Blandin on Broadband

News and information on broadband use, policy, and trends

Blandin on Broadband

EVENT Nov 12: Broadband Task Force, November Monthly Meeting

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The Office of Broadband Development announces the agenda for the November meeting of the MN Broadband Task Force…

Broadband Task Force, November Monthly Meeting

Date: 11/12/2026

Virtual Meeting Join the meeting now.

· Meeting ID and Pass Code: 254 733 753 476 50 and V8hn3kW2

· Dial in by phone: +1 651-395-7448,,135225071# United States, Minneapolis · Join on a video conferencing device: Tenant key: mn@m.webex.com and Video ID: 117 416 054 4

Meeting Agenda

10:00 a.m. – 10:05 a.m. – Welcome from Teddy Bekele, Chair, Minnesota Governor’s Task Force on Broadband and approval of minutes from October Task Force meeting.

10:05 a.m. – 10:50 a.m. – Minnesota Public Broadband Alliance presentation and overview of work.

10:50 a.m. – 11:15 a.m. – Office of Broadband Development (OBD) overview and updates from Bree Maki (Executive Director, OBD) and Broadband, Equity, Access and Deployment updates from Jennifer Frost (State/Federal Programs and Compliance Manager, OBD).

11:15 a.m. – 11:30 a.m. – Task Force updates and discussion on progress on the 2026 annual report including:

· Share-out from subgroup leads, Melissa Wolf and Marc Johnson on where recommendations are at and other discussion from the meetings

· Discussion on Task Force wide recommendation around speed goals and other items to include for “long term” goals for the report (i.e. Data centers, AI, etc.)

11:30 a.m. – 11:35 a.m. – Open the floor to other business, December’s meeting plans, and meeting wrap-up.

11:35 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. – Subgroup breakout, work time until the end.

EVENT Nov 16: Rochester City Council to Vote on Interim Ordinance That Would Enact Data Center Moratorium (Olmsted County)

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The Rochester City Council meets on November 16 (you can view it online). Y105 reports on the agenda…

The agenda item for Monday’s vote says the impact data centers have on public health and welfare is “not fully understood or known at this time.”
The listed potential impact areas include planning functions, public utilities, and the environment. Rochester’s Unified Development Code does not have specific regulations regarding data centers, according to the agenda item.
Staff is recommending the elected leaders enact a moratorium on data centers to allow for adequate time to allow for what the agenda item describes as a “meaningful study” to help learn more about data center impacts and to determine rules and regulations.

Monticello data center decision delayed until Nov. 30 after divided council vote on Nov 9 (Wright County)

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Monticello Times reports…

After months of debate, mounting opposition and unanswered questions, Monticello’s proposed data center moved another step closer to approval Monday night.

But the final decision will have to wait.

Following four hours of testimony, presentations and discussion Nov. 9, the City Council voted 3-1 to direct staff to prepare approval documents for the controversial 547-acre development. The council will consider them at a special meeting Nov. 30, just eight days before a state-imposed deadline.

The votes did not approve the data center or authorize construction. Instead, they directed staff to prepare approvals for annexation, a preliminary plat, rezoning and a conditional use permit.

Harmony holds over data center ordinance due to sound regulation details (Fillmore County)

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KTTC reports…

The Harmony City Council tabled a proposed data center ordinance Tuesday over the wording of its sound regulations. KTTC confirmed this information with Harmony Mayor-elect Kerry Kingsley.

The council will take up the proposal at its next regularly scheduled meeting.

The delay follows the Planning and Zoning Commission’s approval of a draft ordinance on Oct. 28. During that public hearing, residents raised concerns about noise, quality of life and environmental impacts.

The draft would allow data centers, data center campuses and cryptocurrency mining facilities only in an Industrial Technology zoning district. Each would require a conditional use permit.

The proposal calls for noise studies before and after construction, as well as annual and quarterly studies during operation. Facilities would also have to comply with Minnesota noise standards and use sound mitigation measures.

City of Eagan sues data center company over “temporary chillers” ( Dakota County)

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CBS News reports…

The City of Eagan is suing Eagan Capital, a data center company in business along Pilot Knob Road, alleging they’ve been operating “temporary chillers” without proper permits. This comes months after Eagan Capital sued the city over a data center moratorium, calling it “unlawful.”

This latest lawsuit focuses on “chillers,” which cool the data center and prevent overheating. During a city council meeting on Nov. 2, Mayor Mike Maguire announced the legal action and claimed the company was operating “without the required permits and approvals”. The court document shows aerial pictures from 2025 showing no chillers on the property and from 2026 showing the chillers in place.

In May, a representative for Eagan Capital told the council the company didn’t think they needed a permit for installing the chillers but applied for one as soon as they were notified. The representative also said Eagan Capital designed a sound barrier around them.

The city denied an interim use permit and later denied an application for a mechanical permit for permanent chillers in part because “data centers are not a permitted principal use in the Research and Development zoning district,” the lawsuit explains.

Minneapolis City Council to consider data center regulations ordinance on Nov 12 (Hennepin County)

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CBS News reports…

The Minneapolis City Council is scheduled to consider a data center regulations ordinance on Thursday.

According to the city’s website, the ordinance would amend “regulations for certain uses associated with distribution and use of electric power, including data centers, electric or gas substations, backup generators, utility boxes, and battery energy storage systems.”

The Minneapolis Committee of the Whole discussed the proposed ordinance for over two hours on Monday before voting to forward it to the full council.

On June 25, the City Council approved a five-month pause on data center development, temporarily halting new data center projects to allow city staff to study regulations and examine concerns about environmental impacts, energy use and public safety. The moratorium expires on Nov. 21, according to city officials.

The proposal, in part, says a new data center may only be established in a building existing on Jan. 1, 2027, and that the floor area of a facility “shall be limited to no more than (50,000) square feet on any zoning lot.”

Harmony City Council prepares final language for proposed data center ordinance for Nov 10 (Fillmore County)

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KTTC reports…

The Harmony City Council is preparing to consider final language on its proposed data center ordinance at its meeting Tuesday at 7 p.m. at the community center.

The review follows months of discussions among councilmembers and the community about how to address a possible data center in the region. According to the city, the goal is to protect public health and welfare, as well as the environment around the town.

The proposed ordinance would limit data centers to a new industrial technology zone in the city and limit each data center to 55 megawatts of power. Any building would have to sit at least 500 feet from residential areas. Evaporative cooling, which uses large amounts of water, would also be banned.

Unlike the planned Google data center development in Pine Island, there has been no public announcement about a specific project in Harmony. However, the city website says there has been interest from developers.

Aaron Brown gives a front-row, local view of a national topic: data centers in communities

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The MN Star Tribune posts a piece from Iron Range columnists Aaron Brown…

Voters across the nation rebuked data centers in last Tuesday’s election, vaporizing paper billions on Wall Street. But this isn’t just a national story about money. It’s an extremely local story about human beings.

One tumultuous week in Hermantown, Minn., reminded us how quickly political fortunes can change when the public loses trust in their leaders. Politicians, take warning. Transparency is not negotiable in projects so consequential to the economic lives of your constituents.

The full article is worth checking out!

Benton Institute for Broadband and Society creates a roadmap for communities looking at data centers

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The Benton Institute for Broadband and Society partnered with Duke University to look at communities with data centers in North Carolina and came up with a roadmap for dealing with data centers for other communities. The study uses good examples and more. I’ve just pulled out the high level steps…

Step 1: Engage Independent Expertise at the Start of Negotiations

At the beginning stages of negotiations for a large digital infrastructure project, local governments should consult with independent, unbiased experts who can assess the technical, environmental, and economic impacts. This may require maintaining pre-approved consultant lists or establishing accountability mechanisms for developers. In the Apex case, this step may have reduced concern that the developer was misrepresenting the energy use associated with the facility by providing a trusted evaluation for all stakeholders to review.

Step 2: Inform the Community and Gather Their Priorities Early

Local governments should establish formal processes for gathering community input on the proposed data center infrastructure, such as through public forums. Community engagement should begin as early as possible—ideally before plans are officially filed—and continue consistently and transparently throughout all stages of zoning and approval. We also recommend that local leaders proactively seek input on the areas of resource use, pollution, financial investments, transparency, and governance. Current practices that shroud data center negotiations in secrecy produce distrust in the community; opening the process to the community offers greater opportunity for residents’ participation and to gain buy-in.

Step 3: Consider the Full Range of Policy Tools

Local governments should evaluate multiple policy mechanisms, drawing from existing toolkits and best practices like MediaJustice’s Site Fight Guide.[7] Policy interventions include but are not limited to community benefits agreements (CBAs), moratoriums, conditional use permits, zoning ordinances, and strict water and energy use regulations. There is not necessarily one solution for all communities when it comes to data centers: consider those protections that assuage community concerns. While the Apex case ended in a withdrawn proposal, a set of policy interventions may have created conditions that residents could live with.

Step 4: Tailor Policy Tools to Local Context

Once a policy choice is identified, the choice should then be carefully tailored to reflect the specific priorities identified through community engagement. Any regulatory framework should directly incorporate local preferences into concrete demands and requirements. This step was not part of the Apex case, where it would have allowed local officials to bridge the gap between abstract community feedback and enforceable zoning regulations.

Step 5: Use Community Priorities to Evaluate and Choose From Policy Options

Local governments should make their ultimate decision by evaluating all policy options in the context of the community’s biggest priorities. This can be done by referring back to each of the top priorities identified in Step 2 and deciding—such as through explicit criteria—whether they are reflected by the policy. Where feasible, governments can conduct a full cost-benefit analysis that reflects the local harms and benefits to the community. In the Apex Case, this approach would have provided a structured mechanism to weigh the project’s projected economic benefits against the community’s concerns.

University of Minnesota’s Hormel Institute uses AI to predictively model viruses

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Post Bulletin reports...

Researchers at the University of Minnesota’s Hormel Institute in Austin have created a tool to predictively model viruses.

In a Wednesday, Nov. 4, news release, the institute says the FoldaVirus tool has modeled the probable structures of nearly 700 viruses so far. Though there are more than 280,000 known viruses, just 156, as of 2024, have had their structures confirmed through cryoEM bioimaging.

“If we know the structure of a virus that causes a devastating disease, we can use the structural information to identify the regions that virus uses to interact with cells, and more,” said Vijay Reddy, the associate professor at the Hormel Institute whose lab created FoldaVirus. “We can use this information to develop therapeutics like vaccines, neutralizing antibodies, or as viral vectors to deliver specific genes to the cells to prevent the spread of harmful viruses.”

The FoldaVirus tool, which utilizes the Google-developed AlphaFold artificial intelligence system, uses existing information about a particular virus and its family of viruses to predict that virus’s structure. Each model is scored for how likely its predictive structure matches the real thing.

The research team published its work in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

OPPORTUNITY: Mobile Beacon Wi-Fly Connectivity Kit grants for schools, libraries, healthcare providers, and nonprofits

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From the Mobile Beacon website...

Mobile Beacon wants to put the power of unlimited, anytime/anywhere internet access into the hands of schools, libraries, healthcare providers, and nonprofits to create lasting change.

DEADLINE December 31, 2026

Empowering Communities
to Go Digital

We believe local organizations play an essential role in building digital equity, and we want to empower you with the resources you need to make that happen.

You know the people you serve best, so our Wi-Fly Connectivity Kit provides the tools to harness the power of the internet and place it directly into the hands of those who need it most.

Each winning organization will receive:

Computer Connectivity Grant

You’ll receive

  • 25 Chromebooks
  • 25 T-10 Hotspots
  • 2 year Mobile Unlimited Data Service

Mobile Connectivity Grant

You’ll receive

  • 10 T-10 Mobile Hotspots
  • 2 years Mobile Unlimited Data Service

Service Line
Grant

You’ll receive

  • 10 Mobile Unlimited SIM Cards
  • 2 years Mobile Unlimited Data Service

A Second lawsuit filed against Hermantown over data center environmental review (St Louis County)

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FOX21 reports...

The City of Hermantown may have given the green light to build a Google data center, but that’s not stopping another lawsuit from being filed.

The groups behind the lawsuit are the Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy (MCEA) and the Stop The Hermantown Data Center (SHDC). The groups claim the city’s environmental review process violated the Minnesota Environmental Policy Act because they say the process was done before enough was known about the project and its impacts.

The groups filed an appeal over the type of environmental review used for this project. It’s called an “alternative urban area-wide review” (AUAR), and the city adopted it in October 2026.

Google plans to cut off search engine access for students at schools that reject AI

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Northern News Now reports…

Students using Google software in the classroom will not be allowed to access the company’s search engine unless their school system also opts in to using artificial intelligence, the tech giant said Tuesday.

The Mountain View, California, company has been facing pushback from educators, child development experts and parents over the use of its technology in schools, with the backlash heating up since it announced in August that it had turned on its Gemini chatbot for many K-12 students who use Google Classroom.

On Tuesday, the company said that practice would no longer be the default option for school administrators. Instead, K-12 schools will be able to individually turn each Google tool on or off — including Gemini, Gemini Notebook and search, with each being off by default until administrators turn it on. But because search is integrated with AI, schools that opt out of AI altogether would also lose access to Google search.

City leaders and citizens chime in on new AI data center coming to Glencoe (McLeod County)

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KSTP TV reports...

A new artificial intelligence data center is under construction in Glencoe, with city leaders calling it an economic opportunity and some residents questioning its impact on the community.

The facility is being built at 670 11th St. W. on Glencoe’s western edge. According to Revolve Labs, the project spans about 6.25 acres and nearly 94,100 square feet across three buildings.

According to Revolve Labs, the facility will support artificial intelligence computing. The company says the data center will handle AI “inference,” the computing that happens when artificial intelligence systems generate responses. In project materials, the company compares that work to technology used by tools such as ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude.

One resident, who asked not to be identified, said he believes residents should have had more say before the project moved forward.

“That was just terrible. We should have been able to vote on it,” he said. “Everybody that I’ve talked to, they’re all up in arms about it.”

Hibbing Historical Society expands online access to historic newspapers (St Louis County)

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IRRRB Ranger reports…

Hibbing Historical Society partnered with the Minnesota Historical Society to digitize nearly 90,000 pages of historic Hibbing and Chisholm newspapers, making local history easier to access and preserve. The newspapers are being added to the Minnesota Digital Newspaper Hub, a free online database that allows users to search by date, keyword and location.

Iron Range Resources & Rehabilitation supported the project with a $27,900 Culture & Tourism grant. Total project investment was $67,500.

Previously available only on microfilm, the newspapers are now being converted into high-quality digital scans that include articles, photographs and other historical content. The searchable collection helps residents, visitors, students and researchers explore local families, businesses, mining history and community events from any computer or smartphone. The archives are also accessible through public library computers in Hibbing and Chisholm and at Minnesota Discovery Center.

Since the first newspapers became available online in June 2026, the Hibbing and Chisholm collections recorded more than 7,200 accesses in their first two months. Phase 1 was completed ahead of schedule and included nearly 90,000 pages. Fundraising for Phase 2 is underway.

The project is supported by the cities of Hibbing and Chisholm and their public libraries, with Hibbing Historical Society managing the project and funding. The effort preserves important historical records while expanding public access to the region’s history.

The newspapers are available at https://www.mnhs.org/newspapers/hub.

My librarian heart is so happy.