St. Joseph County IN Council Votes 6-3 to Begin Data Center Ban Process

The St. Joseph County Council in Indiana voted 6-3 on September 22, 2026 to begin the process of banning future hyperscale data centers in the county, directing the Area Plan Commission to define key terms and draft zoning-ordinance amendments. The resolution, sponsored by Republican council members, does not create an immediate ban and would not affect the Amazon and Microsoft data-center projects already under construction. Three council members — Diana Hess (D), Mark Catanzarite (D), and Dan Schaetlze (R) — voted against it, citing concerns about the county’s business image.

The vote follows the council’s still-unresolved fight over expanding the AM General Tax Increment Financing district to include a Microsoft data center in Granger — a deal that would let the county borrow up to $4 million — which this timeline has followed since the vote was first postponed to September 22 (2026-09-14–st-joseph-county-in-council-delays-microsoft-tif-expansion-vote-to-september-22). The status of that TIF vote as of September 22 is not independently confirmed in this entry’s sources; a capture-ledger story asserted it was postponed again the same day, but that claim rests on a source dated to the original September 14 delay and was not corroborated here — do not treat the TIF vote’s disposition on September 22 as established without confirming against local reporting on that specific date. Community members packed public meetings in August raising concerns about infrastructure strain and tax-base impacts from data-center development. The ban-process vote marks an escalation from a single-project fiscal fight (the TIF district) to a county-wide zoning response — the same shift this timeline has tracked in Fulton County, Georgia and other jurisdictions moving from abatement disputes to outright development pauses.