Members of the audience break out in cheers when council votes to deny approving the ordinance: it was a close vote of two for and three against
by Janice Daniel
The Mayor and Council of the City of Tallapoosa met for their Regular Monthly meeting on Monday, March 9th, 2026 at 6:00 p.m. at City Hall, Council Meeting Room, 25 East Alabama Street, with all councilmembers present and others as follows:
Mayor, Brett Jones
Post 1 Councilmember, Dan Pope
Post 2 Councilmember, Jacqueline Roberts
Post 3 Councilmember, Mark Smith
Post 4 Councilmember, Jonathan James
Post 5 Councilmember, Bobby Parker
Philip Eidson, City Manager
McKay Kelley, Community Development Director
Nick Gorzynski, Development Intern from University of West Georgia
Boyd Coggins, Public Works Director
Carey Pilgrim, City Attorney
Melissa Chandler, City Clerk
Donna Hicks, City Planner
Eugene Brown, Chief of Police
Councilmember Bobby Parker offered the Invocation, and all present stood for the Pledge of Allegiance. The meeting began with Mayor Jones’ recognition of employees’ years of service for the city. Gina Griffith has racked up an amazing 41 years; Randall Brown 17 years; Chris Harper 5 years, and two others with one year. Mayor Jones also read a Proclamation naming March 16th through the 20th as Government Finance Professionals Week and recognized the city’s finance department for their outstanding work. Melissa Chandler, Finance Director, Donna Hicks, Accounting Clerk, Teresa Baggett, Accounts Payable Clerk and Gina Griffith, Accounting Tech were all recognized with a round of applause.
The first item before Council was a request to amend the city’s Technology Park Overlay District (TPOD) provisions to establish a maximum building height of 100 feet, and to add onsite power generation as a principally permitted use. Such uses were listed as: natural gas engines, turbines, fuel cells, battery energy storage systems, solar arrays and standby or emergency generators, which may include multiple units, redundant systems, and microgrid configurations sized as needed to support onsite operations.
In the Public Hearing, Jacob Freeman (address not given) stated that he is a member of the Tallapoosa Planning & Zoning Commission, but wanted to speak as an individual citizen. He said that, of the 26 permitted uses allowed in the 1,800-acre TPOD, one stands out – Data Centers. “A lot of land if being grabbed up right now for the use of data centers. Of all the 26 uses listed [in Tallapoosa’s TPOD Ordinance], none have the requirements of data centers. They are the black sheep of permitted uses.”
He stated, “They can use up to 4.9 million gallons of water PER DAY, enough to provide the entire City of Carrollton. Data Centers require enough electricity in one single day to power 100,000 homes. This land is being marketed directly as a data center. If we went forward with this, we would lose 1,800 acres of our city and county. A medium sized data center employs about fifty (50) people. The average Walmart Supercenter has at least five (5) times that many employees. A data center is not an industry looking to hire a bunch of people. Not only that, technology is moving so fast, data centers could be obsolete by the time they’re built [5-10 years]. Let this land be for businesses that are a pathway for local school graduates to work. Fifty people is nothing.” He said this land runs from Bethel Church Road to Golf Course Road, filled with old hardwoods, hunting land, AND PEOPLE LIVE THERE. “The list of pros for data centers is short-term at best, and the list of cons is a mile long. They pollute the water air, and noise. I pray that our elected officials act with conviction and think of the long-term damage a data center will bring.”
From StarNews research (on a multitude of information on data centers): it is a fact that data centers are targeting small rural areas where ordinances have not yet caught up to the facts of the dangers and destruction they cause. Already strained water systems are not able to stand up to their enormous water consumption each and every day. The hum from their power requirements is 24/7, and loud enough to kill honey bees. They also periodically test the generators, each of which is the size of a railcar and the sound is comparable to listening to a heavy metal band concert in a closet. They recycle as much water as they can, then that waste water spills into the creeks, lakes and rivers in addition to wells and wetlands, spewing poison that causes disease to humans and wildlife, including lung problems, infertility, all kinds of cancer, and a multitude of other health problems. When the large data bank machines become outdated due to newer technology, they have to be disposed of somewhere, and they contain environmentally hazardous materials as well.
Councilmember Dan Pope said he doesn’t think all the acreage would be taken up by a data center if one is coming. “Do we know if a data center is coming?” To which Mayor Jones replied, “The county has asked us to apply this to our TPOD to the property they own for better marketing bridges. That’s all the city knows.” That explained the second item on the agenda, which was for the City of Tallapoosa to annex that land, thereby putting the utility services burden on Tallapoosa.
Councilmember Pope continued on to say, “Yes, we want the city to have property available for students to get a job and not have to drive sixty miles to Atlanta, and we try diligently to get properties and draw businesses into the city, and it’s a tough job I can tell you. I’ve been on Council for 20 years, and we’ve had a difficult time getting businesses to come here. I think we need to annex this property, not for a data center necessarily, but other industries that would come near the Interstate to help relieve some of the tax burden on our aging community. We have a lot of elderly people here, and I’m one of them now, so I can agree to this just based on being able to have land available for some type of industry to come here. I don’t know enough about data centers to know, but I know we need a place for some industry to come into this community that can help relieve the tax burdens on the citizens that live here.”
Councilmember Mark Smith then made a motion to approve the amendments to the city TPOD ordinance. [Side note, a TPOD, Techology Park Overlay District is normally adopted by a city or county in order to exclude industries that may cause harm to the environment, the people and other businesses as an incentive to draw industry in. A data center does the exact opposite.] Smith followed his motion by saying, “I know there’s a lot of people going to be ill at me for making that motion, but I promise you one thing. We’re not going to give this city away. We’re not going to give the water away, and we’re not going to let any industry come in here and *****” (couldn’t understand the last word.)
Tommy Allen, President of the Tallapoosa Downtown Development Authority, then spoke from the audience and said, “They’re already on the list. You won’t be able to stop them.” And this is a true statement, as the city and Haralson County learned just a few years ago during the landfill nightmare. Every citizen and business had “No Landfill” signs on their property, and the county fought long and hard in the legal system to stop it, finally spending several million dollars to purchase the exact land being discussed at this meeting, to persuade the owner to withdraw his application.
A lady from the audience then stood and told the Council how she had to pull up stakes and move from Paulding County because of the data center there. “It’s terrible what they do,” she said, “and it’s hard to move when you’re 75 years old.” And that’s the reason she chose Tallapoosa was because she thought she was getting away from the data center.
The first speaker’s wife stood up and said, “If the data center is permitted, only about 50 people will be employed. That takes away the rest of the uses permitted. Before you say yes, you should look into the data centers. You want to sit there and say you don’t know much about them? You should, because it’s something that’s very, very important that has something to do with our families who are here now and will benefit very little if they only have 50 employees.”
Other people in the audience began to murmur and nod their heads in agreement with objections from these citizens. Someone suggested they first amend the list of permitted uses to specifically exclude data centers, and Councilmember Smith said, “NO, because do you think I’m going to let something come in here that is going to hurt this city,” using the first person pronoun as if it was his decision alone.
Mayor Jones said there was a motion on the floor and asked for a vote, when Councilmember Pope said, “Wait a minute. I’m not ready to vote. I think we should table this before we make a decision.” Someone else from the audience asked, “Why are you so against taking it [data centers] off the list?” Another chimed in, “Yes, why couldn’t that be done? Whey can’t y’all do the research?” Mayor Jones responded. “This is a request by the county. The county is the one marketing this program.” But someone else retorted, “But we’re being asked to annex it.” The Mayor said, “We have to annex it because we have to serve it with water and sewage.” At this point people in the audience were all talking at once and couldn’t really be understood, but the tone was clearly in opposition to this motion.
Councilmember Smith said, “A motion is on the floor.” The motion was seconded by Councilmember James. Smith and James voted in favor, the other three councilmembers were opposed for a vote of 2-3.The audience actually broke out in cheers and cried “Thank you” to Councilmembers Pope, Roberts and Parker. When order was restored, Mayor Jones spoke directly to Tara Chapman, President of the Haralson County Chamber of Commerce, and asked, “Do you want us to go ahead with the annexation?” to which she responded, “No.” So Council skipped that item. It’s not clear whether it was tabled, withdrawn, or will be re-submitted at a later date.
Council then went on to other business on the adopted agenda. Community Development Director Kelley said there has been some discussion about mobile home parks in the city, and whether they are allowed to replaces ones which have been moved out with new ones [not literally new, but replacing one mobile home with another.] The mobile homes are still in operation, grandfathered in to a non-conforming application. Kelley advised that there is not a 50% threshold which applies to these businesses such as the one that exists for buildings or homes which have been burned or demolished and removed. City Attorney Pilgrim said this does not apply to mobile home parks if they have continued as an on-going business. He said the non-conforming use would only apply if the entire mobile home park was removed. City Manager Edison said some of these parks have become very blighted, but the law allows for obsolete and unoccupied trailers to be replaced by newer models which are in compliance with the federal standards. Kelley said he was bringing this to Council’s attention because people had been asking questions about what can be done. Eidson advised that the city will look at the matter further.
Finance Director Melissa Chandler gave the financial information:
Year-to-Date Revenues were at $5,970,607
Year-to-Date Expenses were at $3,841,418
Net Operating Balance is $2,129,189
These reports were approved by Council 5-0.
McKay Kelley advised that the city has put a dumpster on Head Avenue for businesses to use in getting rid of trash. Public Works Director Boyd Coggins said the trailer has been filled up once and is almost filled up again. He said the city is getting good use and service from the dumpster owner.
Kelley also said he was sending a text to all Councilmembers to try and reach a consensus for a date and time for the last joint meeting of property owners, the DDA, and Mayor and Council.
The Community Development Department is working on a potential ordinance to address downtown vacant properties and those that need maintenance done. Kelley advised that they want owners of property in the historic portion of downtown to register their property with the city in order to get everyone in that area on the same page, and also give the city a registry when property is vacated in order to try and get new businesses to occupy such property. “The goal isn’t to create a burden, but to make sure there is no blight. We can work hand-in-hand with the Blight Ordinance to enforce building codes without causing property owners to feel like we’re picking and choosing. We want to prevent safety hazards and ensure security from unauthorized access, really just to put a solid set of guidelines in.” Kelley said that the city has hired two new Code Enforcement Officers, and his department wants to give clarity to the rules and clear communication with property owners downtown. “The Blight Ordinance gives offenders one year after a code violation is issued to make the required improvements. If they violate the proposed code and continue to violate, we would apply the Blight Ordinance as well, along with a 30-day period of time to apply for permits and make progress on required improvements.” Kelley told Council that what they have is just a draft which they want to maybe put in the form of a pamphlet to give out to property owners showing what they need to do. “We could also send letters. We need to make it informative and educational.” The consensus of Council was for Kelley to continue with a formal ordinance, and to work with the City Attorney on the next steps.
Kelly continued on to say Council has asked his department to make a draft making some changes to the downtown sign ordinance. City Manager Eidson said they have looked at about six communities to see what they do, and used that information to consider what Tallapoosa should work toward. Kelley said they want to charge twice the current fee for violations of the new sign ordinance and that building permits are necessary. “We currently only have a draft, and we would need to work with the City Attorney to finalize the rules. We want to tighten the previous sign ordinance a little bit and the major change is to alter the maximum sign size. Previously it was 25% of the store frontage. We want to change it to 1.75 square feet per linear foot of building frontage. This would create a sliding scale to make the signs adjustable to the buildings.” He added, “Building Permits are necessary if Council approves these changes, so we will have to redo the public notice and advertise about the fine for failure to obtain all appropriate permits.” Kelley said the proposed changes would ban roof signs except for those on small roof parapets attached to the front of the building, and there will be a temporary signage limit with placement and duration rules. He said these changes are not out of character with surrounding cities, and some came from the State of Georgia requirements. He will bring something to the next Council meeting for their suggestions or approval. Councilmember Roberts said that all new businesses need sign permits. A motion was made to continue the current moratorium of no new signs until the revised ordinance is approved by Council. The motion was seconded and approved 5-0.
City Manager Eidson announced that the city has finally received its Tax Digest from the state and county, and notices were mailed last week. He said city residents should be getting bills soon except those with a homestead exemption could be delayed for a couple of weeks. He also advised that the EPD had inspected the wastewater facility and cited up some violations, but none that will affect citizens’ water bills. Council approved a motion to authorize the Mayor to sign consent orders to have these violations corrected.
The Saint Patrick’s Day Festival is this Saturday, the 13th, and preparations are being made for that. The Dogwood Festival will be April 12th, and a fireworks quote will be obtained for the 4th of July event. Ideas are needed for ways to celebrate the country’s 250th anniversary as well. Tommy Allen said the parade theme will be Happy Birthday USA, starting at 2:00 and there will be a Veterans’ Program at 12:00 noon with the opening of part of the new Veterans Museum. A motion was approved for the Mayor and Council to attend the annual Chamber of Commerce meeting on March 19th. Mayor Jones also announced approval for Council and Staff to attend the GMA (Georgia Municipal Association) Convention June 26th through the 29th.
Eidson announced a conflict which will require moving the city’s regular Mayor & Council meeting from the 2nd Monday of April to the 1st Monday, April 6th, 2026.
Citizen Audrey Thompson of 538 Robertson Circle spoke at the meeting to say “our street looks horrible. The ditches and roadside needs cleaning up and there is a building at the bottom of the hill that needs to be painted and fixed up to look nice. Garbage bins need to be returned to peoples’ houses and moved off the street. I don’t like rocking on my front porch looking at garbage carts.” Thompson went on to add, “I am a very good citizen of this town, and I don’t live on Trash Street. I want it to look as nice as possible.” She told the Council there are some trees on city property that need to be cut because they are leaning out over the power lines and if they fall it will take out the power on her side of the street. “I want my street to be fixed, and quickly,” she concluded. Boyd Coggins told her that Robertson Circle is on the list of streets to be paved, and some of the work couldn’t be done until the paving was finished, but he promised that Code Enforcement will look at the violations on her street.
The meeting was then adjourned.