The Seattle city council today approved a 1-year moratorium on large-scale AI datacenter developments. It’s good news in my opinion…but this could be a good strategy moving forward.

The way this CA city structured their approach, the city actually has to put AI datacenter development on the ballot for voters in order to remove the ban. My concern with relying on the 1-year pause is that the news cycle moves on, and they could quietly sign development deals slated for when it expires. Curious what others here think. And was anyone at the council meeting about this a few weeks ago? I hadn’t heard about it.

Some thoughts on an outright ban, and a few resources:

\- This puts the ball in the tech companies and developers’ court to really sell us on why these developments will be such economic game-changers and boons to the city, and might force more responsible development proposals. We would have negotiating leverage. If it were up to me, we would make Elon figure out a way to build these on f\*\*\*ing mars and tell the rest of the dystopian AI to eff right off out of Washington. But I understand that some people believe these developments will bring jobs and industry, etc. This forces them to require convincing \*voters\* of this before deals are green lit.

\- Datacenter development hasn’t worked out that well for Grant County and others. [https://www.propublica.org/article/data-centers-clean-energy-washington-state](https://www.propublica.org/article/data-centers-clean-energy-washington-state)

\- A ban would keep our lawmakers in check. You can see here how the 1-year Seattle pause could play out: [https://www.geekwire.com/2026/data-center-resistance-comes-home-to-seattle-as-council-considers-a-one-year-freeze/](https://www.geekwire.com/2026/data-center-resistance-comes-home-to-seattle-as-council-considers-a-one-year-freeze/). They are ordering various impact studies, etc. You never know how effectively those will be managed or shared publicly. But they are also dropping hints about negotiating with developers to support community priorities like housing, childcare, social programs. Frankly this one scares me. I don’t think I trust our city council or admin here…they are so desperate for “revenue streams” i.e. taxes I could see them getting so drunk on the prospect of new money that they give out tax breaks and sweetheart deals. These companies use massive layoffs to free up the hundreds of billions of dollars they need for these “investments.” Datacenters employ like 200-300 people at most. I can’t handle it if we get tricked into this.

\- The 5 proposed Seattle datacenters, now on pause, were in talks with Seattle City Light for a potential combined demand of 370 megawatts…that’s 1/3 of the city’s current average daily electric use. The idea that it would even be \*possible\* to protect residential rates and availability at this level, is so far-fetched…

This is just scratching the surface of possibles issues. What is the sentiment out there and would you sign a petition? 

Seattle or WA state should do this - “In first, California city overwhelmingly votes to permanently ban datacenters”