GALLATIN, Tenn. (WTVF) — Gallatin city leaders are weighing two moratoriums that would pause construction on apartments and data centers.
The proposed ordinances would have stopped work on new apartments and data centers for one year. However, at Tuesday night's council meeting, both ordinances were shortened to last six months.
The apartment moratorium passed in the first reading, but there are concerns within the council on what the moratorium would mean for the Housing Authority. The Planning Commission did not give the ordinance a favorable recommendation.
"Frankly, I've stood here and told you multiple times that I don't agree with the city enacting a moratorium on apartments. The easiest way to not affect the Housing Authority is not enacting the moratorium," said Gallatin City Planner Brian Rose.
One council member said halting development of apartments hasn't hurt other municipalities who have passed similar ordinances.
"Our neighboring community down the street did it for 12 months, and I don't think it hurt them too bad," said one council member.
The data center moratorium was also another big topic of discussion for the council. The ordinance says if approved, it would give the city time to evaluate the impact from the facilities and then make suitable regulations.
"I have no problem doing that, studying the impact on what they do to the community, and if they come back and say there is no impact, great. Hopefully we will learn a lot of things," said Council member Pascal Jouvence.
Mayor Paige Brown was the tie-breaking vote to shorten the moratorium to six months for data centers.
"All data centers are not equal, there's all different scales of data centers. I fully support putting some clarification within our code that better describes the various types of data centers, but to just pull data centers out and say, 'We're gonna put a moratorium on those,' when if a data center came to us, and I know for a fact Mr. Kellog has had some inquiries that wanted a certain kind of service, and he just tells them, 'No that's not something that our system is equipped to adequately service at this time.' That's how we deal with any type of industry," Brown said.
Both moratoriums will go before the council at its next meeting for a second reading.
Do you have more information about this story? You can email me at Megan.Scarano@NewsChannel5.com
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