Pataskala voters will get to decide this November whether to ban certain data centers in their town after city council voted Aug. 3 to place a measure on the ballot that could restrict them.
The ordinance, which targets data centers using at least 25 megawatts of power each month, easily passed with a 4-0 vote as an emergency. That amount of energy is enough to power around 20,000 homes
, according to a congressional report on data centers.City Administrator Tim Hickin said at the start of the meeting that the fast-tracked voting format, which is rare in Pataskala, was needed to meet filing deadlines for the question to end up on November ballots.
Organizers collected 401 valid signatures for the ballot question to ban data centers amid concerns
about a data center planned in the city at the intersection of Broad and Mink streets. The city’s planning and zoning commission recommended rejecting the plans, which council is holding a public hearing for Aug. 25 at 5:30 p.m.
There are no existing data centers in the city, Hickin said in an interview after the meeting.
Lee Guttentag, one of the organizers of the petition, said after the meeting that the process was “a little stressful, but luckily everything was resolved.”
Organizers and Licking County Board of Elections Director Tess Wigginton previously disagreed on the number of signatures needed for the initiated charter amendment.
Petitioners thought that they needed to collect at least 310 signatures, which would be 10% of the voters in the last general municipal election in November 2025. On the other hand, Wigginton said in a July 23 letter to the City of Pataskala that the petitioners would have needed 10% of the registered voters in the city, or 1,345 signatures.
The Ohio Secretary of State’s election handbook states that citizen-initiated changes to municipal charters requires 10% of the electors from the last general municipal election.
Wigginton said in a July 23 letter to the city that the organizers did not collect enough valid signatures to make the ballot but later said that it was up to cities to decide whether to send something to the ballot.
Guttentag said that the petition-gathering process has brought together people from all political persuasions.
“We think we deserve the right to speak and vote for ourselves and let the outcome be driven by us," Guttentag said. "That’s the beautiful part of it being the 250th anniversary of the country: Let the people make the choice, that’s what our country was based on."
Guttentag is also working with a coalition of people gathering signatures for a statewide ballot question on data centers, which could go to voters as soon as spring 2027. Groups around Licking County and in other municipalities in central Ohio are also working on similar local ballot questions – but the statewide effort would cover residents living outside of a city or town, she added.
Newark Advocate Reporter Josué Perez contributed reporting.
Anna Lynn Winfrey covers regional/suburban trending news for The Columbus Dispatch. She can be reached at awinfrey@dispatch.com.
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Pataskala residents to vote on data center ban
