Tag Archive for: #datacenter

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Vance Commissioners, County Attorney Discuss Process For 60-Day Moratorium

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The Vance County Board of Commissioners agreed by consensus Monday to start the process of putting in place a 60-day moratorium as it relates to the possibility of a proposed data center.

During the special called meeting Monday afternoon, County Attorney Jonathan Care walked commissioners through a series of legal steps the board must consider, which includes how a required legislative hearing to hear public comment must be advertised.

A moratorium of less than 60 days requires a minimum 7-day notice to the public before a legislative hearing can take place; a moratorium longer than 60 days is treated like a proposed ordinance and must be published twice at particular intervals before the hearing takes place.

The plan is to have the legislative hearing at the board’s regular September meeting, with additional discussion on Aug. 25 when the planning board and commissioners will have their next joint work session on the UDO.

The meeting, lasted about 40 minutes, began with Care’s review of numerous statutes and regulations for commissioners to keep in mind as they consider the ongoing data center debate.

By law, Care said, the commissioner must clearly identify four specific areas to satisfy the requirements necessary to put a moratorium in place, including a statement of the problems and conditions, the development approvals that would be subject to the moratorium, a date for termination of the moratorium and a statement of actions and schedule of actions that the county will undertake during the moratorium.

Commissioner Dan Brummitt said he would support a 60-day moratorium, a comment that was met with vocal disapproval from residents in attendance.

Commissioners Leo Kelly and Valencia Perry each stated that 60 days wasn’t long enough.

Perry said, “It’s only fair that the community have the ability to voice their opinions.” Before making a “decision of this magnitude,” she added, she’d like commissioners to have as much information as possible so that they can make the right decision.

Brummitt recalled the recent joint planning board meeting with commissioners to discuss the unified development ordinance. At that meeting, he proposed that the group start their discussions with the section dealing with data centers with the goal of making a text amendment that could be put in place more quickly than the UDO.

“I believe that right now, we are vulnerable to with our current ordinance,” Brummitt said. He said he would support a moratorium “as long as we proceed with the text amendment. The moratorium that I would recommend would be a 60-day moratorium.”

Kelly said although he favors a 6-month moratorium, he’s willing to come to the table to discuss it.

Commissioner Tommy Hester asked whether the moratorium could be extended if the county determined it needed more time, and Care said the county would not be prohibited from extending it.

Hester suggested that the county start with a 60-day moratorium first and extend it if the process will require more time to complete.

It was unclear which commissioners expressed agreement with the 60-day moratorium since no vote was taken.

TownTalk: Vance Commissioner Dan Brummitt On Current Status Of Data Centers At State, Local Levels

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There’s been a lot of speculation and rumors swirling about recently about the location of a data center or centers within Vance County. And while District 4 Vance County Commissioner Dan Brummitt said there has been communication from a Maryland developer, he said the fact is:

“There has been no application made to Vance County for a data center.”

That doesn’t mean it won’t happen, just that it hasn’t happened. Yet.

Brummitt said pending legislation – the Ratepayer Protection Act- that contains strict language governing data centers, and he said Tuesday on TownTalk that developers are waiting to see what the final bill entails.

From what he has heard, Brummitt said Maryland-based developer Tom Natelli is planning to schedule some community meetings in the county “to dispel some of the misinformation and also give more about what their plans are for the community.”

No dates have been set, however, as all parties are waiting to see what legislators do.

Many residents have been in an uproar since a rezoning request came before the planning board about a property along U.S. Hwy 158 Business. The commissioners ultimately approved the planning board’s recommendation to grant the request, which has resulted in residents near the property to voice their concern and disapproval both during meetings and as recently as Wednesday, July 8, when a group of concerned citizens held a town hall-style gathering to express their opposition to a proposed data center.

Brummitt cited Mecklenburg County, VA as an example of the type of economic impact a data center can make. Microsoft has a data center complex there, and Brummitt said it accounts for 65 percent of the county’s property tax base. They just completed construction of a new school and announced just recently that all students’ school supplies will be provided this year.

Those are both beneficial for Mecklenburg County residents, he said.

The cons of having a data center, he said, come into play “if they’re not properly done. Then you’ve got some issues that you may have to deal with.”

During last week’s joint meeting between the planning board and the board of commissioners about the unified development ordinance, Brummitt proposed that N-Focus get started on the portion about data centers first so that the wording can be used as a text amendment to the existing plan that is being updated.

“I think with the information that we have, we can get a text amendment done in fairly short order,” Brummitt said. He said he hopes to get input from the public, too. “They’ve been more than happy to do that in the past,” he added.

Although there was a lot of resistance at first, Brummitt said he’s hearing from people who are studying ordinances from other municipalities and counties. “There’s a number of people who are contributing positive information now to us so that it should make it easier for us to work on the text amendment,” he said.

He said he gets a lot of calls from people about data centers. “At first, it was a lot of ‘No, No, No.’ Now people are starting to study them some and look at other ordinances.”

The calls he gets now are fairly evenly divided into three camps: for, against and still studying.

Brummitt said he’s told people who are upset about the prospect of having a data center in the county that he wouldn’t have a problem with it. “I’ve told them… if there was a 500acre parcel close to my farm, I wouldn’t have a problem with it. And I honestly believe that. Part of development is noise, when you have commercial business, they’re going to make some noise, but that’s part of what we’ve got to have to live in society. As long as those things are not toxic and not poisoning people, then I think that’s just a part of what we have to do. I wouldn’t have a problem if there was one right next to my farm.”

Brummitt is kicking off a series of community town hall forums on Wednesday, July 29 at the Bearpond Volunteer Fire Department to discuss a variety of topics, from public safety and infrastructure to economic development and county priorities.

The event will be from 5:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m.

Submit a question or comment before the event at https://www.vancecounty.org/vance-county-community-town-hall-district-4/

 

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TownTalk: Chamber’s “State Of” Event Features The Case Made For Data Centers

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Economic Development Director Ferdinand Rouse was the guest speaker at the Henderson-Vance Chamber of Commerce’s “State of” luncheon on Tuesday to talk about the current state of local economic development.

Most of Rouse’s presentation dealt with plans, goals, strategies that need to be in place to attract business and industry before he touched on what many in the audience, no doubt, were waiting to hear: data centers and data center development.

Using Richmond County as an example, he described what a scenario may look like for Vance County, providing several pros and cons for having a similar project locate in the area.

(In the embedded audio below you can hear what Rouse said.)

Richmond County, bordering South Carolina in the southern Piedmont region, landed an Amazon data center last year – a $10 billion project for a 20-building campus on about 800 acres.

Rouse listed one “pro” in the current climate is that data center developers aren’t calling the shots like they once did, asking for incentives, tax breaks and more from the places they want to locate.

“The landscape has drastically changed,” he noted, in large part because of pushback from communities and people who ask questions about possible negative impacts.

Data center developers are paying their way with regard to infrastructure and basically becoming a lot more intentional about being good community partners, he said.

When utility upgrades are needed, “they’ll foot the bill for that,” he said, so those costs aren’t passed on to rate payers.

“Cons” include the amount of water they require – 2.5 million gallons a day isn’t unusual. By comparison, the city of Henderson and Vance County combined use about 4 million gallons a day.

If energy suppliers have to make infrastructure upgrades to accommodate increased demand, those extra costs are passed to all rate payers.

Rouse said the question is not if customers will pay more, but whether they will benefit from having a project in their county that would add millions and millions to the tax rolls.

“Are you going to pay for another community’s success?” he asked.

It’s important to distinguish, Rouse continued, between what he called “good” actors and “bad” actors. “Knowing who you’re working with is a big part of this,” he said.

Another important aspect of economic development is being able to have ongoing, thoughtful conversations with community members to determine which projects are the best fits for the area.

He said the city and county need to continue to work together when opportunities present themselves.

“Our fates are tied together,” he said.

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