Public Hearing Tells Hogansville Council “No Data Centers Here”

The Hogansville City Council held the second Public Hearing concerning amendments for a Unified Development Ordinance (UDO) for rezoning areas of the city to General High Industrial (G-HI). This UDO would be in used to regulate any data centers that could be built in the future. The hearing was originally scheduled for City Hall but was moved again to the Royal Theater to accommodate the expected large crowd. It was a good change of venue since approximately 150 people attended.

Nineteen people chose to speak at the hearing, all of them against data centers, and many of them living or working within two miles of the proposed data center site.

The first speaker, Stacy Miles, said she is not anti-progress, but she is anti-corruption and felt the Council was selling the citizens out. She said data center developers promise jobs and downplay pollution, and Hogansville’s future should not be for sale. “There’s an issue whenever we have more regulations in this city, in this county and in this country to sell a sandwich than we do to regulate data centers,” Miles told the Council.

Several speakers, among them Travis Turner, said they are against the city even having an area zoned High Industrial. Turner said he believes the city can make plenty of money from the growth that has already started in Hogansville. Liz Warner added that ordinances are important, but the council shouldn’t approve high industrial areas or data centers.

Many of those who chose to speak felt the wording in the amendments was either too vague or not strong enough. Lauren Pringle, one of the owners of Georgia Untamed Zoo, said she read about how the ordinance says there will be testing for noise before ground is disturbed. The problem is, Pringle went on, that there will be no noise before the ground is disturbed, but there would be a lot of noise, with no testing for it, after the construction begins. Ila Burdette and Albert Prado agreed that the wording for the new UDO needed to be stronger. Prado asked the Council members if they were willing to live next to a data center.

Ansley Brown warned the council to take more time to do research before putting Hogansville in jeopardy. Chris Rice urged the council to find out more about data centers and asked, “Why are the people on Hightower Road being sacrificed?” Cody Pringle says he has heard from several people who had planned to move to Hogansville but are now reluctant because of a potential data center. “This is preventable,” he warned.

Perhaps the most outspoken of the data center opposers was Stacy Smith, who asked if data centers are good for cities, why the Council did business with the developers in secret. She stated that the Council and mayor failed miserably in transparency and urged them to “wake up, step up and lead like you were elected to do.”