The ACC Commission has voted unanimously to ban new data center construction in Athens until June 5, extending their previous ban which was scheduled to expire today.
Commissioners delayed making a decision about how to regulate data centers at their meeting on Tuesday. Instead, they sent the regulations back to the planning commission with instructions to review them more thoroughly. Commissioners also decided against recapturing ARPA funds from various nonprofits and they instructed the planning commission to develop a plan to promote affordable housing based on a list of recommendations from the Georgia Initiative for Community Housing.
At the end of the meeting, ACC Manager Robert Cowell reported that the US Congress has extended a road safety grant deadline significantly, which should allow Athens to make full use of the “historic” $25 million RAISE grant intended for improvements to North Avenue. Before this surprising announcement, APN had reported that the RAISE grant deadline would not be extended and that Athens would lose the funding. APN will continue to cover this grant as more information becomes available.
Lastly, several speakers took to the podium during public comment to encourage the mayor and commission to adopt an affordable housing ordinance developed by the Athens Anti-Discrimination Movement.
Contents
Ban on new data centers extended
ARPA recapture denied
Affordable housing recommendations
AADM’s affordable housing ordinance
Ban on new data centers extended
The ACC Commission voted unanimously to extend the current ban on new data center construction until June 5. Commissioners voted after hearing from a number of residents during public comment who are strongly opposed to the impacts this industry has on nearby communities.
“I’ll say this loud and clear: no more data centers in our Black and working class neighborhoods,” said Tawana Mattox, Athens resident and community advocate. “We cannot trade our health, our water, our air or our neighborhoods for corporate profits.”
Commissioners appeared to be in full agreement with these sentiments. Not one commissioner or public speaker voiced any support for data centers throughout the entire meeting. Going further, Commissioner Melissa Link even called for the public to stop using AI, the technology that’s causing the data center boom.
“This technology is quite literally destroying our planet and our societies,” Link said.
The ACC Planning Department has developed a fairly strong set of potential regulations for data centers, but commissioners have delayed making a decision about it for now.
The crux of these regulations is a requirement for the commission to approve each data center individually, which by itself might mean that very few new data centers are ever built in Athens. Even so, these regulations are not strong enough for those who spoke against data centers during public comment. These residents called for further restrictions and requirements, including complete transparency around water and energy use, mandatory community benefits agreements and requirements for clean and renewable energy. Speakers also wanted to ensure that data centers don’t become clustered in any one part of town.
Some of these demands might be very difficult, even impossible, to enact legally. Therefore, commissioners decided to send the regulations back to the ACC Planning Commission for further research and review.
Some speakers called for the ban on new data centers in Athens to last forever. And commissioners might even do it, if it turns out to be legally possible.
“There is extreme concern throughout our community about this. I think we need to make it as onerous as possible [to build data centers],” Link said. “These facilities use more energy often than tens of thousands of households. But it’s a really unique industry; I feel like we need some serious schooling as we move forward to develop an ordinance that’s appropriate.”
Once the planning commission reviews the regulations to ensure that they are as strongly-worded as legally possible, the ACC Commission will likely approve them.
Some of the desired regulations might turn out to be infeasible, but this doesn’t mean that data centers will start popping up across Athens, even in a worst-case scenario. The bottom line is that commissioners don’t seem to be in the mood to approve any new data centers in Athens anytime soon.
ARPA recapture denied
Local nonprofits, including the Athens-Area Chamber of Commerce, the Boys and Girls Club of Athens, Quality Care for Children and the Clarke County Mentor Program, spoke during public comment on Tuesday to ask commissioners not to recapture hundreds of thousands of dollars in American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds that were previously awarded.
With the final deadline for spending ARPA money coming up at the end of the year, ACC staff were recommending the recapture of $125,000 from the Athens Land Trust, almost $250,000 from the Athens-Area Chamber of Commerce and $43,000 from Quality Care for Children so that they could ensure the money was spent before the deadline. Any money left unspent would be reclaimed by the federal government.
Employees representing these nonprofits explained at the podium that their reporting had been greatly slowed by a complicated, multi-step reimbursement process. Nevertheless, they expressed confidence that they would be able to spend all of the funds by the deadline.
For example, Kirk Dominic, the interim CEO of the Boys and Girls Club of Athens, said that his organization has experienced significant turnover, causing inexperienced employees to become responsible for the complicated work of federal grant reporting in 2025. However, he said that these problems had since been corrected.
Commissioner Ovita Thornton spoke in favor of allowing the nonprofits to be reimbursed with ARPA money, saying that these organizations “do excellent, excellent work.”
Thornton then proceeded to criticize the local government for continuing to use paper checks in today’s digital age, saying that this could cause reimbursement delays.
Cowell disagreed that paper checks were the primary cause of the delay, pointing instead to the multi-step reimbursement process that was also cited by the nonprofits themselves. This process is necessary whenever one of the original ARPA grantees contracts with another nonprofit to perform the work. When a reimbursement is requested by the subcontractor, the original grantee must first check their work before sending the request to the ACC government, which then double-checks everything again before sending out any funds. This can cause significant delays.
Commissioners unanimously decided against recapturing any ARPA funds from local nonprofits at Tuesday’s meeting. ACC financial staff will keep a close eye on the remaining ARPA balances and may suggest recapturing these dollars again at a later date.
Commissioner Dexter Fisher recused himself from the vote because his son works for the Boys and Girls Club of Athens.
Affordable housing recommendations
On Tuesday, the commission voted to send a set of affordable housing recommendations to the planning commission for review and refinement into various zoning code changes that can later be adopted.
The recommendations come from the Georgia Initiative for Community Housing (GICH), which is a statewide program that helps communities create local solutions to their housing problems. Generally speaking, the local GICH team is recommending that the commission lift various zoning restrictions put in place over the last 60-70 years to block certain kinds of housing from being built. Things like townhomes, duplexes, accessory dwelling units, tiny houses and other types of development are currently illegal to build in many parts of Athens.
Some housing advocates feel that the ban on smaller, more affordable housing types has greatly contributed to the rapid rise in housing costs across Athens in recent years.
“75 years later, hopefully we can correct that and address our housing crisis, a crisis brought to us by the status quo of zoning and planning regulations,” former Commissioner Russell Edwards said during public comment.
In 2022, commissioners narrowly rejected a proposal to lift the ban on accessory dwelling units, also known as “in-law” suites. Some commissioners continue to view these sorts of developments with trepidation, worrying that allowing slightly higher housing density in single-family neighborhoods would cause traffic, noise complaints or other unwelcome side-effects.
“I appreciate what the resolution is trying to do in moving stuff forward, but unfortunately I’m not going to be able to support it because I don’t think the resolution adds enough guidance to the planning commission about what it is we would hope to achieve,” said Commissioner Mike Hamby. “I think we just need to tread carefully and offer more guidance…so that we don’t bring up expectations that we won’t be able to meet.”
Link agreed to an extent, saying that she was concerned about some of “our older, really densely-packed neighborhoods that do not have the infrastructure to sustain much more density.” However, she concluded that there was still “a great deal of opportunity” to make improvements to Athens’ housing situation by way of these recommendations.
Commissioner Tiffany Taylor expressed concern that some of the recommendations could make gentrification in her district worse. She asked with some worry evident in her voice about how the recommendations would be presented when it eventually came time to vote. Mayor Kelly Girtz assured her that the recommendations would be voted on one at a time, not as part of a package, with a range of options available for each policy.
In a sense, this entire discussion was unnecessary.
As mayor, Girtz could have sent the recommendations to the planning commission himself, without any commission involvement at all. But Girtz knows that similar proposals have failed in the past, which is why he chose to involve the commission at an early stage in order to have them “buy in” to the recommendations ahead of time.
Interestingly, there’s at least one commissioner who doesn’t need any encouragement to support the recommendations, even though she voted against allowing accessory dwelling units in 2022. After serving on the GICH committee and learning about the racist history of Athens’ zoning codes, Thornton appears to have completely changed her mind. It seems she’s even been whipping votes in support.
“After Ovita got mad at me already today, I’m definitely not going to not support this one,” Commissioner Allison Wright said playfully as Thornton chuckled in the background.
Make no mistake, Thornton is dead serious about seeing these zoning changes enacted.
“A lot of the zoning [codes] that we have are discriminatory. They were written to be discriminatory. They were written to be racist,” Thornton said. “If it makes some other folk uncomfortable, we’ve been uncomfortable for a long time.”
The commission voted 8-1 to send the recommendations to the planning commission, with Hamby as the only commissioner voting no. Commissioner Carol Myers was absent.
AADM’s affordable housing ordinance
Last year, the commission passed a racial equity resolution at the request of the Athens Anti-Discrimination Movement, a local nonprofit and activist group. At the time, some Black community members opposed the resolution because of its non-binding nature and instead called for an actual ordinance to more directly attack racism and inequality in Athens.
On Tuesday, AADM’s executive director Mokah Jasmine Johnson returned to the commission armed with exactly such an ordinance. AADM’s affordable housing ordinance includes a number of policy recommendations, such as rent control, prohibiting landlords from refusing section 8 vouchers, enacting a criminal history non-discrimination policy as well as various zoning and property tax changes.
“We all know that families are desperately in need of stable and affordable housing. So we look forward to the mayor and commission honoring your commitment from a year ago and working to turn these ideas into action,” Johnson said.
However, many of these policies can’t be accomplished at the local level. Johnson and other AADM members encouraged commissioners to work with state representatives, such as newly elected State Representative Eric Gisler, who do have authority over such matters.
Of course, it won’t be easy. The state government is currently dominated by Republicans who have a history of ignoring the wishes of the ACC Commission.
But when the tide turns, sometimes it turns quickly. It may be wise for Democrats to have a list of policy objectives in mind, in case they do take power in November, and to start laying the groundwork for them now.
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