming the second city in the county to prohibit the land use after Coachella.

“I’m so glad to know that…we have gotten ahead of an item that could have definitely jeopardized our community,” Councilmember Marisela Nava said at the October 13 meeting. “I am really proud of us for doing the right thing, because [the] general welfare of our community should never be up for negotiation.”

Principal Planner Rafael Garcia explained to the council members that the item was coming to them with a unanimous recommendation from the city’s planning commission which found that any benefits from potential investment, property tax revenue or job creation from a data center development would not outweigh the negative impacts. 

“A citywide prohibition would accomplish a wide variety of things including to protect the public health, safety and general welfare [and] manage the high and continuous resource demand associated with the high-level usage of electricity and water,” he said. “This would also establish a clear policy, [and] it would provide consistent and a predictable approach before major private investment comes into the city.”

The city’s newly adopted policy defined data centers as any facility, building, structure or dedicated space within a building or structure used for housing of a computer network or computer systems or servers for storage or processing of data. This included, but was not limited to, server farms, hyperscale facilities and edge data centers, which are small, decentralized computing facilities close to end users and devices to process data locally and reduce lag.

Not included were traditional telephone switching facilities, telecommunication antennas, residential computer rooms and standard server rooms ancillary to a permitted principal office use.

The city previously discussed the issue in June, at the recommendation of Councilmember David Starr Rabb, who earlier this year asked city staff to research the impacts of data centers and evaluate whether they should be allowed in the city. At that meeting, the council voted unanimously to move forward with a ban.

At Tuesday’s meeting, the council heard from 15 speakers in support of the ban, with many hoping it would spur other communities to take action.

“As you know, these decisions have a domino effect in other areas as well,” Karla Cervantes, founder of Mead Valley Coalition for Clean Air, said. “For the city of Perris to be the first in Western Riverside County to enact this type of ban, it’s just such an easy [win] for you guys and such an easy [win] for the community.”

A number of residents also called on the council to send a letter to the 46th District Agricultural Association/Southern California Fair board, calling for an end to an agreement with Global Stack LLC to explore a potential development on the fairgrounds to support emergency services. 

The development proposal includes a potential data center, said to be about the size of a shipping container, that the company has referred to as an edge compute system to support those efforts.

“I ask the city council to send a letter to the fairgrounds to end the agreement with Global Stack regarding [a] proposed data center,” Shirley Martinez, a Perris resident, said. “It is your responsibility to hear from the public, and since you are banning the data center here, we do need a letter sent to the fairgrounds to end the data center there.”

In a tense exchange, Mayor Michael Vargas told one speaker to stay on topic since the council has no jurisdiction over the fairground, which is state-owned property.

“You have the right to speak, but you have to stay focused on things that are within our jurisdiction,” Vargas said. “What goes on at the fairgrounds is not in our jurisdiction.”