SATIRE: This is parody. Not a real news report.
BROWNSVILLE — With its second of three required public hearings on a 90-day moratorium on high-density data processing facilities scheduled for 5 p.m. Tuesday at City Hall, the City of Brownsville confirmed it has already placed a deposit on a second 90-day freeze, ensuring no data center application will be accepted, processed, or even conceptually imagined until well after the first freeze has finished freezing.
“We learned our lesson with enchiladas,” said Assistant Planning Director Ruben Cuellar, gesturing at a whiteboard reading ‘FREEZE #1: OCT–JAN. FREEZE #2: JAN–APR. FREEZE #3: TBD, NOSTRADAMUS.’ “You don’t order one. You order two, because the first one goes too fast. The moratorium ends, everyone panics, and then boom — you need another moratorium. This time we’re buying in bulk.”The ordinance would bar the city from accepting, processing, or approving any data-center application, permit, or zoning request across the city and deep into the extraterritorial jurisdiction — an area so wide that officials confirmed a server farm currently being built near Laguna Heights technically has to stop and wait, even though nobody has told it yet.
Task Force Reactivated, Immediately Asks For Extension
The twin freezes buy time for the reactivated Environmental and Conservation Task Force, which convened Tuesday at a folding table, reactivated itself, and then voted 5-0 to reactivate a sub-task force to study whether the task force needs more time.
“Our preliminary finding is that water infrastructure is a thing,” said task force chair Dr. Leticia Fuentes, holding a single Gatorade. “We now begin Phase Two: determining whether the electrical grid exists. We ask for 180 days, minimum, not counting weekends, holidays, or the freeze we may pre-order after that.”
Meanwhile, draft rules already on the table would confine data centers to Heavy Industrial districts, require special-use permits and closed-loop cooling systems, and mandate safety buffers from schools and homes — homework the city insists must be finished before any application is legally allowed to exist. Developers who attempt to submit paperwork during the freeze will be escorted from the building by an officer whose entire job, per the ordinance, is saying ‘not yet.'”
Valley Developers Adjust To Life On Hold
One Houston-based developer, reached by phone, said he respects the process. “I was going to build the largest data center in South Texas off the expressway,” he said. “Now I’m going to spend 180 days practicing not applying. My lawyers have drafted a special not-application. It’s 400 pages of nothing, and Brownsville won’t accept that either.”
At press time, the city had also declined to rule out a third freeze, explaining that if the task force’s study is thorough enough, the data centers might age out of wanting to come at all, which officials described as “the dream scenario.”
FAQ
Q: Can I apply for a data center permit during the first freeze?
A: No. Can you apply during the second freeze? Also no. Can you think about applying? The city prefers you didn’t.
Q: Why pre-order the second freeze before the first one starts?
A: Officials say it’s like buying quarts of frijoles — one is never enough, two is what you actually need, and three is the quiet assumption nobody writes down.
