Trenton’s data-center fight is headed to voters after a 336-signature dispute

For anyone who has signed a local petition, Trenton’s dispute offers a practical lesson: the number beneath a percentage can determine whether residents get a vote at all.

Five residents of this Ohio city collected 336 valid signatures for a charter amendment concerning data-center construction. The city council said they needed 820. On September 1, the Supreme Court of Ohio decided that the constitutional minimum was only 128—and that the council had to send the proposal forward.

Two days later, the council certified the amendment on an emergency basis, according to WLWT’s report on the September 3 meeting. Voters are now scheduled to consider the proposal in a special election held alongside the November 3 election. WLWT describes the ballot measure as a ban on data centers larger than 25 megawatts within Trenton.

That vote will occur against a concrete backdrop: the council had already approved a substantial tax incentive for a planned 250-megawatt data center.

How one percentage produced two answers

Trenton’s charter, the city’s basic governing document, requires signatures from 10% of the municipality’s “electors” before a proposed charter amendment goes to voters.

The disagreement was over what that 10% should measure.

The council used the 8,197 people registered to vote during Trenton’s November 2025 municipal election:

8,197 registered voters × 10% = 819.7, rounded up to 820 signatures

The residents used the 1,277 votes actually cast in that election:

1,277 votes cast × 10% = 127.7, rounded up to 128 signatures

The Butler County Board of Elections had verified 336 signatures. That was well below the council’s calculation but more than twice the residents’ threshold.

The Supreme Court sided with the residents. In State ex rel. Blankenship v. Trenton City Council, Slip Opinion No. 2026-Ohio-3406, the justices read three sections of Article XVIII of the Ohio Constitution together. Section 14 bases the calculation on the total vote cast at the preceding general municipal election—not the total number of registered voters.

Because the petition exceeded 128 signatures, the council had a mandatory constitutional duty to submit it, the court held. The city could not use its charter to impose a calculation conflicting with the state constitution. The court’s case page links the full slip opinion; its accompanying public-information summary is useful but expressly says it is not an official headnote or syllabus.

The Statehouse News Bureau independently reported the same turnout, registration and verified-signature figures.

The council had already approved a tax incentive

The ballot dispute followed a major economic-development decision. In July, the council approved an agreement granting developer Prologis a 15-year, 75% property-tax abatement on the planned data-center buildings, according to WVXU reporting carried by WOSU.

That report describes a proposed 250-megawatt development with four buildings and an electrical substation on 140 acres near homes, farmland and soccer fields. Trenton’s finance director estimated that the abatement would reduce the buildings’ taxable value from $233 million to about $58 million. With the land included, the total taxable value was projected at roughly $68 million.

City officials projected approximately $1.3 million in combined annual property-tax revenue for Trenton and Edgewood City Schools during the agreement. Prologis estimated that the project would create 120 full-time jobs by the end of 2035 and pledged about $9 million in annual payroll. The mayor argued that an abatement was necessary to attract the project.

Residents quoted or described by WVXU raised concerns about noise, utility bills and environmental effects. Those are reported concerns, not findings established by the court. The justices did not evaluate the project’s economics, environmental effects or desirability.

What the ruling—and the vote—do not settle

The September 1 judgment was about ballot access. It determined the correct signature formula and the council’s resulting duty. It did not adopt the proposed ban, endorse it or decide how anyone should vote.

The reviewed records also do not establish whether passage of the amendment would affect construction rights, contracts or tax arrangements already in place. The court summary describes the litigation’s proposal broadly as prohibiting data-center construction, while WLWT’s later account specifies a threshold of more than 25 megawatts. Questions about the amendment’s application to the advancing project therefore cannot be answered from these sources alone.

What is settled is narrower and immediately consequential: 336 signatures were legally sufficient, the council certified the proposal after the ruling, and Trenton voters—not the council or the court—are scheduled to decide its merits on November 3.

Sources

• Supreme Court of Ohio public-information summary and access to the slip opinion
• WVXU/WOSU reporting on the project and tax abatement
• WLWT reporting on council certification and election timing
• Statehouse News Bureau report on the ruling