What's at stake:
The city's planning rulebook currently allows the planning director to unilaterally allow a data center.
Richardson wants to close that loophole.
A Fresno councilmember will ask his colleagues to begin writing a citywide ban on data centers, a step that would strip power the city’s Planning Director currently has to allow one.
The resolution, from Councilmember Nick Richardson, directs staff to prepare an amendment to the city’s Development Code defining data centers — including facilities built to train and deploy artificial intelligence — and prohibiting them throughout Fresno. The ban would run 10 years, then become permanent unless a future council votes to change it.
“I figured everybody else is on board with me,” Richardson said in an interview on Friday.
The northeast Fresno councilmember said that his primary motivation for banning data centers is water.
“I have never thought that having one here in the valley is a good idea, primarily based on hard access to water,” he said.
“The last thing we need is a business disproportionately taking more than it’s contributing to the community.”
The proposed ban resolution is on the council’s consent calendar this Thursday, Sept. 3.
The proposal follows the Planning Commission’s vote last week to advance the Southeast Development Area (SEDA) plan, where Councilmember Miguel Arias said the plan was a vehicle for bringing data centers to Fresno. Planning Director Jennifer Clark told commissioners the code does not allow them.
The resolution, written with the help of the City Attorney’s office, attempts to close a loophole that could allow Clark the power to decide that data centers are an allowable use in Fresno, according to the resolution.
The current planning code could authorize a datacenter “by a [Planning] Director’s determination,” according to the resolution authored by the City Attorney’s office.
When it comes to data centers, Richardson wants to remove that unilateral power.
“There is a portion in there [in the city’s planning codebook] that says at the planning director’s discretion, the planning director can decide to allow a use that is not otherwise used,” he said.
Richardson said he didn’t speak with other councilmembers before drafting the measure.
If the council initiates the amendment next Thursday, the data center ban would then go to the airport land use commission, then the planning commission, then back to the city council for final approval.
Mayor Dyer could not be immediately reached for comment.
A workshop will also be hosted next Thursday on the unreleased financial plan for the first phase of SEDA, which currently has over $400 million in funding shortfalls.
