Last updated: November 2026
Four governments in Price County have now looked at the same question — what to do about data centers — and arrived at four different answers. Park Falls wrote zoning rules. Georgetown moved toward a ban and has a moratorium hearing scheduled. The county is still drafting regulations. The Village of Kennan concluded it is probably too small to be a target, and said so in one sentence.
That sentence is new. It appears in the village’s minutes for September 14, obtained from Clerk Brenda Jones:
Jill explained information offered by the Town clerk regarding AI data centers and a sample moratorium. Consensus is that we are probably too small, but we should stay vigilant.
Kennan had a population of 143 at the 2020 Census. A town clerk had passed along a sample moratorium, the kind of document a town adopts to pause data center development while it writes rules. The minutes do not name which town. Kennan’s board looked at it and concluded the question was moot at village scale — but wanted to keep watching.
The four postures
Park Falls regulated, and it’s the only one that has actually passed anything. Its Common Council held a public hearing on Ordinances 26-013, 26-014, and 26-015 at its July 13, 2026 meeting. The three ordinances created a Manufacturing Data Center zoning district, set standards for it, and defined how the city can change it later. Price County Fun reported in July, citing the city’s published ordinances and a letter from City/Zoning Administrator Scott Kluver, that they took effect July 24 and that no data center had been proposed or applied for in the city.
Kluver told the city that the community’s opposition came through clearly in the Comprehensive Plan survey, but that an outright ban would have been legally risky under Wisconsin law.
Price County is regulating, not banning, deliberately. At the July 23, 2026 Land Use Committee meeting, county staff laid out a strategy of drafting ordinance amendments for data centers and battery energy storage systems with strict conditions rather than prohibitions. A recording of that meeting shows the reasoning was legal self-preservation. Staff described the county’s conversations with its legal firm and warned that an outright ban invites the state to take local control away:
We don’t want to outright ban it because those are the things that when we do that then the state takes away local control because they say you can’t play nice and we’re going to do it for you.
The same discussion put distance between the county and the smaller rural risk: data centers “are what you’re hearing in the news right now. We’re not a hot spot for it. We don’t have the electricity. Um it takes a lot to do that.” Battery storage, staff said, is “probably the higher concern”, “more likely something you would see in a rural area.”
The county’s model is the gravel pit: write conditions, require a conditional use permit, keep the power to deny or revoke.
That work has not finished. By the September Land Use Committee meeting, the amendment was still waiting on legal input from the Wisconsin Counties Association, and the timeline had moved from November to “winter.”
Georgetown is furthest along toward a ban, and its hearing is today. At its July 21, 2026 board meeting, the Town Board discussed “having a resolution/ordinance prepared that will not allow any Data Centers within the boundaries of Georgetown,” along with a second resolution targeting Flock license plate cameras. Georgetown opted out of county zoning in the early 2000s, so it writes its own land use rules.
By October 13, that discussion had become a scheduled public hearing. The board minutes record that notice of the Data Center Moratorium Public Hearing was published October 8, 2026 in The Review, with the hearing set for November 10. The board also directed that the town’s legal counsel be consulted on implementing a moratorium and updating the zoning ordinance “to address data centers and other high-frequency facilities.”
Georgetown’s November 10 board meeting carries two items: the 2027 budget public hearing and adoption, and the data center moratorium hearing.
Kennan is watching. No ordinance, no resolution, no committee. The board heard the information, judged the village too small to be a target, and moved on. The September minutes record no follow-up, and the November 9 minutes show the 2027 budget adopted with no data center discussion.
Why “too small” is a defensible answer
Kennan’s reasoning is not naive. A data center needs power at a scale the county itself says it lacks, “We don’t have the electricity,” the county’s attorney told the Land Use Committee in July. Price County is not on any developer’s shortlist, and a village of 143 is further down that list still.
There is also a cost to legislating early. Park Falls spent months on ordinances for a use that has not been proposed in the city. Kennan’s board chose to spend nothing and stay informed, which keeps the option open without committing staff time a village this size does not have.
Where the reasoning gets thin
The concern the county flagged as more realistic than data centers was battery energy storage, large battery banks that charge overnight and discharge at peak. Staff at the July 23 meeting described one as “a big building with batteries” that harvests energy all night and distributes it all day. Those need less land and less transmission capacity than a server farm. If BESS is the likelier arrival in rural Price County, then “we’re too small for a data center” does not answer the question, because the thing being considered is not a data center.
Kennan’s minutes do not distinguish between the two. The information Jill Arndt relayed concerned “AI data centers” and a moratorium template. Nothing in the record shows the board was told about the BESS distinction, or that it considered one.
That’s a gap worth naming, not a criticism of the board. The county is still writing the rules that would define both uses. Until those exist, every municipality in Price County is guessing at what it might need to regulate.
The scoreboard
| Government | Position | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Park Falls | Regulate (MDC district) | Adopted, in effect July 24, 2026 |
| Georgetown (town) | Moratorium, then rezone | Public hearing November 10, 2026 |
| Price County | Regulate as conditional use | Drafting; slipped to “winter” |
| Village of Kennan | No action | Consensus: too small, stay vigilant |
One county, four answers, and the two governments that moved hardest are at opposite poles. Park Falls wrote rules to allow data centers under strict conditions. Georgetown is trying to stop them outright. Kennan, the smallest, has done nothing at all.
Georgetown’s hearing is the one with a date attached. Everything else in this county is still being written, or waiting to see whether it needs to be.
Price County Fun obtained the Village of Kennan minutes directly from the village clerk. The village has no website.
Sources
- Village of Kennan, Regular Monthly Meeting Minutes, September 14, 2026, and November 9, 2026 (obtained from Clerk Brenda Jones, November 10, 2026)
- City of Park Falls, Common Council Meeting Agenda, July 13, 2026 (Ordinances 26-013, 26-014, 26-015; item 8A, public hearing)
- Price County Fun, “Park Falls Adopts Data Center Zoning Ordinances After Public Hearing,” July 12, 2026, updated August 4, 2026
- Price County Land Use / UW-Extension Committee meeting, July 23, 2026 (transcript on file)
- Town of Georgetown, Regular Board Meeting Minutes, July 21, 2026
- Town of Georgetown, Board Meeting Minutes, October 13, 2026
- Price County Fun, “Price County Land Use Committee Backs Full-Time Youth Educator and Approves the 2027 Wildlife Damage Budget,” September 22, 2026