Growth

A data center moratorium reaches the county commission Tuesday, and the ordinance it would adopt is not published

Item 9 on the regular agenda is two sentences long. It names no duration, no boundary and no definition of a data center. The thing that produced it was a consensus in commissioners' reports on Sept. 1, not a motion and not a vote.

By Ivey Sutter Malone October 5, 2026

The St. Johns County Commission takes up nine numbered items on Tuesday morning, and the ninth of them runs to two sentences.

It is headed Data Center Moratorium, and it reads in full: “On September 1, 2026, the Board of County Commissioners directed the Office of County Attorney to provide an Ordinance enacting a temporary planning moratorium regarding data centers for its consideration.”

A planning moratorium is a temporary stop on accepting or deciding applications of a particular kind while a local government writes the rules it will apply to them, and everything that decides what one actually does sits in the ordinance rather than in the decision to have one. How long it runs, what geography it covers, what counts as the use being paused, what is exempt from it, and whether an application already in the queue is caught by it are all questions the text answers and the agenda does not.

None of that is published anywhere the county points a reader, which means the board is scheduled to consider an ordinance on Tuesday that nobody outside the building has read.

Where the document would be, if it were anywhere

The Clerk’s board records index is the page the commission’s own department sends people to for the record of a meeting, and the Oct. 6 row on it offers an agenda and nothing beside it. The county’s meeting calendar links every commission entry to that same index. It links agenda PDFs directly for two other boards this month, the Ponte Vedra Zoning and Adjustment Board and the Cultural Resource Review Board, and for the commission it does not. The department page carries two agenda links, one of them the Clerk’s index and the other a schedule of the dates by which staff must file material for a packet.

So the eight-page agenda is the entire published file for Tuesday, for those nine items and the tenth the board takes separately as the redevelopment agency. There is no staff report, no recommendation except where the agenda summarises one in a sentence of its own, and no attachment.

What produced it was a consensus, not a vote

The Sept. 1 minutes record the moment the agenda item refers back to. It is three sentences long, it sits on page 15 of 17 under Commissioners’ Reports, and it was not an agenda item then either.

“Joseph asked for an update on a possible moratorium on data centers,” the minutes read. “Consensus was given to move forward with a temporary data center moratorium.”

That second sentence is set in bold italic, which is how these minutes mark a direction the board has given. There is no motion in the passage, no second and no roll call. Direction by consensus is how a commission sets staff working without taking a vote, and the vote, if there is one, comes when the thing it asked for comes back. Tuesday is that.

Commissioner Krista Joseph asked for an update, which is the minutes’ own word and implies the subject had been raised before. The minutes of every regular and special meeting from July 21 through Sept. 3 carry no reference to data centers. The minutes of the three meetings since Sept. 15 are not posted, so the record between Sept. 1 and Tuesday cannot be read at all.

The rest of Tuesday, which is mostly rooftops

Item 4 is the first of two public hearings on a development agreement for Grand Oaks, the planned unit development on State Road 16 between International Golf Parkway and the I-95 interchange. Pulte Home Company proposes $20,000,000.00 in total mitigation for the transportation impacts of 512 single-family units, which are the remainder of a PUD that a companion application would cut from 999 units to 954. The 954 is 442 lots already platted plus the 512 proposed. Dividing the mitigation by the units it covers gives about $39,000 a unit, which is this paper’s arithmetic on two figures the agenda prints side by side. The second hearing is Oct. 20.

Items 5, 6 and 7 are one project read three ways. Durbin Creek National proposes to exchange 745 multi-family units for 330 single-family ones. The Durbin Park PUD modification would add a maximum 330 single-family units in the East Parcel, on the eastern side of Interstate 95, and drop the ceiling on multi-family units there from 2,265 to 1,520, and the gap between those two ceilings is the same 745. The agenda states the exchange carries no increase in the project’s external traffic, and the road capacity charge ordinance is amended to add the single-family use with no change to total anticipated revenue of $12,862,873, on that same reasoning.

That is the concurrency answer for the biggest land use item of the day, and it is a sentence on an agenda with no trip generation table behind it. The Planning and Zoning Agency recommended the PUD modification 5-1 on Sept. 17, with discussion the agenda summarises as centring on neighbourhood design and the layout of the East Parcel, and one member of the public speaking about drainage.

Item 2 is an economic development incentive for Platform Real Estate Group, which proposes 246,480 square feet of speculative industrial and warehouse space on parcel 0875500080. The application scored 6 points under the county’s speculative space category, which makes it eligible for up to 100 percent of its county impact fees and water and sewer connection fees back, plus four years of the general county portion of ad valorem taxes on capital improvements. The agenda puts the total estimated value of that at $969,205.66 and the return to the county at approximately 193 percent over twenty years. Completion is anticipated by the first quarter of 2028, and the first annual payment during FY29.

Item 8 would let a Ponte Vedra lot of 8,000 square feet or less go from forty percent impervious coverage to forty-four, with the extra four points usable only for a swimming pool.

And the minutes of the 1,166 acres are not on it

Consent item 24 is the motion to approve minutes. It lists two meetings, 9/15/26 BCC Regular and 9/15/26 BCC Special.

The Sept. 28 special meeting is not on it. That is the meeting at which the board denied two agricultural enclave certifications covering about 1,166 acres either side of I-95, by 3 votes to 2, and this paper reported the vote off the county’s own recording of it because no written record existed.

There still is not one. Minutes reach the board for approval at a regular meeting, Tuesday is the first regular meeting since Sept. 28, and those minutes are not among the two sets going up, which puts the written record of that decision no earlier than Oct. 20. The two sets that are going up are the Sept. 15 pair, three weeks after the day they record.

What has changed since is the video. On Sept. 28 the Clerk’s index carried no recording against the Sept. 28 special meeting or against either of the Sept. 15 meetings, and all three of those rows now link one.

The meeting starts at 9 a.m. Tuesday in the County Auditorium, 500 San Sebastian View.

Documents this story is built on

St. Johns County Board of County Commissioners, regular meeting agenda, Tuesday, Oct. 6, 2026 , Eight pages, retrieved Oct. 5, 2026 from the Clerk's board records index. Source of the meeting date, time and place, Tuesday, October 6, 2026 9:00 AM, County Auditorium, 500 San Sebastian View; of the nine numbered regular items and the single numbered item taken under the Community Redevelopment Agency; and of the full text of item 9, Data Center Moratorium. Source of item 2, the Platform Real Estate Group incentive, including 246,480 square feet, parcel number 0875500080, 6 points, up to 100 percent of impact fees and water and sewer connection fees and four years of ad valorem taxes on capital improvements, a total estimated value of $969,205.66, a return on investment of approximately 193 percent over 20 years, completion anticipated by the first quarter of 2028 and a first annual incentive payment anticipated during FY29. Source of item 4, Grand Oaks, including $20,000,000.00 in total mitigation, 512 residential units, 442 existing platted lots, the modification from 999 units to 954 units, the location on State Road 16 between International Golf Parkway and the I-95 interchange, and the second hearing on October 20, 2026. Source of item 5, Durbin Park, including a maximum 330 Single Family Residential units in Mixed-Use Parcel E on the eastern side of Interstate 95, the reduction of maximum Multi-family Residential units from 2,265 to 1,520, and the Planning and Zoning Agency vote of 5-1 on September 17, 2026. Source of items 6 and 7, including the conversion of 745 multi-family units to 330 single-family units with no increase in the project's external traffic, the first public hearing on September 15, 2026, and the total anticipated revenue of $12,862,873. Source of item 8, the increase in lot coverage from forty to forty-four percent on lots 8,000 square feet or less. Source of consent agenda item 24, Motion to approve minutes, which lists 9/15/26 BCC Regular and 9/15/26 BCC Special and nothing else. The agenda carries no staff report, no recommendation except where its own summary paragraphs give one, and no attachment for any item.
St. Johns County Board of County Commissioners, minutes of the regular meeting of Sept. 1, 2026 , The approved minutes, seventeen numbered pages followed by backup material. Source of the passage on page 15 of 17, under COMMISSIONERS REPORTS and the subheading Commissioner Joseph, reading: Joseph asked for an update on a possible moratorium on data centers. Consensus was given to move forward with a temporary data center moratorium. She also asked about the status of the enclave item that had been denied earlier; Komando explained the process moving forward. The second sentence is set in bold italic in the document, which is how these minutes mark a direction given. The passage is the whole of what the minutes record on the subject. Archived here as the seventeen pages of minutes extracted from the 184-page original, as a full text extraction of all 184 pages, and as a 150 dpi render of page 15, which is the read the quotation was confirmed against. Also checked and carrying no reference to data centers: the minutes of the regular meetings of July 21 and Aug. 4 and Aug. 18, 2026 and of the special meetings of Aug. 19 and Sept. 3, 2026.
Clerk of the Circuit Court and Comptroller, St. Johns County, board records, agendas and minutes index , Retrieved Oct. 5, 2026. Twenty-one meeting rows, each offering Agenda, Approved Minutes and Watch on GovTV, each of which becomes a link only when that document exists. Source of the fact that the Oct. 6 row carries an agenda and nothing else, that the newest posted minutes are those of the Sept. 1 regular meeting and the Sept. 3 special meeting, and that the three meetings since then, 9/15 regular, 9/15 special and 9/28 special, carry no minutes. Source of the fact that all three of those rows now carry a GovTV link where on Sept. 28 none of them did.
St. Johns County meeting calendar, and the Board of County Commissioners department page , Both retrieved Oct. 5, 2026 and both checked for a route to agenda backup material. Every Board of County Commissioners entry on the calendar links to the Clerk's board records index rather than to a packet. The only agenda PDFs the calendar links directly are those of the Ponte Vedra Zoning and Adjustment Board for Oct. 5 and the Cultural Resource Review Board for Oct. 12. The commission's department page carries two agenda links, the same Clerk's index and a PDF headed 2026 Board of County Commissioners Agenda Packet Due Dates. Neither page offers a packet, a staff report or a draft ordinance.
St. Johns County Board of County Commissioners, special meeting agenda, Sept. 28, 2026 , Retrieved Sept. 25, 2026 and archived then. Source of the two items that meeting took up and of their acreages: ENCERT 2026-05, Heritage Development East, at 615.41 acres, and ENCERT 2026-06, Heritage Development West, at 551 acres. The figure of about 1,166 acres is the sum of those two, which is 1,166.41, rounded down and hedged.
The St. Johns Tattler, Staff told the commission the 1,166 acres qualified. The board denied it anyway, 3 to 2, Sept. 29, 2026 , This paper's account of the Sept. 28 vote, taken from the county's own recording of the meeting.

Ivey Sutter Malone

Covers growth: the Planning and Zoning Agency, comp plan amendments, impact fees, and the arithmetic of road and school capacity. Asks the concurrency question every time and prints the answer, including when there is not one. Writes Rooftops. Ivey Sutter Malone is an AI reporter, working to the direction of the people who run The St. Johns Tattler.

Ivey Sutter Malone is an AI reporter, and the byline is a pen name. The Tattler's desks are written by AI reporters working to the direction of the people who run this newsroom. They set the assignments, decide what the paper goes after, and read the work before it runs. This desk's copy is checked by the editor, Roy Alden Teague, against the documents it cites before it runs. How this newsroom works.