The Jackson City Council will vote Tuesday on a six-month moratorium on new data center construction, the first test of whether two days of public hearings in July shifted the council's math. The vote is scheduled for the council's regular meeting at 10 a.m. on July 14, according to the city clerk's office.

The moratorium would temporarily ban the construction, expansion, permitting, and site plan approval for data centers exceeding five megawatts of projected electrical load. That threshold covers the kind of large-scale AI and cloud-computing facilities that have drawn billions in investment to neighboring cities like Clinton, Ridgeland, and Madison County.

Council President Brian Grizzell introduced the measure. He has been its most vocal advocate. At the July 6 special council meeting, Grizzell said the city needs time to study the issue before developers rush in. 'We know that Mississippi, the Southeast actually has a lot of cheap land and also offers a lot of cheaper labor, so you have these big entities that want to rush in and make these things happen,' Grizzell said, according to WAPT. 'But there's a lot of groundwork that needs to happen before we allow these developments to come in.'

The vote is not a sure thing. In May, the council tabled an identical moratorium on a 4-2 vote. Ward 6 Councilwoman LaShia Brown-Thomas made the motion to table. Ward 7's Kevin Parkinson seconded it. Ward 1's Ashby Foote and Vice President Vernon Hartley joined them. Voting no (against tabling, meaning they wanted to pass the moratorium) were Grizzell and Ward 3's Kenneth Stokes.

The procedural question that sank the May vote was whether the moratorium counted as a zoning action. If it does, state law requires a 15-day public notice and a public hearing before a vote. The city attorney advised the council that the moratorium likely constituted a zoning change. 'If we're hearing from the city attorney that this is zoning action, then even if you support the moratorium, you should be opposed to doing it now,' Parkinson said at the time, according to WLBT.

Since May, the council has held two public meetings on the issue: a Planning and Economic Development Committee meeting on the afternoon of July 6, followed by a special council meeting that evening. Both were packed. Residents from Southaven, where an xAI data center has drawn noise complaints, traveled to Jackson to urge the council not to repeat their city's mistakes. 'No one who had the power to protect the community did,' Southaven resident Shannon Samsa told the council, according to WLBT. 'Every single guardrail and guideline that was meant to protect us has failed.'

The public pressure appears to have changed the conversation. A Facebook post from the activist group Make It Make Sense JXN, published the morning of July 6, noted that 'a process that was moving forward was forced to slow down' and that 'the people demanded transparency.' The group credited public engagement with forcing the special meeting.

But the council also heard from developers and their attorneys. Robert Ireland, an attorney with Watkins and Eager, told the council he represents a client interested in locating a data center in Jackson. He warned that a moratorium would signal the city does not want the projects that its neighbors are competing for. Ireland cited the potential tax revenue: a project the size of Clinton's $1 billion Amazon Web Services data center would generate an estimated $62.3 million for the city in its first decade, plus $85.3 million for the school district, according to his presentation to the council.

The vote count is unclear. Brown-Thomas and Parkinson voted to table in May but have since participated in the July 6 discussions. Foote and Hartley also voted to table. Grizzell and Stokes voted against tabling. Ward 2 Councilwoman Angelique Lee is no longer on the council after pleading guilty in the federal bribery case. Ward 4's Brian Grizzell (the council president) and Ward 5's Charles Tillman have not taken public positions on the record. The council has seven voting members.

The same day as the council vote, the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality will hold a public hearing on a draft air permit for Entergy's proposed Traceview Advanced Power Station, a 754-megawatt gas-fired plant in Madison County. That hearing is scheduled for 5:30 p.m. at Greater Pearlie Grove Missionary Baptist Church on West County Line Road, just outside the Jackson city limits. The two events, four miles apart, will bookend a day that will shape the region's energy and development future.

Tuesday's vote will answer whether the council's May majority has held or shifted. If the moratorium passes, Jackson will join a growing list of Mississippi cities that have paused data center development to write rules first. If it fails, the city will have no data center regulations on the books, and the next developer to come calling will find an open door.