Hillsboro Passes Data Center Moratorium – Councilor Sinclair Champions Inclusion Of AI Computing & More

The Real Story – A Column

With 20 hours’ notice this past Sunday and a 9 AM start time Monday morning, the Hillsboro City Council began a meeting to pass a Temporary Data Center and BESS Energy Storage System Moratorium.  As the caffeine began to take effect and the microphones came on, a crowd of about 50 residents came to attention to participate in this meeting. No one had any notice except the Herald, and we were tipped off mid-day yesterday.  The City of Hillsboro did not use its social media or engagement channels to notify people either.  After 6 months of passionate City Council meetings in which residents have demanded action, from screaming and swearing to passionate science-based testimonies, it was time for something to happen.

Hillsboro City Council Passes Data Center Moratorium – Hillsboro Herald Photo 

Many people gave up their workdays; I know I did.  And they came from all walks of life.  Some were City Hall regulars, while others were shaky and nervous, as this was their first time ever speaking at a public meeting, which can be very scary.  Honored more seasoned folks, activists, industry experts, and even a large number of students from Hillsboro’s Glencoe High School made up today’s crowd, and boy did they deliver their thoughts with feelings, passion, and armed with statistics and information.  A dozen spoke from home on Zoom, and about 30 took their 3 minutes to state their wishes.

After 2 hours of public testimony, Mayor Beach Pace and City Attorney Chad Jacobs opened with an explanation of the proposed 120-day Moratorium, which was written to stop any new Data Centers and Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS) for a period of 120 days.  During the moratorium, the City staff will commission studies to understand how much land, power, and water Data Centers have taken up in Hillsboro.  In addition, impacts to humans and residences, which were never part of the City’s criteria when it approved the first 33 buildings, will be considered.  Factors like noise, vibration, impacts to wetlands and people, and more will hopefully be reviewed.

What was missing from the Moratorium- What Sinclair Did 

The Herald spent hours on Sunday reviewing all 529 pages of the packet that the City of Hillsboro provided to the DLCD in Salem.  This was a required step the City had to do under Oregon law.  And it was done quietly and carefully.  It was not done fast enough to stop the 7 or 8 new data Centers that have applied to the City in the past few days.  Had Councilor Sinclair been granted her request for an emergency meeting in early May, this may have been done before any of these newest projects could slide in.  But today she caught two crucial issues that were missing from the Moratorium as proposed, and in mid-meetings she led a discussion to get some very important fixes done before it passed.

1.  She made sure that Data Centers, as defined, included AI Computing and AI factories in the definitions of how this moratorium applies.  You see, she knows, as we do and others working on this, that Data Centers are not the same as those uses.  They may occupy the same type of buildings, but they use more power and energy, and they do not really store Data- mostly they handle AI problems and work tasks.  So, acting on the information she had gathered and learned, she insisted that those terms be included.  If not, the Moratorium may be meaningless- something we wrote about during the previous week.
2. Kipperlyn also asked that the Moratorium make it clear what an accessory use is. The Moratorium does allow for “accessory uses” that can be Data Centers to an allowed Primary Use.  But the Trojan Horse option was in the draft the City attorney had- a small factory could open, building parts of some kind, and then ask for a massive data center and call it an accessory use.  Sinclair insisted on some restrictions based on size, power usage, and the accessory use’s percentage of the land.

City Manager Hammond, Mayor Pace, and City Attorney Chad Jacobs opened the discussion on the proposed changes; there was some debate, and another City lawyer drafted excellent language for Councilors to review.  Surprisingly, none of them resisted, and the amendments, after some robust discussion, were included.  The Vote was called, and the deal, as they say, is done… for now.

Here is Kipperlyn today and what she asked to be added to get this Mortaorium done.

Here is Councilor Kipperlyn Sinclair asking for additions to the Data Center Moratorium

Here are the revised clauses.

I pulled the Business Oregon definitions from House Bill 4084, passed this year, which needed the same exact sort of language, and sent a letter to the City and Council about 2 AM last night. Letter to City Council – 7-27-26   We only have one chance to do this first Moratorium right, and the end result is a good one, for now.

All of the Council is to be commended.  Councilor Alcaire once again played the part of the wise sage fighting for everyone to be heard. She once again centered the room on our residents and recognized the months of hard work many of us have done to lobby for this.  Council President Harris gave a great summary of the timing and the stealthy approach adopted to get this done without more Data Centers pouring in to secure permits before a Moratorium was passed. He was measured and of course, the retired lawyer in him explained the precariousmness of this entire process.

Hillsboro City Council President Rob Harris went over the strategy of announcing the hearing on a Sunday AM & passing the ordinance the next day.

At the end, there were cheers and hope for the future.  Granted, the City has a lot of work to do and must take meaningful actions if it hopes to get the State of Oregon to provide another 4 to 6 months.  The goal is to use the Moratorium time we have now to pass meaningful land use changes to control where, how big, and how many more Data Centers and AI Compute facilities will come to Hillsboro, a city we believe now has more Data Centers and Megawatts being used than anyone else in America per-capita.

We reached out to Councilor Sinclair for he thoughts on the day and road to get to this point. She had this to say.

“Today, the Hillsboro City Council passed a hard-won 120-day moratorium on new data centers and battery energy storage systems (BESS). Make no mistake, this victory belongs to you, the residents who require transparency and refused to be ignored.

Recognizing the absolute urgency of this threat, Myrna Munoz, Tammy Carpenter, and I launched a Washington County petition that mobilized upwards of 5,000 residents. The unchecked expansion of data centers is not a partisan debate; it is an immediate risk to our shared resources. This pause is critical to protect our water, our power grid, and our air quality before irreversible damage is done.

Hillsboro is our home, not a disposable industrial zone for tech sprawl. In this explosive era of artificial intelligence, if governing elects get this wrong, everyday families cannot simply uproot their lives.

This pause is a solid beginning. I am calling on every resident to stay engaged at the local level: keep packing City Council meetings and get out to vote. This election cycle will dictate the landscape of Hillsboro and Washington County for generations to come.”  Kipperlyn Sinclair –  She is running for Washington County Commissioner this Fall- find out more here- https://www.kipperlynsinclair.com/

I agree. The real heroes were the people of Hillsboro and the greta Community Leaders we have had a chance to cover, assist, and get to know over the past couple of years.

There is much more to do.  Much more.  And let’s make no mistake- Hillsboro will never ever be the same.  The North Hillsboro Industrial area has been paved over and underutilized by these unwelcome guests.  The soils, gone forever. The views of the Coast Range that have been there since the dawn of time, gone forever.  The peace and quiet for people like the Haags and the Richies, still living out there or trying, gone.  Nothing can ever fix or repair the damage done by the lost revenues, the lost economy, the onslaught of AI, all powered by our town’s Data Centers, Ai Computing firms, and transpacific cables.

But Hope is all we need.  Hope to get to a better place and to make these interlopers contribute to our community, even if they do so while lining their pockets.  And today for a while, we have Hope.  Congrats to everyone that worked to get this done.