00:00:05,170	City Current. Produced by Dakota Media Access. In-depth discussion with Bismarck and Mandan city officials. Watch on Government Access channel 602 HD or tune in to Radio Access 102.5 FM. Always local, always current. Welcome to this special edition of City Current. Going to be talking about data centers from planning to proposal. Good morning everyone.

00:00:39,670	I'm Tom Gerhardt from Dakota Media Access and joined by a special cast and crew today from the City of Mandan, including Mayor Froelich, City Administrator Jim Neubauer, City Engineer Jarek Wigness and Building Official Jordan Singer. Gentlemen, thank you for joining me here today. Thanks for having us.

00:00:58,700	It was just not enough to have Jim, you know, we need to we need to diversify. We brought in the big guns. The big guns today. Well, this is an important topic, and I know you want to get the information out to the public to understand what's happening. And so I just have a few questions here and feel free to, to jump in wherever.

00:01:15,600	But maybe I'll start with you, Jim. And just as we looked at that initial slide, it was part of the presentation, the meeting from August 24th that took place at the Mandan High School auditorium. So we'll put up some more of those slides to help people visualize and understand what's happening.

00:01:35,300	But where are we at? How did we get here? What's happening at this point? Great question, Tom. And I think to provide some background and some relative information on this. We started our land use code rewrite in really the spring of 2023.

00:01:57,570	At that point in time, Andrew Stromme was our city planner and had made a suggestion that, hey, it's it's been decades since our land use code had been updated. And so that's really where the ball started. We contracted with a with a firm to assist us in that process. It's been a couple of years.

00:02:14,700	So if you look from today until last three years, this has been a work in progress between city staff, the engineering firm that we hired to help us with this, and also the planning and Zoning commission members that have provided some valuable input into this process. So specifically, at last night's on September 1st city Commission meeting, we moved forward.

00:02:35,200	The final consideration of what I think we have 890 pages or 900 pages of zoning code that moved forward, except for the topic of today, which is a piece related to data centers. And the North Dakota League of Cities had commissioned a group of planners around the state.

00:02:54,770	I think there were ten of them or so, got together and started putting together some draft model ordinances regarding data centers. They put that initial draft together. We took a look at it and said, yeah, I think we might be missing some things. I think the initial draft, I think was about four pages long. We looked at that.

00:03:13,830	We listened to some public comment on what we're hearing from around the state, from around our community, and said, we probably need to add some things to that draft. So after hearing those comments, we pulled that piece out of that 890 900 page document and thought, this is an important enough topic that we should deal with. It's on its own.

00:03:31,070	We in turn, we told folks, we're going to pull that out. Let's we will do some revisions, some additions. We I think we did a great job of strengthening the ordinance. That was the draft that was presented. We went, I think, four pages to 19 pages.

00:03:51,830	A lot of things that we heard from the from the from the public on sound water use, zoning and things like that. So we strengthened those areas. We told the public we would put that out for public comment on August 6th. We did that on August 6th. We received more public comment prior to the August 24th Planning and Zoning Commission.

00:04:14,770	We had, I think, for items that we had heard in written comments and verbal comments. We had language to insert into that draft ordinance. So planning and zoning then heard from the public on August 24th and we, I think, drafted on the fly.

00:04:38,230	Jarek and Jordan were there and rewriting some things and presenting those on based on some of those things that we heard at that meeting and had those ready to go for the Planning and Zoning Commission for their consideration on the 24th.

00:04:54,770	So that received with the addition, I think there were six items in addition to the four that we already had in the bag and drafted for more or two more on the fly, and then had those for the planning and zoning consideration on the 24th, they had some discussion after public hearing and in turn adopted those four changes into that ordinance. And so now it will move up to the city Commission.

00:05:10,000	And we are still working on a date on when we can schedule those meetings. On the first and second consideration, we know that there's a great deal of public interest based on the 5 to 600 people that attended August 24th scheduling that is becoming with school starting in the auditorium in use quite a bit.

00:05:30,830	It's great for the high school. New auditorium used a lot. We want to make sure that we have an appropriate venue to hold the first and second consideration. So that's kind of where we're at.

00:05:46,270	One thing and we were talking a little bit ahead of us getting on air here is I think it needs to be said to that August 24th meeting. What you're talking about, this is talking about an ordinance, not talking about passing a data center. I think there's some confusion out there where people, at least from my perspective, seem to think that this is a green light for a data center.

00:06:01,900	This is providing structure to an ordinance in case a data center comes right. I think it's important to note that we don't have an application for a data center in front of us today, and we have not had one in front of us.

00:06:23,200	We know that Jarek and Jordan attended the the meetings that were held at the Bismarck Library, attended some meetings that were held at the signature events in downtown Mandan and attended, I think a third get together at the high school auditorium and heard took all what they heard and drafted those comments. Okay, we're hearing this.

00:06:43,000	We're hearing that how can we best accommodate some of those items? Again, we don't have a data center application in front of us. What we are doing with these ordinances, we're providing, I think, the guardrails, because right now we have limited guardrails, we have industrial zones and things like that, but specifically rated related to data centers.

00:07:01,300	We don't have anything that would appropriately, appropriately deal with a data center application. And again, we obviously we are at the Stark Power Open House on August, the Thursday I think, before the August 24th meeting date escapes me. But several of us attended that. We were we asked some questions.

00:07:23,530	We felt this was a good time for the public to ask that entity those questions too. So like I said, we don't have an application in front of us. We from what our understanding is they're still reviewing.

00:07:41,030	We understand the land has not been purchased, but there are contracts to buy several hundred acres of property in the northern part of Mandan. We'll get to in just a minute. I want to ask you about the ordinance and the amendments that you are working on the night of the August 24th meeting. But just one more thing for you, Jim. Just the importance for a city to have ordinances in place.

00:07:58,830	Yeah, I think from our visit visiting with other communities around North Dakota, I think this is why the League of Cities got involved is because several communities were saying, okay, we may have interest in data centers coming to our our city or county and things like that, and we don't really have

00:08:17,300	anything good to go on right now. So that's why the League of Cities got involved and said, let's put together a group of folks. A lot of them were planners. And what what things do we need to address in a model ordinance that can be shared among all those communities? Great starting point.

00:08:33,830	But each community then can take that model ordinance and add things that are specifically related to their community. Because right now, in our case, and they're really, really none. And that's why, again, we're trying to set up some guardrails to make sure that if we do have an application, here are the things, the parameters that have to be met.

00:08:51,630	All right. Well, there's no application as of today. It's September 2nd as we record this. But Jordan say there is an application. Let's just pretend you got one today for a data center. And as the land use ordinance stands like what could happen? Yeah. Great. Great question. Tom.

00:09:12,370	I think one of the things that we look at from staff perspective is, okay, when we when we get an application, where are we going to do with it? And right now it would be really hard to not have anything on the books as far as an ordinance.

00:09:27,270	But I think one of the things I know a lot of people look at and say, oh no, what are we going to do? But it's also a process. So right now let's just say, Tom, you brought in. All right. I want the status center. We are looking currently at a time frame of late October to be in front of the Z.

00:09:43,370	And as staff, we would look at the application and knowing what we know about a perspective project that may be coming, they're not nobody's ready. And in order to come in front of P and Z, we have to have a fully ready application.

00:10:08,230	And we we probably wouldn't accept that knowing there are missing pieces and okay, we need to work on this and we need to get this piece yet. So honestly, earliest that would come would be November end of November for that. But we just as staff, we don't see that happening. And if it would we're going to we're going to we want to use our new ordinance.

00:10:26,130	Obviously we go to the city commission with that and move it forward from what we have and go from there. The other the other thing that needs to take place, if an application comes in is the process. And when an application comes in, we obviously have to go to and Z.

00:10:50,270	Go back and have a public hearing, have the special use permit, all of those steps. Not only that, but there would most likely be a zone change. So a lot of times you'll do those at the same time. But there are multiple steps and things that need to happen.

00:11:07,270	So PNC first have that meeting and then go to the city commission with that with final either approval or denial, whatever they would decide based on that application. So lots of steps. Yet we're we're just getting at the beginning of a lot of these, these things. Well that was a hypothetical. Let's jump back to reality in the actual ordinance that's being worked on.

00:11:24,130	Jarek, can you tell us a little bit, Jim, use the word guardrails. So tell us about some of the the bones of this ordinance that you are working on. Yeah, absolutely. And then I would I would add that the ordinance itself, it's not an ordinance for a specific project.

00:11:41,330	It's not an ordinance that's being written so that we can handle Stark Powers proposal. It's an ordinance that's being written so that we could handle any proposal that comes to town or might come to town. And then, yeah, an ordinance is not a red carpet. It's not an invitation.

00:12:00,700	It's it's a set of rules that are meant to protect the community and I would say mitigate nuisances and mitigate negative impacts while still maybe allowing room for, for improvements or improved life. And that's really the whole goal. The whole goal is to do what's best for the citizens of Mandan.

00:12:26,670	As far as how the ordinance was drafted, we our approach was look at what people are talking about and identify how we can address those concerns and then translate that into ordinance language. So, you know, we heard about water usage. We heard about wastewater discharge, nuisance noises, decommissioning of these massive facilities after their life. And we had, yeah, dealing with lights and things like that.

00:12:54,000	Light trespass, the esthetics of these buildings. You know, people imagine big concrete structures. We don't want that in our community. And yeah. So so that was kind of the approach that we took. We said, well, these are all the concerns that everybody has related to data centers. Let's mitigate as much of this as we possibly can.

00:13:13,400	That's under our control. And and you know, that's just in in the interests of preserving everybody's livelihood and health and doing trying to do what's best for the citizens of Mandan. Yeah. So working on this ordinance, public input, obviously, an important piece of that going back to the August 24th meeting, which I attended and listened to.

00:13:40,300	And you were working on amendments, I guess, to that ordinance live as you were taking some input. What are some of the things that as of that night, you're working to change in the in the draft ordinance? Yeah.

00:14:02,270	And then, yeah, ordinances, I think that they can be revised continuously and we're kind of we're, we're working towards what we want a more and more perfect ordinance. But yeah, after we had posted our draft on August 6th, we still kept our ear to the ground, tried to listen to people's concerns. We went back to recorded legislative sessions.

00:14:22,970	We reviewed, we went to the meetings that were being put on by the community, and we looked at Facebook comments, looked at emails, everything. And there were common themes among all of those sources. And some of those are PFAS, PFAS. You know, we're going. PFAS is kind of an emerging, emerging topic in the wastewater community. And that is basically like a forever plastic, forever chemical.

00:14:47,500	And one of the concerns with data centers is that they're using coolants that have PFAS in them. And then when they get disposed, that ends up places. But we included provisions that would require not coolants that don't have PFAS in them. So that was a really easy addition.

00:15:11,870	Commissioner McLean had come to the meeting with a proposed 500ft setback. And it was really interesting because I had, in my own independent research prior to the meeting, come up with the same independent 500ft setback. This is this is what we should do as kind of a safety net for our acoustic and light provisions that are more performance based.

00:15:35,300	Commissioner McLean had also come to the meeting with a proposed decibel reduction, and we did write that one on the fly wasn't really hard to write it on the fly just because it was adjusting a table, but he had felt very strongly that a more protective awaited decibel was five decibels lower

00:15:53,400	than we had in the initial draft, and we were able to accommodate that based on the commission's feedback and the public feedback, schools being considered the most sensitive, I think, made this wall had sent in a very comprehensive comment that showed where she felt that schools need to be treated as a sensitive, receptive site and completely agree

00:16:21,500	with that one. We talked about it with the meeting and implemented that, and then we have this measurements in every direction. That one's maybe more of a technicality. We want to treat every data set are the same as far as determining those measurable goals.

00:16:38,800	And then we included a non-disclosure agreement restrictions in the ordinance, which is another big topic around the state, not only with data centers, but with with everything that the municipalities and political subdivisions are doing. So. So, Jordan, you touched on this a little bit, but what are some next steps from this September 2nd date forward? Yeah.

00:17:02,700	You know, I think one of the things that we are looking for is to go to the city Commission with the rest of what we have from August 24th with these six additions that we added and then looking for the proposed language to go through the city commission, we we want an ordinance. We need an ordinance for this to get going.

00:17:23,600	Go back to the guardrails, back to the conversation of, okay, now we had a set of rules in place. This is the this is the playing field that we've set up. Now you can bring in an application. You know, we're going to have you follow this. And not only that but you know there's other pieces of it.

00:17:42,330	I know we touched a little bit on them during the meeting, but things like a development agreement, it's a very big document and a lot of things that we're probably going back and forth with a developer on. Hey, we need this. We need to have this in here. Road, you know, road surveys, things like that.

00:18:00,930	All those pieces that staff would work with the development in a normal development process and it's going to take some time. But that would be the next step is, is to have all of that in place, work on those items and then have that application go forward to a PNC commission if that was the case.

00:18:22,700	And then, like I said, hearing and then back through the city commission. So once again, I know I know you said the word greenlight, but yeah, this is just for the ordinance. And we would need significantly more pieces from any, any application or anybody that would bring anything to us on that.

00:18:42,070	But I think for us right now, the most important pieces that we need an ordinance in place and as staff and jerk and I and, and the rest of our team and have looked at this and said, yeah, we need this to go forward and want that.

00:18:58,230	So I think it was you touched on this, but I think it maybe deserves a little bit more time. You said like a an ordinance is a living, breathing document. Changes can be made down the road to I think that's an important piece. Yeah, absolutely.

00:19:11,130	Just just in the same way that we're doing a big land use a land use code update right now. The likelihood of us getting all 800 pages right that very first go pretty slim. So I think that the full expectation is to is for ordinances to be scrutinized, looked at and revised to make sure we're getting it right, because that ultimately that's the goal.

00:19:34,370	If new information comes out that says, you know, actually it shouldn't be 45dB, it should be 43dB, we would we would want to go back and revise that number to, to have the best information that we possibly can. But we have done quite a bit of research right now.

00:19:51,870	We feel very good about the state of the ordinance as it sits, and it's something that can be built upon in the coming months or years or decades. So let's talk about we hear a lot of the word moratorium, a lot state level special session is taking place right now, a legislative special session.

00:20:14,530	And the word moratorium is really popping up in headlines and things. What about a potential moratorium or about the idea of one? Yeah, it gets tossed. It talked about a lot at the state level.

00:20:36,100	And then when at these meetings, we're talking about it at a local level, and we have had moratoriums before so that we could have internal processes to get ordinances in place. But what we have right now is a process that we're comfortable with.

00:21:02,430	So for a moratorium to wait and see if some other entity will come in and define things for us, or wait and see if some university comes out with a new study, we feel like that's not worth leaving, worth leaving ourselves exposed, and we would like to have. And we're going to have to have an ordinance anyways. So we want to fill that void with the information that we have available now.

00:21:22,000	And one thing about a moratorium or in that conversation, it's always in the background of that conversation, is we have a lot of local control right now, and we want to be responsible with that local control, because there's there's a world where, you know, the industrial, the Industrial Commission or the public service commissioners or, or federal government starts saying, well, this is actually where it has to be cited.

00:21:46,900	And City of Mandan, you have no say in it now. And your and because of your performance standards are too strict there. They don't they don't matter as much as the federal authority saying that this is where this data center needs to be cited.

00:22:06,230	So we want to take advantage of that local authority and keep as much of that local authority as we can. Mayor Froelich kind of goes hand in hand with what Jarek just talked about, but I guess, why do something now? Well, as it stood, we were standing in a field naked. We had nothing to, as we said earlier, no sideboards.

00:22:28,830	We were going to have to probably wedge this into another ordinance land use code. And that's not good. And we want to be in the driver's seat and as much as possible, as Jarek alluded, we don't want the federal government or state government dictating what we need to do to protect the citizens of Mandan.

00:22:52,830	I want to touch on one thing. I mentioned that this is a stiff ordinance, and when I asked Jarek, I said, how would you rank this in ordinances out there? 1 to 100 on a percentile basis? And Jarek said it's in the 99% tile. This is a good ordinance as we have it right now.

00:23:19,930	Again, we're open to stiffening it up. And I want to commend Jarek and Jordan. There's been some banter out there that this was rushed, that we didn't put enough time and effort into it. We have over 100 hours into this ordinance, these 19 pages, consulting world experts on sound.

00:23:52,400	So as it stands right now, I'm very pleased where we're sitting. If somebody should come into a city hall and apply for a permit. So.

00:24:02,970	Well, Jim, give you the last word.

00:24:08,600	Again as we stand, we're working. The City of Mandan is working on an ordinance. There's no application to this point, but you're preparing for the potential. And then, as Jarek alluded to, trying to get ahead of things so that you don't fall underneath a state or federal, you do have that maintain that local control.

00:24:27,130	That's that's very well said. And along with Mayor Froelich like there has been a lot of time and effort and research and study done by Jarek and Jordan and Rachel and the whole group of people on how do we make this as strong as we can to protect our citizens?

00:24:41,970	And it is we don't have really much we can rely on now in our industrial zoning permitting process. But I would tell you that should an application come in, there is a lengthy process. There's stormwater review that has to happen. There's traffic studies that have to happen in the document that we're talking about the ordinances.

00:25:04,430	There's environmental studies. There's tone studies. There's sound, there's air, there's water. Some of those are set up by the state of North Dakota, and some of them are specifically located in this ordinance that we have drafted right now. So there's a lot of protections in here.

00:25:24,130	And I think that without those protections, where where do we stand? If an application comes in, we're going to be looking at each other going, okay, where do we go? What should we do? It's not a flat out denial, but we have to have something to tell whether an application comes in to say, are you meeting the guidelines? If one came in right now, I don't know if

00:25:38,930	we would necessarily accept it. I don't think we can just say flat out no, but we would look to the guidelines that we have proposed and say, how do you meet? How are you meeting these things? And there's enforcement provisions in here. There are a lot of time and effort and work has gone into this.

00:25:56,100	I commend Jarek and Jordan for attending these meetings that have been organized by others to hear what has been said. And they have been there, they have heard, and they took that input and drafted it into the document that we currently have in front of us and think that it's very comprehensive.

00:26:16,130	Can it be tweaked and perfected? Absolutely. That's the whole part of a living working document. But that takes time also. And if an application comes in today, like I said, there's a whole bunch of things that that application would have need to meet before it even gets to a point of, okay, we have to have a public hearing on a special use permit

00:26:34,630	in front of planning zoning commission if it gets moved up. We have a public hearing at the city Commission, and there's a significant amount of time in there to make sure that what's being proposed is is right and that the proper protections are put in.

00:26:55,100	So, like I said, it's a it's a great opportunity to we sometimes have guests on City Current come in. We have a whole the J team from Jordan and Jarek and Jim and Jim to to be here to help explain this. And we want to make sure that if, if folks in the public have questions on it, come in and talk to us, our doors are open.

00:27:13,270	And like I said, we want to be informative and educational. We are not a proponent of a data center coming in, but we want to make sure that we have the guardrail set up, that if we get an application, we are well positioned to be able to deal with it.

00:27:29,470	So like I said, this is a starting point for us and think it's a very good starting point, right? It's no way a rubber stamp. Right. There's that's not what the issue is. Well, Mayor, Jim, Jarek, Jordan, thanks for joining me on this episode of City Current.

00:27:54,330	This episode will be available on demand at Dakota Media Access to view and review. And as Jim said, if there are questions, you can visit City Hall, give them a call and they'll answer them. So see you next time. Have a good day. For more information on what was discussed in this episode of City Current, visit CityofMandan.com or call (701) 667-3215.

00:28:14,370	If you have any suggestions, comments or issues you would like addressed in future City Current episodes, contact us at info@freetv.org This program airs on Government Access channel two and 602 and HD or on Radio Access 102.5 FM. It's also available as a podcast on Radio Access and as a video viewing link at FreeTV.org.

00:28:38,730	Thanks for tuning in to this edition of City Current.