The Blairsville City Council’s Oct. 13 regular meeting opened with a brief update regarding the establishment of new development regulations within the city limits of Blairsville. The first reading of the new ordinance was held in the Sept. 8 meeting.
Some of the rules specify that buildings cannot reach a height greater than 40 feet, create housing limits per lot and set a minimum lot size of 1/3 acre or 15,000 square feet for lots serviced by city sewer.
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A moratorium that is currently in place was extended to Dec. 9 to prevent applications for land disturbance permits and building permits for work on properties of 1 or more acres while the council works to finalize its new development regulations.
According to City Attorney Marvin Harkins, Fire Chief David Dyer provided some feedback on fire hydrant requirements for safety reasons, and despite not seeing many other changes to the document, Harkins wanted to open the floor for council comment. There was no discussion, and the ordinance is set to be approved next month.
Speaking of next month’s meeting, the council approved changing the date to Nov. 17 due to scheduling conflicts. Regular meetings are held at Blairsville City Hall and start at 6 p.m. Due to Blue Ridge Street construction, the public should consider parking behind the building.
Council members also held a second reading of an ordinance to set the 2026 millage rate. City Clerk Kay McCann noted that there were no changes to the document, allowing the council to officially adopt the revenue-neutral rollback rate of 1.034 mills.
Data centers came up with the Dec. 9 extension of another moratorium that halts applications regarding development of cryptocurrency sites, data mining sites and data centers within city limits. To date, no developer has expressed interest in bringing a data center to the city.
“The county recently adopted regulations about data centers … Their (minimum land requirements) are much larger because they have larger areas to worry about,” Harkins explained, stating that the requirement for hundreds of acres to build a data center within county territories is not tenable within city limits due to the relatively small size of Blairsville.
“I need to … shrink those numbers, so that will change when it comes back (on the table), but it’s basically the same thing: to regulate when and where folks can have a data center in the city, how you would control noise issues (and) water use, for example,” Harkins continued, leading to the first reading of Ordinance No. 2026-04 on data center regulations.
With the moratorium extension approved, Harkins advised that no further action was needed that day, especially since edits must be made to shore up the legal tenability of the city-specific ordinance, and he said the document would return by next month’s meeting.
