County Council - Regular Meeting

I guess I was going to be the guy that kind of dreamed in and kind of take things over a lot of stuff, you know. He just got done with all the graduations. He was like 37 or something. And I was like, what? By the time he went to Clemson, all the high schools. Oh, yeah. Because they used little John for a lot of that. Oh, yeah. That's good. That's good. That's terrible. I bet you hate pomp and circumstance. My ears are bleeding. Which they have actually had more. It's probably the biggest one.

Right.

It was in the 30s, I guess. And then what we really got here was basketball. It was 37, I think.

Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, that's right. many years ago as well. I went to school there, so I drive through Abbeville, because we lived out of the country, I was such a friend, and I drive back and forth. It was great to meet Anderson. I was like, when did you meet Anderson out of his driveway? So, you don't have to talk about it. You know, I can do what I can.

Okay, where is the room where you guys want to be?

Yeah, that's right. Do you want to go up a range somewhere?

Hey, y'all. Hello. You can take your knee. I think I'm good right now.

Are they doing the executive session meeting?

We appreciate your help.

You must have some good camera speed.

Yeah, we have, we got in the corners there, we got them hitting the, you know, podiums here.

Oh, I got you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah, yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. And then we have the, what goes to the right. Gotcha. Hey Tom. Hello. How you doing? Good, how are you?

Hey Tom, whose iPad is this on the table?

That's probably Kevin's. It's probably the one he uses for the mics. Okay.

Where's it at? Right on the little thing on the left.

Yeah, he was adjusting the mics with it. We'll just set it up. Okay. Oh. Yeah.

Tom, I'm going to hit my computer up. Yeah, so we can test.

All right, so I got those links. You got the links? Yeah. So, I mean, it looks like that's that managed broadcast thing in there. I mean, it looks like it's doing what it's supposed to do, right? Yes. Well, I've got the things here.

I couldn't remember exactly where we said we wanted to put them. I know we talked about like over here.

Yeah, I think we're going to put them over here so I can have the pointer at one podium and then staff and the speakers are going to speak from here. Okay. Would that work okay?

That would work great, but we just want to block off that. first that road right there the first two rows because we've got speakers under our staff what do you think yeah that's fine yeah and then are you good with people sitting in this road here do we want to block it too yeah i mean we're trying to move back that's no problem

What do you think this is? Is this his legs? I don't know.

Something like that.

I guess with that blade they just did. I'm tired of walking. Had it with him, he walked over to the other end to get up a ramp.

School got painted. Yeah, high school. Senior play or whatever. Or not senior play. Something, something.

Yeah.

So you feel pretty good about it now? Better. Feel good when it's over?

Yeah. It would have been better before. It would have been better to get him to let you know. Yeah.

But what I'm saying is it's that in conjunction with something else. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or when Tony starts making faces I know it was an adapter that we plugged in. Is this the only camera you have set up? That one's mine. The one down there next to the flag, I can't even see. It's in front of the curtains there. That's got this podium. And he has an almost identical camera, but it's on that side of the flag. That's on this podium. So I've got the main dais, the left podium, and the right podium. So literally all the audio that's going to happen here is going to be coming into it anyway. Yes. From the podiums or from anybody on the stage. Coming out through the main speakers and this is going to be just that. So they're not going to have people, or not supposed to have anybody talking out here. Okay. So even though the person talking in the podium's voice is pointed that direction, you're going to get it coming back. My only thing is I'm wondering if they can see, if the people in the base are going to be able to see those screens, because that's all they can see, is those two screens in the front. The ones on the stake? Yeah. Are they already on? I'm sure they are. So you're saying the council can't see it? Yeah. We're sitting way back there. Yeah, we don't know where the power plant is going.

Ladies and gentlemen, we're going to call to order this meeting with Greenwood County Council Tuesday, June 2nd. We appreciate you all being here. We anticipated a large crowd tonight, so we wanted to provide better space, make sure everyone has a seat, make sure everyone's comfortable. I want to go ahead first and I want to thank the school district for allowing us the use of this beautiful facility. Your Greenwood County Council has been in executive session since 4 p.m. In the interest of full transparency, I'm going to ask that Manager Toby Chappell tell us why that need was. Mr. Manager.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We enter the executive session for the following five matters. Two legal matters pertaining to Greenwood County Ordinance 2026-19 and special tax districts. One real estate matter in the area of Promise Lane Community and two economic development matters pertaining to projects Cannon and Banner.

Thank you Mr. Manager. I'll ask for a motion now that we exit executive session please. Second. I have a motion from Mr. Templeton, a second from Ms. Griffin. All in favor? That's so ordered. So ordered. We're now out of the executive session.

If I may, I just want to say that a change to this facility was actually an idea by one of my constituents, Mr. Troy Fields, who's out there tonight, and his wife, Danielle, who's on the school board, was one of the ones who got this facilitated through the school district. So thank you. That's all right. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Susan. Our invocation tonight will be given to us on behalf of District 4, Ms. Miller's district, by Bradford Rush from South Main Baptist Church. And afterward, we'll honor our nation with a pledge of allegiance. So I would ask, please, if you are able, please stand.

You're standing. And gentlemen, please remove your hats. Let us pray this evening. father almighty maker of heaven and earth tonight lord would you be with those close to the hurting would you be near to the brokenhearted and lord would you bring peace and healing in our community we humbly ask that you would pour out your grace on us here in greenwood that people will come to know jesus christ your son and the grace of forgiveness you offer through faith in him May our people find their purpose in him, the way, the truth, and the life. Tonight we acknowledge before you that there is no authority on this earth that has not been established by you. Please give guidance to the county council. Please give guidance to the community. May we love our neighbor as ourself and love you above all things. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. Council, I trust that you've had the opportunity to review our minutes from our last May 19 meeting. And so I'll entertain a motion that we accept those minutes. Motion to approve. Motion by Mr. Pruitt. Second. Second by Ms. Miller. All in favor? That's unanimous. Thank you. We have several people that have signed up for public comment. And I believe, looking at that, I'm trying to see, if you're signed up for public comment tonight and you want to speak on the data center issue that's on our agenda, what I'll ask that you do is speak during the public hearing of that portion of the agenda. I see here Reggie Terry looks like Reggie it looks like you're here to speak on a budget issue is that correct where are you ready is there anyone else that's here to speak on anything other than the data center issue what are you here to speak on ma'am I can't hear you I'm sorry Okay. Item D. Okay. Ms. Thierry, why don't you come ahead to the podium, please, and speak. And as I said, anyone else who's speaking on the data center issue, I'll ask that you wait and speak here in the public hearing. Yes, ma'am. You're correct. Thank you, Ms. Dorn. It is. So, Reggie, since you're speaking on the budget, if you will please hold until the public hearing portion. Thank you. Alright, we have one other speaker, I believe, and you're speaking on which item, ma'am? Come to the podium, please.

D under new business yes ma'am state your name and address for the record please Kimberly McIntyre and I live at Dixie Drive in Hodges the property that I'm asking about is the property I own on Deadfall Road West I'm here respectfully requesting approval for rezoning for our property this R5 multifamily residential to add one our goal is not to overdevelop this property or change it too much at all. In fact, it's just the opposite. We want to preserve the land, we want to maintain its open and rural character, and use it in a way that is consistent with our family, caregiving, and be responsible stewards. The current R5 zoning allows for more intensive residential uses, including multifamily development, apartments, townhomes, and similar high density housing uses. according to Greenwood County's R5 zoning materials. We're asking to move away from that to, according to Greenwood County zoning for AG1, which Greenwood County describes as a district intended to provide agricultural activity, spacious residential development, and to prevent the untimely scattering of more dense urban uses. Our request is also personal. We have agent parents that are right there with that same property. Those three properties are mine. my personal property and my father's property. And we want the ability to place temporary housing and whatnot to be able to on our property so that we can better take care of them and give them in their privacy and keep their dignity without creating a burden on the neighbors or changing the character of the area. We understand the zoning exists to protect the public health, the safety, welfare, and orderly development of the county. Our intent is to comply with all county requirements, including permitting setbacks septic utilities and any other conditions that the county may require we're not asking for permission to create a subdivision or high density development we're asking for the zoning that benefits our intended use preserving the property and keeping it low impact and caring for our family we believe that one is a more appropriate zoning classification for this property because it supports open space lower density residential use and more rural setting It would allow us to be good stewards of our land while meeting that real family caregiving need. And we appreciate any consideration for that.

Thank you, Ms. McIntyre. I'll stay at the podium for a moment. Council, does anyone have any questions or comments for Ms. McIntyre? Hearing none, thank you for being with us, Ms. McIntyre. We appreciate your attendance. Thank you. We have, now, before I move on, I just want to make sure, is there anyone else that has signed up? I have several sign-up sheets here in front of me. Has anyone else signed up for public comment that is not, that topic is not included in the public hearing tonight? Okay, seeing none then, we will move on in our agenda. We have no presentation scheduled tonight, so we will move into old business. Ordinance 202603 will amend the Greenwood County zoning map as and if amended so that two parcels of land totaling approximately 46.48 acres at 615 Old Abbeville Highway in Greenwood County change from R2 single-family residential to an MPR master plan residential. Mr. Ryan Bland, our county planner, will speak, please. This is third and final reading. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

As you see, you have before you rezoning R260104. The properties are currently zoned R1 and R2. The request is going to a master plan residential development. You see here the current zoning of those two properties, the R1 being the smaller portion of the property. I would call it north and R2 to the south. Just for general directional purposes, we are northwest, I would call it, at the intersection of Old Abagal Highway and Woodlawn. These are DOT roads on the property and adjacent to the property. It is served by public utilities, particularly to the southeast and the north of the property. You can see here the nature of the general development currently in the area, as well as the character of the roadways, generally a two-lane road without a shoulder and fairly low density roads, which are immediately across the street. Subject property is currently wooded. Here you have a couple of additional properties to get you an idea of the nature of the property as it sits today.

And as we look on a similar, again, view of the same property.

typical amenities that the applicant has provided to us as examples of other developments that they have built in recent history in which they would like to provide similar types of amenities as part of this development and you see here the conference of future land use map the property there properties with a We took the red indicator there, but it is low density residential in the future land use map, but nearby to two commercial corridors just northwest on those future destinations. You had a different version of this, a slightly different version initially. The admin has removed a entrance off of Woodlawn as part of this, so it would only access Old Abbeville as the primary means of entrance. The item was continued for some time to do a traffic study which you received with our last presentation that came back to say that there are less than significant impacts to adjacent intersections and roadways and they'll continue to function at what is considered a standard level or above. the planning commission recommended tile on a vote of eight to two planning staff felt it was consistent with the long-range plan and provision of utilities in the area and recommended approval mr chair would that complete staff comments

thank you mr bland and i do recall that we had a community group that met with the developers some concessions were made in this regard so i thought that was very good interaction so this is third and final reading ordinance 20 26 03 council what is your pleasure i'll be a motion to approve mr chairman have a motion approved by mr templeton second second by mrs miller before any questions or comments before we vote

I was just going to measure. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. If you look in your packet on page 19, I believe you were inadvertently given a different ordinance, but I believe the clerk has given you the correct ordinance. So I believe your motion probably needs to be to approve or deny as amended. Is the ordinance number correct? Yeah, everything you've done so far is correct, but the one in your packet is actually incorrect. What you have before you is correct.

I'll change my motion to approve as amended. I have a motion to approve the ordinance as amended. Do I have a second? I'll second. Second by Ms. Miller. All in favor of this presentation? If that's unanimous, so ordered. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Banner. Item B, Ordinance 202620 to amend the Greenwood County zoning map as it is amended so that one parcel of land totaling approximately 34.36 acres at 917 Old Abigle Highway in Greenwood County changes from R1 single-family residential to Ag 1 agricultural. Mr. Bland, again, please. Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

As you stated, we have, this is Ordinance 2026-20. The zoning application is R260401. In this case, we have a split zone property that the applicant is requesting to consolidate in a single Ag 1 district. It's roughly 34.36 acres. We are on the old Abbeville Highway, just a bit north of our previous application, but completely unregulated. The property is built with a bloated cc family residential. Here you get a general idea of the layout of the property. It is generally at the intersection of Folly Farm Road and Old Abbeville Highway. It is an irregular shaped plot. And the zoning, here we have, sorry, a couple pictures of the subject property as it exists to get the idea of the residential nature of the uses on the site currently.

And views down Old Abbeville.

Polypharmament. Here you can see the split nature of the zoning on the property. So the northern collar finger is AG1. The bottom portion is R1. So the applicant, in order to clean up the zoning on the property, is going to consolidate that all as an AG1 district property. It is low density residential on the future land use map. So the AG1 designation would be consistent. again yeah there's two single family residents on the property which would make to be maintained and again comprehensive plan uh it would certainly impact if this would align with the ldr nature of the property of the future land use map compatibility with the zoning ordinance it would generally conform with the exception of the two residences again which would just be maintained by conforming status right now Staff recommended approval. Planning Commission recommendations also for approval.

And that concludes staff's comments. Thank you, Mr. Bland. I think my recollection, too, is the applicant does not intend any material change with land, just to clean up, as you stated earlier. Correct. That's my understanding. Counsel, you've heard the presentation. What's your pleasure? Motion to approve. Second. A motion by Mr. Pruitt to approve. A second by Mr. Templin. Any comment or discussion before we vote? Seeing none, all in favor? And that's unanimous in so order. Thank you. We're now going to move into a section of public hearings. The way we're going to conduct this tonight, we have a number of public hearings. So what we're going to do is that we're going to move through the public hearings. At the end of the ordinances, I will close the public hearing, and then I'll ask council to vote their pleasure of the public hearing ordinances one at a time. So I'll ask now council for a motion, if you will, please, that we can open the public hearing. So moved, Mr. Chairman. Second. I have a motion by Mr. Templeton, a second by Ms. Griffin. All in favor? And we are now in public hearing. Thank you. Item C is a consideration of the sale of plus or minus .10 acres of Greenwood County property at 190 Lake Greenwood Boulevard, tax map number 6879963082 to T. Parker Properties. Our county attorney, Ms. Carson Petty, please.

Hi. You'll see in your packet the proposed draft contract. This is T. Parker Properties is better known as Fishbones and they approached the county to buy a tenth of an acre of our property that sits right outside of theirs so that they can permanently expand their business to incorporate a deck and some other elements. This is what some people would consider like by near break on the lake and our gate would our gateway landing background if that you have a map that highlights the exact, well, close to the exact, as much as I can draw on the map, a little rectangle that indicates what we're talking about. But I know that we've talked about this before. It is a $12,000 offer on this tenth of an acre. It's not a complete package, so I would ask you to let staff gather additional documents to support this sales contract and ask you to approve with the ability of the county manager and county attorney to modify in the best interest of the county. But for all actual details of the contract, we are in alignment, as far as I know, with T. Parker Properties.

Thank you, Ms. Bennett. So on this item, I'll ask, is there anyone here that cares to speak in support of this ordinance? Seeing none, is there anyone? Excuse me. I'm sorry, ma'am. I missed you. Come to the podium, please. State your name and address for the record. It's hard to see into these lights, by the way.

My name is Nikki Parker. I own Fish Ponds on Lake Greenwood. I appreciate it.

Nikki, what's your address?

My address?

Yes, ma'am. We need it for the record.

138 Mason Road, well, 314 Indigo Way in Greenwood, South Carolina, 2934.

Thank you. Go ahead. Sorry. That's all right.

I appreciate the opportunity to discuss the acquisition of the piece of land and what it means to not only fish farms, but to the patriots and the county on the public ramp and the occupants of the surrounding and quickly developing area. I am Nikki Parker, owner of Fishbones, General Store and Tackle, and a resident of Palmetto Crossing. We at Fishbones have held dozens of fundraisers at the store, in addition to many yearly fishing tournaments, including Breast Cancer Awareness and Take a Kid Fishing from Connie Maxwell Orphanage. In the past three years, we have raised over $30,000 in charities in Greenwood. The amount of people that we are able to reach and assist is just going to multiply with this land in our possession. When we opened the store, we laid side and we have continued to maintain it alongside with the rest of the yard. Our goal is to have a family oriented atmosphere where people can come and enjoy the lake. Fishbones is a place to bring your dog and your kids and listen to live music on Fridays. Fishbones is a place to grab ice cream on Sunday afternoon. With the purchase of the land, we'll be able to expand and provide more for late goers and our customers. For example, a roof for people to get out of the hot sun and rain. The acquisition of the property of the land can only benefit absolutely everyone. Thank you for listening, and if you haven't been out to fish ponds, come and see us.

thank you miss parker and let me also say thank you for your investment in our county um organizations like yours contribute to the quality of life here it's what makes people want to come and live and bring with so thank you so much for that thank you is anyone else here would like to speak in support of this ordinance seeing none is there anyone here that would like to speak in opposition to this ordinance All right, then we'll move to the next item of business, please. Item D, Ordinance 202618, authorizing pursuant to Title IV of the Code of Laws of South Carolina, 1976, as amended, including Sections 41170, 41175, 42968, Thereof, in Article 8, Section 13 of the South Carolina Constitution, the execution and delivery of an infrastructure credit agreement by and between Greenwood County, South Carolina and Amazon.com Services LLC to provide for certain annual special source revenue or infrastructure credits to enlarge the boundaries of a joint county industrial and business park and three other related matters. Our economic development director, Mr. James Vayner, will give details. Please, James.

Good evening, Mr. Chairman and members of council. before you tonight is the third and final reading for approval of the infrastructure credit agreement between the county and amazon as you stated and one of our attendees tonight asked me for some from for some details some insightful questions about where the subject property is located the gpin number the physical address and what this agreement contemplates which is what i was going to present to you and want everyone here to know The PIN number is 6895689304. This is a newly created tax parcel number because this approximately 24-acre piece of property that is on Business Park Road at the intersection of Highway 34, where the old Sloan and Adams plants are located, was on about 420 acres owned by the Adams family that executed an auction agreement with Greenwood County, giving the county economic development department the marketing rights to recruit industries onto this property and the control over that property to transfer that to Amazon that has acquired the property. The new tax parcel number then gets created And a physical property address also gets added to that parcel, which is now 472096 Highway. That's in the name of Amazon.com Services LLC. The agreement states that the county would reimburse via a property tax abatement up to a maximum of $1.2 million. Over the course of about three years, it should take to refund these property taxes based on the estimated capital investment of $20.5 million by Amazon, a site that they're already working on. And those would only be for the qualified expenses for off-site sewer infrastructure. And without a visual that I intended on including in your presentation tonight, I'll do my best job with words to describe where the existing sewer main is located that is operated by 96 CPW, which is along Kate Fowler Branch that can be seen on the county GIS system at the southern boundary of the property. The two existing plants are served sewer by 96 CPW, but That sewer is antiquated and cannot handle any additional use and could cause failure in that system. Therefore, new sewer service is required for any new tenant going into this industrial park. Amazon happens to be the first one. It happens to be a company that is willing to partner with the county to design and install that sewer at their expense, and they only asked for reimbursement of the public portion of that line, which I believe is about 2,700 linear feet. between the existing main and the private property line. From there, what is on Amazon's property, they will pay for their own sewer. There will be no rebate or refund for the sewer haunting or any other utility on Amazon's property. So not only will it serve the first tenant in that park, it will also make that park viable for future tenants that will also require sewer service.

Any questions from council? Counsel, any questions or comments before we take public comment?

Mr. Chairman, the infrastructure credit agreement that is in your packets is near final. We have been in constant communication with the company and their legal counsel. We've agreed to this on principle. There are minor edits that will be necessary to properly administer this agreement the way the county and company understand that it should work mechanically. We'd ask for your vote to authorize the county manager and county attorney to negotiate those final edits in the favor of the county. Thank you. Thank you, James.

Is that excellent? Yes, sir. Mr. Bateman, it is also to be noted that there is no FLO involved with this transaction, correct? This is the only thing that we're doing to help accommodate Amazon coming into Greenwood County, specifically at the 96 Business Park, but it's also allowing for more growth since they're technically the first new partner in that area, correct?

yes mr vice chairman that is correct amazon did not request nor is the county provided a fee in lieu of tax agreement this infrastructure credit agreement would only survive for those few number of years that it takes to rebate those qualified expenditures which if they are less than 1.2 million dollars will be capped at the actual expenditures and wouldn't go up to 1.2 correct okay Thank you for that clarification. Yes, sir. There's up to nine additional conceptual lots within the 96 business park. This still is one of ten. There could be as many as nine, depending on how that park gets built out, but this does open up the opportunity for future industries to locate there.

Thank you. Any other comments or questions? Period Explanation Ordinance 202618. I'll ask if there's anyone in the audience tonight that wants to come forward and speak in favor of this ordinance. Seeing none, is there anyone here that wants to speak in opposition to this ordinance? Seeing none, we'll move to the next item of business. Item 8, Ordinance 202619, to amend the Greenwood County Zoning Ordinance, being Ordinance 13-86, as and if amended, so that Section 61315, 6343, which is light industrial district, section 6344, I-2 heavy industrial district, section 6347, rural development district, be amended to add data centers as a conditional use. Mr. Rob Rushen, our deputy county manager for operations, please give us an explanation, Rob.

Thank you, Chairman. Before you tonight we have ordinance 2026-19. Again, this is a text amendment to our zoning ordinance to address data centers. A while back, our county manager asked me how our zoning ordinance addressed data centers, and truthfully, it does not at all. It's not addressing the current zoning ordinance. There's some ambiguous language in there, but the word data center does not appear in it at all. By right, therefore, because the RDD zoning district does not limit anything only regulates uh it could be placed the data center could be placed in the rdd rural development district by right at this time by definition the purpose of the rdd is not to restrict the use of land but only to regulate it you can look at it as actually a kind of a lack of zoning only putting some conditions on it In that particular zoning district, minimal restrictions that would be applied to anything else in that district would be also applied to data centers at this time. For instance, the front setback could be only 50 feet. A side and rear setback would be based on the size of the building. For a building approximately 100,000 square foot, you would have a 130 foot setback. Buffer yards to any type of residential use could be as little as 40 feet from the building and then with full vegetation or up to 100 feet with absolutely no vegetation between the building and a residential use. There is currently in the RDD, there's no set level of noise restriction. There's some ambiguous language there about noise, but no decimal levels under there. And then also in the RDD district, there's no set level of light restriction. So there would be no conditions essentially put on a data center if it were to locate from that in the RDD district. The proposal that you have before you, the text amendment and the ordinance is to add conditions specific for data centers in the I-1, I-2 and RDD district. As staff we feel that the I-1 district is the proper district to place a data center just by its description. But in the I-2 district, as it allows all I-1 uses, we want to make sure we put the conditions in there as well. And then the RDD district, again, is a district that does not restrict anything in it but does regulate. So adding that language to those three districts is what we are recommending at this time. This is the same presentation I'm giving tonight that I gave to Planning Commission last Tuesday. Prior to that Planning Commission meeting, I was asked by a Planning Commission member to look at those three particular districts and give them the number of parcels that were in each of those districts. By reference, the total parcels in the entire county is 39,220. That's all parcels from the smallest tenth of an acre to the largest thousand acre parcels. So 39,220 parcels. In the I-1 zoning district we have 732 parcels, or 1.9% of the total. In the I-2 district we have 133 parcels. And in the RDD district, obviously that is the largest district that we have, we have 10,392 parcels, or a little over 26% of the total parcels in the county. Right now, as it stands, a data center could be developed in any one of those 10,392 parcels as long as they fit the minimum requirements of the RDD district. The map on the right shows in green the RDD district, in red is the I-1 district, and the little blue there is the I-2 district. As far as conditions that we would like to implement, First of all, establishing a conditional use permit would be required, meaning that by right they couldn't just start developing the district. They would actually have to come to us to get a permit to do a data center anywhere in the county. Power, water, and sewer are some of the greatest concerns of the public as well as staff when it comes to really any industry, but data centers as well. So as part of the conditions, we want written verification from providers on capacity, safety, and impact. There's several statements on there as to what the utility providers would have to provide for the county as part of that conditional use permit. As far as noise go, we would implement clear standards for acceptability with sound study required of both pre-construction and post-construction with decimal levels that they would have to meet. And then light as well. Clear standards for acceptability with photometric lighting plan and post-construction measuring with specific standards for what light can go onto surrounding properties. As well as a decommissioning plan. This is a concern that the equipment in the building is specialized and that should the building need to be decommissioned, that there's a clear plan for decommission to include a financial security to provide for that should something happen to the company. Talk a little bit about setbacks. Again, we talked about the front setback being as little as 50 feet and site setbacks being 130 feet for a 100,000 square foot building currently in RDD. As far as these conditions go, we're looking to add a middle of 200 feet. setback from all property lines of residential use or zoning. I think I want to be clear here in that we say both residential use or zoning. If a property is zoned, something other than residential, so as a commercial property that's being used for residential, that these setbacks would apply regardless of what the zoning was if it was being used for residential. So even if the zoning didn't match the use, we would go with the use as opposed to the zoning for the property when it comes to setting setbacks. And there's also not just residential, but we also have language in there that says not only residential use, but also includes schools, daycare, hospital, place of worship, park, or public open space. We'd have a minimum 100-foot setback from all other non-industrial use or zoning, and then a 75-foot setback from property adjacent to industrial use or zoning. So again, we're looking at use as well as the zoning, but the use of the property would prevail when it comes to setting the actual setbacks for a building. Talking about buffer yards, again, the current restrictions could be as low as 40 feet fully vegetated or 100 feet with no vegetation at all. We're mandating vegetation as far as a buffer yard for data centers. The buffer yard would be set by the size of the building. So it could be natural or it could be planted, but we do put in specific vegetation requirements. For instance, for every 100 foot of buffer, we would have 10 canopy trees, 15 understory trees. I think it's 30 shrubs and 30 evergreen trees. So it's a substantial amount of trees and vegetation that would be required in that buffer yard. It does give the planning director some leeway when it comes to keeping the natural buffer there as opposed to taking anything natural out and having to plant something new. Obviously we would prefer the natural as long as it was properly screened. It may be natural with additional screening to be sure that we do get proper screening of the property. For a less than 100,000 square foot building, we would have a 100 foot buffer for residential use or zoning. That also includes, again, schools, daycares, hospitals, church, parks. For a building between 100,000 and 250,000 square feet, there would be a 120 foot required buffer yard, vegetated buffer yard for residential use or zoning. And then for over 250,000 square feet, we would require 140 foot of vegetated buffer yard for residential use for zoning. Again, also including the school, daycare, hospital, church, or park. Roadside buffers would have an additional requirement for a 10 foot high berm as well as the vegetation. Other requirements that we've put in this text amendment, refuse collection screening, any dumpsters, garter scans that might be on site need to be fully screened. Ground mounted mechanical electrical equipment screening and location requirements cannot be located within the setback area, cannot be located within the buffer area. Rooftop mechanical equipment screening, anything mounted on the roof would have to be screened. Electrical substation screening and location requirements. Again, electrical substation could not be allowed in the setback area. Perimeter fencing, looking at the aesthetics of the property as well. Black when visible by public or adjacent residential property. And then emergency contact information posted at the site as well. Just in summary for Council, these conditions were specifically chosen to address most of the common complaints that we have heard about data centers. Nearly all the conditions are over and above what is required of any other industry within our zoning ordinance. I went to Planning Commission last week. Planning Commission did deny the request or deny the amendment unanimously. The motion was made to deny it. It also included a recommendation to Council that a 24-month moratorium be placed on data centers to gather additional information. There was three people who spoke for the text amendment. There were 13, I think, who spoke against the text amendment at the planning commission meeting. We don't typically go over those public comments. I have taken detailed notes on all of them, can give you specifics on the concerns, run through all those if you'd like. We typically don't do that for counseling, but I do have that information if you'd like it.

I can take any questions you might have. Thank you, Mr. Rushin. Any comments or questions from council? If not, I have a comment. And I want to say this in an effort, I hope, to better educate the public and tell them what our motivation has been in dealing with this issue. I've had a number of people contact me and I've read social media postings saying that some members of public felt the county council was handling this issue very expeditiously. I want to tell you that I think that's a correct observation and I want to tell you why. As Rob just stated in his presentation and Rob made sure my numbers are right, 26% of this county is currently zoned RDD. Is that correct? 26 and a half, yes sir. 26 and a half percent of the entirety of the county. A concern that staff had that was shared with council was that if today, if in the morning, an interest came before county government if they purchased land privately anywhere in this county that was zoned RDD. The reason for the text amendment and all of these safeguards and precautions that we want to put into place now is that that interest could buy that land and say we're going to build a data center on it and no protections, prohibitions, would be in place and there wouldn't be a darn thing we could do about it. Does everyone understand that? As it exists today. That was the purpose of bringing forward the text amendment. And yes, we did bring it forward quickly because every day that we don't bring it forward, we believe creates more risk in that regard for our county. So I just wanted to make that comment and hope that everyone fully understands that. And I believe also tonight, In regard to the concerns that we've heard about water, power, and sewer, we've asked some of our community partners who you all know and I believe trust and are familiar with to also speak on this topic. So I'm going to ask now that anyone who is here to speak in favor of this ordinance please come forward.

Good evening again, Mr. Chairman and members of council. If you would, Mr. Chairman, allow me to deliver some remarks about this proposed text and introduce those who guest speakers who are here to share information before opinions are performed and shared with you in favor or in opposition to these proposed conditions. As your Economic Development Director, I have the privilege of speaking with industries of all kinds that are interested in Greenwood County. Available land and robust utilities make Greenwood County an attractive destination for many industry sectors, including data centers. Others on your staff do not communicate directly with prospective industries early in the site selection process, and therefore do not have first-hand knowledge if a particular company is coming, the industry sector they're in, or what they make. Oftentimes, I don't even learn that information until the final stages. That is a serious charge that I take to heart. It's unethical for someone in my profession to publicly discuss the types of projects they're working on. Even when I do know who it is I'm talking to, I cannot reveal their identity. Do not confuse confidentiality with some kind of clandestine operation. Prematurely disclosing a company's plans has real-world consequences, not just for their project, but for Greenwood County's reputation in site selection circles that, in large part, dictate our economic success outlook. I couldn't say if I were working with a data center intern more than I could say if I were working with an automotive manufacturer or a food processor. However, in full transparency due to the sensitive nature of tonight's topic, I will tell you that data centers have contacted me. That doesn't make data centers a target industry for Greenwood County. We are not recruiting data centers, although Greenwood County does have the capability to support data center development and the opportunity to reap the reward if we are prepared. The proposed conditions that Mr. Russian presented at the recommendation planning department to fill a void in the county's zoning ordinance provide clarity. Prospective industries of any type require clarity. Without clarity, Greenwood is both uncompetitive and unprepared. Any South Carolina county that is not taking proactive planning measures to restrict data centers is behind because it's happening all around us. I'll be brief on the education about data centers because I want to introduce you to the subject matter experts that have come here to speak to you about their capabilities. But briefly, I'll talk about how are data centers used. They're used in a number of ways. Cloud storage. I think we're all familiar with the use on our phones, the applications, the photos, the videos, that has to be stored somewhere. It's in the cloud, the cloud's not in the sky, the cloud's in a data center somewhere. I think most of us get that. Next would be automation and robotics. I'm asked often, how does data center impact manufacturing? Because that's the primary industry that we're recruiting is manufacturing. Not only are manufacturers, for decades, becoming more automated, using more robotics, but they're becoming more data dependent with that automation in their process. That data is stored somewhere. So manufacturers rely on data centers. They have data storage contracts with those data providers. And not only that, those manufacturers are making the components for the data centers. In fact, there are some here in the upstate of South Carolina that manufacture chips for some of the most well-known data center component companies. It's also used in a higher necessity for transactional purposes, financial institutions store data. So your ATM card, your credit card, every time you tap it, swipe it, insert it, it's all a financial transaction that's routed through a data center and is why they require the power of reliability and redundancy to ensure that those transactional centers never go down. So when you're in a store or you're traveling abroad and you depend on the access to your money, it's there. becomes more of a necessity then. And then on a larger scale is artificial intelligence. That's more of the emerging market of data centers. They've been around for a very long time. How they're used has advanced. Another data center use that I would like to introduce the first speaker on is for medical. When we talk about the necessity, access to our cash, our finances, is important. Probably the most paramount of them all is for medical. We all have a MyChart app on our phone, and so Regional keeps our health data. We want our doctors, physicians to have instantaneous access to that so they can give us the best medical treatment. And I've asked Dr. Logan to come and just talk about how does our hospital use data? Because it's being stored somewhere. And then I'm going to continue on with this educational event.

Dr. Logan, CEO of Self Regional, we appreciate you being here at James' request tonight. Thank you, sir. Please speak.

Sure, glad to. So at Self Regional, we have four main applications that we use data centers for currently. The primary one is the one James just mentioned is around Epic. That is our electronic medical record that is part of the MyChart that everyone's probably familiar with with the app on their phone. Those data centers that we use are located in Madison, Wisconsin and Rochester, New York. The data from our electronic medical records is saved in both places. In case one data center goes down, there's redundancy so we don't lose your medical information. So two data centers supporting our electronic medical record system at the hospital. We also use data centers for Microsoft as well as Long Base. Long Base, think about things like echocardiograms, other things that require storage, and we do use those for the cloud. We also use a program called AGFA. AGFA is our storage for imaging. Think about MRIs, CTs, X-rays, et cetera. That particular server is located in Atlanta, Georgia, that we use. uh for that so um overall um i've talked with our i.t experts at the hospital before i came up here this evening and we currently have over 700 terabytes of data stored in data centers around the country right now hope that's helpful thank you thank you

Thanks again, Dr. Logan. I could talk about the ways data are used in all the different industry sectors it's used in, but I wanted you to hear from the CEO of our regional hospital system who's actually using one of the practical applications and where it's being stored, how it's put to use. Next, I want to talk about how our data center is built. And the easy answer is to tell you there is no one-size-fits-all. I'll do my best to describe the myriad of ways that they can be built, but know that this is not One-size-fits-all answer. Data centers can be single-story buildings. They can be multi-story buildings. And then the type of construction depends. Are they one-story or two-story? They have power yards. That means pad-mounted equipment for primary or secondary power generation, depending on how they're powered, which we're going to talk about, and chillers. The substations must be shielded by the building per this text amendment or buffered if they're not behind that building per the conditions that Rob laid out. Data centers can be, I classify them as small, medium, large, or massive. I'll tell you, I think a lot of the concerns come from some of the massive data centers that are in other parts of the country, but I'm here to tell you the agreement has the capability to support more of the medium to the large size data centers, and this is based on utilities and on land availability, where one could actually be built, and layer that on top of the zoning conditions before you tonight. First, a small to medium-sized data center could be one building on tens of acres, speaking in general terms. So what does tens of acres look like? I'm going to use this as a reference point. It does not mean that it is a data center because it's not designed for that. But the new speculative building at the North Greenwood Industrial Park on Highway 25 is a landmark location that most would be familiar with for a concept of size. again that building is designed for manufacturing we would recruit a manufacturing tent in that building just as we did with our first building ea swing however for size reference that building is 108 500 square foot shell building with concrete walls data center could look similar on the outside that building is expandable to 155 000 square feet it's already graded out for that expansion and it sits on 11 acres. I'll tell you that being on the smaller side of data centers. It could go up from there. That gives you some concept of size. For a large data center, it could be multiple buildings on hundreds of acres, and Greenwood has the capability to support that. Again, these concrete sides house what are called data halls, or racks of servers and chips are housed that store the data. Usually there is a principal office building that is separate from those data halls. For instance, Meta that is under construction in Aiken has two data halls, has a primary building, has a power yard, is behind their data halls. That will come online early next year. The massive data centers, there are thousands of acres that you hear about in other parts of the country, I would tell you Greenwood does not have the properly zoned areas with the adequate road and utility infrastructure to accomplish that on the zoning map in the planning presentation. where you saw the green shaded area, which was much of the county, the 26% of rural development district. I would encourage residents to go to the county's geographic information system and apply the utility infrastructure layers to that. Click on agreement CPW water and gas and agreement metro sewer and layer those things together and you'll see that about the bottom third of the county does not have adequate water, sewer, gas, any of those utilities, or electric to house the data center. Although it may have the zoning, and if it met these conditions that conceptually could be built, it doesn't have the utilities. Therefore, it would not be able to meet the utility verification requirements that are also in that text amendment. Finally, how are data centers powered? They can be powered by electric or natural gas, but before I get into those, we'll talk about the multiple cooling methods that can be used. They can be cooled by water or by air. There are multiple methods, but a basic explanation would be an open-loop system. I'll tell you that that is how The data centers that use massive amounts of water, where you hear about water loss, that's an open-loop system. What is becoming more prevalent in data centers today are closed-loop systems. These operate about like a car radiator. They use dry coolers and air-cooled heat exchangers and operate also like an HVAC system at your house. There's been a rapid acceleration of new technologies that mitigate concerns around utility consumption, air, sound, and light emissions, which we'll talk a bit more about. As far as how their power requires for electricity, the transmission lines to deliver the generation capacity wherever a data center goes, and gas. They can be powered either by primarily electric or primarily gas. For a gas power data center, it requires transmission pipelines or connectivity to those transmission pipelines to deliver the gas supply that would be required to power. Either way, to determine a community's capability to support a data center or any other industry, an economic developer must stay in regular contact with utility providers to remain competitive in industrial recruitment. Any economic developer who is not in constant communication with the electric provider for their industrial science is out of touch with the reality of today's industry because electric demand across all sectors has risen to historic highs, not just for data centers. To talk to you more about Duke's infrastructure, their process for managing data centers, is Duke Energy Carolina's Economic Development Director, Steve West. I'm going to ask Steve to come up and talk with you about that.

Thank you, James, and good evening. I really appreciate the opportunity to participate in this conversation. We've been dealing with large load customers forever, largely manufacturers, the last three or four years. Of course, we've seen an uptick in data centers, and although we have dealt with data centers for years, largely in North Carolina, The needs of today have grown exponentially and we all understand why as has already been spoken. What I'd like to do is try to address some of the, what I would term, misinformation that is out there and share with you the measures that Duke Energy specifically is taking to guard against two of the top concerns that we all have. One is that data centers are going to come in and take all of our power and we're going to be dark or not able to grow in other sectors. The second thing is that it's going to drive our rates through the roof. I've heard stories in communities across the country as high as 200% increase in power rates. Well, I can assure you that's not going to happen in this area. As a regulated utility, our number one job is to keep the lights on and keep the price fair and competitive. And at Duke Energy, we're highly committed to that. And you can rest assured that our regulators, primarily South Carolina Public Service Commission, keep close tabs on all of that. We're in regular communication to ensure that the moves that we're considering are palatable for everyone and are within the guidelines that are laid down statewide. Every dollar that we spend is accounted for. Every generation facility we build goes through a tremendous amount of padding. It's a long, drawn-out process, as well it should be because it's important and there's a lot of money involved with building power generation facilities. As James mentioned earlier, of course, the Southeast, we're all blessed and Whether you think it's fortunately or unfortunately, the rest of the country has come to recognize that and they want to come and join us. So a lot of the growth that we're seeing, we're in the process of building new generation now. And in the coming seven to eight years, you'll see a lot more new generation put on the ground by Duke, whether that be combined cycle natural gas, fire, solar, lots and lots of solar. as well as extending the life on our nuclear facilities and even some new nuclear is on the horizon. But all of this growth, I mean the growth that we're seeing, while large industries or responsible or driving some of that. A lot of it really is the residential, the big box commercial, things like that. We tend to, I think as we drive down the road, we tend to neglect that or overlook it. A whole lot of houses can equal a data center. It's a simple way to put it. But we're preparing for growth while protecting reliability and we're working closely with policy makers. Again, the South Carolina Public Service Commission and already discussions, of course, going on with the state legislature. They will be addressing this in detail in the next session is my understanding. And we along with our peer utilities intend to be in the room and a part of that discussion. But again, in order to try to protect our existing customers from any financial impact or the liability impact, we've developed a process that has evolved over the last two or three years and quite honestly will probably continue to evolve for the next three, four years, however long this phase happens to last. But of course we do studies for prospective customers after a pretty good vetting process we put them through. At first we were taking requests from people that probably shouldn't be in a data center conversation to be quite honest. They were looking for looking for that pot of gold but they didn't know what the gold looked like i guess but first thing we do is if they're of a certain size we do charge them an entry fee just to pay for our engineers to do the studies because it is a very complex process it eats up a lot of time and a lot of manpower But after we complete the study, we present them with a report that gives us a good idea of, one, what the cost would be for us to build the facilities necessary, and secondly, the schedule, how long it would take us. nobody unless except for some of the small ones would get the ultimate amount of load that they're requesting from us uh not in the time frame that they want but we share with them what we can do and and how long it would take to do it and most have come to accept that it's ramp up proposition and you're looking at not getting full we have probably no power until 2029 or so which is generally acceptable by most of them, but ultimate loads probably not until 2032-ish. But after we get through that process, they have an opportunity to either sign an agreement with us, we call it a litter agreement, which basically gives us to go ahead to do the really detailed engineering and peel more layers of that onion back to further refine the cost and what the schedule would be. Something I think is very important that you note is when we present that letter, they have 30 days to sign it or they're kicked out of our queue. If they do sign it, they have 30 more days to make a significant cash deposit with us. I have dealt with several over the last three or so years. I've seen numbers as low as $5 million. I have seen numbers in excess of $100 million. And if they are serious and want to go forward, they have to make that payment within 30 more days or they're kicked out of the process. Once we get through the detailed engineering and it comes time to sign a permanent electric service agreement, we have put in much more stringent requirements than we would for regular manufacturers and the folks that we serve now. The minimum term for those larger ones is 15 years. The minimum billing demand is 75% of the contract megawatt level. If they don't use the 30% or 50%, they're going to pay us for 75% of it. Again, to protect our customer base from having to absorb the costs of what we've already put in place. Another one that I think is very important, particularly from the reliability of the worries about the grid going down, if they are graded in excess of 100 megawatts, which a lot of them, most of them honestly are, they have to be interruptible. for a number of years until we feel like we have adequate, have enough generation on the ground to support their needs as well as, of course, taking care of our existing customer base. They have two options. They can interrupt 50% of their load up to 100 hours per year, or they can interrupt 95% of the load up to 50 hours per year. That will be during the time when You know, it's a really cold winter morning or a really hot southern summer afternoon and maybe we've got some generation that was unscheduled but it's not available. We're not going to interrupt the people that are already here. We're not going to interrupt the people that are in this room. Those data centers are going to interrupt. We don't give them any in the mid-sentence.

We don't offer a rating. Excuse me, Mr. West, hold on a minute. I want to make sure I heard that correctly. You said we're not going to interrupt the people in this room. I agree with you 100% on that. But you said the data centers would be interrupted in that agreement you just discussed, correct? That is correct. Thank you.

After that, once we do sign that electric service agreement, they're going to put up more cash collateral. to guard against if, say that they shut down for some reason before the contract term has been fulfilled, that money will be for liquidated damages. Again, to protect our existing customer base from a potential issue. We have a lot of confidence in these new requirements that we have placed on people. And I'll tell you, the real data center people that I've had the opportunity to talk to don't blink an eye. They are fine with this. The others that are maybe not who we particularly would like to do business with, that's usually when they leave. And quite honestly, that's our desire at that point. So in closing, I just want to add that or repeat that they're not going to take all the power that we've got. We will not allow that to happen. Our regulators will not allow that to happen. And rates are not going to go up through the roof. Actually, studies that we have had done indicate that the amount of money that we make them pay towards the infrastructure in a particular generation Spreading that money across all of those kilowatt hours that they buy will actually help to hold the other ratepayers' costs down.

Council, do you have any questions or comments for Mr. West? If not, I have one question. Steve, recently in doing our due diligence, both staff and some council members, we visited, and you heard James mention this earlier, we visited the MATA facility in Aiken. Actually, they're building the third larger one. There are two there in place now. One of the things that I was surprised by, we learned in that visit that in order to get the capacity or the load that they needed, MATA paid for and built over 19 miles of transmission line to get to Aiken Electric Co-op. I was really very surprised that any company would be willing to bear the cost of 19 miles of transmission lines. So for those billion dollars, that's probably over 20, 21 million dollars. Am I close, Steve? Close. Today's cost is probably even more than that. But my question to you is, is that becoming a norm with other investor-owned utilities that are entertaining data centers?

It's my understanding that it is still. Of course, we've got friends in the industry all over the country and this big nut has been thrown at us. There's a lot of conversation with our peers. But yeah, and we have been commended by our peers and by the potential customers for the strategy and the process that we have put together. But again, as I mentioned earlier, that 19 miles of transmission line, if they were building that in Greenwood, South Carolina, they paid us for it too. Yes, sir.

Steve, I have a question real quick. You talked about the existence of Duke in North Carolina. Is there anything in particular that Duke has learned in North Carolina that, as far as lessons with these data centers, that you can carry over into other areas? I know one of the things I keep hearing is everybody keeps making them make the substantial investments and build outs and stuff, but is there anything else? I'm just curious.

A lot of the experience that we've had for the last 10 to 15 years, I mean, and it's all public info, Google and Facebook and Meta, all of those companies are up there and we serve them all. Those are more the older type data centers where it's really just storing information. It's not the artificial intelligence which has a lot higher power density per square foot. There were lessons learned there, but they weren't unexpected lessons. One thing that we did see there is they were much slower to ramp their loads up. Experts in the industry for the artificial intelligence things that we're seeing these demands for now is that they will reach that maximum a lot more quickly, or as quickly as we can allow them to. Okay, thank you. All right, thank you.

Thank you, Steve. If I heard you correctly, Duke is already building generation capacity to keep pace with growth in its service territory. That new generation is not because of any one data center. If a data center were to come into the Duke Energy Carolina's territory, Duke is regulatory obligated to maintain service to its existing customers and reserve capacity even after a data center comes to continue to grow the future customers that they would be obligated to serve. And that's through a regulatory process and then Duke has established its its own policy whereby that data center pays for the study to be done. A study can't be done until they know how much electric load and ramp schedule a project needs, so you can't study it before then. Data center pays for the study, they pay the deposit, and then they pay for any and all transmission upgrades, they pay for the on-site substation, and Duke has a policy placed to ensure that those costs aren't passed on to the customer. And it sounds like actually it could help stabilize rates because of the electric rates because of what is charged to those customers. That's one way that data centers can be powered, is through electricity. Induced capacity and reliability enable Greenwood County to compete for high electric demand of today's manufacturing and non-manufacturing projects, as does the excess volume of water available on a daily basis from Greenwood's CPW, which has increased after recent closure of legacy industry that consumed even larger volumes of water than a data center would. Next we ask, CPWU General Manager Jeff Meredith to come talk with us about the water capacity.

Mr. Chairman and members of the council, I want to thank you for allowing me time to come and talk with you this evening about this important issue. I know we've got a lot of concern in our community, so I'd like to try to address and share some insights from the local gas and water utility industry. So I'll be talking about gas and water while I'm up here. As a corporate member of the community and a longstanding member of the community, we've been in the business and serving our customers for over 100 years. we take very seriously the impact that development both residential and industrial has on the quality of life for those of us that call Greenwood home because most of us that work here in CPW also live in this community and so things that happen in this community are very important to us not just from a professional standpoint but also from a personal standpoint. I want to talk with you first about one of the major concerns that I've heard and that I've heard expressed from Steve also, but essentially it's that any large industrial user that we have is going to have a severe impact on our local infrastructure. I just want to let you know, as far as our water plant is concerned, we have a single water plant that we serve our community with. It's permitted for us to withdraw 55 million gallons a day of water from Lake Greenwood. The plant itself is designed to treat 33 million gallons a day of water, and we're currently averaging treating 9 to 10 million gallons a day. In the last several years, as Mr. Bateman has already alluded to, we've seen three industries close that resulted in a loss of treated water needed at the plant of approximately 2 million gallons. And just to give you some numbers, that equates to about 15,000 residential water customers, an average water customer. Just as another matter of information, the average water use of our top five industrial users is about 310,000 gallons a day, every day, which equates to about 2,200 residential water customers. Data centers that use the newer technology, which is the closed-loop system, require about 300,000 to 400,000 gallons to do an initial fill. Once you fill them up, that stays in that closed-loop system, much like James has already stated. It's kind of like a radiator. So every so often, you do have to add water back to it. But it's nothing close to what the emission field is. As I've said already, with this initial field, that's going to equate to about one day's use of our average industrial customer. So the water requirements are very, very minimum for modern day technology on data centers. So I think hearing some of those numbers should help you realize that we've got plenty of capacity from a water standpoint to meet the needs of data centers, even the old style data centers that take one to two million gallons a day. When we're running nine to 10 million gallons on a 33 million gallon plant, we still have plenty of capacity to serve those. But it's my understanding that most are going to the newer technology because of That's cost. Like anybody in the business, they want to limit their costs as much as they can. On the gas side, I want to talk to you a little bit about it. We currently have about 42% of our contracted capacity during peak conditions is being used. That means we have 58% capacity during peak conditions available to serve large industrial loads, residential loads, data centers, things of that nature. We have three delivery points with these capacity contracts in place, and our contracts vary monthly anywhere from 26,000 to 36,000 decatherms a day. On average, our sales volume in 2025, we had a minimum of 3,000 up to 15,000 decatherms a day. Plenty of capacity there. Just as I mentioned on the water side, with losing those three industrial customers, on the gas side, it was even more severe. We lost a little over 5,000 decathrons a day. That represents about 15% of our peak contract capacity that we have in place. And just to give you a residential gas customer equivalent, that equals about 45,000 gas residential customers. So as you can see, industry plays a very, very important role in our system, in our load models, in the way that we design our rigs. So one industrial customer can make up a huge amount of residential customers. I think, again, looking at these numbers, that kind of shows you that we do have the capacity to serve on the gas side. Another concern that I have heard and seen on Facebook a good bit, people are concerned about what's it going to do to their rates. Will it impact their rates? I've heard stories from other communities where rates went up. I can tell you in our situation, this is not the case. Most of the time when we have the industrial users, they help levelize the cost for all the rate classes because they're going to have a larger portion of the cost allocated to them through the volume allocation factor that we use. And so by doing that, that actually lowers or at least does negatively impact the rate that our residential customers will pay. I can also tell you that we are currently developing great structures that will ensure data centers pay their share of all costs to operate and maintain the system. As part of that structure, much like Duke Energy does, we will require the data centers to sign and take their pay agreement, which means that whether they use the gas or not, they'll have to pay for a certain percentage of gas volume, no matter what. And that way, that's going to provide a set amount of revenue for the company, which will help everybody that serves our company. In an effort for us to promote responsible growth of our utility system, Ringwood Super Heavy uses models to determine the adequacy of our system to serve existing and future loads. We work very closely with the economic development folks here in Ringwood. to allocate and include loads in those models that fall outside your typical growth model. Typically, you look at a growth model, you're looking at 1.5% to 2% year-over-year or something of that nature. When we know that we're dealing with And again, as James says, a lot of times we don't know what type load we're dealing with, what type of company, but we do know the quantity of load we're dealing with. And when we get some of those, we do add those into our model to make sure that our system can provide that. If we have any questions or if we get into more complex situations, then we use a consultant to actually help us run those models and look at particular situations. In the case of data centers, all of the cost for engineering studies, delivery point upgrades, distribution system upgrades, regulator stations, meter stations, all of that is borne by the data center and is required that they pay that before we're beginning to work. And so, you know, we do very simple. We sign letter agreements. For the engineering studies, they have to pay for those. And then as we move forward, we get into more of the contractual agreements where you get into the take or pay and you spell out the exact things that they're going to have to pay for. But we make sure if we ever get to that stage, which we have not gotten to that stage, but if we do, that the cost is not going to be borne by our existing customers. I think some probably in this room can tell that CPW over the last several years have implemented different fees and service type things instead of raising rates. And what we did is we looked at that and said, the people that are getting the service should pay for the service. Everybody on the entire system, if they're not getting that service, they shouldn't have to pay for that service. So we're following that same model with data centers. If the data center is what's getting the service, then the data center is who will need to pay for that service. So I hope that can help with any questions that you may have there. And really, just in closing, I just wanted to let you know that, you know, CPW is committed to our customers to provide them long-term service. And we think, by implementing measures that we've talked about here tonight, that we're going to be able to protect our customers from having to pay anything additional for these newer type loads that most of us are not used to dealing with. But we also recognize that we have to have industrial investment and facilities in Greenwood to be able to continue maintaining the level of service that we provide and trying to maintain that at a reasonable rate. We've got several regulatory requirements that we're going to have to look at and it's going to require substantial dollars. to the likes of which we've never seen as a company. And when we can be supportive and get industrial customers in to help bring that revenue up, that will help all of our customers, even in those areas of regulatory requirements that are not necessarily tied to large industrial buildings. I'll be happy to answer any questions that you may have.

Jeff, I want to stay on gas for just one minute, at least if I may. And I know exactly what you're talking about. You're about to get some federal legislation that's going to come down hard on your industry. I'm aware of that. The question I would ask you is, you've talked about that you have more than enough capacity to serve, whether it be data centers, manufacturing plants, whatever. You probably know, let's just take an average data center and if that data center were gas fired, how would that one entity stack up against your current gas customers?

There's no doubt, any data center, small, medium, or large, and as James has said, we really don't have the capacity to meet the very, very large data centers and don't have any desire for that. But the small or medium, if you're looking at a data center that, say, starts off at 5,000 decatherms a day, that's a very phase one type start. That essentially equals the three industries that we lost over the last several years. So it pretty much replaces those industries.

So that would balance out your lost revenue stream? On the gas side.

On the gas side. Not on the water side. We lost two million gallons a day of water.

Yes.

So you wouldn't get that back. On the gas side, you wouldn't. If you go up to, you know, where they're running, say, some 50 megawatt facility, that's equivalent to about 15,000 megatherms a day. Our system can handle that, providing firm delivery now without any additions or upgrades to the system needed. If you go above that to 100 megawatt facility, it's about 30,000 a day. When you get into the 30,000 a day, we have the capability from a delivery standpoint with some modifications, but we would need to do some work on the distribution side. When we get up into that level, we also have three different rates that we can provide. We have firm, that are interruptible, and we have what's called distribution on, which means we just transport the gas. We don't have to procure it. We don't have to buy capacity for it. We just have to make sure that the pipe's big enough to get it there to the customer. When we get into those upper ranges, we're actually designing that the customer has to go to that distribution only rate. So we're no longer responsible for the firm delivery of that gas. We're only responsible for transporting it across our system.

I appreciate that information, but myself being one of your gas customers, I guess my hope would be that if an interest like that came to Greenwood and was approved by this council, that that added revenue Speaking to that regulatory impact that you're about to have, which is going to be a significant financial impact from my knowledge, would it maybe help you to at least stabilize rates in the face of that? Is that a reasonable assumption?

Preliminary numbers, if you're looking at something of that nature, you know, because Part of my job as the general manager is to find revenue and part of finding revenue is being aware of what's in the market and knowing that large industrial loads, it doesn't even have to be a data center. Anything that's in that realm of what we're talking about, you know, two or three additional industries coming in. is how we've run these numbers. If we were able to replace what we've seen, you're talking about millions of dollars a year that could service that debt that we're going to have to issue to be able to make the improvements that we're going to have to make.

Well, thank you very much for that. Council, any other questions, comments from Mrs. Merriman? Thank you, Jim. Thank you.

Thank you again, Jeff. Understanding that a large gas customer can actually be beneficial to the system, not only does the supply exist, but can replace consumption and lost revenue. And then on the water side, where I had the, excuse me, the myth here about water, and Using all of the water, Jeff mentioned the one-time draw that could be 300,000, 400,000, 500,000, say it's 500,000 gallons a day. Jeff is telling you that's approximately 5% of one day's excess capacity that already exists in Greenwood CPW's water treatment plant from Lake Greenwood. So it's not drawing any more off the Lake Greenwood, lowering it, draining it. There's no water restrictions. I see that in other parts of the country. Water restrictions because of water consumption from different industries or even contaminated drinking water. They have an industrial user program. All of any new development has to meet CPW's water and gas design regulations. And that will be things like backflow prevention that prevent any contamination from coming back into the drinking water supply system. And I also have Tony Williamson from Greenwood Metropolitan District, who's a special purpose sewer district, that's working in the industrial areas in the county. Although Tony came up with sewer is a relatively minor consideration for for a data center because of the closed loop system. I want Tony to speak just generally about their capacity and their infrastructure and policies for new industry.

Mr. Chairman, Council, I appreciate the opportunity to discuss tonight how Greenwood Metropolitan District plans for growth and evaluates new development opportunities within Greenwood County. As the county considers potential zoning changes, I'd like to provide some perspective on how GMD approaches growth from a wastewater infrastructure standpoint. Growth comes in many forms, maybe residential subdivisions, commercial developments, manufacturing facilities, institutional users or data centers. Regardless of the type of development, our responsibility is the same. We determine whether adequate infrastructure and treatment capacity exists to serve that project while protecting existing customers and maintaining regulatory compliance with our state and federal requirements. Wastewater infrastructure is among some of the most expensive public infrastructure a community can construct and maintain. Treatment plants, pump stations, horse mounds, gravity sewer systems require significant capital investment and a long-term maintenance commitment. GMD relies on land use regulations, growth planning efforts, development patterns to help us guide infrastructure planning and and investment decisions. Land use regulations would add predictability regarding residential, commercial, and industrial growth, allowing us to focus resources where infrastructure can be provided in an efficient and sustainable way. How is that growth funded? GMD's financial structure Gamby thought of it as a three-legged show. Our user rates, they're billed monthly on metered wastewater consumption. And those provide primarily the day-to-day funding for operation and maintenance, staffing, equipment, chemicals, routine repairs. We do get some after-war tax money. property tax revenue from within the district boundary. This funds public infrastructure, trunk lines, pump stations, plant capacity expansions that serve the system as a whole. And capacity fees. Those are one-time fees paid by new users at the time of connection. These fees ensure that new development pays its proportional share of public infrastructure needed to serve it, protecting existing ratepayers from subsidizing growth. Capacity fees help balance the equity between our existing customers and new customers. Like we've heard earlier tonight, like many systems across the country, GMD's financial health is dependent upon maintaining a stable customer base, wastewater flow volume over which operating costs can be distributed. Over the past several years, GMD has experienced the loss of major wastewater flow contributors. While infrastructure, treatment facilities, staffing, regulatory requirements associated with operating those treatment systems remain largely unchanged, the revenue generated from those users has decreased. Over the last five years, we have seen approximately a 53% reduction in our industrial flow volume. Wastewater treatment systems have significant fixed costs. Our fixed costs are roughly 75% of our operation. Treatment plants must be staffed, operated, regardless of whether they're treating 8 million gallons of water a day or 12 million gallons of water a day. For that reason, responsible growth is important to the long-term financial sustainability of the system. New residential, commercial, industrial development helps reduce lost flow, or helps replace lost flow, better utilizing existing infrastructure investments, and spreads that operating cost over a larger customer base, helping stabilize user rates over the long term. As a special purpose district, our enabling legislation does not authorize us to install wastewater collection lines on private property. Instead, developers are responsible for designing, constructing, at their own cost, the collection infrastructure necessary to serve their developers. Any outside improvements required solely for the proposed development are generally responsible to the developer also. Once that infrastructure has been constructed to our standards, inspected and tested by us, and accepted, then that can be transferred to GMD for ownership and maintenance. Currently, GMD operates two wastewater treatment plants with a combined permitted capacity of 14.2 million gallons per day. Today, approximately 3.5 million gallons of treatment capacity remains available for future growth. This represents roughly one quarter of our permitted capacity and positions GMD to accommodate a variety of future residential, commercial, and industrial projects. Before we go much any further, it might be a good opportunity to talk to you a little bit about the wastewater treatment plant process. GMD's wastewater treatment plants are fundamentally a biological process. The treatment plants use naturally occurring microorganisms to break down organic matter and nutrients from wastewater before it is safely returned to the environment. The process generally includes preliminary treatment, where screens and grid chambers remove large solids, rags, sand, and debris that could damage downstream equipment. Biological treatment, where wastewater enters aeration basins, where billions of beneficial microorganisms consume organic material and nutrients. These microorganisms convert the pollutants into biomass, carbon dioxide, and water. Clarification then separates those microorganisms from the treated wastewater, forcing the microorganisms to return to be reused in the treatment process. The treated water is then disinfected, in GMD's case it's disinfected with ultraviolet light. It is monitored to ensure compliance, and then it is safely discharged back into the environment. Because wastewater treatment relies heavily on biological activity, the characteristics of the wastewater entering the treatment plant are just as important as the volumes being received. In addition, treatment plant treatment capacity is not determined solely by the size of the treatment plant or the number of gallons it can process each day. GMD operates under a National Polluter Discharge Permit that establishes permits for pollutants that may be discharged to the receiving waters. Those permits are based in part on the assimilative capacity of the stream, meaning the ability of the streams to safely absorb and process the treated effluent while maintaining state water quality standards. As a result of the new development, GMD must consider not only hydraulic capacity and the treatment process capability, but also the potential impact for the additional pollutant loading may have on permit compliance and on the long-term health of the receiving waters. For that reason, treatment capacity is not simply a measure in gallons per day. Biological treatment capacity, pollutant loading, permit limitations, receiving stream, and segmented capacity are all important factors that we evaluate while we look to accommodate future growth in the system. Evaluating new development, we look at two primary factors, wastewater volume and wastewater characteristics. We evaluate average daily flow, maximum daily flow, peak flow conditions, future expansion plans. For wastewater characteristics, we look at the quality and the characteristics of the wastewater being discharged. Potential considerations include the organic material, the biological activity, suspended solids, nutrients. Since our treatment plant depends heavily on biological activity, certain chemicals or waste streams can negatively impact performance if not properly managed. Data centers are one of the examples of future customers within GMD's perspective on data centers, or we evaluate them the same way that we evaluate any other development. We examine projected flows, wastewater characteristics, available infrastructure capacity, and the long-term impacts on the wastewater system. Data center wastewater demands can vary significantly depending on the cooling technologies and operation and design. As Jeff mentioned earlier, Grumman Metro has also seen that approximate 2 million gallon a day reduction in flows from the industrial closing. From what we understand about the data centers, they would accommodate or replace about 5% of that lost wastewater flow from those legacy industries. GMD spent decades of planning, investing, building infrastructure to support Greenwood County's growth. We've invested hundreds of millions of dollars in waste water infrastructure over the decades. Our role is not to determine what types of development should occur within the county. It is our role to ensure that when growth occurs, waste water infrastructure and treatment capacity is available to service safely, reliably, and in compliance with all of the core requirements.

We can't answer any questions. tony thank you so much council any questions comments agreement metro division if not thank you

Thank you very much for the explanation of the wastewater treatment system, Tony. You heard Tony talk about the regulatory requirements for Metro to monitor its discharge after treatment back into the receiving waters and their permit requirements to do so. It's important to understand that any discharge from a data center or any other type of industry must go into a sewer collection system and cannot be direct discharged into a stream or lake, and that is a requirement of the South Carolina Department of Environmental Services. So even though it could just be restrooms, break rooms, and irrigation, waste water discharge for a data center using a closed-loop system that doesn't discharge any processed water, all of that flow would still have to go through a sewer collection system. I think a common theme that you've heard from all of our utility partners is the forecasting and planning that they do for growth, regardless of if there's an industrial project coming or not. They factor that in, but they don't wait on a project to study their system and make sure they're keeping pace with development. However, they can't proceed with a project-specific study until they know that project's requirements. No developer will build without a utility verification letter. For residential, commercial, industrial, they're asking each one of these utilities for a quote-unquote will serve letter based on the parameters they provided that utility and after the project-specific study has been done. But if the notion persists that utilities could overcommit at the expense of their customers and agreement residents because data centers are such a lucrative business, then please understand that the proposed text amendment provides the county oversight of that utility verification process where currently none exist for the county. Our utility partners would not overextend themselves in this manner. You've heard them speak to that. Reputation aside, regulatory requirements prevent them from doing so. But without adopting the standards in the text amendment before you tonight, it's the only way for the county to oversee the process. Otherwise, strictly between the utility and the developer or the company, the county wouldn't see that letter as a part of issuing a conditional use permit. The other thing the Texas Amendment does is set the standards for noise and for light. This was outlined in the conditions that Ron presented. There's also some misconceptions around noise and light. There certainly could be data centers in other parts of the country that are causing noise and light pollution. Some of those are using diesel generators. diesel generators use combustion engines and mechanical parts that produce noise that without any mitigation can be loud without setbacks requiring a certain distance from neighboring property can enhance the volume of those generators however there are measures that can be installed on backup diesel generators to mitigate emissions and noise many times however it is not because it's more costly to do so So that's an important protection to put in. And there are sound enclosures that can reduce the noise around that equipment as well. We talked about some of the trends in the technology that data centers of old versus present are using. And what is becoming more prevalent is a move from diesel generators to linear generators or fuel cell technology. These are much cleaner alternatives to gas turbine or gas power data center, which much lower emissions and much lower decibel levels that when placed as far away from the property line as proposed would not be nearly as noticeable. And also, as Rob outlined, the construction noise mitigation plan including barriers, equipment staging, daytime hours of construction operations would be submitted in pre-construction plans. prior to the issuance of a conditional use permit. Then there's a post-construction study and there's continuous monitoring and reporting of the decibel levels and of the lumens to ensure compliance with noise and light standards in the proposed text amendment for Greenwood. So when you read that text amendment that's been made publicly available, what does 60 decibels sound like? And what does one tenth of a foot candle look like? And a foot candle, I looked this up, is the equivalent of one lit candle where you were standing. So we're saying a tenth of the light of one candle where you're standing is being cast down onto the ground. I have several examples, just supposed to be representative of places that people would recognize in Greenwood. What won't it look like? for Shadowwood that is directly behind the Catholic Church, and you see Lowe's in the distance. We're all familiar with this corridor, but you have a religious establishment, you have a retail establishment that borders right up to a residential neighborhood. This reading, if you can't see it, it's about 135 lumens. This is standing directly underneath a street light. We're still there because it is on the property line of the residence. It isn't as close as you can get to a residence. I'll show you where Approximately I was standing, it's the red dot on the map on the right. This is the street light standing underneath and you can see a residence in the distance and you can see their windows with very little buffer in between because there are no requirements there. This is not what a data center would look like when there's concerns about light pollution. I can tell you that .1 foot candle would be more than 1,000 times dimmer than what you see here. Here's an industrial example. And this is, you're going, of course, those are designed and built off the current industrial zoning requirements. And we'll talk about the difference that you would see here. This is North Greenwood Industrial Park, the county's first speculative building. And this is as far north on that property line as you can get without going on the residential property. It won't look like this. Although the lights are aimed at the ground, they are shielded, that verbiage is in the text amendment, and they are not set on the property line like the last example, this reading is a tenth of a foot candle. But the reason why that measurement doesn't correspond to the visual that you would expect to these conditions is because there's no buffering. You're not looking through a berm or trees and the buffering and the setback that's going to be required for a data center. Again, this is compliant in an industrial use. That red dot is where I was standing on the edge of the woods and you can see a residence on the other side of those woods. However, that photograph is not looking through those woods to buffer that light. It will not look like that. What could it look like? I can't give you an exact picture. This is This is standing on Athens Court on Highway 25, entrance to the former Mulberry Mobile Home Park. Both of these pictures are actually looking at the Eaton facility in Hodges. This is a more representative example of looking through a natural vegetative buffer. Looking through the vine trees, what does the Eaton facility look like? we all take pictures with our iphone we know at night time it light adjust it brightens the screen i'll tell you that on the left that's brightened what it looks like standing there in person was on the right much darker specks of light through the trees and that didn't read a tenth of a foot candle because there was no light cast on the ground where i was standing from that facility so more representative example looking through the trees Red dot on the map on the left is approximately where I was standing. I think it's also important to look at the surroundings. Instead of just looking at commercial establishments, industrial establishments, what do residences give off as far as lighting? Turn around and look at the residents on the other side of Athens Court from Eaton and you see light through the trees. Look across Highway 25 at the residents across from Athens Court and you see light emitted from that residence. You see street lights. So those are the surroundings in that area. in an industrially zoned area. Then, how does it sound? I have video recordings of this, a point of this, to show people where we're standing, what's the decibel reading, what could it sound like? Unfortunately, I couldn't embed videos here for everyone to hear, but you would be able to replicate this. Go see it and hear it for yourself. This is standing around the public right-of-way at the employee entrance to the facility, and that is just over 60 decibels. Sounds like the HVAC unit running at your house, but that's adjacent to the road. So again, not a perfect example of what a data center might sound like. for comparison when you're on fairway court behind publics but they also have chillers obviously for refrigeration and groceries it's approximately 50 decibels that's on the other side of some trees and the other side of a fence on fairway court residential areas approximately 50 so somewhere between there is the 60 decibel level is equivalent to the volume of a normal conversation if i had that decibel reader standing here at the podium listening to myself, it'd be approximately 50 to 60 decibels. So that's how it could sound. To give some examples to what is in this text amendment. There is also a misconception that there are limited local benefits. The data centers over-consume and under-contribute to a community. You've heard how capable Greenwood is to support a data center. You've heard the clarity that it is providing in the text amendment. It also wants you to understand the credibility of the potential benefits Should the ground rules be established for a data center to be constructed meeting those requirements? And the first thing I'm going to ask the Deputy County Manager of Finance to speak on is the potential tax implication of a data center development. Meta and Aiken has been referenced. Google's name is mentioned there constructing two campuses in Dorchester. Meta committed $800 million in Aiken. Google committed $9 billion in Dorchester. So just picking a point in between those two investments, Stephanie is going to talk to you about a hypothetical $5 billion investment and what that would mean.

Thank you, James. There's a lot of numbers on this sheet and I'm not going to read them all to you. But I do have this information available. As James said, I was asked to use an estimated $5 billion investment. This would be at a 4% assessment ratio. And so we have, if this was done as a philo, it would be a decision that would be made on how that distribution was done. So I did this a couple of different ways. But at the baseline, it would generate 53, $0.48 million in property taxes. Because this would have to be in a multi-county business park, we would have a 0.01% fee that goes to our partner county in Newberry of just over $53,000. And then if we followed our normal distribution, which is to take each of our millage rates and determine that pro rata share that each millage has. The county operated fund would generate or receive about $12.2 million, the special funds $1.7 and the capital funds $700,000. Our vocational facility, which is run by School District 50 but shared by all of the districts, would receive 1.8 million. Piedmont Technical College would receive just over a million. Our county library, 1.3 million. And if a data center was located in District 50, they would receive 26 million. Metro sewer would receive almost 600,000 for operations. And then we have 39 mills, and for those that aren't familiar with that, it's a state mandated millage that we collect for our schools. The first three mills of that goes to the smallest poorest district, which is District 51. And then the rest is separated out based on their student population. So all three schools together would recognize almost $7.8 million. If we were to take $10 million off the top to be used for other economic development projects, then you would see all of those corresponding funds go down by various amounts. And then I ran one more proposal where we would actually distribute the money to all three school districts. So regardless of where the project was located, all three school districts would receive about $8.7 million and all the other entities would receive the amounts I previously discussed. This is assuming an investment was made completely in the first year. We know that it doesn't work that way. And then in addition to that, as property is put in, it's also depreciating, it lowers values, but then new investments were made. So this is just one way to look at that. We would have to know the individual data center's specific plans, how they depreciate their property to be able to fully give an example of what this would be. So this is just an estimate and something to get an idea of the impact on our entities. So just to put it in perspective for the county, the county millage which includes the general fund, capital assets, special appropriations, the library and Piedmont Technical College, that total millage rate is 85.7 mills. About 75% of the homes that are in our community have a taxable value of $200,000 or less. And so I use that just to show a $200,000 home is currently paying $685.60 toward county millage. One mill generates about $229,000 under our county millage. And so if we were to trade and say, well, we like that idea of having that kind of revenue, how could we generate it without a data center? We would have to have 24,975 new homes built in Greenwood County that would be valued at about $200,000 a piece. if we wanted to say well we don't want that but how can we generate money without adding a bunch of homes that equivalent to what the data center could generate would be a 75 mil tax increase which would be a 600 increase for for our general homeowners our commercial property is assessed at a higher rate About 81% of the commercial properties in Greenwood County have a taxable value of less than $100,000. So taking that same example of how else we generate it, if we did a 75 mil tax increase, which we of course can't do due to limitations and wouldn't do, but that would be $450 increase on those commercial properties. To put it in further perspective, we have approximately 17,400 single-family homes now. If we eventually added almost 25,000 homes to generate these kinds of revenues, that would be 143% increase in our single-family homes. And finally, just to show what the potential financial impact could be, this is just looking at the current tax revenue budget for some of these areas that could potentially be impacted. Within the county operating, we currently are generating about $16.8 billion in tax revenue. and we're looking at an increase of 14.7 million dollars. The vocational facility, school facility, we're currently generating 2.1 million and this would add another 1.8. Piedmont Technical College, 2.1 now, an increase of just over a million dollars. Our library is generating 2.3 million and would see an increase of about 1.3 Again, taking the school districts, assuming if we decided to do an equal allocation to all three of those, they would each see 8.7 million. For District 50, they currently generate 27.4. For District 51, currently generate 3.7, so a significant increase for District 51. District 52 at 6.6 million now would over double their tax revenue. And then Metro sewer this year intends to generate 326,000 for operating. And their increase would go to almost 600,000. And in that far right column, I've just equated that to the millage increase that would be required for each of those particular areas. Significant increases, of course, especially for District 51 and District 52, which are our smaller school districts. I'll be happy to answer any questions that you might have. I know that's a lot of data and a lot of numbers.

And a lot of work. Thank you so much. Do you still have counseling questions or comments?

Can you repeat how much Nathan, that invested in Nathan? Because these numbers were based on a $5 billion investment. How much was invested in Nathan by then?

Do we recall that? I don't recall that number personally.

I'm sorry, how much? It is 800, you're right, $800 million. So the metal was $800 billion and this was $5 billion. Google in Dorchester is $9 billion. So the point in between, we read it on Bible, it was $4, $6. Illustrated taxes.

Counsel, any questions or comments on this? Thank you, Stephanie.

yes thank you thank you stephanie um and thanks for the question uh reiterating information was 800 million dollars in investment commitment by meta and again nine billion for anyone who didn't hear for google and dorchester so for this illustrative purpose we just picked a five million dollar number and ran the numbers off of our normal tax distributions what those benefits look like and then What are several different scenarios, since that would be at the discretion of county council, for any industry and a fee in lieu of tax agreement to distribute those revenues. And with the significance of those revenues, it could open up a lot of possibilities, particularly for our school districts. And while data centers such as Meta and Aiken and Google and Dorchester are investing directly in educational opportunities for students in those communities, sponsoring classroom space, sponsoring robotics teams, implementing new educational curriculum to gain skills in artificial intelligence, operating a data center, for those students, it could directly impact very significantly the budgets for our school districts. And we have representatives from our school districts here. As opposed to just hearing the numbers, I wanted you to hear directly from them about how impactful that would be when you talk about as much as tripling the District 51's budget or doubling District 52's budget for the county received tax collections for that portion of their funding. So Dr. Crockett from District 51 and Dr. Beth Taylor from District 52, you are here to speak and I'd invite them to talk about why that would be meaningful for their respective districts.

And while Dr. Taylor's coming forward, for those of you in the audience, as soon as educators speak, we're going to take a 10-minute break, bathroom break if you need it, stretch your legs, whatever, because we're going to be here with public comment for a while tonight. Dr. Taylor, thank you for being here.

Thank you for having me. I greatly appreciate it. As a rural school district, We recognize the importance of exploring opportunities that strengthen our local economy and provide long-term benefits for students, family, and our community. One of the most significant potential benefits of the data center development is the expansion of local tax rates and local tax base. Additional revenue could support investments in school safety. technology, facility improvements, workforce development programs, and student services without increasing the burden to local taxpayers. This opportunity is especially meaningful given the economic changes our town has experienced over the last few years. Many of the industries and legacy companies that once contributed significantly to our tax base are no longer here. Responsible economic development can help replace lost revenue and support essential public services, including education. Beyond financial benefits, data centers may also create opportunities for partnerships for STEM, cybersecurity, informational technology, engineering, and workforce development. These collaborations can help prepare students for high demand careers while providing access to internships, mentorships, scholarships, grants, and other educational resources. From an educational perspective, data centers present opportunities worth exploring. not only as a source of long-term investment in our community, but also as a way to help prepare students for the careers of tomorrow. Thank you for your time, your leadership, and your commitment to Greenwood County.

Council, any questions or comments for Dr. Taylor? Thank you, Dr. Taylor. Thank you, Dr. Taylor.

Dr. Crockett? good evening council it's good to see you and thanks for this opportunity to be here and just probably one of the most important things i can say is and share my appreciation for the job that you do the dedication and a lot of hours that you're putting into these types of decisions um i simply just like to to make mention that our town's kind of went through something like this before years ago there was nathaniel dial senator dial at the time i proposed that he would bring one of the largest industries into our town And so what he had done was proposed miles of railroad and access to the Saluda and brought Regal Mill to our town. And that propelled prosperity into our town like never before. Soon after, they had built one of the most sophisticated and state-of-the-art buildings the state had ever seen in Ware-Scholes High School. And a hundred years later, that building is still serving students today. Recently, the State Revenue and Fiscal Affairs They create a report. It's called the Indicator of Taxpayer Ability. They rank all districts across the state. And they view what is their ability for their taxpayers to support the local districts. In fact, of course, unfortunately our district, despite our increasing academic performance and our higher teacher retention rates, We've noticed that not only are we the lowest in Greenwood County, but also in the state as a whole. So there is an incredible need for mechanisms to be in place. We saw the loss of our mill. We saw the huge impact that it had on our system. Clearly our biggest need is for capital improvements and infrastructure. And we're proud of our three districts. They're climbing up the ranks in academic performance in the state, and it's something that we're very, very proud of. But there's so much more that needs to be done. This clearly could present a mechanism for additional support to come in to help with those capital improvements and to offer so much more than what we want to offer our students. So I'm going to end the same way that I started. Again, thank you for your appreciation. You're doing your homework. You've met with all the experts that are here. And I appreciate listening to all of our residents. So I simply just want to pass along my appreciation and thank you for your time this evening.

Council, any questions or comments for Dr. Crockett? Dr. Crockett, I have a comment. You and I have had many conversations. Your district's sitting squarely in the middle of my district, my county council district, my council member to my right, a graduate of Ware-Scholes High School. But I personally am always going to do what I can do to help your school district. The fact that you're the lowest student in the state, you deserve better. You deserve better. I'm always amazed with the outcomes that Ware-Scholes High School produces with the limited resources that you have. But it speaks not only to your passion and commitment, but that of your staff. So thank you for that, and hopefully as we move forward with economic development in Greenwood County, hopefully we can do better for you. Thank you, sir. I appreciate your time. Thank you.

Thank you to Dr. Taylor and Dr. Crockett. I also have a statement from Mr. Goodwin that I'd be remiss in not reading at the time to prepare. He regretted that he cannot be here this evening. He was going to join his colleagues and speak for Greenwood School District 50 and the opportunities to present for them. He had a brief schedule of appointment. In the absence of time, I'm going to paraphrase. His comments will be in the meeting minutes verbatim. But Mr. Goodwin said that from an educational perspective, the project offers the proposed opportunities to positively impact our students, staff, and community. However, before taking a position, he believes it's essential to continue to listen to the community, review available information, and understand the potential benefits and challenges. and District 50's commitment is to making informed decisions in the best interest of the students and the community. Coming from Northern Virginia, I think that Mr. Goodwin, known as the Land Data Center, I think that Mr. Goodwin has a unique perspective to offer on positive or negative benefits, positive benefits or any negatives that he saw from data centers in his previous experience there. So at this point, I wasn't able to do this tonight, but I appreciate him sharing the facility that our districts share. I also want to have Dr. Rivers come forward who sees students from each of these three districts trickle through and come to the college and offer support for preparing students for industry and educational opportunities and employment. Dr. Rivers.

All right, Hope Rivers, president of Piedmont Technical College. Let me just say that the college has a long-standing relationship with Greenwood County, and we are so appreciative of all the support we've had throughout the years. Together, we have been able to advance in economic development, certainly working closely with James and making sure that the students that come to our college have an opportunity to go right to work. It's in that same spirit that the college is deeply appreciative of the opportunity to collaborate with businesses and investments that come into the county. Whether it is a data center or an advanced manufacturer or any other type of employer, Piedmont Tech stands ready, willing and able to prepare the students for the jobs that will be available in Greenwood County. The college can tailor its curriculum and its training to the companies that are coming into the county. This responsiveness provides the skills and the talent pipeline needed for the various opportunities that are being presented. The benefits of this support extend well beyond the businesses themselves. Each new investment into Greenwood County creates opportunities for residents to build careers, advance their training, and enhance long-term upward mobility. Again, I just want to end with the fact, I know that we've been here a long time, that Piedmont Tech stands ready to partner as needed to turn any new investment into the county, into opportunities for individuals to be able to go to work. That is what we do. That is what we will continue to do. So we appreciate you and thank you very much. Thank you, Janice.

Thank you, Dr. Rivers. Thank you, Dr. Rivers. Council, any questions or comments for Dr. Rivers before she sits down? Thank you. Dr. Rivers, thank you for being here. Folks, let's take a 10-minute break. It's roughly 7.45. Let's take a 10-minute stretch of legs, go to the restroom if needed. We'll reconvene at 7.55. Thank you.

You can play with those if you take the sleeves.

Ladies and gentlemen, we will resume our Resumption of Ordinance 2026-19. What I would ask if you were here to see In favor of this ordinance, I would ask you to come to either of the podiums in the front. State your name and address on the record. You'll have three minutes to speak. As we go through this process, if there are a number of people, it might be more expeditious if you would just line up behind the podiums, just one at a time, certainly if you need to stay in your seats. and don't care to stand, that's fine, but we're going to be here a long time tonight. So I would ask again, Ordinance 2026-19, if there's anyone else here that wants to speak in favor of this ordinance, please come forward and speak. State your name and address of the record. Yes, sir.

My name's William Leslie. My address is 108 Gunnery Court West 96. Thank you, sir. I don't know whether I'm for it or against it. But on four restrictions, as I was sharing with Jeff, the economic development guy, all of the information that was presented tonight was very insightful and very informative, and I thank all the speakers for that. Thank you, sir. However, it was presented in a positive light based on restrictions around closed-loop systems, around either sound suppression for diesel generators or new technology generators. However, my understanding of the text that is in front of you all for approval or not tonight or in the future, does not have any of those restrictions in it. So my suggestion is that if there are going to be rules put in place around data centers that the reality of those restrictions align with the information that was presented tonight. So there's not 500,000 gallons a day of water used. It's a 500,000 gallon one-time draw for a closed-loop system. and or you know a maximum amount of water that can be used a day based on capacity of the infrastructure that's in place so number one number two i'm curious how the setbacks were set were determined because 100 feet 200 feet from school is is not very far so i don't know you know what was what research was done around the specific setbacks that was not addressed tonight but i would just I believe that there should be restrictions put in place, but I'm not sure that the text aligns with the information that was submitted to the public tonight.

All good points. Mr. Wessels, thank you for your comment. Let's take your name and address from the record, please, sir. Austin Smith.

I live at 2207 Cambridge Avenue East. Piggybacking off him of, you know, in favor of restrictions. Two incidences that I think y'all should look at is in Georgia. Fayette Field, Georgia, they found that one of the data centers had built a pipeline into the city's water without ever notifying the city. And for four months, they took water without ever paying for it in an amount of about 30 million gallons of water used by that data center and it resulted in low pressure amongst the residents within that city. And then in Colwood County, Georgia, 34 residences are being removed from their homes with the use of eminent domain because a data center wants to build power lines for itself so it's not the data center being built that is resulting in eminent domain being used it is the data center requiring more power lines that are resulting in 34 residents losing their homes because of the increased use of power by that data center so when writing restrictions and looking at more restrictions for data centers i would definitely look at those two incidences within the state of georgia fayetteville georgia and coahueta county georgia How do you spell that, Mr. Smith? C-O-W-E-T-A, I believe is the correct spelling.

Thank you, sir. Thank you. Appreciate it. Now, let me say, I ask for any speaking in favor of this ordinance, but if there are none other speaking in favor and you know you're speaking in opposition, just tell me that.

I believe I'm speaking in favor, but I think the ordinance needs to be amended from what it is right now before I would be comfortable saying I am in favor of it.

I'm not sure. My name is Colleen Duffy.

I live at 110 Patriot Point Court in 96. I'm not sure how much research went into the restrictions that have been put forward regarding setbacks, regarding noise, regarding light, regarding water. But a few things did jump out at me because if you do a simple Google search about data centers in other parts of the country or if you read the news or if you watch the news, you see the impact that data centers are having on people's lives, whether it's low water pressure, dirty water, whether it's an incessant high-pitched hum that they can't escape. And so I think some of the restrictions that are in the text amendment are not strong enough. Like Mr. Leslie said, the 100 foot setback, I'm not sure where that came from. I have watched on the news and read articles about people who live a half a mile away from data centers and the home is still high pitched and incessant and intrusive even inside people's homes. We all experienced the great cicada invasion and we got used to that high-pitched hum over the course of a summer season. Some people learned to ignore it. Some people who work outside for a living really had a problem with that and I think the magnitude of a data center will be much more than that. I really came here after watching the Joint Planning Commission meeting online thinking that this would be more of an informative meeting and it did very much come across like a sales pitch for a data center. Everyone lined up was prepared to sell this to the public which you are aware that the public that attended that meeting was definitely in favor of a moratorium on data centers until further study on what needs to be put in place is done. That goes to where did these kind of things that you put in the text amendment come from what other data centers were used as a benchmark for those restrictions we've been told about the closed-loop system being better but we're not assured that closed-loop system would be the one coming here it could be an open system that's going to use much more water we are told that a diesel system is very noisy but these other systems are very much quieter but we're not sure that we're not going to get a diesel system here i'm not sure why duke and cpw are of the mindset that they are much more unique able to handle a data center than other places around the country who have had significant problems with having to have downtime with users, having low pressure, having dirty water, having people's wells run dry.

Ms. Stuckman, I have to cut you off. You've exceeded your time. But let me say this. I'm disappointed that you think this was a sales pitch. Our goal here tonight was for this to be an education.

was to be an educational session and that's why we wanted to address water power all of those things but thank you for your comments next please I'm Rebecca Rudolph I live at 1422 Cambridge Avenue East I'm in favor of having an amendment to the ordinance for data centers I do agree with some of these people that some of the parameters are incorrect. I did a lot of research on this pro and con. What I found was most of the results were con. But listening to the speakers tonight, if their promises are true from the utility companies, it could be a benefit to the city in that respect. But will they stick to their word? I researched buffer zones. This is the one thing that stuck out to me that was not suitable to me for the presentation because I pulled up a role model used by the nation on data centers for buffer zones. It was put out by fllaw.com and sierraclub.org. But they recommended one mile buffer zone of trees and shrubbery around all data centers. One mile to be between the data center and any residential or any other business. And that was what the model had encouraged. And this has shortcomings. I think the amendment needs to be amended in that respect. Another issue that I didn't see brought up was liability. If it's an AI data center, AI is known for fraud. I mean, look at all the imitation, everything out there. You don't know what's real, what's not. It's getting to the point where you can't even go into a courtroom and see a video and know if that's a legitimate video or not. So you got lawsuits that are going to be involved with these data centers. You got breaches involved with data centers. Are there any contractual agreements with the city or county that ties them into the data center that could create a huge liability for our city or county where we would lose everything? This is something else that needs to be addressed in the amendment is a liability clause, which I didn't see in here. Maybe I missed it, but I didn't see one. And basically, you know, I came in here totally against a data center. But listening to the promises that were given, like I said, if they're true, and then keep up with them and don't change minds by, oh, this happened. then I'm okay with a data center placed in the right place. I'm tired of seeing all of our forests cut down. I'm tired of seeing farmland taken for all this overbuilding of houses, subdivisions, apartment complexes. I mean, when I bought my property, I had 200 acres of woods behind me and 200 acres of woods in front of me, and now that's all gone. You know, and the aesthetics of what I bought my property for has divided my property and this can happen to the owners of property around the data center. This all has to be taken into consideration as well as I don't want to see them get huge tax credits that are passed on to taxpayers. There should be some clause in there about

limitation on the tax credit you've exceeded your time but thank you and you made some points and i don't think there is a um the clause you mentioned so we'll take that into consideration thank you ma'am thank you name and address please my name is sean duffy i live at 110 patriot point court in 96.

And I am for having an amendment, but I think this amendment is totally weak. And everything we saw today was the sunny side of the street. Everything's wonderful. We've got to raise all this money. It's going to be great. But I would ask the people here, do you think this was, I felt like I walked into a sales pitch for big data was paying for everyone to speak here. Now, does people here think that this was a gross sin?

Mr. Duffy, let me stop you right now. You address me and this council. You don't address the crowd. So we're not going to have a bunch of theatrics. You address the council. Okay.

I believe that this was a very one-sided meeting, that every PowerPoint was, this is wonderful, we're going to raise all this money, Well, if you look at Spartanburg, which is a much bigger city, they have a data center that is in all kind of trouble. They're using half a million gallons of water per day. There's no guarantee that that will not happen here. I live on Lake Greenwood, very proud to live on Lake Greenwood, but I can hear a flea fart across the lake. I can hear cars from seven miles away on chapels. If anything is built near Lake Greenwood, that sound is going to reverberate across the entire lake. We just had a fish kill that no one could ever explain. We don't want the same issues with dirty water going into the lake, using up our valuable resources. Everything here I thought was very one-sided, and the amendment does not go far enough. It needs to be much clearer. If there is going to be a data center, they have to meet all the rules and regulations. And I think people here feel that this was too much of a sales pitch for data and not enough for the community. Thank you.

Thank you, members of the council, chairman. What I have to say is about seven minutes. So I don't know if I can get those parameters or not. I do have some information about the state laws that I wanted to mention in addition to talking about the actual ordinance. So I respectfully ask for seven minutes, but if I can't get it, I will. Out of respect for your position, I represent you for seven minutes. Thank you, sir. First of all, I do want to thank you for your service. I feel like all of you are people I can call. I think you can call me. I think we have a good relationship for the benefit of Greenwood. And I appreciate that. And I appreciate those relationships that you have developed with me. And I certainly support economic development in every way. I've always been for the Commerce Department and everything else and increasing the school districts and all that. Tonight, I'm just speaking here not only as a state representative, but as a resident for 60 years and four generations of my family here. And let me say first of all, I'm not against data centers. I'm for data centers. We need our data centers for national security. President Trump, his White House has been on the Zoom with us and the State House and explained how important it is. We're competing with China, we're competing with our AI, and that's a large part of why we need these data centers. But, you know, and I just want to say that the same issues that we're hearing here tonight are being debated on the state level. So we've got a bill in the Senate that's way more restrictive than this ordinance is, you know, and it's about eight pages long. And it's got a lot of restrictions, but the first thing it says is we want to encourage data centers in places like the Savannah Riverside. We want them to be in brownfield areas where we already have environmental issues, so there's no question. Savannah Riverside's been identified by the federal government as a great place for data centers, and they're planning on leasing 300-something square miles in South Carolina for data centers. So that place is almost as big as Greenwood County, the whole county. So there's plenty of places for them there, and that's where the Senate is headed. The House of Representatives has a different bill, and it's a moratorium for two years on data centers because they want to be able to understand the impacts that are really happening out there. And I know that the big power people will have input into that. I know that everybody will. And there's a lot of proposals. So you're struggling with the same things that we are in our state. And really the issue before us tonight is whether data centers are appropriate in a county like Greenwood County. And so we're already having problems in our state with electricity, with having enough power. We had to pass an energy bill to enable utilities to do more and give us more power because we're running out of power in South Carolina. Duke Powers told us that. The guy here tonight, I'm sure he could tell you that we've got to facilitate more energy. So they're already having problems keeping up with the demand. So, you know, this is an issue. And, you know, I would just say that across the state, the nation, everywhere, they are putting moratoriums on these data centers. Now the problem is they need to go in the right place and so I think there are solutions for that in our state and it may not involve Greenwood County and if even if we were okay with the data centers that we've talked about tonight the thing This ordinance is what I would call a little bit loose. I'm in the legal field, so I can read it and I understand it. I've compared it with other ordinances around the nation. And it places, although we've talked about meaningful limits on water consumption, it doesn't really address that. Although we've talked about limits on electrical demand, the ordinance itself doesn't address that. The ordinance doesn't have any cap on the size of the facility. So even though we talked about small and medium tonight, the ordinance doesn't do that. The ordinance permits data centers in rural development districts, which is, that's a very rare thing. I couldn't find an ordinance anywhere that did that. They're all in heavy industrial. and uh you know the ordinance doesn't address some of the noise concerns most of the ordinances i've seen have a thousand foot setback uh not not just 200. so these you know these aren't just minor details i think they're very important and it's worth studying and uh i would just say that you know our comprehensive plan the greenwood county comprehensive plan does say we're promoting energy conservation. I don't see how this is consistent with this. We're preserving open space. We're supposed to be protecting the character of our community. And these are the kind of questions that I think should be answered during a moratorium study period. not after permits have been issued you know once we have an application then it's too late to do a moratorium because then there are legal issues so i i do applaud the council for for being proactive on this i think it's very important to be proactive but i would be proactive and i would recommend that we study these issues and we take the time to do it and i i would agree with the planning commission or the planning department, their recommendation of a two-year moratorium. I did draft for your convenience. You don't have to throw it away if you want to, but I drafted a two-year moratorium ordinance that would be legally sound. And I think I went to a lot of pains to do that, just in case you needed the language. And I'd be glad to hand that up. And that's all I have for you. Thank you very much.

Just give it to James, please, to represent, if you will. Thank you.

Yes, sir. My name is Dr. James Brooks, 731 Calhoun Road East. I'm also in favor of a moratorium on data centers and this is a very complex topic that requires time to study and to fully understand. Fortunately, there are multiple publications in fully peer-reviewed, high-impact journals that address these issues provided by unbiased research groups. One of those was published in July of 25, 10 months ago. from the Ford School of Science, Technology, and Public Policy at the University of Michigan that goes through other community experiences across the United States. And in fact, they actually address some of the issues that Mr. Bateman raised. and quite frankly, don't agree with his conclusions, which is fine. I am going to request that Mr. Bateman provide his reference citations that he used to support his presentation tonight because it would be nice to have both sides of the coin. Secondly, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, AAAS, has in 2026, quite recently, published a series of questions around data centers that they believe every community should consider addressing prior to approving those data centers. Now, these are the two publications. There are others. You can certainly use Google Scholar or any other search mechanism that goes after peer-reviewed, high-impact journal publications to review this and to see what the experiences are of other counties and other cities. And I think it's well worth doing, and it takes time to do. Okay, in the Planning Commission meeting, I felt like it was very unfair that county administrative staff was expected to come up with this amendment in such a short period of time. And it was clear they really hadn't had the time to address a lot of these very important questions. Growth is actually a good problem to have. Delighted to live somewhere where we have this as a problem. I'm sorry it's become such a contentious issue in our county and I'm certain that that is a discussion I hope that all of you are having to find ways to better manage and resolve it because it really is unfortunate that we had those feelings. A moratorium, as I said, is an opportunity to provide time to actually study and be fully educated on this matter. And I want to say that I am very impressed that we have someone on our county council who can accurately predict the cost of 19 miles of transmission lines charged by Duke Power. That's pretty impressive. I'll give another challenge. I did a quick back of the paper calculation. 500,000 gallons of water circulated one time going from 212 degrees steam to 140 degrees, 104 degrees water would require the removal in a closed system would require 1.1 trillion calories of heat to be removed. So the publication from the University of Michigan shares the fact that you can either optimize energy usage or you can optimize water usage, but you can't optimize both. I don't know that the 500,000 gallons was sized at the $5 billion point. plant that Mr. Bateman proposed. I rather suspect that's not the right size for a plant of that magnitude. But again, that just gives you an idea that's an incredible amount of energy. If they can provide it and they can be billed for it, and it doesn't impact people in our community that don't have the resources to absorb significant cost increases. Again, for some of us it will be a nuisance, but for others it will be devastating.

My name is Adam Jackson. I live at 605 Johns Creek Road. I've kind of prepared a statement here. I'm relatively opposed to data centers. I'm definitely for the moratorium. And my statement, as we approach our nation's 250th birthday, I want to acknowledge how fortunate we are that our founding fathers left us with a representative republic. Every election cycle, we the people get to choose members of our community who take a sacred oath to represent the will of the people who elect them. Today, we are asking each of you to honor that vow you made to each of us. Our petition is simple. Take the time to do this right. Others here today will express concerns about power consumption, water costs, water consumption. My background is in medicine, so I, however, would like to discuss the impact on physical health that's being documented in individuals living in proximity to data centers. You guys are measuring the wrong thing. You're looking at decibels, but you're not looking at infrared noise at all, which actually travels for a mile or more and causes real health impacts. So issues like the significant increase in respiratory disease associated with nitrogen dioxide and particulate emissions from diesel generators at the Colossus Data Center in Memphis, Tennessee is causing people to report breathing difficulties even a half mile away from the site. There are also documented cases of physical illness that result from 80%. which is not perceivable by the human ear, which is why the decibel meter is useless. This is the same sound frequency range that is used in sonic weapons. Unlike the short-term effects of sonic weapon sound exposure, people who live as far as three-quarters of a mile or more from the Mara Crypto Mine in Granbury, Texas, are inundated with these sound frequencies 24-7 and are suffering from tinnitus, permanent hearing loss, nausea seizures and pulmonary embolisms cardiovascular disease all well-documented pathologies from sustained infrasound exposure one family who lived down the road about a quarter mile from the morrisite had to abandon their home and move away with their six-year-old daughter because she began having seizures upon abandoning their home and moving away her seizures stopped immediately It is also causing physical and neurological harm to pets and livestock. Think about our farmers and our animal owners. I don't believe for a minute that any member of this council would willfully subject the citizens of this county to asthma, hearing loss, seizures, or heart disease. But if you get this wrong, that is exactly what we will be doing. Please take a moment, look at the person next to you, the person in front of you, All these people in the crowd, which one of them would you willingly hurt? I guarantee probably none of them. So please make sure you do this right. We elected each and every one of you to protect our health and our quality of life here in Greenwood County. We elected you to be our voice. As such, on behalf of the citizens of Greenwood County that you have sworn to represent, I request a roll call vote for a 24-month moratorium on data savers. The same moratorium that was recommended to you by the Planning Commission after a unanimous 10-0 vote last Tuesday. Thank you very much.

Tory Miller, 134 Kingston Road, Wellington Green. One of the first things I'd like to say is we do need more than a two-year moratorium. One of the factors this morning, I had no power in the house. Called Duke immediately and they weren't sure what was causing it. And we've had over 380,000 in Greenwood County outages. It's not because they don't have enough electricity. The system needs to be fixed before you put something in like this. Also, I'd like to point out from The Economist and The Data magazine, the biggest issue with data centers is unstable demand for energy, resulting in a strain on the electrical grid. Back to when we had an outage. Powered heavily by artificial intelligence, cloud computing, these massive facilities require so much electricity, they trigger rolling rate hikes for local residents. Massive power draw, a single hyposcale data center can consume as much electricity as a hundred thousand households once in the next generation ai facilities projected exceeded by 20 times rising utility bills this came from the data magazine upgrade grading utility infrastructure deliver power to massive warehousing facilities is a multiple billion dollar expense that costs are frequently passed to everyday households noise and pollution Constant running and cooling system, HVAC units, diesel backup generators causes intense noise and local air pollution as well as damages to those who are in hearing distance. And that came from The Economist. And basically I agree with that moratorium. Two years are great.

Thank you, Ms. Miller.

Good evening, Mr. Chairman. Good evening, Greenville County. I will ask for an additional 30 seconds. I'm Dr. Ernest E. Magnus. I am the candidate for this congressional district three. So I just need an additional 30 seconds to attach myself to it. Okay, with that being said, I live at 101 Greenland Road, Anderson, South Carolina. My parents live at 203 West Forest Drive. And I want to thank you for the opportunity to stand before you just to talk to you about a few issues. Today I rise in opposition to ordinance 2026-19 text amendment of data centers. And I would like to speak to you effectively about the communities, our health, our economy, and the rapid expansion of data centers. James and Dr. Logan has told you what data centers do, so I'm not going to go back through all that. I want to first consider the health issues. Many data centers operate around the clock and require massive cooling systems to prevent service from overheating. These cooling systems, along with backup generators, can produce These studies have shown that prolonged exposure to low frequency noise can contribute to stress, sleep disturbances, headaches, and reduce quality of life for nearby residents. foot is not going to be enough. You've got to move them way back, more like 1,000, maybe 2,000 feet. In addition, many data centers rely on diesel power backup generators during emergencies or testing periods. These generators can release pollutants such as nitrogen oxide. Yes, I'm a middle school science teacher. I retired from education. And nitrogen oxide hurts you. Okay? Especially something called particulates matter in the air. Exposure to these pollutants have been linked to respiratory problems such as heart disease, other health issues, especially among children, older adults, and people with existing medical conditions. If you have anything like asthma, you're going to suffer because of these plants. Another concern is water consumption. We talked a lot about the gallons of water and how they're being used, but what they didn't talk to you about was the blooms, the actual blooms that appear on top of the water, which pollutes the water and release more particulates into the water. How are you going to keep the community safe when you're polluting the waters? And we only have 3% of what, 3% of salt water to drink, that's fresh water. So we don't need to do that. And they affect local farms and businesses. Let's discuss the final thing that everybody talked about. If I listen to all the presentations, they tell us we're going to make all this money. Let me tell you something. What good is money if you're dead?

What good is money if you're sick? What good is money if you can't take care of yourself?

Because if you can't take care of yourself, you can't take care of your children. So we are basically selling our children's future. So yes, these companies are going to pour in millions of dollars to employ and get people into the community, but what they don't tell you is that these data facilities only employ a limited number of people. And those people are usually people that are in part the good old ones since nobody else gets a job in those facilities. That's got to stop. To be clear, I want you to understand, I'm not against economic progress. I believe that data centers have their place, just not around people. Maybe way somewhere down in the corner of the country where nobody can find them. To be clear, technology helps the world. Data centers are important. Our community should carefully evaluate the health impacts, the environmental effects, the long-term financial costs before approving any new projects. Responsible planning, environmental safeguards, and transparency are necessary to ensure that technological progress does not come at the expense of public health and community well-being.

My name is Charlie Herndon. I live at 729 Calgary Road East in Data Summits. Let's talk about the grid. The grid is old.

That's what they were planning for it to get this large. Actually, if you knock out nine power substations, you shut the whole system down.

That's air control, banking, and everything. I can't get by without my credit card. I got to get gas money. We talked about water usage and, you know, Well, there's more salt water than there is fresh water. And the reason we wouldn't want it is because of the water supply. We do have animal water supply, that's why people are moving here. I'm not so much against data centers, but I think they need more study. I use computers. I generated a bunch of AI stuff on it, and we talked about that. I'm not going to bore you with it, because you've been boring, and I've been boring too a little bit with it. We got, life is full of unintended consequences. When we vote for stuff, a lot of times it doesn't turn out the way we're talking about. And I did power a man over here. Remember we had a sale in 1960? You remember what it was? Told you. It was the REA. REA, well, Greenwood County sold the REA to do power company. And they took the election rates and they said, well, whichever one was lowest, that's the one you're going to get to stay with. Now they've got, what, 3,000 customers here, you know? They've got 3,000 customers on the rate they come.

About 2,500 facilities. How many? About 2,500 facilities.

Yeah, 2,500. So what happens, those people are stuck with that rate. They can't raise it. It's already been in the Supreme Court. So any abnormal costs that are achieved by data centers, those guys are not affected because this thing has already been tested in the Supreme Court. Also, on the grid, if we got so much power, why don't we put control joints on the power wave and control them? So power is essentially what we're dealing with. Atlanta has no water. And there's a deal with water. If you take water from one area, you have to put it back in there to see where it works. So there's not a lot of fresh water out there. I think you need to do a moratorium. I think it's over because it has long-lasting effects. It's unintended consequences. Don't let it get allocated to the customer. You know what that is?

That's something I feed every day, and that's buying a piece of property. And you pay taxes and stuff on it, and upkeep and that sort of thing.

Yes, sir. Mark Lee. I live in 212 St. Augustine Drive. Mark, what's your last name again?

Lee. Mark Lee.

Thank you. I wasn't exactly planning on getting up tonight, but I feel it's our duty when you feel strongly about something that you really should. So I'm somewhat a little prepared, but not totally. You've heard all the complaints about all the different things that i agree with and i believe we should do a moratorium i don't know that we should block data centers altogether but i do believe that the text amendment that we're pushing through is extremely extremely limited just as a representative mccravey mentioned you know we're not covering the things that that are valuable to us which is our people You know, the community is what's the most important thing amongst us all. You know, yes, we've lost industry. You know, there's been several industries that have shut down and it's affected us all. But the problem is, I think Dr. Rivers mentioned advanced manufacturing. Really and truly, that's what we should be pursuing. Not data centers that are only going to employ 40 or 50 people. We've got a lot of houses that we've been building. We've been building houses at a rate that just, I can't fathom. These people have to work somewhere. And a data center is not going to be that place. Yeah, they might provide money for the short term, but they don't provide the longevity to keep your young people here, to keep your community safe, to keep your community growing. You're going to have a bad environment if we don't do the right industries. And to me, you've got so many negatives with the data centers. In the text amendment, we don't limit size as a key thing that I think is huge. A small data center? Maybe not a big deal, but a huge data center is a massive draw that takes away from even an advanced manufacturing company here because we may not have the capacity for them. So, you know, I think it's short term. Yes, there may be a boom, but long term is a pain and punishment for all of the community. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Williams.

Yes, ma'am.

Good evening.

My name is Ellen Crouch. I live at 528 Wilson Street. And I'd like to start out by saying that I moved to Greenwood about five years ago from Buffalo, New York. And the reason I say that is because it helps to give some perspective of my position on this. I don't know if you know, but Buffalo, New York is right next to Niagara Falls, New York. which is the home of Love Canal, one of the worst environmental incidences in this country, and in fact led to the development of the Superfund, the federal Superfund to clear up toxic waste. The fight that those people had to go through for over 12 years to be removed from that toxic site and relocated over 1,900 families And during that time, there were deaths, there was cancer, there was all kinds of health problems. I don't want to see that happen in Greenwood. A very cursory study on the internet of what data centers risk carry shows that, for example, just the noise pollution, the average noise from a data center carries or can be heard two miles from the center. And the obnoxious noise is heard up to 3,000 feet away. So a buffer zone or a setback of 200 feet is grossly inadequate to protect the people who might be living in the region. There were two studies that I'm going to cite. One was done by Earthwatch in Delaware City. of data centers in that area from 2015 to 2023. And that study showed that carbon monoxide emissions increased by 196%, nitrous oxide emissions increased by 111%, and dangerous particle matter emissions jumped by 139%. There was a study done by the Harvard Department of Public Health which showed that this study, I'll give you the date, was published in April 8th of 2026. and it was of health issues raised by data centers in Loudoun County, Virginia. And that study showed that estimated increased costs of healthcare in their area was between 53 million and 99 million in annual health damages from associated air pollution. And although the largest the size of the cost was related to the density of the population. The fact that these health risks are increased in any degree is something that needs to be considered. And I know, you know, I've sat through this presentation tonight and I noticed something that I felt was sadly lacking. And that was any type of environmental impact report or study or any type of health impact report or study. And as I said, I moved from an area where I feel economic interests were placed above health and environmental concerns. And I don't want to see that happen in Greenwood.

That's my name.

Hi. My name's Amy Campbell. I live at 307 Oak Ridge Drive. And I wasn't planning to speak. I'm not a public speaker, so it hurts my heart to do this. But I'm just very concerned. I've seen so many news articles over from different communities this is affected and it's very scary and they weren't missed they weren't misinformation these are things that have really happened to communities across the country I would at least hope at the very least for a moratorium on data centers till more studies can be done. I'm not a fan of AI or data centers personally, but for health-wise and because I've seen so many things about the hum of the noise that it's not the decibels, it's the hum, and they talk about half mile and miles away. And also with the backup generators, diesel, I'm a severe asthmatic. I know what it's like to not be able to breathe and that is especially alarming to me and all the other to hear about seizures and all these other things I just think there needs to be studies done before they're allowed in our community and that's really that's that's just how I feel about it thank you thank you thank you ma'am

Good evening, my name is RJ Pike.

I live at 8 Roxanne Drive in 96.

I've been a resident of Greenwood County for almost 25 years. But because of work, some of the things I do for work for the past four years, for the most part, I've been not in Greenwood. I've been elsewhere and data centers. I've been back in town for two days and today was the first time I've learned about data centers and also that's why I'm here tonight to get myself educated on what's going on with that. With that sir, my question not to the council but also respecting your earlier comment also to Mr. Rob Rushin. Some of the planning you mentioned Mr. Rushin talked about planning meetings, the notes that were presented. Is there a way that the public can either attend the meetings or get a hold of the notes so we can better educate or someone like me can better educate themselves on what's going on and to make sure that we are doing the right things to make this happen?

Excuse me one second. I think what Mr. Rushin was referring to is he did not publish the public comments that were made at the planning commission meeting to us, but that it would be in the thing. Is that right, Mr. Rushin? Because, but just for informational purposes, all those meetings are broadcast and everything is, you can get all the info you want. But I think that was what he was referring to. Okay, great.

Again, like I said, I haven't been in town for a while, so I'm educating myself on a lot of things. So thank you for your comments, sir. Thank you. Yes, sir.

Thank you, Mr. Fein. Yes, sir.

Hi, my name is Joe Bocelli. I live at 620 Swingham out in the Stony Point area. I'm relatively new to the area, a couple of years, so I guess maybe I'm the newest here. I had a lot of things to say, but everyone that had me had said them already. So I will not repeat that, except to say that the biggest problem I see is this instantaneous possibility that someone can walk in tomorrow and do a data center based on today's zoning. So therefore, you need the amendment. I don't like the language. There's some details that have to be changed. The buffer zone is the obvious one. requiring the electrical requirements to do such and such certain numbers that do fall into the Duke's ability to supply water. All those requirements need to be spelled out better. Moratorium, yes, and the economic development presentation, which was amazingly long. I didn't hear the word moratorium mentioned once. I guess they just want to slam dunks, send it down our throats. But no, please give us some more time. These things are soon. Get it right. Maybe the state's going to preempt it. I don't know. Thanks for your time. Thank you. You guys have a question?

Certainly. Come forward.

When can we see the moratorium being passed? What time?

Well, let me clarify something first. This ordinance tonight is for approval of the text amendment. There's no moratorium piece in this ordinance. So we won't be addressing that tonight. it doesn't mean there couldn't be some type of moratorium coming out of this but tonight the only thing before this council in ordinance 2026 19 is approval or denial of the text amendment thank you ma'am thank you my name is dr byron jones my address is 112 reedy cove lane in stony point

I have a, first of all, I work for the United States Department of Commerce, Economic and Statistics Administration, but I have an engineering background somewhat in nuclear power. And one of the things that I believe needs to take place with these data centers is requiring them to generate their own electricity. using nuclear power. I agree with their representative that placing it in a place like Savannah Riverside could accomplish that. The power plant that they build to generate their own power could benefit Greenwood County as well. Thank you.

Thank you, Dr. Brown. Appreciate it. is there anyone here anyone else here tonight who cares to speak on this ordinance come forward please sir i would just like to request clarification so you're saying there's no way you want to do a roll call vote on the moratorium tonight because the moratorium but it's not before us thank you good evening

My name is Tracy Rickey. I live at 522 Pascal in Greenwood. We live in a climate right now where there's lies all around us, everywhere. And as much as I appreciate James's effort in telling us about how the lucrative business data centers are and that there are rewards for data centers, I'm not seeing it. I don't understand where this is coming from. I haven't seen it anywhere. Nobody has proven to me that there's a reward for our community or that this is going to be lucrative to us in any way. This whole business of the, you know, the trans lines and that they're paying for, are we supposed to be impressed by that? They should be paying for that. That's not something that we should be praising. They should be paying for those things that they're putting in a data center. I don't understand. IFCBW, I relatively pay $120 a month, summer, winter, doesn't matter. I got a bill for $365. I'm a single person living alone and I have $365 in December and January. When I asked CDW why, I got no explanation, no help. This is ridiculous. I just don't feel that this is, something that's gonna be good for our city and our town. The colleges talk about how the money will benefit them because the jobs, there aren't gonna be jobs. This is AI. We've all heard it. AI is taking over. Kids right now can't even find jobs. So I don't get where everybody's talking about all this money and it's gonna benefit us. I just don't see it. And this whole, closed loop thing, it causes bacteria corrosion because there's no, it's continuous. So chemicals have to be used in order for that to clean it up. So where does that water go? It's going to go right back into our water system. And I don't know that our sewage people are going to be able to handle that kind of corrosive stuff going on. I just don't feel that data centers are good for Greenwood. I moved here five years ago, and I love it here. And I think it's great that we've got these homes coming in. I want to see new businesses come in. So we've got things to do. We can spend our money. A data center I just don't think is good for our community. It doesn't give back to us. It just takes from us.

Thank you.

Ma'am, if you would please, please refrain from speaking from the audience.

Go ahead.

Good evening. My name is Tina Escalona. I live on Johns Creek Road in Hodge, South Carolina. I had not planned to speak tonight, but I feel compelled to speak for a couple of different reasons. Please realize that any of my comments are not personal. These are some observations. First of all, one primary concern is that when we all presented or attended the county planning meeting and you have a recommendation not to approve language that was felt to be hastily put together, they recommended to you guys, 10 to 0, to consider a moratorium. The fact that you did not address the language, you did not consider anything that was given or fed up to you from the Planning Commission is very concerning to us. Why do we have a Planning Commission if they make recommendations and yet we're here with the same amendment, the same language? and without you hearing that input from them that this moratorium was requested. This is what we heard from the public, this is what the public expects, and we want you to investigate that. Secondly, again this is not a condemnation of you guys, but the fact that you have not been able to manage, you don't have the systems and processes to manage the damage that is done through bad development. If you make mistakes here, the repercussions are to the extent that you will not be able to understand or be able to backtrack from those. We have smaller issues with other developments and then you're looking at a data center where we honestly do not feel that you've done the due diligence. Tonight you've made a lot of presentations, a lot of great information from people that are in a bubble. You've not compared case studies. You've not compared externally. You've not convinced us that you know enough about this to do this well. We're not saying that you can't do that well in the future, but we need a two-year moratorium to make sure that the right people are informed, are involved, and that all of the information is transparent. We want this to be done correctly if it has to be done. We don't want to rush through. Lastly, you guys were able to rush through an amendment that was hastily thrown together. We would also like you to rush through for us the moratorium that we consistently are asking for to keep us safe, to keep us prepared. Tonight, it felt very much like a data center sales pitch that you were coming to us with this information, this decision already made, as opposed to a forum where you hear the citizens. We expressed ourselves at the Planning Commission meeting, we are expressing ourselves tonight, and we don't expect just our voices to revert off of the wall. We expect you to hear us and we expect you to take appropriate action. That is part of what the representative government is for us. This is probably one of the most important decisions that you all individually are going to make during your tenure with Greenwood County, and we need to do this correctly. You've heard our representative McRady explain the complexities of it at the state level. and across the nation. This is not something simple. This is something that we don't believe you have figured out and it's not saying that you're unintelligent. It's just saying that you don't have enough information and we need to get this right. So please consider the moratorium. You fast track the amendment, fast track the moratorium for us. Do what the citizens are asking you to do.

Ma'am, you've spoken twice tonight.

Yes, sir, but I want to make a point, like what she just said, because I really feel like you aren't listening to us. Go ahead. How will you make sure that land has not been bought and all this is starting? Because there's some places they've already, I can tell, picked out, kind of like from the sales issue we had today.

If you paid attention to my comments earlier this evening, one of the reasons that we are so firm on wanting to put this text amendment in place, you heard Mr. Rushin say that 26% of this county right now is owned by RDD. A developer wanting to build a solar, excuse me, a data center, could come in here in the morning, could purchase 150 acres land, whatever, and could build a data center without our approval, with no protections, no guardrails, none of what we've talked about tonight. So that's what we're trying to prevent. So thank you for your question.

Thank you.

All right. no sir you've already spoken i've got to cut it off at some point i'm sorry all right seeing no others we're going to move on to the next item of business which is item f Ordinance 202621, providing for the adoption of the fiscal year beginning July 1, 2026, of operating and capital budgets for operation of the government of Greenwood County. The identification of the sources of anticipated revenue, including taxes necessary to meet the financial requirements of the budgets adopted, the levy and collection of taxes necessary to meet all county purposes, including bond and indebtedness of the Greenwood Metropolitan District, payable during the Alphacet fiscal year. The expenditure of the Alphacet taxes and other revenues coming to Greenwood County during the Alphacet fiscal year, the establishment of rates and fees and other matters relating to Greenwood County, our Deputy County Manager for Finance, Ms. Stephanie Norton.

Thank you, Chairman and Council. first reading was on May the 19th and there have not been any changes to the budget since then but as this is public hearing I will go through the summary of the budget As far as revenue is concerned, we have no millage increases that have been proposed. We do have a $5 road user fee increase that will be on each vehicle tax bill and that will be set aside and dedicated to resurfacing for our funds. We originally thought we might have an increase on delinquent tax notices due to an increase in our service contract, but that did not come to fruition. We have added a $25 per field field maintenance fee so that during tournaments we are able to refurbish the fields in between those tournaments and return them to a suitable use. For the residents on Lake Greenwood that live in Newberry and Lawrence County, an increase of their dock encroachment fee of $50 per year. For those that rent hangers at the airport, a 10% increase in the rent. Also a $15 fee for any lost or additional gift cards requested at the airport. and a 13% increase in the fire fee. Since that increase is a little bit more significant, I would like to provide you with a little bit of additional information. This is the increase that our taxpayers would see. The largest number of taxpayers, just over 12,000 taxpayers, would see an increase on their annual property tax bill of $11.34. The next largest group is about 5,000 taxpayers would see a $1.40 per year increase on their annual property tax bill. And the next largest group is just over 4,000 taxpayers at an increase of $14.79. Just as a reminder, the fire fee is based on the square footage of the property. This is paid on all properties and empty lots in the unincorporated city of Greenwood parts of the county. So it is in Ware-Scholes 96, but it is not in the incorporated part of the city of Greenwood because they have their own fire department. Our major initiatives for this upcoming fiscal year is a 3% cost of living adjustment for all of our full-time and part-time regular employees that would be affected with the first full pay period in July. Also up to a 3% merit increase available for our regular full-time employees based on evaluations completed in September. That would be effective in the first full pay period in January. An addition of four sheriff's deputies to our uniformed patrol division. The completion of our triennial compensation study. Again, this would be completed during this fiscal year and consideration for implementation would be in our next fiscal year budget. the completion of our county policies. We have some policies that were planned and have not been fleshed out and completion of those would be considered during this year. As you know, we are in the process of completing our strategic plan and we should have that by the end of this fiscal year or the first part of next and so we will be implementing some of those strategies. and also providing a reporting platform to make the plan and the performance indicators available to our public. FERC, which is the Federal Environmental Regulatory Commission, Electric Regulatory Commission, which has supervision over Lake Greenwood, requires a comprehensive assessment every five years. That will have to be completed during this fiscal year and also repairs to the retaining wall at the dam needs to be completed. Finally, this is the end of the five year reassessment period as required by the state of South Carolina. So that will be implemented and which will require us to come back with potential rollback millage before property tax bills go out in October. We plan to present detailed information on the reassessment process at your next meeting so that that information is available to council and the public before reassessment notices go out in the mail later this month. We have a multitude of funds. These are some of our larger funds with the budget that is represented. Our general fund is $31.1 million. The capital assets that support the general fund are $1.2 million. Our EMS operations are $5.4 million and our fire is almost $3.4 million. Our lake operations are $2.5 million. The road operations are 1.7. Our special appropriations are 3.1. And our landfill operations are 5.3 million. Some of our other smaller funds, the 911 surcharge fund, just over 480,000. airport operating fee $243,000, accommodations tax just over $192,000, our bondsman fund $2,500, our capital project sales tax administration $123,000, our delinquent tax almost $284,000, the DSS incentive fund $48,000, our DSS unit cost $200,000, The electric trust fund $400,000, hospitality taxes $561,000, North Greenwood Industrial Park $4,000, our school resource officer grants $1.7 million, and our victim services almost $143,000. This is just a quick glance of the total expenditures for all of the budgets that you're passing at just over $58 million. As you know, you were provided with a line-by-line detailed budget that was discussed at a public meeting earlier in May. Our schools requested any changes. Again, that millage will be re-evaluated. We do have a couple of minor line item transfers that I will present to you in summary at your third reading, which will be in two weeks. So third and final reading in two weeks. Happy to answer any questions that council has before hearing from anyone in the public.

Council, any questions or comments before we take public comment? So I'll ask now, if there's still in public hearing, if there's anyone here that wants to speak in support of this ordinance, please come forward, state your name and address. Seeing none, if there's anyone here that wants to speak in opposition to this ordinance, please come forward, state your name and address.

Hi, I'm Reggie Terry. I live at 410 Baldwin Road in Hodge, South Carolina. And I'm the chairman of the Voter Registration and Election Board. And I'm here to speak on behalf of my board. And due to some miscommunications, did not realize we probably should have spoke on May 19th. And I hope you will forgive me that it's gonna sound really silly after we've talked about millions and millions of dollars tonight to talk about less than $3,000. And that represents 92 cents per day for my board who are appointed officials by the state to run the elections in Greenwood County. And over the years, some things have gone on, and by things I'm talking about decisions that were made by county council and decisions by former members, and they gave a small little stipend from Greenwood County to my board. That left your budget last year without our knowledge. And it came about, the knowledge happened when our director notified our county treasurer of a change that had been made at the state level. Now folks, I have nothing to do with the state level and the decisions that they made and the legislative delegations across the state. They decided they would increase a little stipend for my board. And so it was decided that it would be taken back last year without our knowledge. So this year I sat through all the budget processes and it was there and now it's not there. And I cannot believe as elected officials, you do not regard my board as valuable members of this community. We're talking pennies. But without that board, Greenwood County would not have elections. because I don't see other people coming up to step up and help do things. And when we have to ask for some things, there goes the back and forth and the back and forth and it's this one and it's that one and it's an email and it doesn't happen. Just to remind you, we have a primary next Tuesday. And I'm gonna have board members up to 85 years old standing on the airport parking lot at the antics, loading and unloading cars. I cannot believe that they're not valued to be able to be thanked by a measly $200. The hours and dedication that these people put in, I'm talking about hundreds of hours loading and unloading, making sure that the voters of Greenwood County have the opportunity to vote. So I'm asking for you to reconsider in putting that back in to your budget. Thank you so much.

I appreciate your time. Thank you, Ms. Terry. Reggie, stay at the podium, if you will. Council, any questions or comments that you need from The chairwoman. Stephanie, just to refresh me, Reggie, this is the same conversation we had when we had the meeting in the library, right?

Yes, sir. A year ago when that money got taken out and here we are again.

So, Stephanie, for the benefit of council, if anyone's forgotten, just give us a brief history of why that money was withdrawn, please.

It's in front of me, so I'm going to do the best that I can. Sure. I understand. I believe it was in maybe 2021 or 2022 the request was made to increase the amount that was given to the commissioners or to the board above the amount that the state reimburses us so the state sets the amount they give that to us and then we pass it through to the board and the council at that time agreed to give additional funds And then as Ms. Terry said, last year the state increased the amount that was being given to the county to give to the board. And council decided that the additional funds were not needed because the state was not only given the amount that we had added, but also given more than that. I think the increase was a total of $1,000 per year that they funded last year.

That's my recollection, exactly. And Reggie, I'll ask you, the percentage increase, because you know the previous conversation that we had, we the council felt, I'm not speaking for council, let me speak for myself, I felt that the state had stepped up and done what candidly I felt they should have done long before. But wasn't that increase about 150% that the state applied?

As I understand it, the state originally had it at, I think, $1,500. It went up to $2,500. And Greenwood County originally had been putting in $200 a person for the board. Deep in my heart, it is not about the money. It is just the way this has been handled. And it's my understanding from the legislative delegation that you're not supposed to supplement or cement monies that the state now gives the county versus what we have. I'm not a politician. I don't get into all of that. I'm here because these people are doing this work for the county. And the folks, if they stop doing it and we have to put into the budget the 10 people to help load and unload and hire all these other trucks, it's going to cost us more money. You guys benefit from what we do. And I hope that the citizens of our county do benefit from the work we do so that they can vote.

This is very important work, but you asserted earlier that we don't appreciate the work that's been done by your board. That's absolutely untrue. We absolutely do. But for historical clarity, I just want to repeat, and you know this, you and I have talked about this, The county stepped up when we felt like, when you requested more money, and we felt like the state was not doing what they should do. We stepped up. We gave the increase. What year, Stephanie? What year was that?

I believe it was fiscal 21.

Fiscal 21. And we only took that stipend back after we believed that the state had done what they should have done. I think I told you at one point in our conversation, it felt like no good deed goes unpunished. I just want everyone to understand that the county stepped up when we were asked to. And we only took the stipend back when that pretty significant increase came. But I just want to be historically accurate in how that went down. But I assure you, we have a tremendous appreciation for what those people do. And I'm sure that we will take your comments under advisement. And thank you for speaking.

You all have a nice evening.

Thank you. Is there anyone else who would like to speak in opposition to this ordinance, budget ordinance? Seeing none, we'll move to item G, Ordinance 202622, providing for the levying and appropriation of taxes for educational purposes in Greenwood County for the fiscal year beginning July 1, 26, and other matters relating there to this ordinance.

This will be much briefer. This is the ordinance that is specific for the school districts as I mentioned previously. They have not asked for any increases in their millage rates.

Council, any questions or comments from Ms. Dolan? So if not, and is anyone here that cares to speak in support of this or an opposition of this so seeing seeing none that is item g ordinance 20 26 22 and that will end our session of public hearings so i'll ask for a motion now that we close the public hearings so by Ms. Bishop, seconded by Mr. Templeton. All in favor of closing public hearings? That's unanimous and so ordered. Thank you. So what we will now do, council, we'll vote these items individually. Beginning with item C, regarding the sale of a portion of property at 190 Lake Greenwood Boulevard, the Teeparker properties. Council, what is your pleasure? I'll offer you a motion to approve. I second. A motion to approve by Mr. Pruitt is seconded by Ms. Bishop. Before we vote, any comments or questions? All in favor is presented. That's unanimous and so ordered. Item D, Ordinance 202618, regarding Amazon.com as presented. Council, what is your pleasure?

I offer you a motion to approve.

I second. Motion is approved by Mr. Pruitt, seconded by Ms. Bishop. Any comments or questions before we vote? All in favor is presented. And that's unanimous. Item E, Ordinance 2026-19, regarding zoning text amendment as it relates to data centers as presented. Council, what is your pleasure?

Mr. Chairman, excuse me, I think Mr. Pacelli hit the nail on the head with his first comment, which is currently we have absolutely zero protections as it relates to data centers in Greenwood County. I heard very loudly the folks who were here tonight that the ordinance doesn't go far and they might go far enough. And I think we may need to look at changing some of those things in there to tighten that up. but currently we have zero protections for any of our citizens and our quality of life in this county. I make a motion that we approve second reading and ask that we further investigate the language before third reading. That's my motion.

I second. I have a motion by Mr. Templeton and a second. Any comments or questions before we vote? Understanding that Mr. Templeton's motion is that we continue to evaluate what may be needed in additions to this amendment.

is that correct mr tupper that's correct sir any comments or questions i also want to say i do appreciate everybody coming and listening and staying with us this long it is it is it's been lengthy and it's cold in here for me but thank everybody thank you for your comments i mean i know that everybody loves greenwood and so do we we do we love greenwood um but that's all i wanted to say

Mr. Chairman, thank you. I made notes throughout the proceedings this evening, and I just want to share my thoughts with you all. First of all, I want to thank Duke Energy and CPW and Metro and our deputy county manager, Ms. Norman, for answering many of the questions that I had coming into tonight's council meeting. So I appreciate that. I got a lot of them answered. I'm not opposed to data centers. I think I heard many of you say that as well. You're not opposed As long as, you know, they don't negatively impact our environment and the quality of life for our citizens. I think we just need to come to terms with what that means for us. There is no doubt that South Carolina and Greenwood will be attractive sites for data centers. I think mainly because of the low cost of the land and that they will be a huge economic boost to our county. but we need to proactively and responsibly manage them. And I've heard that as well many times this evening. I do agree that we need guidelines on how data centers would operate in RDD, which currently doesn't have any kind of restriction on it. And I think that's a very concerning issue for all of us. We need to consider that. And my final thought is that I am, along with Mr. Templeton, I'm not completely on board at this time with some of the existing language in the text amendment. And I feel that we do need to probably look at some changes or amendments to the text amendment. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Ms. Milton. Any other comments? Mr. Chairman, let me say that, again, I appreciate the folks coming out tonight expressing their opinion. And I will also say that I did not know who all was coming before us and did not know the presentations that would be given to us before we came here tonight. But I will admit it looked a lot like a self pitch, just to be frank and honest. If it wasn't meant to be, it sure looked like one. I am real concerned about some of the stipulations in here. I don't think enough research, I think we're being pushed. I feel pushed to make a decision on this. I think we can move fast in looking at this closer. Again, there's a lot of good points brought up. I've done a lot of research on a lot of the things that were shared with us tonight. I am totally uncomfortable with this. I think we need to scrap it and start over on what we're going to do as far as stipulations for that. I also question, and I'm not an attorney, and we have one here. She's very good at what she does. But I also question the fact, while they're under our present zoning, somebody can just come into our county and do whatever they want to do, and there's nothing we can do about it. I question that. I don't know. Again, I'm not an attorney. But I am real concerned about this. I have done extensive research. I have found it very difficult to find any community that will tell you that a data center was a plus in their community. If I knew everything that I heard tonight to be a fact, I would support it 100% and everybody in this room would if we knew what we heard was going to take place. But many years ago, I was also told, or this council was told, that a food processor was coming to town and there wasn't going to be any smell. They were going to put scrubbers on it, and you wasn't going to smell anything. That was 20 years ago, and I still smell. And my point is, to this council, is there's no backing up. Once we do this, it's done. There's no backing up. It's just like the food processor. We've had meeting after meeting. I was chairman of this council. We've met with that industry. I think they took some positive moves, but still the issue is still there, and I hear it from the folks in that area constantly. There's no getting this right once you get it wrong. I will not vote in favor of this tonight. I am in opposition. And if we're that concerned about it, about jumping on here and getting it, well then let's get to work and let's do the research we need to do and let's get it right and get it on paper. That's all I have to say, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Donaldson. Any other comments before we vote? We do have a motion and a second on the floor. We do have a motion and second on the floor. That motion was to approve the text amendment with the understanding that there may be things we need to tighten up. I do agree with Mr. Templeton that my concern has been because Mr. Allison, I will tell you that on the advice of that good attorney down there that you just referenced, she tells me that the RDD would allow... Am I speaking correctly, Madam Attorney? The RDD would allow someone to come in by land and build a data center without coming through our authority. So, having said that, my position on this is simply we do need the text amendment. That doesn't mean that it can only be what it is today and can't be improved and amended. That was the whole reason.

I think there's got to be some more work done on this. I don't disagree. But I think we've got to take a vote on the text. We do. Are we ready to vote?

Let's call the question, Mr. Chairman.

Can you clarify again what we're voting on?

We're voting only for approval of the text amendment. Second reading. Second reading. Yes, thank you. Second reading. Voting on the text amendment, the motion that Mr. Templeton made that we vote to approve the text amendment as presented with the understanding that we will be looking at- To tighten up the language before third reading. Before third reading and to take into consideration the concerns that we heard tonight from the public. Correct. All in favor signify by raising your right hand. Any opposed? That passes five to two. Item F. We'll be voting on Orders 2026-21 regarding FY 2027 operating and capital budgets as presented.

I'll offer you a motion.

Second. We have a motion to approve as presented by Ms. Griffin, second by Mr. Templeton. Any comments or discussion before we vote? Mr. Chair. Yes or no doubts?

When we were talking to the lady tonight about the board, my understanding is the state was funding, we were offering some funding, and then the state came in and offered additional funding and we pulled our funding. What is the difference in the amount of total money that these folks were getting from the time we were putting in to us not putting in now? It's not been cut, right? That's the question you're asking, right?

It has not been cut, is what I'm getting at. Yes, that's my question. Ms. Dorn.

They were receiving $1,500 from the state. We added, I believe, $200 per year. and then the state went to 2500 and so if we had left the 200 and then we've been getting 2700 so they 15 from the state two from us for a total of 17 and then they went to 2500 which was we allowed to be fully funded by the state instead of them going to $2,700. So it was actually still a net increase.

Correct. Thank you.

That was my question. Any other comments or questions? It's all over. It's 2026-21. Council, what is your pleasure? We already have a motion and a second, Mr. Chairman. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Been a long night. Yes, it has. All in favor? And that's unanimously so. Thank you. Ordinance 2026-22 regarding the FY2027 education appropriation of taxes as presented. What's your pleasure? Motion to approve, Mr. Chairman. Motion by Mr. Templeton, second by Ms. Bishop. Any comments or questions before we vote? All in favor is presented. And that's unanimous in so order. Thank you. We'll now move to new business. The consideration of the informant to the Library Board of Trustees, Ms. McIntyre.

So we have a vacancy in one of our districts for the library board, District 6. At the recent passing away of Ann Hancock, they have submitted a nominee for District 6, and that's Kathy Johnson. I think Mr. Templeton has that name presented.

That's correct. And Ms. Johnson. served as the media specialist here at Greenville High School for about 20 years. He's very well qualified. We'll make that a formal motion.

Thank you. I have a motion by Mr. Templeton, a second by Ms. Miller. Any comment or discussion before we vote? All in favor please present. That's unanimous and so ordered. Thank you. Item B, consideration of the change to policy 13.3, our waste tire policy, to respond to new legislation at the state level regarding this issue. Deputy County Manager, Mr. Dunham.

Sorry about that. Several months ago I came to council with a proposal to change our waste and iron policy. The feedback I got from council at that time was that you didn't like it. So I'm back here today to go back to kind of what is our current policy with some adjustments to fees. I'm going to go through this really quickly. Feel free to stop me if you have questions or whatever. I know it's late at night tonight. But the current tire policy is governed at state level. State law established in 93, revised in 2015 and again this past year. It's a legal disposable tire. The landfill encourages recycling, set a solid waste and excise tax at $2 per tire or roughly $180 per ton that's collected by the Department of Revenue. Part of that is returned directly to the county from the Department of Revenue. Part is distributed in the form of grants to the county through the Department of Environmental Services. And up until a few years ago, that fully covered our expenses to recycle tires. Since that time in fiscal year 24, we had a shortfall of almost 40,000. In fiscal year 25, 122,000. and we are projected to have a shortfall this year of $57,000. Obviously, the program is no longer paying for itself. The current cost to recycle the tire is about $330 per ton, so the fee is $180, the actual cost is $330. So again, current policy, if solid waste tax is paid, county accepts the tire at no cost. If the solid waste tax is not paid, county charges $150 per ton. Individual residents can dispose of small amounts of tires free of charge. We are essentially, we can keep that policy except, or what the proposal tonight is to keep that policy except for that fee. So the revision to the state law allows us to charge even if tax was paid and they cap that at $150 a ton. So our new proposed policy is undocumented tires, those tires that they're not showing proof of the solid-base excise tax being paid, increasing from $150 a ton to $230 per ton. And then if you provide proof that you've made the solid waste and excise tax, the increase will be from what you're currently paying, $0 a ton up to $50 a ton. And then again, low volume user can dispose of up to four tires per month free of charge. That is the policy as written in the policy 13.3. This is kind of a two-legged thing here. I'm asking you to approve the policy. The policy itself does not have the fees in it. It just says the council will approve the fees through the annual budget. And then secondly, I'd like approval from council on the $230 per ton for the undocumented tires, $50 per ton for documented tires, as that currently in the fee schedule that you just approved is $140 for both regardless. So this would change the fee schedule for documented and undocumented for third reading as part of the budget. Just pros of the policy, the program is closer to paying for itself. Under these fees, we believe there'd be less than a $10,000 loss in that department, but we'd rather air it as a little bit of loss as opposed to bringing in too much. So we kind of set those fees at that amount. The con of the policy, this is a substantial increase in cost to many local tire retailers, but it'd be much closer to covering the actual cost to recycle for what they're paying us. And then with this increasing likelihood of tires being dumped or stockpiled, certainly that is a concern for us as well. At the last meeting, you asked of a list of vendors that fall in those two categories, the undocumented or documented. In front of you, there is a list. I did not have any time for the packet, but it's in front of you tonight. The customers at the top typically pay or show proof of the paid state excise tax. The customers listed at the bottom typically do not show proof of the solid waste excise tax being paid. I want to caution you. that the ones at the bottom they're not necessarily avoiding paying taxes you see their star fork golf course on there they pay the undocumented fee they have off-road tires they may not have to pay any fee at all as part of those off-road tires called outside the next state law so just because they're listed at the bottom and they're not showing proof that they pay the excise taxes does not mean that they are somehow evading taxes that they should pay Yes, with the list I provided. I can take any questions you might have.

Counsel, any questions or comments? I'll ask again. What is your pleasure?

So I make a motion to approve the policy.

I have a motion by Ms. Bishop to approve this presenting. Second. Second by Mr. Allison. All in favor? And that's unanimous. Thank you.

Is there guidance on the fee schedule?

And now I make a motion, because you asked for two motions, right?

And it'll show up in the next budget, but is there agreement on the fee schedule?

So I make a motion to allow the fee schedule to change for the third reading of the budget.

Thank you, Rob. Thank you, Ms. Bishop. Well, we need a second for that motion. I'll second it. Second by Ms. Bishop, second by Ms. Miller. All in favor of that second motion? That's unanimous in so order. Thank you. Resolution 2026-17 to amend the FY2026 to transfer funds from the General Fund to complete the South Carolina Department of Commerce Palmetto Sites Program at the Hodges Corporate Park. Ms. Dorn.

Thank you, Chairman and Council. These funds are currently budgeted in the economic development budget within the general fund. We just need to move it to a transfer so that we can match the grant. And just for your information, we brought a couple of these to you and we are intending to correct the budget going forward so that it's in the original budget as a transfer so we don't have to bring these forward to you in the future but this is we have received the grant and this is just that matching portion of it that was already in the FY26 budget just in the wrong spot

I'll offer you a motion, Mr. Chairman. I second. We have a motion by Mr. Templeton, a second by Ms. Bishop.

Yeah.

Comment?

So what was that amount? The amount that's in the budget is, sorry, $64,875. Okay. Thank you.

Any other comments or questions before we vote? All in favor is presented. And that's unanimous. Thank you. Ordinance 20-26-23 to amend the Greenwood County Zoning Map as and if amended so that three parcels of land totaling approximately 33.33 acres in Greenwood County at 803 Deadfall Road, 797 Deadfall Road West, and 6837 changes from R5 multiple family residential to agricultural run, agricultural one. This is first reading and title only. Mr.

Chair, application 2625-01, we are looking at a property, again, 33 acres consisting of three separate lots. The current zoning is R5. The applicant is requesting to change the zoning of those properties to ag-1 as represented earlier in public comment period to keep the land built more consistently with that ag-1 district we are approximately quarter mile east of montague avenue on the south side of deadfall road here you can see the zoning context for the area it is a kind of a peninsula of that r5 district but it is within the Bodinski residential designation in the comprehensive plan future land use map and so the AG2 zoning would be consistent with that again here you kind of see the development context of the area it is generally developed with a single-family residence there you can see in this area of the property You can see the entrance to the property down the character of the property here. It's generally rural in nature along that fall road. They have a secondary entrance here, a farm type gate into that, what I would call the northeast property. And then you could see the character of additional residential units along that same stretch. With that said, staff recommendation was for approval. Planning Commission also provided a unanimous recommendation of approval.

Thank you, Mr. Bland. First reading again, the title owner requires no action. Thank you. Item E, Ordinance 202624 to amend the Greenwood County zoning map as and if amended so that two parcels of land totaling approximately 104.06 acres in Greenwood County and 1641 Emerald Road and a portion of Well, GPIN 6876443843 and a portion of 6876533938 changes from RDD Rural Development to I-1 Light Industrial. Again, this is in first reading and title only. Mr. Bland.

Mr. Chairman, this is an application from Mr. Bateman with Greenwood Economic Development. And this is another case where we're trying to clean up a split zoning on an existing property. The two properties total 104 acres. We're about eight-tenths of a mile east of Old Brickyard Road and where the CSX rail crosses. there on the north side of Emerald Drive. Here you see kind of the context of the property, again with the CXS railroad on the north side and the drive there on the south as part of the developing industrial area. Here you see the split summary of the properties to that RVD, the I-1 at the RVD district. it has been designated for industrial in the future land use map so this would be consistent with that so you see certified infrastructure in the vicinity of the property as well as the rail making the this is the existing building on the smaller site the remainder of the property is generally forested at this point along emerald road with that said staff recommendation was for a approval and Planning Commission agreed with the unanimous recommendation.

Thank you, Ryan. As we said, this first reading title only requires no action. Ms. McIntyre, do we have any pending items? No pending items. District reports. District 1, Ms. Griffin.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'd like to say good evening, almost good night, everybody. But I'm just happy that you were able to come and be with us tonight and to to give your pros and cons on the data centers. Understanding right now we don't have any guidelines and so that's what we were trying to do today. So just continue just to keep us in your prayers and we will just continue to go at this ordinance so that it best serves Greenwood County. I also like to acknowledge for also the early voting you still have until Friday if you haven't early voted and also we give a happy anniversary shout out to Curly and Willa Bennett on Friday they will be celebrating 57 years so we want to say happy anniversary to them And my brother and my sister will be celebrating their anniversary June 9th, 22 years. And last but not least, the Promise Land Community Association will have a meeting on June 11th at 6 p.m. at the Promise Land Fire Department. So happy new month to each and every one of you. Again, we say thank you for all you do for Greenwood County. So ends my report.

Thank you, Ms. Griffin. District 2, Mr. Allison. No report from District 2. No report from District 2. District 3, Ms. Bishop.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just thank everybody again for being here. And I would love for everybody to come and help me clean. At 1102 Reynolds Avenue, Greenwood, South Carolina, 29649. And that's going to be our district three cleanup on Saturday, June the 20th. And that we will start at 830. So the more people we have, the quicker we can get it, you know, do our best to, you know, clean up what's there. I always enjoy doing my cleanup and I love our community. So that is my report. I hope everybody has a good night.

Thank you, Ms. Bishop. District 4, Ms. Miller.

Mr. Chairman, I'm going to forget my comments tonight and reserve the right to talk about them at the next meeting. Thank you.

I think that's a great decision, Ms. Miller. District 5, Mr. Pruitt. Pretty much doing the same thing. I'd like to talk about my trip. I'll do it next time. I'll finish with a Bible verse, though. Proverbs 21, 21 says, whoever pursues righteousness... and love finds life, prosperity, and honor. That ends my report. Thank you, Mr. Pruitt.

District 6, Mr. Templin.

Yeah, Mr. Chairman, I would love to hold mine until next time, but by the time the next time comes around, this will be gone. So you might have to bear with me for just a minute. First off, I want to thank everybody on both sides of the conversation tonight who came out. I want to thank Trustee Danielle Fields for getting us, helping us to procure the building, Dr. Superintendent Shane Goodwin, Kevin Jolly has been in the back the whole time running the AV. It's been a long night. To Tom and Susan and everybody else in Cameron County who had to make this work at the last minute. So I just want to thank all those folks. I also want to thank our deputies who have been here a long time. Thank you guys. We appreciate you more than you know. Tomorrow, Wednesday, June 3rd and Thursday, June 4th, Farmers Market will be giving out senior vouchers. That is a big deal. I know that's close to Mark's heart. 9 to 3 tomorrow, 9 to 12 on Thursday. The lines will be long. Be patient. I would advise you come on Wednesday because when they're gone, they're gone. Again, tomorrow, 9 to 3, Thursday, 9 to 12 at the Farmers Market. And lastly... Our own Greenwood Flying Monkeys will have their home opener at Legion Stadium at 7 p.m. on Friday night. That is my report, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Templin. I want to echo everything that Robbie said. Thanks to everyone for putting all this together, especially to our staff. I know a lot of work went into preparation for what may have been the longest meeting in Greenwood County Council history. I appreciate everyone that came out tonight. You know, we don't always agree on every subject, but this is a democratic process, and this is the beauty of living in the greatest nation on the face of the earth, where we have the right to express our opinions openly and without fear of any kind of reprisal. So with that, I will thank you all for being here, say God bless you, and we will adjourn. Thank you.