The Joliet City Council meets again at 5:30 p.m. Thursday for a likely vote on the proposed 795-acre data center after unusual circumstances surrounding a public hearing on the project earlier in the week.

The meeting is being continued from Monday, when so many people spoke out on the project that the council was unable to wrap up a vote by midnight.

That led to a rushed attempt to end the meeting by the midnight hour, so the city would not run afoul of a new state law barring public meetings on election days.

Tuesday was th day of the primary election in Illinois.

“If you could just wrap up your comments,” City Manager Beth Beatty told council members when they continued to discuss the matter as midnight neared.

The council eventually voted to end the meeting and reconvene at 5:30 p.m. Thursday but did so in what appeared to be minutes after midnight.

The city on Wednesday issued a news release announcing the proceedings for the Thursday meeting, which will not include more opportunities for public comment on the data center.

Roughly 100 people spoke on the project at the Monday meeting, most of them opposed to the data center. Public comment during the hearing lasted about five hours preceded by a presentation from the developers that lasted more than an hour.

The proceedings outlined for Thursday allows for public comment after a council vote on the data center.

But the public comment period is restricted to items not on the council agenda, which suggests the council will not hear more discussion on the data center after the vote.

The Monday meeting itself was an unusual combined meeting of the usual Monday workshop meeting with the Tuesday regular meeting. That occurred because the council could not meet on Tuesday.

The council’s Monday meetings typically are held at 5:30 p.m. with Tuesday meetings at 6:30 p.m.

The city on Feb. 28 published a legal notice stating that the public hearing on the data center would be part of a City Council meeting being held at 5:30 p.m.

But when the agenda was posted on Friday, the time of the meeting was changed to 4:30 p.m. while the city kept the time public hearing at 5:30 p.m. and conducted other business beforehand.