The City of Mount Vernon decided to take no action on a data center ordinance at the moment.

The council entertained a discussion on the matter, noting the construction of data centers in other smaller communities in the area.

“I don’t see data centers coming to Mount Vernon any time soon,” said mayor Tom Wieseler.

Council member Craig Engel said discussion on data centers did come up at the local Mount Vernon-Lisbon Community Development Group’s Community Leader’s breakfast, with Dennis Jordan speaking in favor of the projects.

City administrator Chris Nosbisch said Mount Vernon is likely not a prime candidate for a data center, due to fairly shallow wells in the community and no immediate proximity to a water source like the Cedar River. He also noted many of these projects are taking a 15 to 20 year speculation on data centers maintaining their value.

Nosbisch said he was not a fan of pre-emptively writing a code unless it’s a foreseen issue.

“I look at the bypass as one of those that was one we wrote the code for how we wanted things to develop out along that area,” Nosbisch said. “We could foresee that was coming and planned for it.”

Nosbisch said with data centers being so new, he was reticent to put an ordinance restricting in case data centers of the future make more innovations on their water usage or power consumption.

“If there’s a project with the right parameters looking to build here, I’d hate to have an ordinance in place restricting,” Nosbisch said.

Council member Paul Tuerler said that a lot of the centers would likely operate in the county jurisdiction, and Linn County has passed an ordinance with restrictions.