The Emporia City Commission’s meetings Wednesday will involve more conversations about data centers.
Commissioners will discuss their course of action for a petition seeking to ban both the installation and operation of battery energy storage systems commonly associated with data centers. The tentative plan is to ask Lyon County District Court for a declaratory judgment on whether this petition is legislative or administrative in nature following a legal review process; if the review leads to an administrative ruling, the city has said the petition will likely be invalidated. The city’s goal, if this step is taken, is to have District Court address the storage system petition as it continues a legal review of a related petition to ban high-impact data centers for a 10-year period — and thus have District Court issue one ruling instead of two.
Other action items include a public hearing for a Community Improvement District benefiting Flinthills Mall by extending its current 1-percent CID sales tax and a resolution designed to put a 0.25-percent sales tax question on the November ballot to fund both a new public recreation center at Jones Aquatic Center and significant renovations to Lee Beran Rec Center.
The study meeting to follow will involve a discussion about meeting procedures and decorum following increasingly-heated public meetings last month. A budget discussion and a conversation about an economic development service agreement are also planned ahead of an executive session on legal matters.
The meeting slate begins at 11 am. For the second straight meeting period, the meeting will be livestreamed only due to what have been called credible threats that have been under investigation by Emporia Police for several weeks. It will be accessible online at emporiaks.gov/agendas.
