City Council Passes 150-Day Moratorium on Data Center Petitions

Charlotte City Council held a business meeting on Monday night, voting on the Fiscal Year 2027 budget and an anticipated moratorium on data center petitions. 

Council voted 9-2 to approve the budget, with LaWana Mayfield and Ed Driggs casting the only No votes. You can read the budget in full at the city’s website.  

Before those votes, council heard a presentation from city staff on a proposed red light camera pilot program that they will vote on at a later date. 

Below, we’ve got highlights from Monday’s meeting, including the notable decisions and discussions on those topics and others.

On the Agenda:

• Red light camera presentation
• Data center moratorium vote

What’s next:

Charlotte City Council will meet next for its monthly zoning meeting on Monday, June 15.

Red light camera presentation

Charles Jones, deputy director with the Charlotte Department of Transportation (CDOT) led a presentation on a proposed one-year pilot program to bring red light cameras back to Charlotte streets. 

The program would equip cameras at locations deemed to be especially dangerous according to recent data, with signage providing advance warning at any intersection where cameras are installed. Violations would lead to non-criminal citations of $75 each issued to the registered owner of a given vehicle, with no points issued toward the driver’s license or insurance.

Working from a list of 39 intersections along the High Injury Network where fatal wrecks have happened, city staff identified 10 potential spots to launch the pilot program, emphasizing that the locations are not yet set in stone and could change according to any number of factors. 

The potential first locations are: North Graham Street & Norris Avenue, University City Boulevard & the I-485 northbound ramp, Steele Creek Road & Westinghouse Boulevard, North Tryon Street & University City Boulevard, Central Avenue & North Sharon Amity Road, W.T. Harris Blvd. & North Tryon Street, South Tryon Street & Arrowood Road, South Mint Street & West Boulevard, Central Avenue & Kilborne Avenue, East 36th Street & The Plaza.

The program would be expected to cost approximately $5,000 per month per intersection, with an annual program cost $600,000. That initial investment would be expected to lead to $4.5 million in annual revenue, with $4.05 million going to Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools and $450,000 going back to the city. 

The revenue estimates are based on an assumed 500 citations per month per location. 

City staff estimates that the program would bring the number of total collisions at those 10 intersections from 1,666 in a year to 1,296.

The funds needed to launch the program are already baked into Vision Zero funding in the city’s budget, Dante Anderson clarified.

“People have been acting like a red light is a suggestion, not a command to stop, lately and that is disheartening to see,” said LaWana Mayfield. “But in my dream world these cameras might capture the people who open their car door and put an entire bag of trash out on the street as well. I don’t know if we have the technology to see that.”

Renee Johnson asked what has changed from the time around five years ago when she was in the Safety Committee and was told there was no way forward for red light cameras. 

Jones said there have been favorable court rulings allowing cities to partner with school districts for these sorts of programs, but there’s also more of a political will to spend tax dollars on traffic safety through Vision Zero.

Read more: Tracking Vehicle-Related Deaths on Charlotte Streets in 2025

One of the vendors the city has looked into for implementing this program also offers noise cameras, which have also been discussed as a quality-of-life issue around the city, specifically in Uptown. 

Jones said the city would need new legislation from state lawmakers to allow for the use of noise cameras but there could be a future for dual-use cameras that ticket for both noise and red lights somewhere down the road.

Council members Joi Mayo and Ed Driggs expressed interest in coming to the table with CMS to have some say in how the district spends the revenue from the program.

Data center moratorium vote

Beginning the data center discussion, Dimple Ajmera said, “The question before us today is not whether data centers are good or bad; the question is whether Charlotte has the right policy framework in place to manage them responsibly … Today I believe the answer is that we need to do our homework and we need to make sure we put guardrails and safeguards in place to protect our taxpayers, our residents and our health.”

“It’s important to know that we have data centers here in the community that we’ve had since 1990. This is not a new issue,” said Dante Anderson before acknowledging that, in a time when tech is moving at an exponential rate, “We have to understand what the impacts are to communities, to environment, to small children and having these facilities close or proximate to K-12 schools. That is the work that I hope we can do during this moratorium.”

Following Anderson’s speech supporting the moratorium, a man stood up to demand council members answer for the data center that’s already under way near Moores Chapel Road in west Charlotte, asking what will be done to stop that or curb its impacts.

Once the meeting continued, District 6 rep Kimberly Owens acknowledged that data centers are a large part of our economy but that she has recently learned more about these facilities and now believes they operate more like industrial uses rather than office buildings and should be zoned as such.

“However, let me be clear,” Owens continued. “We do not have the legal authority for projects that have already been approved and they will move forward unaffected by the moratorium.” Boos followed that statement.

City attorney Andrea Leslie-Fite clarified what projects are exempt from the moratorium: those that already hold a valid building permit, any project for which a special use permit or application has been accepted and approved, any project that has had a site plan approved, any project for which expenditures have already been made in good faith, and any project that has a complete application for developmental approval.

“This is not a city council policy, this is state law and any attempt to apply a moratorium to any of the projects I have just listed would be a direct violation of state law,” said Leslie-Fite.

“I think it’s important that we tell people what they need to know versus what they want to hear and we have a conversation based in truth and honesty about what we can and can’t do,” said Malcolm Graham. “A lot of the framework will be shaped by legislation in terms of how they perceive this issue, so I would encourage everyone here to also speak to your state representatives.”

LaWana Mayfield referred back to 2023 when she tried to speak against data centers and was largely ignored, pointing out that the community was not speaking out about it any more than her colleagues on council at the time. 

“No we can’t backtrack to 2023, but when that info was out there, we didn’t hear from the community,” said Mayfield. “The community was like ‘I don’t know, we’re all using AI so it must be OK,’ but then we all learned more information. It’s not going to retract what’s already approved.”

When Mayfield acknowledged that “we” are going to use ChatGPT and Claude one way or another, some folks in the audience started to yell out in opposition. “Do I come to your job and act up?” asked Mayfield. “So that’s what I’m going to ask y’all not to do.” 

Listen: JD Mazuera Arias on Toll Lanes, Data Centers and More

“If residents have to be asked to conserve water during drought conditions, if families can be asked to reduce energy consumption, then corporations, especially those with massive water and energy footprints, should be held to the same standard,” said JD Mazuera Arias, “especially when Duke Energy is pushing for higher rates and our residents are already facing property tax increases.”

Renee Johnson said that just a year ago she would call the idea of a moratorium “the M word” because no council members would even entertain one. She believes tonight’s vote represents a bigger shift toward “people first” governing.

The 150-day moratorium was approved unanimously to much applause and chants of, “The people united, will never be defeated!”