The Johnstown City Council voted to hold a special election on Jan. 5, 2027, to allow voters to decide a city charter amendment that would prohibit the construction of large data centers within city limits.
At the special meeting held on Thursday, Sept. 10, the council members were required to select a date for the special election after being unable to meet the previous week to get the issue on the Nov. 3 ballot.
The petition that sparked the special election was verified two days before the deadline to appear on the Nov. 3 ballot. In that short timeframe, the council was unable to meet quorum requirements.
The special election could cost the city $15,000, Johnstown Mayor Tiffany Hollis said Thursday.
The petition, which outlined the addition of Section 10.07 to Article X of the charter, would prohibit the construction of various types of data centers and those that exceed a combined monthly demand of 25 megawatts from any energy source.
For a charter amendment to appear on a ballot, petitioners must gather a number of signatures equivalent to 10% of the total number of votes cast at the most recent general municipal election. That meant for the petition to appear on the ballot in Johnstown, petitioners needed to secure approximately 123 validated signatures.
They submitted 180 signatures to the Licking County Board of Elections on Wednesday, Sept. 2, and the board validated 133 of them.
Hollis said the most important thing leading up to the special election in January is for voters to educate themselves on data centers.
“The January 5th date that we chose, it might seem like we’re punting this a little bit down – and we are – because this is too important for us. We want to get it right,” Hollis said. “We want to get as much information as we can, whether it’s to support data centers or to support banning data centers. One way or the other, we need to get the actual facts to the people.”
Hollis said there have been overwhelming concerns in the community about overall environmental impacts, but she said a petition signed by 123 people in a community of over 5,000 residents doesn’t feel right to change the charter.
“As an elected official, it doesn’t really matter what my opinion is. I need to hear it from the people. And that’s what we need the time to do,” Hollis said. “We need the time to have conversations and feedback, and really educate ourselves and the community, as a whole, before we go changing our governing doctrine.”
Even if this measure was on the Nov. 3 ballot, Hollis said, the ongoing construction of the Cologix data center campus within city limits would still be completed. She said because of Johnstown’s proximity to other development in the area, infrastructure such as roads are deteriorating from constant truck driving.
“Johnstown is positioned versus other municipalities; we’re on the border of every bit of development that there is. So, we can ban it in our municipality. That doesn’t mean that it’s not happening right at the edge of our municipality,” Hollis said. “We just won’t be annexing and we won’t get any benefit from it. So those are other parts of the conversation too. Do you cut yourself out of, cheat yourself out of the piece of the pie?”
The next scheduled city council meeting is 6:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Sept. 15.
Tyler K. Thompson writes for TheReportingProject.org, the nonprofit news organization of Denison University’s Journalism program, which is supported by generous donations from readers. Sign up for The Reporting Project newsletter here.
Thompson is one of two Kirtley Mather Fellows at The Reporting Project. The fellowship is created in memory of Kirtley Mather, Denison Class of 1909, with the mission of providing unique opportunities for students to engage in service for the common good.