Somerset selectmen send a data center moratorium to the Planning Board and order hearing notice right away

SOMERSET Somerset's Board of Selectmen voted Wednesday night to send a draft zoning bylaw that would put a temporary moratorium on data centers to the Planning Board, with directions to "immediately issue notice for a public hearing," the first step toward a town meeting vote on pausing such projects in town.

The motion, recommended by the town's lawyers at KP Law, directs Town Administrator Mark Ullucci to forward the draft bylaw to the Planning Board for a hearing under Chapter 40A, Section 5 of state law. It passed on a voice vote at the board's Oct. 28 meeting in the Somerset Public Library's Cucinotta Community Room. Three ayes are heard on the meeting video, and Chairman Allen Smith declared that the motion passed. Selectmen Todd Costa and Joseph Bednarik both said they favored a pause.

Why a pause

Smith raised the idea at the board's previous meeting, and he said Costa and Bednarik asked to hold the vote a week so it could be posted for the public. A moratorium, he said, "is pressing the pause button to slow things down to give us time as a community to be able to look at changing our zoning bylaws, so that they address this emerging technology."

Under the town's zoning now, Smith said, a data center would likely fit under wholesale business or storage, a use allowed by right in an industrial zone, and he recalled a zoning board chairman's point from past hearings that a use by right is almost impossible for the Zoning Board of Appeals to turn down. He said that unlike Taunton, he was not proposing "a total ban on data centers," and that the board was looking at the question townwide rather than at any one site.

Costa said the only reason he did not vote to bring the item forward the week before was that he wanted the public to have a chance to weigh in. He said data centers "do tax local infrastructure" and that the town should not "repeat the same mistakes over and over and over again that we made with Brayton Point, that we made not considering battery storage." He added, "I 100% agree that we should be hitting the pause button right now."

Bednarik said Somerset has surplus water and "quite the substation grid in town from National Grid," but "we don't want to just put something in that's going to be detrimental to the neighborhoods." He said he was not sure how long the moratorium should last. Later in the discussion, Bednarik said, "I am not anti-data center," calling one "a sizable taxable project," and said he did not want the pause pushed out so far that it hurt residents, seniors especially, who struggle to pay their taxes.

What happens next

The Planning Board, which is elected separately, now holds the public hearing and votes on whether to send the moratorium to town meeting, Smith said. Its length would be set in the bylaw that goes to town meeting, where voters could change it, and he said the moratorium could be cut short at a later town meeting if new data center rules are ready before it ends. The selectmen would then call the town meeting, and Smith said he would want to give residents 30 days' notice.

State law requires the Planning Board's hearing to be held within 65 days after the selectmen submit a proposed bylaw, with notice published in a newspaper in each of two weeks in a row, the first at least 14 days before the hearing. Under the same law, a zoning change applies to building and special permits issued after that first published notice. Ullucci told the board that town counsel described the first notice as "kind of a placeholder": anyone who applies after it "will have to deal with whatever the outcome is of the town meeting."

One of the two residents who spoke backed a moratorium of some length but urged the board to give the Planning Board a firm deadline of three to six months, and said a site in town could suit a data center that makes its own power. The other asked that any deadline allow for the holidays, suggesting mid-January. The board kept the word "immediately" in its motion rather than writing in a 60-day target.

Nearby, Taunton's City Council banned data centers and added a one-year moratorium on Oct. 20, and a New Bedford City Council committee backed Mayor Jon Mitchell's citywide ban on Oct. 26.

Old Town Hall and Village School requests

In other business, the selectmen voted to submit preliminary applications to the town's Community Preservation Committee for $150,000 for Old Town Hall renovations, $100,000 for renovations to the Village School and $60,000 to buy a kitchen hood for the Council on Aging, $310,000 in all. Smith said the requests would not have to cover the full cost of the work.

The board also honored Ann Marie Couture with a proclamation for her years of service to the Somerset TRIAD, a program that works on safety for the town's seniors, including as its chair. And anyone who wants to point out a family in need of a Thanksgiving meal for Meals That Matter can email tturner@townofsomerset.org, the board was told.

Label: Reported by us, from the town's posted records.