The Taylor City Council was set to consider a proposed ordinance Thursday night that would temporarily ban data centers. But 15 minutes after the council meeting began, the city released a statement on its Facebook page saying council members would not be taking any action on the proposed ban.
“State law does not allow a city to enact or change its zoning by popular vote,” Mayor Pro Tem Kelly Cmerek said at the meeting. “This is a determination about the legal process made available to the city. It’s not a judgment about a policy issue — about the concerns you guys have voiced.”
The decision and the way it was communicated caught many people attending the meeting off guard. Multiple residents inside the council chamber gasped as they learned about the Facebook post from organizer Sarah Winters’ public remarks criticizing it.
“After this meeting started, y’all posted this on Facebook, knowing we were all coming here?” Winters told council members. She pointed out that the mayor wasn’t at the meeting, adding: “Tell me this is not shady, shady business. Shame on all of y’all.”
Cmerek said Mayor Jim Buzan was not at the council meeting because he was out of the country on vacation.
The citizen-initiated ordinance was submitted to the city last month, along with more than 1,400 signatures from residents. The hope was that if council members didn’t take action on the proposed ban themselves, they would place it on the ballot for voters to decide.
Cmerek said council members made the determination to not take action on the proposed ban or place it on the ballot after speaking with outside counsel. He also apologized for the way the council’s decision was communicated.
“Obviously, this information was put on the website inappropriately. I do apologize for that,” he said.
Cmerek said council members plan to address some of the concerns about data centers through changes to the city’s comprehensive plan and land development code. He encouraged residents to stay involved.
A city spokesperson, Jerrod Kingery, would not say when the city or its council members first determined that action wouldn’t be taken on the proposed ban.
Carrie D’Anna, an organizer with the Halt Taylor Data Center Coalition, helped submit the citizen-initiated ordinance to the city last month. She said the city did not communicate its decision to her or other organizers before Thursday’s meeting.
“They could have told us at any point in time, but instead they allowed us to organize, and then they post their decision before we’ve even started speaking on the website?” D’Anna said. “That’s humiliating. It’s humiliating. It feels like they’re intentionally trying to make light of what we’re trying to say.”
The Statesman wrote about what the Halt Taylor Data Center Coalition was trying to do last week, reprinted by the Chron. It provides some context to what was happening before the city’s weird about-face on the ordinance.
If approved, new data center development would be immediately banned under a measure to remain in place “unless and until a zoning district specifically created for digital infrastructure uses is adopted,” according to the petition.
“This is not anti-AI, it’s not even anti-business,” said Carrie D’Anna, a Taylor resident who supports the ban. “It’s a people-first prerogative.”
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Under Taylor’s city charter, a valid petition, defined as one with signatures from at least 10% of registered voters, requires the City Council to either enact the proposed ordinance within 30 days or send it to voters at the next general election.
“We knew that it’s unreasonable to say that we could ban them completely,” D’Anna said. “But it was reasonable to say that we needed adequate protection for the people who already live here.”
Taylor, a fast-growing city that now has a population of about 18,000, has seen a wave of large industrial growth in recent years. The boom has been led by Samsung Electronics’ $17 billion chip factory, which is on track to be operational by the end of the year. The semiconductor plant also has attracted several data centers to the area.
In March, the City Council unanimously approved a $2.5 billion center next to the Samsung plant. Nearby Hutto also has given a green light to several data center projects, including Skybox’s 160-acre, 600-megawatt “PowerCampus.”
In 2024, Taylor approved a 135,000-square-foot data center planned by Blueprint Data Centers at 1601 E. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd.
But after nearby residents received construction notices on their doors, community members began questioning how the 87-acre site was marked for development.
The tract was transferred to a public trust for $10 in 1999, with the former farmland earmarked for a public park. The development is about 500 feet from a small neighborhood of about 35 predominantly Black and Hispanic families, D’Anna said.
“We didn’t plan on being data center activists in the beginning, we say there’s an inequity happening here,” she said. “But we started realizing our zoning was just inadequate. It was very easy for data centers to come in and follow the rules, but data centers are not a daycare or a gas station. We stepped back and asked, ‘How can we slow this down to get conversation started around this.’ ”
Pushback against the development eventually led to a lawsuit against Blueprint, though the case was dismissed by a state district court judge in October. The plaintiffs have appealed the decision. Blueprint did not respond to a request for comment.
While those data centers have been approved, the proposal would keep them from receiving permits until the city creates a zoning district that allows them.
“Council wants to extend our city limits and incorporate these data centers so they can get the tax revenue, so they don’t miss out on what they say is control,” D’Anna said. “But if you don’t have zoning? That’s not control. It’s just responsibility that the taxpayers are bearing the burden of for the next 30 to 50 years.”
The coalition submitted its petitions a month ago, so it’s easy to understand the group’s frustration with how this played out.
Did you see that bit in the story about how the land on which one of the data centers is to be built was supposed to be a park? That story is also wild.
What was once gifted to this Central Texas city as parkland nearly three decades ago is now headed for a very different future: a sprawling, billion-dollar data center.
When a family in Taylor, Texas, transferred 87 acres to a public trust for $10 in 1999, the goal was simple: the land was supposed to become a public park, according to 404 Media. Instead, the site, located at 1601 E. Martin Luther King Blvd., took a different path.
After being granted to the Williamson County Park Foundation in the early 2000’s, and then to the City of Taylor, the land was then sold to the Taylor Economic Development Corporation in 2008, according to Fox 7. Then, in April 2025, the corporation sold the property to Blueprint for $10 million to make way for a 135,000 square-foot data center.
The City of Taylor and the Taylor Economic Development Corporation did not immediately respond to Chron’s request for comment.
Taylor residents have pushed back on the proposed development, even prompting a lawsuit against Blueprint—a case that was ultimately dismissed by a state district court judge in October 2025, according to KUT. The plaintiffs have appealed the decision to Austin’s Third Court of Appeals, Spectrum News reported in November.
You have to sign up for a free membership at 404 Media to see that full story. Newsweek also wrote about it, and the 404 Media folks discussed it in their June 24 podcast episode. How the original donation to the city turned into a multi-million-dollar sale to a developer sounds awfully shady to me, but it’s held up in court so far. All I can say is that I’m rooting for the Halt Taylor Data Center Coalition to succeed with their ordinance, one way or another.
“State law does not allow a city to enact or change its zoning by popular vote,” Mayor Pro Tem Kelly Cmerek said at the meeting. “This is a determination about the legal process made available to the city. It’s not a judgment about a policy issue — about the concerns you guys have voiced.”
I call billshut. Please cite the statute that prevents a city from operating in accordance with its long established charter.
On the other hand, there is a statute, Chapter 551 of the Texas Government Code, that prevents a governmental body from deliberating, discussing, or taking action on public business. I have to wonder when was the meeting to deliberate, discuss and craft this Facebook post?
If I was the family who donated the land, I would be enraged. They should have setup a trust that would keep ownership but grant the city or country perpetual access for non-commercial purposes (or specifically as park if they wanted but that could case problems if the city wanted to, say, put a community center in the park).