Chattahoochee Hills Voted to Take Data Centers Off Its List of Allowed Uses. Two Residents Spoke. Nobody Objected.

On September 1, 2026, the City Council of Chattahoochee Hills, Georgia voted on a measure to strike data centers from the list of uses allowed under its development code. The code does not use the words "data center." It calls the use "data processing services." That line is what the measure removes. The measure also adds a new zoning action review standard. It carries a change to the city's farm visit rules too, though staff had written that the council might strike that piece out.

The vote was unanimous. Councilmember Lightsey made the motion. Councilmember Peek seconded it. Mayor Camille Lowe opened the public hearing and closed it. Two residents spoke. Both supported the change. Both asked the council to go further. Nobody spoke against it.

Chattahoochee Hills has 3,524 people. It sits mostly in Fulton County, Georgia, with a portion in Coweta County. The city sets a separate property tax rate for its Coweta residents.

At a Glance

• Action: Remove "data processing services" from the list of uses allowed in the city's development code; add a new zoning action review standard; change the rules for farm visits, a piece staff expected the council might strike out
• Vote: Passed unanimously, September 1, 2026
• Moved by: Councilmember Lightsey, seconded by Councilmember Peek
• Brought by: Community Development, under Director Mike Morton. The council minutes name no presenter
• Where: Chattahoochee Hills, Georgia, mostly in Fulton County with a Coweta County portion. Population 3,524
• Public turnout: Two speakers at the hearing. Both in favor. None opposed
• Planning Commission: On August 13, 2026 it set the farm-visit language aside, then recommended the data center language and the new review standard. Both motions carried unanimously
• Fiscal impact: None published for the data center change. Staff reported none for the farm-visit change
• Open question: The adopted text has not been published, and the draft ordinances released with the meeting carry no ordinance number and no signing date

What the Council Voted On

Chattahoochee Hills runs its zoning through one document, the Unified Development Code. Inside it sits a permitted use table. That table is the short answer to what you may build and where. If a use is on the table for your district, you can apply. If it is not, you cannot. The measure takes data processing services off that table.

Resident Jeny Mathis told the council the city's existing rules already limit how big a data center may be. No city document in the record states what that limit is.

The measure also adds a new zoning action review standard. The city already runs each rezoning request against a set of tests before staff write a view on it. The text of the new test does not appear anywhere in the released documents, so what it asks of an applicant is not yet public.

What a Resident Told the Council About the Land

Mathis, of District 4, spoke against data center development. She gave the council her reading of why the city would appeal to one. The minutes are a rough transcript of spoken comment, so her wording is reproduced as recorded.

"I fear that Chat Hills is becoming incredibly attractive for data centers because of the river frontage, low per acre prices, thousands of acres of un undeveloped land, and our proximity to plant Yates."

Those four items are a site selection list. River frontage is cooling water. A low price per acre lowers land cost. Thousands of open acres means room for a campus without buying up parcels one by one. A power plant nearby means a shorter path to load. No document in the record names a data center developer who has approached the city.

The closest figure on open land comes from a different fight. At a Planning Commission hearing in 2025, resident Patricia Lesko spoke in favor of the Bouckaert Farms proposal. She said that property alone covers 8,000 acres, or 20 percent of the total area of the city. On power, Greystone Power briefed the council on August 4, 2026 on how electricity gets to the city, on a local reliability snapshot, and on outages.

What the Two Speakers Asked For

Neither speaker treated the change as the end of the matter. Mathis said nothing short of a full and outright ban should be considered sufficient. She also named the companies she expects to test the rules.

"Meta, Google, and Open AI don't see restrictions as firm barriers, but as opportunity through legal battles to get what they want. Neighboring communities who have lost those legal battles have cited the loopholes, the doors left slightly a jar, as the reasons that they have lost."

She then gave the council a five-point list of what she said winning cities do. Two of the five are unusual. She asked for "restrictions on the allowed basis for NDAs," meaning nondisclosure agreements. She also asked for "a super majority for approvals of rezoning more than 1,000 acres in single or marketed similar applications in aggregate." That phrase counts related requests together rather than one at a time.

Her other three asks were "airtight data center restriction ordinances," public posting of "special use and administrative actions" that do not require public hearings, and "clearly articulated ethics violations for rogue city staff or elected officials who violate these."

The second speaker, Lynn Scott of District 5, raised noise, dirty air and water. She said she has a well. She cited the city plan and what the city says it wants to be. She also cited a national cost she said would exceed 20 billion dollars by 2030. She did not name the study, and the record does not identify it. Her closing ask matched Mathis: make the language stronger.

The Path It Took

The council took up a discussion of data processing services at a meeting on July 7, 2026, credited to Councilmember Peek and the deputy community development director.

At its meeting of August 13, 2026, with all five members present, the Planning Commission split the package in two. It first set the farm-visit language aside until its September meeting. It wanted more on acreage limits, on a five-year renewal for large farms, and on how much review staff should do alone. That motion came from Chair Doug Cloud, seconded by Laurie Searle. It then voted to back the data center language and the new review standard. That motion came from Will Duncan, seconded by Reginald Wilborn Jr. Both motions carried unanimously.

Ten speakers appeared in support at that hearing and one in opposition. Every recorded remark was about farms. The lone opponent told the commission he supports farm visits and wanted the rules written differently. No recorded speaker addressed the data center piece at all. The minutes record that the commission members had discussion, without saying what it covered.

Where the Record Does Not Line Up

The adopted text is not published. The minutes record the vote as approving the measure "as amended." No amended text appears with them. Every other item the council approved that night is recorded in those same words, including a $2,500 donation and a $45,500 equipment purchase. The phrase looks like a minutes formula rather than proof the data center language changed on the floor. Either way, the words now sitting in the city's code are not public.

The drafts are unnumbered and unsigned. Both versions released with the September 1 meeting are headed "Ordinance No. 26-XX-XXX." Both end with a blank date line above the signature block for Mayor Camille Lowe and City Clerk S. Diane White. That is normal for a draft. It is a problem for anyone trying to cite the law today.

Two competing farm ordinances got first readings the same night. Staff wrote that they were offering the second version "in anticipation that the text amendment proposed for a public hearing on this month's agenda is adopted in a form that excludes the proposed changes to the Agritourism language." In plain terms, staff expected the council might strip the farm rules out of the very measure it was voting on that evening. Community Development Director Mike Morton described the two versions to the council as redundant. Staff wrote elsewhere that the council should view them as alternative approaches, not as complementary proposals.

Staff also noted in writing that the draft farm ordinance carries its own copy of the data processing services line, written on the assumption that the data center change would pass. If that ordinance is adopted later, staff warned, the city must check that the two versions match.

Six Other Georgia Cities Had Data Center Pause Matters in the Record

Chattahoochee Hills is not acting alone. In the same week its minutes reached the record, six other Georgia cities had data center pause matters there too: Byron, Dalton, Hogansville, Madison, Oglethorpe and Summerville. A pause is temporary. It stops new filings for a set number of months while staff write rules. Two of these are older meetings whose minutes only reached the record this month.

Byron, in Peach County, created its pause on January 29, 2026, set to expire on July 31. It extended it once, to September 15, 2026, on a unanimous vote moved by Chris Hodges and seconded by Michael Chumbley. A second extension, to October 13, 2026, has come before the council. No minutes have been published to show what the council did with it.

Oglethorpe's council acted on July 9, 2026. It took up a proposed pause after Councilmember Moore reported on the strain such projects put on water and power. Moore said he would update the council every six months. The motion to accept it came from Councilmember Felder, seconded by Councilmember Fulks. Summerville set out to discuss a pause and consider letting its mayor sign a resolution on data centers.

Madison's item is from a July 31, 2026 work session. City Manager John Klimm brought in Chuck Jarrell of Morgan County, the county's director of planning and development, to explain the county's own 120-day pause. The county heard a consultant on June 18, put the pause in place on July 7, and ratified it on July 21. Counted from July 7, that one runs into November.

Chattahoochee Hills did not pause. It removed the use from the table.

Timeline

Why It Matters for Site Selectors and Developers

A pause and a deletion are not the same tool. A pause runs out. Byron created its pause in January and has already had to extend it once, with a second extension pending. Morgan County's runs 120 days. You can wait one out, or time a filing for the gap. Taking a use off the table has no end date. Getting it back takes a new text amendment, a Planning Commission hearing, and a council vote.

The code word and the market word differ. Chattahoochee Hills never wrote "data center" into its use table. It wrote "data processing services." Its own Planning Commission, recommending that same text in August, called it "the Data Center text language." Screen local codes for both terms.

This measure drew two speakers. Both were in favor. A change that removes a use category from a zoning code can pass a small city with almost no turnout.

Review tests outlast use tables. The new zoning action review standard was recommended as a general change to the development code, not as a data center rule. If the use ever comes back, that test would still apply.

The city plan comes next. The city has a draft plan out for comment, with a state deadline at the end of October. Lynn Scott cited that document in her remarks. What it says about land use will shape how the next rezoning is judged.

The Risks and Obstacles

The final wording is unknown. No adopted text has been published. Until the signed ordinance appears, nobody outside city hall can say exactly what the code now permits.

The ordinance has no number. Both drafts read "Ordinance No. 26-XX-XXX" with a blank adoption date. A title company or a lender asking for a citation cannot get one from the released drafts.

The new review standard is not public. Its text is not in any released document. Applicants cannot tell what it requires.

The farm-visit rules are still unsettled. Two versions are live. One rewrites the definition and splits farm visits into small and large. The other leaves the definition alone and caps visitor counts by acreage. Both touch the same table the data center line sits in.

Residents want more than the drafts give them. Both speakers asked for stronger language. One asked for an outright ban, limits on nondisclosure agreements, and a supermajority for large rezonings. None of those appear in the published drafts.

Two claims in the record are unverified. A speaker cited a national cost above 20 billion dollars by 2030 without naming a study. Another said the city's existing rules already cap data center size, and no city document in the record states that cap. Treat both as testimony, not as findings.

What to Watch

• The signed ordinance, with its number and adoption date, and the adopted use table text.
• The text of the new zoning action review standard, whenever it is released.
• The October 6 council hearing at 6:30 p.m. on the farm-visit ordinance, and which of the two versions survives.
• Whether the adopted farm ordinance repeats the data processing line correctly. Staff already flagged this risk.
• The city plan, due for adoption by the end of October, and what it says about large industrial uses on rural land.
• Whether the council takes up any of the five items Jeny Mathis listed, especially the nondisclosure limits and the supermajority for rezonings above 1,000 acres.
• Byron, whose last recorded pause expiry was September 15, and whether the October 13 extension passed.

This article is factual background and is not legal, financial, or investment advice.