HILLSBORO, Texas (KXXV) — The City of Hillsboro is looking to redefine how data centers can come into the city through zoning changes, and neighbors showed up with their questions and concerns.
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Neighbors made their voices heard as the planning and zoning commission took a new look at zoning for data centers.
Richard Reinhardt with the city of Hillsboro said the current ordinances leave little room to push back against data center development.
"These ordinances that are silent on data centers don't have a lot of room to say no to these data centers and so that got me looking closer at our zoning ordinance," Reinhardt said.
Neighbors want a change in the language to be more specific and restrictive on resources. One neighbor raised concerns about tax incentives offered to data centers.
"You're gonna offer them tax [relief] through this, and they're gonna say they're gonna pay, they're gonna say, we're gonna pay these taxes, it's gonna be great for your community. We're not going to see it for 10, 15 years," the neighbor said.
Another neighbor pushed for broader impact considerations to be included in the zoning language.
"Why do you only have five? Why don't you have community impact? Why don't you have environmental impacts on there. Because it's true, when it's vague, it's not specific, you can get away with a lot of things," the neighbor said.
The committee voted to redirect staff on what the definition of a data center is and to add more parameters after hearing the community's concerns.
"I do know we have to have a definition in order to hand a potential builder these supplemental restrictions," a commissioner said.
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