📈 Will this grow faster than the City can plan for it?

This concern — that demand could grow faster than a small community can plan for — is a reasonable one, and the answer is really about who stays in control of the pace.

Yes, demand is growing. National data-center electricity use reached about 4.4% of all U.S. electricity in 2023 and is projected to roughly double or triple as a share by 2028 (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, for the U.S. Department of Energy). We’re not going to pretend that trend isn’t real.

But the facilities keep getting more efficient. Data centers are far more efficient per unit of computing than they were a decade ago — the industry’s average “Power Usage Effectiveness” has fallen from roughly 2.5 in 2007 to about 1.5–1.6 today, and the newest large facilities run more efficiently still (Uptime Institute). An honest caveat: average efficiency has leveled off in recent years, so efficiency alone won’t offset all growth — which is why the next point matters most.

The City controls the pace and the scale. This is the real answer to “outpacing our planning”:

• The overlay applies only to a specific mapped area the City defines (Section 2) — it can’t spread on its own.
• Every project needs its own Conditional Use Permit (Section 3) — nothing is allowed by-right. Projects are considered one at a time, in public, so growth can’t get ahead of review.
• The developer must fund the infrastructure its load requires (Section 13), so expansion isn’t dumped onto residents or taxpayers.
• Large projects must enter a Community Benefits Agreement (Section 17).

This is exactly the role zoning and conditional-use permitting are meant to play — letting a community control where, how fast, and at what scale these uses grow (American Planning Association; The Conversation). The City is choosing to plan ahead of demand rather than react to it.

What the City can require / commit to:

• Keep the overlay limited to a mapped area, reviewed and approved by ordinance.
• Review each project individually through the public CUP process.
• Require developer-funded infrastructure and conditions that match each project’s scale.