Springfield City Manager David Cameron said city officials are getting ready to take public input on data centers. City Council passed a 120-day moratorium on data center applications on June 29 to allow for a public discussion on the issue.
Cameron assured the public that no meetings have been held yet and that community engagement opportunities regarding data centers are expected to begin next month.
He said the Office of Workforce and Economic Vitality and the Office of Public Information and Civic Engagement are working with two consulting firms to help facilitate a “transparent, fact-based process supported by robust community engagement.”
Cameron said he’ll provide updates in his bi-monthly manager’s report, which anyone can access here.
When he first proposed the idea of the moratorium in June, he said city staff had been talking about discussing the impacts data center might have on Springfield.
"We fielded calls. I fielded calls for the last nine years just on data centers, potentially, but it's always been the question of capacity and the ability to serve those. And would it impact the community or have a negative impact on the ratepayer, the user? Would it affect our ability to grow? Would it limit our ability to grow but also the impacts of the environmental aspects?" he said. "But as we all know, data centers are growing simply based upon our uses, our utilization of all the platforms that we use, even as in operating the city. So, it is a process that is coming, that is necessary infrastructure."
