If Data Centers Were the Threat, Why Didn’t Smart Growth Ban Them?

Data centers have long been a prominent Smart Growth campaign warning. Nearly two years later, all four originally elected slate members are gone, their appointees remain—and North Plains still has no explicit data-center ban. Meanwhile tech stalwart Hillsboro managed to do it in weeks. The public record does not explain why "Smart Growth" failed to deliver its most basic promise.

If you have listened to Smart Growth North Plains over the last two years, data centers are imminently bearing down on North Plains.

Now that we've seen Hillsboro take only 48 days to put its moratorium in place, it seems fair to ask why the "Smart Growth" North Plains city council has done precisely nothing to stop data centers.

Over two years.

This isn't hyperbole. They haven't even reached first base.

Data centers helped build the movement.

Smart Growth made data centers one of its most prominent warnings in the campaign against the old growth plan.

Now-resigned Mayor Ariel Goodwin said, “We want neighbors. We don’t want data centers that employ six people.” Hillsboro resident and North Plains Smart Growth activist Aaron Nichols repeatedly held up Hillsboro as the future North Plains needed to avoid.

Residents were warned that large industrial buildings could replace farmland while producing few jobs.

Until the movement turned that warning into political power.

Activist, nonprofit leader, political organizer and CPO8 government official Linda Galas-Merten described a committee formed to recruit and vet four aligned candidates ahead of the 2024 elections. She explained what the group could pursue “if we can get a City Council.” Nichols helped organize Friends of North Plains Smart Growth and later served as a director and correspondence contact for the PAC that supplied nearly all of the candidates’ reported in-kind campaign support.

The blueprint worked.

Goodwin, Aaron Dumbrow, Katie Reding and Mandy Hagedorn all won. Beginning in January 2025, Smart Growth had the four votes and the Mayor's office it said were necessary to make meaningful change.

That rhetoric created a clear expectation among supporters: an explicit code prohibition on large, primary-use data centers.

The Council knew how to do it.

The Council’s own May 18, 2026 minutes remove any doubt about the available path.

City Manager Bill Reid told the Council that no land then inside North Plains permitted data centers. He explained that the Planning Commission could recommend amendments prohibiting them outright. Mayor Dumbrow responded that the Commission had already been directed to update the code. (Editor's note: readers should consider that city Planning Commission meetings are currently canceled indefinitely)

So the Council understood the issue.

It knew the process.

Where were the results?

The City never produced even a draft data-center ban. No principles or basic work at all. Its published development code still does not define “data center.” TRFNP found no published schedule showing when a prohibition would be scheduled for a hearing and vote.

Why leave the threat alive?

One possible explanation is institutional dysfunction.

The Smart Growth Council collapsed into resignations, appointments, staff turnover and institutional crisis. All four members of “The 4” resigned in less than twenty months. OPB now describes North Plains as navigating a “government crisis.”

The resignations, appointments and staff turnover may have prevented the Council from completing the code amendment.

But another question now has to be asked.

Was leaving the data-center issue unresolved politically useful?

Was the issue allowed to remain open because closing it would reduce its usefulness as a recurring political warning that North Plains could become another Hillsboro?

An explicit prohibition would remove one of Smart Growth’s most prominent objections from future employment-land discussions. The debate would then move to different questions:

• What employers does North Plains actually want?

• How much land do they require?

• How many jobs would they create?

• What tax revenue would they produce?

• Who would pay for roads, water and other infrastructure?

Those are the questions Smart Growth said a smaller and better plan could address. Nearly two years later, the City has not adopted such a replacement.

If institutional dysfunction or administrative delay caused the omission, the timeline should show where the work stalled.

If the issue was deliberately left unresolved because it remained politically useful, that would present a different accountability question.

Hillsboro acted. North Plains did not finish.

The timelines are stark.

Hillsboro was the very city Smart Growth used as its cautionary tale. It has actual data centers, active development pressure and far more complicated land-use questions.

On June 9, 2026, the Hillsboro Council directed staff to explore code changes and a moratorium. On July 27—just 48 days later—it enacted a 120-day moratorium on new data-center applications while permanent regulations are considered.

North Plains had no pending project and no immediate pressure. It had nearly two years.

Hillsboro still got there first anyway.

The unanswered questions for Smart Growth.

Linda Galas-Merten: When you spoke about what your group could do “if we can get a City Council,” was a data-center ban one of the objectives? If it was, why was it never completed? If it was not, why were data centers so central to the movement’s political warnings?

Aaron Nichols: Did Friends of North Plains Smart Growth or the PAC supporting “The 4” ever demand an explicit prohibition from the Council it helped elect? Will you demand one from the appointees now?

Strong Towns North Plains and Friends of North Plains Smart Growth: Do you support a clear code prohibition on large, primary-use data centers—yes or no?

And to Mark DeForge, Jason Ruston, Anna Warrington and Don Weber: You now occupy seats filled by appointment during the turnover of the Smart Growth governing majority. Do you support an explicit prohibition, and is there a timetable for public consideration?

A published draft, public hearing and recorded vote would clarify whether the remaining Smart Growth network and its appointees still support the prohibition its campaign rhetoric led residents to expect.

Until that happens, the public cannot know whether the delay reflects dysfunction, administrative failure or a political interest in keeping the issue alive.