An hour before the meeting, Clintonians Against Data Centers made their voices heard at a rally outside Eagle Point Lodge.<\/p>\n
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This story continues below.<\/p>\n
“I would say that our goal at this point is just to slow this process down,” organizer Celeste Robbins said.<\/p>\n
Robbins said her biggest aim is protecting her city from the worst impacts of data centers.<\/p>\n
“1,500 foot setbacks, livestock animals as a sensitive receptor and more strict, stronger language throughout the ordinance,” she said.<\/p>\n
Another perspective from within the group came from a former city council member, Ed O’Neill.<\/p>\n
“We need some work on both sides to come to a compromise,” O’Neill said.<\/p>\n
O’Neill suggested the city offer space in an existing rail yard, about 1,300 acres split across the highway.<\/p>\n
“Part of the compromise is we’re going to suggest that Grow Clinton gift that 500 acres that they got to QTS,” O’Neill said.<\/p>\n
Inside the meeting, Robbins argued the city is unfairly rejecting the group’s petition.<\/p>\n
“I really wish the city would do the right thing because you got 1,500 signatures from your residents,” she said.<\/p>\n
The petition proposed an ordinance prohibiting the operation of hyperscale data centers within a mile of anywhere people live or work. City Attorney Pat O’Connell said the petition couldn’t be accepted because it impacted zoning laws.<\/p>\n
“It has nothing to do with whether the initiative was a great idea or a bad idea or anything. It\u2019s just not allowed by our initiative process in our charter,” O’Connell said.<\/p>\n
City council ended up approving the first reading. Councilmember Janet Turpin was the only member to vote against. The ordinance must pass two more readings before going into effect.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A petition that would put an ordinance in another part of city code was rejected after the city…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":315952,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[128,130,129],"class_list":["post-315951","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-reading","tag-reading-city","tag-reading-city-headlines","tag-reading-city-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315951","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=315951"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315951\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/315952"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=315951"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=315951"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=315951"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}