Gunter Council Agenda Takes Up Plate Reader Placement and Data Center Rules

GUNTER — The Gunter City Council's agenda for its Aug. 20 regular meeting listed two discussion items tied to public safety and growth: where Flock license plate reader cameras would be placed, and what the city's regulations on data centers should say.

The council has taken up the camera program before. Minutes from May 20, 2025 record a 5-0 vote on Resolution 2025-05-20-1, which authorized the mayor to apply for a fiscal 2026 grant under Senate Bill 224, the state's motor vehicle crime prevention program. The packet for that meeting said the police department planned to lease five Flock Safety readers for a year and place them on major thoroughfares or other high traffic areas.

That packet listed the lease at $3,000 per camera per year, with the grant covering 80 percent and the city responsible for $2,500 annually for all five. The Texas Department of Motor Vehicles' fiscal 2026 grant listing later showed a $56,668 award to the City of Gunter for the "Gunter PD Flock Grant." Cooke County appears on the same state list with $66,292 for a Flock Safety Development Program. The statewide program awarded about $51 million.

The data center item reaches a use Gunter's code has not classified. The city's codified zoning ordinance, as published on eCode360, does not name data centers as a listed use in its visible use framework. For a new or unlisted use, the ordinance says the zoning administrator refers the question to Planning and Zoning, which recommends a classification, and the City Council decides by ordinance. That classification would determine which zoning rules apply. The code says the referral should carry facts on transportation needs, public utilities such as water and sewer, noise, odor, dust, vibration and toxic material.

Gunter's M-1 light industrial district is written for non-nuisance uses near residential and C-1 property, according to the ordinance. M-2 heavy industrial covers uses likely to create noise, traffic, odor or other conditions the code calls incompatible with most residential and commercial uses.

Other North Texas cities have worked the same question this year. Lewisville staff wrote in a June 15 ordinance file that data center demand had surged and that the old code treated the facilities as distribution warehouses allowed by right; the proposal would define the use and require a special use permit in certain districts. Denton set public hearings on a proposed moratorium for Sept. 22 and Oct. 27 under Resolution 26-1287. Fort Worth's economic development office said its council would consider a moratorium process on Aug. 11.

Gov. Greg Abbott on Aug. 3 directed the Public Utility Commission and ERCOT to complete a data center audit before any such project advances through interconnection, with project-level detail on power demand, water use and cooling, community effects such as noise and setbacks, and ownership. His office said data centers accounted for about 90 percent of the new connection requests before ERCOT, a queue it put at more than five times the grid's record peak demand. A Department of Energy report from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory put U.S. data centers at about 4 percent of the nation's electricity in 2023, with projections running as high as 12 percent by 2028.