Salem City Council Meeting - July 27, 2026

The July 27, 2026 meeting included a Salem Housing Authority session followed by a Salem City Council meeting. The Housing Authority approved its consent calendar, including authorization for its executive director to enter a limited partnership agreement with Catholic Community Services for the Compass Point affordable-housing project, described by staff as adding 120 units with rents capped at 60% of area median income and a 60-year affordability restriction. The calendar also included June 22 minutes, acknowledgment of HUD-confirmed shortfall status, and a revised Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher administrative plan. Public commenters strongly urged the Authority to partner with Habitat for Humanity to rehabilitate and sell 33 existing homes affordably; no action on that proposal is evident in the transcript. No competitive procurement or vendor award was identified.

The Council’s main discussion concerned Varys’s proposed data center at Mil Creek Corporate Center. Staff said the preliminary proposal covers about 75 acres, three buildings and a utility substation, with company-stated investment exceeding $5 billion and about 75 permanent jobs; no formal land-use application had been filed, and the project was not approved at this meeting. Staff outlined potential review of water, power, noise, emissions, infrastructure, and fiscal impacts, while noting data centers are currently an allowed use in the zone. After extensive public comment on transparency, resource use, costs, and jobs, the Council approved a task force of up to nine members to hold at least three town halls, evaluate available information, and deliver a draft data-center policy by December 31, 2026. The Council also advanced a commercial property-assessed clean energy (CPACE) ordinance to a second reading, establishing a financing program; this was not a project-specific award. The transcript notes a three-year enterprise-zone tax exemption for the proposed data center had been approved through the county assessor process.