Email County Commissioners and Mayor Wamp today to urge them to consider AT LEAST a 5-year moratorium, working with city officials to ensure county wide regulation and not just specific areas of our county. Also urge them to commit to designated town halls and public input sessions for the community at large to name shared concerns and identify the type of regulations we need around AI Data Centers and big tech in Hamilton County BEFORE the County Commission votes on the short term, temporary moratorium on July 15th.

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Data centers cause irreversible harm to our communities and environment AND in Tennessee, they do not pay their fair share in local sales tax meaning our county loses out on millions of dollars of revenue our local budgets should be collecting because of their sales tax exempt status.

While a 1-year moratorium is a step in the right direction, it is not enough to meet the needs of our county. While Mayor Wamp has introduced this short sighted moratorium for the unincorporated parts of Hamilton County, he has also championed the three Oracle Data centers going into the city center of Chattanooga by his friend and campaign donor, Jimmy White at Urban Story Ventures.

A moratorium in the unincorporatedparts of the county is a partial step in the right direction, but without collaboration with local muncipalities and local leaders this could result in data center developments simply moving one street over. We need local elected officials to work together across the county, listening to community and constituents in what our priorities are around regulation and moratoriums for data centers.

Does this moratorium help Oracle take a monopoly on data centers in Hamilton County? How can we ensure if data centers MUST come to Hamilton County they are built as responsibly as possible? The track record of the Oracle Data Centers has shown us that these companies will start shipping in the parts before the elected officials agree to the deal and that there is strong political desire to continue building data centers in the city center of Hamilton County. A 1-year moratorium for the unincorporated parts of our city simply falls shorts of our needs.