Indio’s moratorium on new data centers runs out October 16. The City Council meets Wednesday, October 7, to consider extending it for one more year, through October 16, 2027.
The extension is item 13.3 on the council’s agenda, under public hearings, and the recommendation is to approve it. The regular session starts at 5 p.m. in the Council Chamber at 100 Civic Center Drive, and the agenda does not give the item its own time. The draft ordinance says the extension takes effect immediately if at least four-fifths of the council votes for it. The agenda lists five councilmembers.
People can speak in person, by Zoom or by email. Emailed comments go to [email protected] and must arrive by 2 p.m. on the day of the meeting; they are added to the record but not read aloud. In-person comments on a public hearing item are taken until the hearing is closed.
The city’s draft ordinance calls this the second and final extension. It cites California Government Code section 65858, which lets a city extend an interim ordinance for 10 months and 15 days and then for one year, and allows no more than two extensions, each by a four-fifths vote. Indio’s first extension, on July 15, ran 90 days, through October 16.
The council adopted the original ordinance June 3 as a 45-day moratorium, by a four-fifths vote, according to the draft. On June 24 the Planning Commission recommended that the council move forward with a complete ban on data centers, the staff report says, and the Sustainability Commission later sent a letter supporting that.
While it is in force, the moratorium bars the city from accepting as complete, processing or approving permits that would allow a new data center, convert a building into one, or expand an existing one. The ordinance defines a data center broadly, including facilities used for artificial intelligence model training or inference, cloud computing and cryptocurrency mining. It says it does not apply to “Exempted Proposed Data Centers” listed in the ordinance; the copy in the agenda packet lists none.
Staff say they are working on permanent rules. According to the staff report, amendments to the city’s Unified Development Code would prohibit establishing data centers, or expanding or intensifying them, in mixed-use, non-residential and public institutional zones, and would add a definition of a data center. Staff are also reviewing existing master plans and specific plans. The report says draft amendments are expected to go to the Planning Commission later this year, with its recommendations reaching the council “shortly thereafter.” It gives no hearing date, and nothing in the packet says permanent rules have been adopted.
The packet does not say how the council will vote. Under the draft ordinance the extension would end sooner if the council ends it or if permanent regulations take effect first.