The county’s data center freeze is law. Jacksonville Today reported that the Board of County Commissioners approved the one-year moratorium unanimously on Tuesday. The vote came five weeks after first presentation. Commissioner Ann Taylor first brought the idea to the dais in June, and the board directed the ordinance on Sept. 1.

What the board was handed is an ordinance that stops the county from accepting, processing, reviewing, scheduling for hearing or approving any discretionary development application for a medium-scale or large-scale data center project. The freeze reaches from comprehensive plan amendments down to building permits that require a prior discretionary approval. Applications already determined complete and sufficient before Nov. 1 are exempt, as are existing lawful data centers, their routine maintenance and emergency work. While the freeze runs, staff is assigned a study covering land use, water demand, backup generation, noise, setbacks and decommissioning, among other subjects. The ordinance expires on the earliest of Oct. 31, 2027, the adoption of permanent regulations, or repeal.

One date needs the adopted text to settle. Jacksonville Today’s account says the ban “goes into effect immediately.” The draft ordinance in the agenda backup carried an effective date of Nov. 15, 2026. Boards amend ordinances at enactment, and whether this one moved its own start date forward is a fact that lives in the adopted ordinance, which the county had not published when this story was filed. Both versions are printed here with their sources, and the ordinance number and its effective date will be reported when the enacted document posts.

Taylor’s argument for moving quickly, as the outlet quotes her from June: “By doing nothing, St. Johns County has a massive target on our back. If our neighboring counties shut their doors to AI data centers, we become the path of least resistance, and we are turning ourselves into sitting ducks to the exact projects our neighbors were smart enough to reject.” The outlet reports Commissioner Christian Whitehurst was originally skeptical of the need for the moratorium and wound up supporting it, saying St. Johns County is unlikely to be targeted for data center development, and adding: “As we all know, the power on whether or not data centers are even necessary, more data centers, bigger data centers, lies with we the people. To post AI-generated memes opposing data centers is the height of hypocrisy. You are generating more need for data by doing that.”

The county is not alone in this. Jacksonville Today reports that Nassau and Clay counties approved moratoriums in the summer, and that Flagler, Lake and Volusia counties have also passed bans of their own.

The moratorium was item 13 on a heavy land agenda, and the rest of that agenda has no readable record anywhere tonight.

The board was also set Tuesday to decide three agricultural enclave certifications, ENCERT 2026-12 Star IV on a continued hearing and the two Osceola Lakes applications, the Inman Road warehouse plan that arrived with a recommendation of denial, 169 more homes at Bartram Park, and a Planning and Zoning Agency appointment from nineteen applicants. The Clerk’s index carries no video for the Nov. 3 meeting tonight, and the draft minutes arrive as backup to a later consent agenda, ordinarily about three weeks on. Each of those outcomes, with the roll on each vote, will be reported when a record exists to read.