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Planning Board Special Meeting

Chatham County · Planning Board
Tuesday, May 12, 2026 at 6:30 pm · Emergency Operations Center, 112 Innovation Way Pittsboro, North Carolina 27312

Special or emergency meeting Data centers and large loadsEconomic development incentivesEnvironment and sustainabilityTax rate and revaluation

Agenda document Minutes Meeting page Watch Meeting recap

What was decided

  1. Continued IVApproval of Minutes - April 14, 2026 Held over; members had not reviewed them

Read from the agenda's recorded outcomes. Where the board published minutes, those are the record — this is a pointer to them.

What's on this agenda

Chatham County's Planning Board heard the case for data centers on 12 May. Michael Smith, president of the county's Economic Development Corporation, came to make it, followed by a staff presentation on the use and its impacts. The board then discussed what it was worried about and what it still needed to find out.

Summarized from the published agenda. Read the agenda itself before acting on it.

Meeting recap

What happened, drawn from the records published after the meeting. Minutes

Smith argued the county needs to widen a tax base that leans on residential property, and put data centers in a line with railroads and interstate highways as infrastructure that met opposition and became essential. He raised the Shearon Harris nuclear plant, which went to Wake County instead of Chatham nearly fifty years ago and has paid for another county's schools and services since. He also said plainly that the concerns residents had raised about water, power, land use, noise and the pace of change are real and deserve to be taken seriously, and that the county should learn from how others have handled them.

Staff followed with the research behind the board's own work, and the board turned to next steps and its meeting schedule. The only recorded vote was on the agenda, 9-0. April's minutes were held over because members had not had time to read them.

How the votes went

The agenda was approved 9-0. The April minutes were held to the next meeting, unread.

From the published minutes.

Speaking at this meeting

Chatham County's own rules for public comment — check them before you rely on anything here.

Agenda items (7)

Procedural · 2Presentation · 2Discussion item · 2Minutes approval · 1
  1. III Approval of Agenda
    Procedural
    Approved 9-0
  2. IV Approval of Minutes - April 14, 2026
    Minutes approval
    Held over; members had not reviewed them
  3. V.1 Economic Development Corporation on data centers
    Presentation Data centers and large loadsEconomic development incentivesTax rate and revaluation
    Michael Smith, president of the Economic Development Corporation, on what data centers would mean for the county's tax base.
  4. V.2 Staff presentation: data centers, associated uses and potential impacts
    Presentation Data centers and large loadsEnvironment and sustainability
    County staff on data centers, the uses that come with them, and their impacts.
  5. V.3 Discussion on current concerns and ongoing research
    Discussion item Data centers and large loads
  6. V.4 Defining next steps and upcoming meeting schedule
    Discussion item Data centers and large loads
  7. VI Public Input Session
    Procedural

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