Memphis City Council puts off data center moratorium vote

UPDATE, October 14th: EDGE sent me the signed lease. It covers about 636 acres – more than the 522 reported when EDGE’s board voted in October 2024 – and it took effect March 1st, 2025. What’s in it is in the update on my moratorium essay.

The Memphis City Council did not pass the data center moratorium.

The xAI files

Every essay in this series is pinned to a question on the board at rachelandthecity.com/the-xai-files.

It just broke out into a huge protest – and I’m gonna tell you why.

Welcome to clown town.

There are two YouTube streams from the Memphis City Council – one lasts almost all day – that’s the committee meetings. It’s in a smaller room upstairs – the public can sit in, but there’s no public comment up there.

So, that’s the first one I watched. At the end they started talking about all of the different ordinances different members had written about the rules for having data centers – some were old, some were new.

Councilman Chase Carlisle talked about how everyone on the council seemed to be on the same page with what they want – and he pointed out that they need to come together on an outcome and then work back from there.

Hey – that’s what I’ve been saying.

Anyway – it turns out that there are so many different ordinances – Councilwoman Janika White said – look, we need to all come together, sit down and work through all of these and come up with a systemized list. A lot of other council members agreed – they talked about clearing their schedules to get this done ASAP.

Great idea! But why did this only occur to anyone ten minutes before the meeting with the final vote on the moratorium? DOH!

Anyway, so they close out that meeting and go down to the main chamber to start the public meeting.

That’s a different YouTube stream – so I click over.

Now – what happened next was pretty annoying – it was some procedural stuff that I kind of tuned out until it was Yolanda Cooper-Sutton’s turn to speak. Some may remember that she was my opponent when I ran for Congress.

I think Cooper-Sutton has the best of intentions. I really do. But she’s not great at fully understanding things – and because of that and her habit of proselytizing – she often misconstrues information and is misleading. She doesn’t know that she’s doing it – it’s not on purpose.

But here’s just part of her sermon:

“I wasn’t at the table when this contract was signed with XAI.“

“There was NDAs that were signed and you better hear me and you better hear me loud and clear.“

“Not one of you all asked for the contract. You ain’t asked for the contract. And I’m asking for it.“

It goes ON AND ON – with a lot of other misinformation.

There are already videos going around saying that she delivered a BOMBSHELL at the meeting.

The only thing is – the NDAs are real – but they aren’t news.

MLK50 reported back in July 2024 that leaders at MLGW and the Greater Memphis Chamber signed one. Forbes reported that October that the Memphis Police Department and the Sheriff’s Office signed them too. MLGW’s was with CTC Property – that’s xAI’s company here – and MLGW told Forbes it’s common for a company to ask for one.

And the contract nobody’s asked for?

MLGW’s power contract with xAI’s company and the 2024 water agreement are both public – they’re on my site right now with this morning’s essay. And you don’t have to be on the council to get them – MLGW falls under Tennessee’s public records law, so any Tennessean can ask for them. So, that’s what I did months ago.

She didn’t say which contract she meant, but I assume it’s that one – but the same rules apply to just about any other piece of paper she wants to look at. xAI has been here for over two years.

There are other deals that still aren’t public – like the signed sale of the City’s land on Plant Road, which I have a records request out for too.

Then she said she has been for the moratorium “since day one.”

And then she told the room, “If the hold passes, I’m going to vote for the hold until they bring me the contract.“

Wait – what hold was she talking about?

WHAT I TUNED OUT

Turns out the procedural stuff was the whole story.

Before Cooper-Sutton ever got to the mic, Carlisle moved to hold the moratorium until October 20th – along with Cooper-Sutton’s own data center resolution. His reasons were that they’d hold a working session Thursday at 1 to pull all the proposals together, and that “we typically read in three readings, and this is how our ordinances are made.“

This was the third reading. It already got pushed once, from September 15th.

He also said, “there’s no one coming in the near term.“

The day before, 5C filed a $575 million permit for the next phase of its data center in the old Fred’s headquarters on Getwell Road – and it was under review the day he said it. That’s not xAI – and it’s an expansion of a data center that’s already running, not a brand new site – but somebody is definitely coming.

When they voted on the hold, the clerk read the roll, and six names came back yes – Canale, Carlisle, Logan, Spinosa, Warren and White. Then you hear, “Pardon me? Cooper Sutton?” – and she was added as a yes. That made seven, and the hold passed 7 to 5.

Easter-Thomas, Green, Smiley, Walker and Chairwoman Swearengen-Washington voted no.

Then the chair recessed the meeting, and all hell broke loose with the protesters. Punches were being thrown and the police were called in.

My favorite part is when you hear Swearengen-Washington say into her mic, “He gotta fucking bullhorn?“

Of course, what else would anyone expect – the council has been edging the protesters for months.

SO WHY NOT JUST VOTE?

My last essay said I don’t think this moratorium does much – and I still think that. But they should have just passed it.

Here’s why I say that. The moratorium can be taken back at any time. The version the City posted in August says it ends at 12 months or when permanent rules pass, whichever comes first. The new version – which the City still hadn’t posted as of Tuesday night – has the same kind of “whichever comes first” language, from what was read to the room on Tuesday.

So, they could’ve passed it today, met Thursday, written the rules, and then moved forward with their plan for the moratorium – which most of them seem to be leaning towards either way.

Councilman JB Smiley – he’s the sponsor – said almost exactly that. “We can come back before this body at the next council meeting and amend it.” And then he said, “There is no point of holding this moratorium if there is no intent on voting on it.“

So – is he saying that some folks on the council – some don’t want it? Cause that wasn’t my read.

Five of the seven who voted to hold it – Canale, Carlisle, Spinosa, Warren and White – were recorded voting yes when it passed second reading on September 1st. That was a consent agenda vote, bundled with a bunch of other items, so it’s not the same as standing up for it – but it still counts for something.

Now, there was a real legal reason to slow down – but it’s not the reason Carlisle gave for the hold. Upstairs, council attorney Allan Wade told the committee that a zoning change isn’t valid without a recommendation from the Land Use Control Board first – and that some zoning changes have been thrown out for skipping that step. He said, “Smiley’s going to tell me his moratorium doesn’t, but it could be argued.” He also said state law says a moratorium has to be reasonable in how long it lasts.

So is that what scared some of them?

Cause literally who cares – if your moratorium gets thrown out at least look like you were fighting for the people.

Then, downstairs, an amendment stretched it from 12 months to 18.

And not everybody was a yes. One council member asked the others to vote it down, saying “doing a moratorium will do damage to our future.”

But most of them sure seemed headed toward a yes. Smiley had asked everybody in the room who supports the moratorium to stand up. He said there were more than 200 people there, and a lot of them took off work to come.

So, again, why edge the crowd?

Anyway, the one person who actually brought numbers was Councilwoman Pearl Eva Walker.

She said $10.3 million of xAI’s tax money – meant for neighborhoods within five miles of the plants – is still waiting on a vote. She said data centers went from 1% of TVA’s industrial load in 2019 to 19% in 2025 – and that matches TVA’s own numbers.

Then she said, “We should not commit the city to decades of costly infrastructure before the public knows who will pay, who will profit, who will bear the environmental and economic risk.“

That’s fair – but as I said earlier today – some of that has already been figured out in the contracts already written between MLGW and xAI.

What we need is a comprehensive air and health records study.

And tested and verified noise laws.

Pretty simple stuff.

Oh, and one more thing.

When Councilwoman Michalyn Easter-Thomas read part of the new version to the room, it listed who the Division of Planning and Development would work with to write the permanent data center rules – MLGW, the Health Department, the Fire Department – and EDGE and the IDB.

EDGE is the economic development agency I wrote about this morning – the one the Commercial Appeal reported leased 522 acres in Pidgeon Industrial Park to an xAI company. The August version didn’t name EDGE.

Is it normal for the economic development agency to help with industrial siting rules? Sure. But xAI’s landlord in Pidgeon is now on the list of agencies helping write the rules.

So yeah – clown town.

If you like facts-first info on all this, consider leaving a tip on Venmo or PayPal – this stuff takes a lot of time to put together. And check out everything I’ve written with citations and receipts at the xAI Files.

Fight breaks out at Memphis City Council after protesters are edged

The xAI files

WHAT I TUNED OUT

SO WHY NOT JUST VOTE?

Sources

The xAI files

WHAT I TUNED OUT

SO WHY NOT JUST VOTE?

Sources

Share this: