Commissioner Kirsch urges UDO updates to regulate data centers and battery storage

Commissioner Mike Kirsch said protecting the county from "unregulated development" was a primary reason he ran for office and led a discussion on updates to the Unified Development Ordinance focused on data centers and battery energy storage systems (BESS). Kirsch proposed multiple changes to the UDO, including reclassifying data centers from permitted by-right uses to conditional or special-exception uses, expanding setbacks from residential, school, park, and historic-preservation districts, and reducing acceptable noise thresholds from 60–65 decibels to 50–55 decibels with attention to low-frequency noise measurement.