By Pauline Masson –
Although data center developer Beltline, abandoned the Pacific Planning and Zoning Commission (P&Z), turning instead to Franklin County P&Z to rezone the Crooked Creek Beef farm for the data center they hope to build there, the firm has not given up on Pacific involvement in the project.
Beltline contacted city administrator James Litterell, offering a free plane ride to tour a data center in Atlanta, Georgia for any Pacific official who would like to go. Mr. Litterell sent an email on the free ride offer to officials.
“I received a phone call from the representative of Beltline. They are inviting us to tour a data center in Atlanta at their expense. Travel to Atlanta would be on April 2. The tour would be the April 3 and fly home that night,” the email read.
“Attorney (Stephanie) Karr, is accepting this offer, something that would be legal,” the email continued. “Nothing about the current status has changed with them. They are waiting to see the results of the next county commission meeting.”
In the same email stream, Attorney Karr said if any alderman accepted the free ride it would be illegal for them to act, or abstain from acting, on a matter that would benefit Beltline.
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No elected or appointed official or employee of the state or any political subdivision thereof shall: (1) Act or refrain from acting in any capacity in which he is lawfully empowered to act as such an official or employee by reason of any payment, offer to pay, promise to pay, or receipt of anything of actual pecuniary value paid or payable, or received or receivable, to himself or any third person, including any gift or campaign contribution, made or received in relationship to or as a condition of the performance of an official act, other than compensation to be paid by the state or political entity. Stephanie Karr _________________________________________________________________________________________________________
It’s been rumored that some aldermen would really like to make the trip, but nobody wants to break the law.
Pacific officials have been in a holding pattern, waiting to see if Franklin County approves a request to rezone the Crooked Creek Beef property.
So many protesters showed up at the Franklin County Planning and Zoning Commission (P&Z) March 17 meeting that officials closed the nine-hour public hearing at 4:00 a.m. before everyone spoke. They said others could speak at the next regular P&Z meeting on April 21.
After speakers are heard at that meeting, it is anticipated that the County will act on Beltline’s zone change request for the Crooked Creek Beef property.
Even before the offer of a free ride to Atlanta arrived, rumors persisted that if the County zone change is granted Beltline would still return to Pacific to fulfill its previous proposal to use the city’s waste water to cool the super hot data center computers – with Pacific benefitting by many millions of dollars.
There is one obvious fly in the ointment here. The action can’t take place until after the April 7 election, which could maintain the status quo at city hall, or seat a new set of legislators.
No matter who is in office the time, Pacific may not be able to prevent construction of the data center. But the city will be in the catbird seat in negotiating, or outright denying, the use of the city’s waste water for the center.
Beltline may also have some odds to overcome with several current Pacific aldermen after purposely keeping legislators in the dark as they negotiated a deal with the city attorney and city staff to plan a data center on the Crooked Creek farm and annex the property into Pacific.
Beltline officials said – but did not offer engineered plans or projected costs of any improvements – that the data center would be good for Pacific as the developer would spend millions of dollars to improve the city’s waste water system.
NDAs
After being stunned that they were denied disclosure of a project that would without doubt have a huge impact on the community, aldermen also chafed that Beltline had convinced city administrator James Litterell to sign a nondisclosure agreement (NDA), and implying to aldermen that the NDA also prohibited them from speaking about the project.
Mr. Litterell told Hometown Matters that Mayor Heather Filley and City Attorney Stephanie Karr had approved the NDA. Both Mayor Filley and Attorney Karr confirmed that they had approved the NDA, “because Beltline wanted it.” They both said that NDAs were very common and were used all the time.
Alderman Scott Lesh said not only have NDAs not been common in Pacific, the NDA flew in the face of the state Sunshine Law.
Mr. Lesh, and alderman Debbie Kelley attempted to end any worries about future NDAs by passing an ordinance at the March 17 BOA meeting that prohibits city officials from signing NDAs. But the 4-1 vote with one abstention in favor of no NDAs left the ban on a shaky foundation. One yes vote that was almost apologetic and the abstention could change in a heartbeat.
And now we may find a different set of thinkers fielding any request from Beltline.
Before casting his yes vote on the ban, Alderman James Cleeve argued that NDAs might actually be good for Pacific if a large business required one to develop a property in the city.
“I am very concerned that it (the NDA ban) puts a closed for business sign up” he said. “There are companies that are not going to want to deal with the city without any kind of NDA at all. I just think it closes us off to certain businesses.”
Alderman Lesh said people that have been with the city for a while do not know of any company coming before the city and asking for an NDA regarding a development before Beltline.
Ms. Kelley agreed.
“In my time served, this was our first, and I believe it was mishandled, misused,” she said. “If they (future businesses) need to reach out to the Board of Aldermen to ask for one, they may. . . This ban is needed to protect the Board of Aldermen and the city, so we all know what’s going on in our community at all times.”
“I don’t read it as it’s coming to the Board of Aldermen,” Mr. Cleeve said. “I read that we’d have to change the ordinance to allow any kind of NDA. I’m just trying to figure out how to not shut us out from bigger companies that might want to come here.”
Mr. Lesh said the city doesn’t have a history of big companies demanding NDAs.
Mr. Cleeve the absence of previous calls for NDAs is not convincing,
“What industry, what big, huge retail industries do we have here,” he asked
Mr. Lesh stuck to his guns.
“What’s being overlooked on this, hugely, is that this is what your sunshine laws are for,” he said. “We can offer that up to them and say, we can keep this confidential. We can discuss this in executive session. And if a company doesn’t want to do that, why would we want to do business with them.”
“The NDA that we had put before us had a financial penalty to it. It said if anybody’s found to be in violation of it, all parties agree to binding arbitration. That’s a financial penalty possibility. Why would we do that as a city? Why would we enter into an agreement? Where if information gets out, the city now has a financial penalty to pay?”
“Because we want business in town,” Mr. Cleeve answered.
Alderman Tyler Hoven agreed with Mr. Cleeve.
“Alderman Cleave is saying that we shouldn’t do away with the NDA’s. I’m with him on that,” he said.
Ms. Kelley said NDA and the secrecy generated on the early discussions not only kept vital information from legislators it resulted in extra cost to the city.
“I just want it on record because of what has happened,” she said. “We allowed taxpayers’ dollars to be spent behind our back. We are responsible for taxpayers’ dollars, she said. We all thought nothing happened, but it did. There are invoices. I’m not even seeing the hours put in by staff. I have invoices by contracted staff. A lot of money was spent by this city prior to any alderman knowing what was going on, and that’s not right. We have to answer for the taxpayers’ dollars.”
Alderman Ed Gass, argued that the city administrator should be the one to determine if an NDA was needed.
The city administrator should decide what aldermen need to be told about a firm seeking a zone change to develop in the city.
In the final vote to ban NDAs, Aldermen Kelley, Stewart, Lesh and Cleeve (hesitantly) voted yes. Mr Hoven voted no and Mr. Gass abstained.
The full argument was recorded and can be viewed on the city’s YouTube page.
Any proposal involving city wastewater requires piping beneath the Meramec River, which contains federally endangered mussels along this stretch. So far, Beltline has refused to fund environmental studies of its proposed development in a floodplain of a recreational and fishing river. That refusal was before the aborted Pacific P&Z meeting of February 25th at the high school– where approximately 380 citizens, government officials and Pacific police wasted two to three hours of everyone’s time, (including wasted taxpayer pay of numerous officers) for something which could have been easily called off at noon, not 8 minutes into the P&Z meeting.
To me (and yes, I was there, as well as at the county P&Z meeting until 3:45 a.m. of their meeting, which went another 45 minutes– Beltline’s proposal was last on the docket, and they could have postponed to a later date, and let probably 250 people of the 800 there including the county P&Z board get some rest. ) The did not. Not only that, but at the county meeting, they cited different and larger figures why one should be in favor of their proposal from what they told the people of Pacific on January 27. I have come to the conclusion they do not intend to be a good neighbor, and considering the mishandling of information and meetings, that they are saying whatever they think they can to get their way. I went into these proposals with an open mind, and Beltline representatives have convinced me they should be sent back to Georgia on a fast plane.
There are serious issues about their rosy vision for Pacific water treatment water which spins so fast the petals fly off, leaving only the stem and thorns. Repeated concerns about developing n a flood plain where river levels go from negative depths on the staff gage, to 33. 42 ft. on December 30, 2015, with a flow of 147,000 cubic feet per second past Pacific means I have no confidence in their ability to engineer such a pipeline.
The median flow of the Meramec at Pacific is 4,870 cubic feet per second. This is not an average. This means that half of the flows are less than that and half the flows are more. Imagine a cube one foot on a side, traveling downstream in one second. That is also about the dimensions of a basketball. One cubic foot of water weighs 62 pounds. So, imagine 147,000 basketballs stacked 33 feet high and weighing 62 pounds each– and then balance that on an underground pipe beneath the river. That is 9.1 million pounds poised on that pipe every second. For much of the time, the median stress on that pipe is only slightly over 300,000 pounds of water or less.
Beltline says the can handle any onsite fire. Someone mentioned that two of the Pacific fire stations are on the same side of the river as the proposed data center. This is true. However, at 24.4 feet of flood, the Hwy. F bridge at Pacific becomes impassable. At 27.2 feet, the Highway O bridge at Robertsville floods. Any sort of major fire out here, even a large brush or house fire, usually calls in mutual aid, which would not be able to get to Catawissa– Hwy. N bridge access has been long closed when the Pacific bridge closes. What would happen then? The only way out is a long detour to Hwy. 30.
Several people have noted that Pacific doesn’t generate enough wastewater per day for their original needs. It is true, they could go to a closed loop system, which is preferable from an engineering standpoint, but they don’t need Pacific for that
After what I have seen and heard so far, I have no confidence in this company in pulling off anything that they are talking about without making a mess that we will have to live with, while they go back to Atlanta. Where is Gen. William Sherman when you need him?