Board of Commissioners - Special Meeting

If you would stand, we'll have the invocation to pledge the flag, please. Bow your heads. Dear Heavenly Father, Lord, we just want to thank you for this day. Lord, we just thank you for the weather that we're having. Pray that you cool it down a little bit for us. Lord, tonight, this is an informational meeting. And Lord, I just want to say a special thanks to each and every family that's taking time out of their busy lives to come out here and share with us this event. type of interest in their community we pray that you put a hedge of protection around each one of them's house in their families and their loved ones Lord we just pray that as they travel away from here tonight they have a safe journey back to their families and their homes and Lord we just ask that you look out for Columbia County the state of Florida in this world that we live in Lord we know there's a lot of evil we just ask for your direction and guidance in all these things in our God's name Amen Okay, again, I'd like to welcome each and every one of you. It's very, very satisfying to see a crowd like this come out and support what your opinions are when these important decisions are trying to be made in the future for our community. The way we're going to handle this meeting, I've got several cards here, and there was a lot of y'all standing here before, but what we're going to do is... I'll start off with these cards that I already put them up here, and we're going to ask for public comment here at the end after the presentations are being made. And then once and because we've done it, and we all know it will be, because I think the point will be made, what our community's opinion is of this. So with that being said, I don't want to bore all y'all with redundant comments, what have you. One of the things I just want to stress, this is an informational, we're seeking information here. And that's what, in my opinion, is so satisfying about all y'all coming out here like that, because we're learning as well as y'all are. We all see what's on the social media thing, and I'm pretty well convinced that almost 80% is probably hogwash. But with that being said, this is one of the beginnings of the meetings uh we as a board will have a discussion up here after everybody has an opportunity as what direction we'll send our staff in here in the most near future but one of the biggest things are we're going to be bringing other professionals in pro and con and uh one of my pet pieces is the environment and the agricultural aspect of it but we're going to be bringing these types of people in to see the effects that has taken on other communities throughout this country uh i've learned a lot in the last couple weeks it's mind-blowing to me and i know there's a lot more smarter people here tonight but the uh but at this point in time what i'm going to do i'm going to recognize the speakers as in the information coming forth and this is david krause he's our county manager David's going to open us up, and then he's going to be introducing our lobbyists, our in-house lobbyists, if you want to say. And then we've got a couple of other guests here. So if you would, let us go through the process. We're going to have a lot of discussion, no doubt. And we'll go from there and see what we can do.

there so david you got the floor okay as the chairman said this isn't a public hearing this is just a meeting it was originally scheduled as a workshop the board asked for a workshop sooner rather than later which is how this got scheduled tonight uh what the chairman was saying is they can't reach a decision tonight is because they can't uh any action that would need to be taken has to go through legal review uh data centers are not even defined in our land development regulations so to define them, to regulate them, to whatever requires more steps than just tonight. So tonight we're just here to hear the information, give the board all the information both from all sides so that they can make an informed decision and give us some direction on how to move forward in the future. As the chairman said, there may be more meetings. but it definitely won't be resolved tonight. I just wanted to make sure everybody's expectations, they knew what was happening. So with that, I'm going to recognize Stas, and he's prepared all our slides for us, and he's done a lot of research on this topic and talked to a lot of experts.

Good evening, everyone. Stas Guntak with Columbia County.

Stas, if you would, just for the public purpose.

Go ahead.

Just the microphone's up.

Okay. I'm just trying to figure this out. I have not used this one before.

Link, can you get us to the first one?

Thanks. All right.

Whoops, too far.

All right, so here we go. Okay, I'm going to stop pressing buttons. Okay, what are data centers and what are they used for? So specialized facilities that store electronic equipment. There's a lot here, so I'm going to go off of these. Process, transmit large volumes of digital data at scale. Provide core services that compute power power cloud computing, artificial intelligence, digital communications, intensive applications, basically all sectors of the economy, as well as US national security, military operations, cyber security, and other types of emergency services and critical infrastructure in that apparatus. How data centers operate. They are billing filled with, filled with servers, computers that run continuously 24 hours a day by advanced cooling systems, require massive electronic use, and rely on software's defined system and real-time monitoring tools to maintain uptime performance and continuity. That's the main nuts and bolts of what is actually in a data center. The types of data centers mostly are in four different categories. We've got enterprise data centers, which are large corporations. They are, or hospital systems or universities or any large users of data that's under a single umbrella. Hyperscale data centers, these are the ones that are defined at Florida statutes over 50 megawatts of electricity. These are the ones that are coming, in the scene with regards to artificial intelligence, multi-tenant data centers, data centers that are built and leased out to multiple users, They're kind of like rented data centers. And then edge, smaller data centers, near end users. So a good example of what edge data centers are, those are the little buildings you see next to cell phone towers. Those are considered data centers. They might be small, they might have a very small usage in energy, but those are considered data centers. The types of cooling, we have air cooling where the The hot air is condensed through the system to be cooled off. Liquid cooling systems use coolant, including water, that circulate through a pipe network, absorbing heat away from the IT equipment. And they employ liquid cooling to use the closed-loop system. A closed-loop system is basically when you put water in and it just keeps circulating. Immersion cooling directly submerges IT infrastructure components and fluids that cool absorbing heat and servers which are kept non-conductive serving fluids. Okay. Oh, okay. Evaporative cooling use fans to draw inside out air in cooling before deploying it to cool IT equipment. Through water evaporation, this message draws heat away from the air efficiently which is a hybrid cooling strategy. And the hybrid cooling basically integrates multiple cooling technologies to cool the IT servers. So key questions to consider on all this, obviously you've got your economic and fiscal impact. You have taxes. What is it going to, you know, bring in some communities are calling that are getting a lot of uh revenue from these data centers as what's called data center dividends to cut fees and cut taxes on the local citizens energy infrastructure are cost fairly allocated to data centers and growth help stabilize or lower electricity bills community benefits can new tax revenue fund affordable housing local developments or other public priorities And then we have the environmental and planning considerations, which we have, we'll talk more about that later. So what are the impacts on water use? What are the impacts on the actual physical environment around? And what are, you know, is there emissions? You know, is there renewable energy? Is there energy on site, et cetera? What exactly is affecting, is the data center affecting the environment around it? Okay, now onto, what's happening legislatively that's just a high level view i'm not going to get into the granular details because it's a lot of technical information so that's the high level per the florida statutes data centers weren't really in the florida statutes until senate bill 484. these are what data centers are data centers means a facility that primarily contains electronic equipment used to process store and transmit digital infrastructure freestanding structure, or a facility within larger structure which uses environmental control equipment to maintain the proper condition for the operation of electronic equipment. So we go on to what a large-scale data center is, or what's considered a hyperscale data center, which is basically a data center that's very large that uses 50 megawatts of electricity or more per month at the peak, and they meet the same definition of what a data center is, but it's mostly based on what the energy usage is. So Senate Bill 484 was passed this past legislative session. Governor DeSantis signed the bill, it was back in May, May 8th. The law targets mostly large-scale data centers over 50 megawatts. So the law requires public utilities to apply tariffs to the Public Service Commission and that they will have to pay for all the infrastructure involved and they have to promise that the rates will not be put on to the rate payer. The Water Management District and Department of Environmental Protection will not be able to give a permit if they find a detrimental impact on the environment around that data center. So they would be barred from doing that. Reclaimed water is to be encouraged as first use of source. And also the bill requires a disclosure of data centers and economic development agreements and takes away the 12 month extension for economic development agreements in terms of keeping it off the public records for that time. Utilities will not be allowed to serve data centers owned or controlled by foreign governments of concern. These are your, regular players, China, Russia, North Korea, Syria, Iran, those types of countries. And most importantly, local governments still have the – retain the ability to maintain the authority to control whether we have it or not. We can still have a say, which over the years a lot of preemption has occurred in Tallahassee where they have taken our ability to save, but they have kept that intact when it comes to these data centers. Senate Bill 180, that was a bill that was two sessions ago that was relating to hurricane recovery and disaster relief. Basically prevents local government from putting moratoriums on development if the property was affected by hurricanes. Well, this has been brought up over time. Some local governments have questioned that, whether this would impact moratoriums on data centers. That could be pushed back and forth. We don't know exactly how that's going to go, but that's something to keep in mind. A lot of folks are saying that the intent of this bill was related to hurricane recovery and not new development. So I don't think that's been brought up as of now. And then that's what Section 28 says when it comes to that actual statute. And I think it also is retroactive too back to, I think it was 2024, and then we cannot do the moratoriums on new development until 2027, but that's mostly for hurricane recovery. So I just wanted to keep that in mind as we move forward. It could be a little sticking point, but it has not been challenged anywhere as of yet. So in terms of moratoriums, this is a map of Florida as of today. I tried to update it as best I can. Forgive me, I'm not the best graphics artist here. All the green counties are the ones where they have passed a moratorium. and the yellow counties are where they are considering or researching or doing what we're doing tonight. I didn't add us because we had just jumped into the mix. And it's not just isolated to one area of the state, it's up and down the peninsula and in the panhandle. Well, I'll give you a second to chew on that. Okay. All right, so that, oh, no, there was another slide. Okay, so national outlook. What are other places doing, not just beyond Florida? So the state of New York, the governor up there signed a moratorium on data centers. The next day the Trump administration said no, rescind that, so we have a federalism issue here. Some believe that this needs to be regulated by the federal government, and many of the states are saying that no, we need to do that on the state level. We have one bill that was – and I'm trying to get the most up-to-date information. July 20th, Congressman Donalds from South Florida, he filed a bill in Congress to protect ratepayers, which would basically have the expenses of the energy cost onto the data centers rather than ratepayers themselves, based on what Florida law did – or the Florida legislature did. Some members of Congress have proposed a moratorium on data centers nationwide. None of that have moved. All those bills in Congress have not moved, nothing significant. No legislation has moved as of now. And there has not been any serious regulatory framework from any of the agencies in the rulemaking process that have been passed as well.

Thank you. Mr. Obama.

So that's all I have from just the legislative overview and some basic definition of what data centers are and some of the cooling and some of the basic definitions, what I could find and what I could pull together based on research.

Okay. Board before staff sits down. Any of y'all have any questions? I do, but I want to let folks talk first.

Okay.

Okay. Okay, Kimberly, I think is going to come up next. At this time, we're going to bring up Ms. Kimberly Dinkins. She represents the Thousand Friends of Florida. She's got quite a presentation here. Thank you for coming.

Thank you so much for having me. This presentation was given by our president back in April, and then I gave it to the Nassau County committee of folks who are working on this same type of policy in Nassau County. And so I just sort of updated it a little bit today to reflect or so we can have a conversation about what some of the local governments are doing around the nation in response to data centers. So Staj did a great job of kind of summarizing some of these things, but I'll just walk through this pretty quickly if I, maybe I'm pointing at the wrong way. Oh, okay. that's the first one okay great so everybody's dealing with this same issue um and we know that billions of dollars are being invested by techs like meta google tech giants like meta google microsoft open ai and this is all a race to power as many data centers as possible to win the ai market we do have smaller data centers that are around but like you know for uh military infrastructure and those types of things we have hospitals have data centers like stuff much mentioned but this big push for these large data centers is AI chat bots and those types of things so this year about 800 billion dollars is planned to be spent in this space and about a hundred one trillion dollars is expected in 2027 by 2030 that's expected to be about seven trillion dollars so while Florida isn't technically a hot spot we have heard about some of these large facilities wanting to come to Florida and a lot of local governments are working on this issue And we already have about 120 data centers in Florida. Some of those are standalone and some of them are ancillary, like the ones we mentioned with hospitals or private tech firms. There are just a few hyperscale centers in Florida as defined by the statutes, the 50 megawatts or more, but several more are on the drawing board. We have them proposed in Palm Beach, St. Lucie, DeSoto, and Martin counties. In fact, in DeSoto, there are about three of these hyperscale data centers proposed. So we're going to talk a little bit about the concerns that folks have and then what local governments are doing in terms of planning for them. One of the primary areas of impact from data centers, like was mentioned before, is the energy demand. It takes about one megawatt of electricity to serve a thousand people. So the demand of that 50 megawatt data center is equivalent to the demand of a city of at least 50,000 people. That's about two thirds of the population of Columbia County. A larger hyperscale data center like the one proposed in St. Lucie County could demand the equivalent electricity load of a million people. A single facility with that kind of demand requires its own electrical infrastructure, and it may need additional power sources with transmission lines and substations, which could have regional implications. One of the, did I, yeah, sorry. Okay, so some of this demand, I wanted to let you know that this slide has a graph from the Pew Research Center which shows a sharp upward slope in projected growth in electricity consumption, more than doubling from U.S. data centers between 2020 and 2030. So that level of demand might force, there's a couple of things that are at play and that people are concerned about. It might force utilities to extend the life of older, dirtier power plants that might otherwise have been retired. If centers rely on cleaner natural gas plants, it still increases the greenhouse emissions and requires that supporting infrastructure, including pipelines and transmission corridors. There's also talk of using nuclear power, but it looks like that's about 10 years out, and we know that the AI companies are not waiting for that. So some data centers could rely on their own solar arrays, but that would also increase their footprint and consume large swaths of farm or ranch land if proper provisions are not in place. And then, of course, the question looming over everybody is who pays for that additional capacity. In Northern Virginia, one of the hotspots of those hyperscale data centers, electricity costs have shot up for everybody. As it was mentioned, Senate Bill 484 deals with some of these issues, and I'll be talking about that in a minute. But there's a lot of talk about using renewable, and I think that there was some hope that renewable energies would be the source for these data centers. But the fact is that for now, they are heavily reliant on fossil fuels from the same sources that we are using as consumers. So another major issue is that water use, because all servers generate heat and they need to be kept cool to operate properly. Most data centers rely on that evaporative cooling, as was mentioned before, or open loop systems. The hyperscale ones that are cooled this way, they can use about as much water as 50,000 people as well. So this is obviously a problem for Florida, where water supplies in many areas are already stressed, like here in Columbia County, Santa Fe River watershed, as well as Anishinaabemowin. in texas water use for data centers is projected to increase eight times over the next five years those so-called loop systems for cooling would use much less water but there haven't been a lot of data centers developed with this type of technology yet and they use a lot more energy to you to cool the system so there's a concern or a question about whether or not that's actually more efficient in terms of water use In Memphis, so I think some of the concern about data centers too is the promises to use things like reclaimed water or waste reuse wastewater. But as an example, in Memphis, there was a commitment to build a wastewater treatment facility to reuse the wastewater for cooling, but that has stalled because the priorities of the data center have changed. So they're just going on and building up a new data center. So that's again highlighted some of that distrust. And finally, data centers create those land use issues that we were talking about before. It's important to remember though, that data centers are industrial land uses. They are large windowless buildings with lighting and security fences. They're closer in appearance to an industrial use or a warehouse, especially if they're providing their own tower. And that's what we're seeing more and more with these large scale data centers. They're not only data centers, they are actually electricity generating stations. They depend on a steady supply of electrical power and outages are possible. So in hurricane prone Florida, we need to be aware that they generally have an array of diesel generators to provide backup power. When those are operating, they create additional noise and obviously greenhouse emissions. on the other hand once the data centers are built they don't require a large staff of employees to operate so their impact on area roads and things like that might be limited data centers do have a potential to increase the local tax bases but what we're finding is a lot of times those tax incentives that brought the data centers there any in the first place are actually outweighing the benefits to the community So this means that decision makers have a lot of questions to ask when they're developing policy or considering a specific application. We'll start with the questions of compatibility and equity. First, how close should they be permitted to other sensitive locations like schools, daycare centers, churches, parks, nursing homes, and hospitals? What should be done to protect low income communities or agricultural areas to prevent them from being unfairly exposed to negative impacts? How might the impact of noise from the center, especially those backup generators, affect current development or future development possibilities? What impact will bright lights have on the nearby communities and wildlife? What buffers or other design elements should be required to make data centers more compatible with their neighbors? And then what limits on size or height would be appropriate? These are all things that will need to be thought about as you develop an ordinance if you decide to go that route. So, we would be wise to think about the impact of data centers, what they might have on the future growth around them, what kind of growth would they rule out? Are they compatible with the retail or hospitality or other economic sectors that the county is wanting to promote? We had geared this primarily for planners. So, everywhere I say planner, you see that in your slide, think decision makers. They, given their large water demands and energy demands, we need to think about how that can be sustained within the area and what other kinds of future growth might be constrained or moved or ruled out if that happens. The developer is asking to tie into municipal infrastructure or will it be self-contained and either way, what does that mean for the existing and future residents of the area? Since water use permits aren't the purview of local government, Decision makers will want to be aware of the water management district plans and limitations like those MFLs that I talked about before. And back to Senate Bill 484, just to kind of another summary of it. It does require data centers to bear the costs of their electricity and that prohibits them from shifting those costs to other rate payers or splitting their load to evade regulation, meaning that they can't call themselves an electrical substation when they are in fact a data center. It also prohibits water permits for large scale data centers using 100,000 gallons a day or more if they would damage the local water supply or violate any zoning or comprehensive plan limits. So this is kind of a flag to you to let you know that you have the authority to establish those limits. It requires data centers to have a water conservation plan and hearing before the permit is issued and to use reclaimed water when environmentally, economically, and technically feasible. I want to take a minute here to let you know that this is actually straight out of the applicant's handbook, excuse me, in the Water Management District's Consumptive Use Permitting Process. So this isn't anything that's new. lowest water quality source that's technically feasible and reasonable beneficial use. These are things that are not defined in the handbook and they're not defined in the statute. So it does make it a little bit difficult to figure out what the Water Management District is actually gonna be required to do. The governor made regulating AI one of his priorities for the 2026 session, and he signed this bill into law in early May. So it does reflect actually at least an appearance that the state is concerned about these things. So let's talk a little bit about what local governments are looking at in their ordinances. Primarily they're developing policies to deal with siting and site design, offsite impacts, security, and increasingly decommissioning and benefit agreements. I think I missed a slide here.

Ma'am, I'm sorry to bother you.

No.

That was January 2027. There'll be a study done on this.

Oh, yes. I'm sorry I didn't mention that. Yes. So the Office of OPAGA is the term that they are required to put out a report by January of 2027.

Now, who are those people?

It is actually, this is an independent group that is, you have to, it's a group of researchers that are at the direction of the legislature to do, yeah.

They're not the data center people.

They're not the data center people, no. So presumably they are unbiased. All right, so let's talk a little bit about site selection. We want to think about things like whether or not they should be prohibited in certain environmentally sensitive areas like the Florida Wildlife Corridor, which is shown on that top map. I'm sorry, the top map there. Those areas in red are the areas the areas of the florida wildlife corridor that are susceptible to development and then the rest of that green is areas that have been defined as important for the florida wildlife corridor there aren't any specific regulations there but that's something that you um should be aware is kind of coming through your county. Should they be prohibited in those areas? Should they be prohibited where you have prime farmland soils or certain critical habitats or within a certain distance of city parks or state parks? In some cases, local governments are requiring a certain distance from areas like the National Wildlife Areas up to about half a mile, and other local governments are prohibiting data centers in agricultural areas altogether. Setbacks from property lines can range from about 300 feet in some jurisdictions to 1200 feet, depending on the neighboring use. And some local governments are restricting property size. Like they can't be over a certain amount of acreage or they'll restrict the square footage of the project. They're also regulating things like facade changes. They're requiring a change in the way that the building looks every 75 to 150 feet and window requirements are common as are planted and natural buffers, walls and berms. Offsite impacts are probably the hottest topic in Florida considering that's what people are seeing. As I mentioned, a lot of those data centers are generating their own electricity on site. And so even though they've been talking about converting to that renewable energy and some local governments are requiring them, they're still burning these fossil fuels. They still have... issues like noise and vibration. A lot of these things are difficult to conceptualize until the facility is actually built. So a lot of local governments are going to routine monitoring and maintenance and reporting back to the local governments as they build out for things like noise, vibrations, and then of course water use. A standard noise limit is about 65 decibels at the property line. So that's standard conversation. Similarly, lighting can be an issue. So strong standards for offsite light penetration should be enforced. There's also a lot of uncertainty about ground and surface water quality impacts from these data centers. There's not a lot of data, water quality data that's been generated for data centers specifically. So adequate monitoring is necessary to determine what types of contaminants might be present. A recent bacteria outbreak in Wyoming caused the city to revoke META's wastewater permit and rethink what type of water they're going to accept there. I just have a couple more slides, I just want to Okay, hopefully this will sort itself out. Really, I think something that we're starting to talk about more and more is that AI technology is changing so quickly that there's a real concern that the facilities will be obsolete sooner rather than later. So local governments are establishing timelines for decommissioning, typically about a year of not being in use. In places like Georgia, Missouri, and Pennsylvania, they're requiring these plans upfront. and they're requiring bonds up front, as well as periodic recalculations of how much it's actually going to cost to decommission these uses. Another thing that local governments are looking at is the potential for community benefit agreements, as was mentioned before. And generally, they have looked like upgrades and expanded capacity for utilities and wastewater facilities or transportation infrastructure. But again, as I mentioned, it's important to ensure that any economic incentives don't outweigh the community benefit. But there are other things that we can be looking at, things like agreements to address issues like affordable housing, education, and other programs that the county might be interested in. And then last, I just want to give you a couple of resources. These have been really helpful for me because I'm also learning as I'm going. A lot of the information that I pulled about the things that different communities are doing came from this Georgia Tech Ordinance Hub. It's been very helpful. It has a kind of a summary of what's happening and then model ordinances and then a list of the ordinances in different areas. The Piedmont Environmental Council is actually out of Virginia where they've been dealing with a lot of the impacts of data centers. It's one of those hotspots. So they have some lessons learned in there and some good policy that's come out of that. The National League of Cities has a good report of some of those same questions that we just went over. And then this Reboot site that talks about what local governments should be asking as well. That's all for me. Thank you so much for your patience as I walked through this. I can answer any questions.

You're going to be here in case we have a question, though.

Sure. Thank you.

David, this information that we're seeing here, is it online right now? I mean, not online, but on our backup material?

Yes, it is, and you can also get it on the web.

Okay, and then I just wanted to point that out. Some of these resources, please go on our county website, and this stuff, if it's not there now, it will be there in the morning. But everything, we need to make sure that everybody here is accessible to the same information we are.

Right. If they go to the calendar, click on the date of this meeting, go into the agenda, it'll be in the agenda.

Okay, that'll be the first place. But on our website, our PIO needs to get this placed on there. We had unfortunately several people who had conflicts that could not make it tonight. We have talked to the water management district, several providers. They unfortunately had conflicts. that's part of the reason why we'll probably need to have more meetings and sessions okay okay before I start how do y'all want to handle the board do y'all want to have some discussion give us thoughts okay not a problem at all but the what David just said water management when I said prior to the meeting getting started these are some of the people that we will be bringing forth to be able to get more information from because keep one thing in mind when you talk about Swanee River water management every single one of y'all pay their check so you know reach out to them attend their meetings get the information they're dealing with the same things that we're dealing with but at this time like I said I got some cards here there was a lot more so gonna get we're gonna carry on give y'all hopefully plenty of time to work we always have three minutes here is that we got the clock here somewhere okay is there any way we can put it down here where they can see where they're at i don't know how linked is that a big task can y'all okay okay that's fine okay but uh do your best to stick closer to three minutes and again once it gets redundant you know we want to give everybody an opportunity but uh i've got something planned here i think i won't bore y'all with all night but uh this time if i say your last name incorrectly apologize mark esposito Mark, if you would, and anybody else, please give your name to the clerk, or she could have it in the minutes, I'm sorry. You can say it from the podium, everybody introduce yourself.

Good.

Yes, sir.

All right. So my name is Mark Ashbaugh. Background about me, I'm an aspiring cybersecurity student. I understand a lot of this technology, the terminology that's been mentioned. AI has been a constant in my curriculum. But with that being said, with these data centers, I think we really need to go like tortoise in the hair. We need to take this really slow because as has been mentioned, technology, quickly goes obsolete just as it becomes the mainstream. Like in the next few years, what I've been learning in my classes is probably going to be obsolete and I'm going to have to start all over again as far as my knowledge goes. A lot of the environmental stuff has been covered, so I won't harp on that too much. But I really just want to say that we should slow down with this because the tech race is, you know, you put on the blinders and you're not looking at what's in your peripherals. And that's what my biggest concern is with these data centers, regardless of what their purpose is for. It almost feels kind of like a blitzkrieg if you will they're just trying to get them up everywhere and anywhere they can as quick as they can which is why i'm glad we're having this sort of you know what if meeting or what is our opinion because some of the issues i've seen is that they just get them up in these towns and it's too late for anyone to even have an opinion on it And I'm glad it was also mentioned that some of these buildings are going to have to get decommissioned. Another thing I want to harp on is the potential job aspect. You'll have after the blue collar work's done, the building itself, electrical, HVAC, plumbing, whatever. Sorry. So there's not going to be a lot of bodies in the realm of IT. You'll have boots on the ground to check the hardware, all the cabling, all the servers, all the computers. But a lot of this stuff is going to be done on what's called the back end, meaning someone's going to be sitting from their home, clickety clacketing on a keyboard, making sure all the software is good. And then the question becomes, who is filling these jobs? Like sure, locally, we could have blue collar companies doing all the work to get the building up. or however, but who from the town is going to fulfill the IT work? Like, I don't imagine I could just go on LinkedIn and send my profile over to somebody and, you know, be in on this job, whether in person or on the back end. So key points being, let's slow down. Let's figure out who's really going to benefit from this as a whole. Consider the environmental impacts of And that's pretty much it. Again, like we're doing right now, we're taking it slow, we're dipping our toe in and not just doing a cannonball into what we do or don't know is gonna come from these data centers. And then also with the tech race, what's the end goal of the data center if it's gonna be obsolete? Who are we beating in this tech race? What are we doing with the tech race? It's like, for example, if you use like a Windows computer and you get an update, sometimes that update breaks your computer, which is why they always say to wait a couple days for any fixes to the update. I consider these data centers one giant technical update, and we should wait to see what their bugs are, if you will, before we even consider instituting this technology ourselves.

And I'll yield back the rest of my time. Thank you.

I was way too far away. So my name is Taylor Satterfield. I've been a lifetime resident of Lake City, Florida. I'm a lifetime Gator. I hope some of y'all won't hold that against me. I firstly wanted to thank y'all for even having this discussion. I think it is incredibly forward thinking because you see a lot of counties around Florida that are very almost seems like they're blindsided sometimes when it comes to this conversation so i really appreciate that um i am also on the side of caution and waiting to see how these things proceed and i'm even suggesting a potential moratorium as several counties have you know uh gone through with i i won't get too much into a lot of environmental and a lot of things that have already been brought up that would be pretty redundant But a concern of mine is that we are in a speculative bubble where you have private equity companies that are rushing to build these data centers, as Mark brought up, and in rural areas. There's a reason they're not building these super close in inner cities in Silicon Valley. They're building these in communities that maybe they think they don't know any better. They just think they can do that. Another concern of mine is actually we're seeing this now, not to say that this would occur in our county, but you see in Georgia currently in Coweta County, I think it's Coweta County, their Georgia power has invoked eminent domain to take up parcels of people's land in order to build a transmission line to the data center. That's a concern of mine, is that that could be, if something was to occur in Columbia County, even not Columbia County, who's to say in another county, that the government, or not the government, sorry, Florida Power could invoke that and take people's land in order to build this. And yes, they'll pay them out, but people should have a right to do what they want with their own land, especially when it comes to this.

Yeah, I had a lot of points, actually.

They already went over, so that worked out good. But again, I wanted to thank y'all for y'all's time. And again, I want to say, I think there should be a moratorium, but I'm very glad we're having this discussion and for us to go slow. So thank y'all.

Thank you. Okay, Sean Chandler. I believe I got it right.

All right, so the information was actually very well that the young lady presented, so I don't want to really harp on it. One of the biggest things that worry me is the power infrastructure that it would take to actually deliver it. A hyperscale place actually comes, that's 50 megawatts that it's going to pull at 90% load. It's roughly around like 400-something megawatts every single day. To put that into perspective, Lake City is 13,000 people, maybe a little more. That's only pulling about six megawatts a day, the whole city. So if, you know, If we have an option, I would rather not even have a data center come here, but if it's going to happen, a moratorium would definitely be the best choice because it will give us time to get studies done. I believe there's one from Florida that's supposed to come out about it that doesn't even come out until October of this year. I believe there's another one that's not supposed to come out until June 2027. So time definitely is needed to allow and study because it's a new thing and rushing into it could end up really being detrimental to this county. That's all I got to say. Thank you.

Kayla Duncan.

Good afternoon, everyone. Again, I want to reiterate really quickly, thank you guys so much for putting this workshop together, for speaking with the public before going ahead and doing something crazy. A lot of the stuff that I was planning to speak about was already talked about. I will add in just some other environmental concerns. A lot of Columbian County is on private wells and septic. There's not a lot of studies done on what it does to the groundwater, to the aquifers. So I would make sure that, you know, as we're approaching this, we need to take that into consideration. And when we're building out this ordinance, there should be provisions making sure that, you know, if wells get contaminated, the company is held responsible. I think that that's reasonable and I think that that's a responsible thing to do. I am also in favor of a moratorium. and taking our time, pump the brakes a little bit, and just making sure that we're fully aware of what we're doing. Our county is a little bit unique with our karst topography, with the porous limestone. We've had examples of sinkholes popping up. We want to make sure that whatever they're doing environmentally to our groundwater is not going to further damage our community. I'll yield the rest of my time.

Thank you.

Thanks.

Well, a lot of what I was going to say was already been said, so I don't want to be redundant about it. But I do have property that has well and a septic, and the vibration of things really does bother me because my well could cave in. it's not set that well and i pray every day that it don't collapse but if that does come about with the vibrations and stuff it will definitely collapse and then i'm going to be messed up so i would for that not to happen and i thank you very much for your time jesse walker

state your name for her if you don't mind that way if i get your name wrong i'm sorry yes sir no problem uh good evening my name is joseph walker i'm a lifetime resident of columbia county i'm a student at florida gateway college in the water resources management program i also am an avid outdoorsman a member of the board of directors for the four rivers audubon society i grew up in columbia county i'm a lifelong resident I grew up swimming in the rivers, wading in the creeks, and exploring every inch of its woods, and I'm sure I'm not alone in that experience here today. We face a question today whether a so-called higher standard of living is worth the cost of all things natural, wild, and free. Columbia County is our home and our future. How we steward our land and our water determines our future, and not only our future, but a future that will be determined that nobody here will experience. Suwannee River water management data shows that the addition of an average size data center being brought to this county will increase our water usage by 2.4%. It's about 110 million gallons a year. This may not seem like much, but with the addition of 10 of these data centers, that will increase our water usage by almost 25%. That would be about half of what is used by all agricultural wells in Columbia County. Our fire department is not prepared to handle a large scale lithium fire with volatile fluids on site that would be required of these facilities. We are simply not prepared. Columbia County is a special place and proposal of a data center here imperils it in the long term. This is sort of hyperbolic and is a sign of a small rural town we grew up in becoming unrecognizable and slowly dying. Slowly dying to the increasing suburban sprawl swallowing the state every single day. This place is a place where folks have come to escape the rush of the coastal concrete jungle, and it is slowly giving up and giving in to corporate greed. I will leave you with this from Theodore Roosevelt. What a man does for himself dies with him. What a man does for his community lives with him after he's gone. Do something now, and if not you, who? If not here, where? And if not now, when?

Okay, Heidi Walker.

This is my proud mama moment. My name is Heidi Walker. So I'm also live here in Columbia County, and I just want to address one quick thing. Somebody else has already brought this up. So I'm just going to be brief. When a project of this scale is pitched, people promise thousands of jobs. We're going to bring thousands of jobs to your community. And that's right. They bring thousands of jobs during the build. And then the build is done. And that carpet is torn out from beneath Columbia County and those jobs are gone. And just as was mentioned, what's left? maybe 80 jobs, 100 jobs. And what jobs are those? As the young man who spoke first said, they're highly skilled IT positions. And if we look, and you can Google this, because that's what I did, and AI helped me, AI did help me today, because they gave me some data. It did, I will not lie, it did. 24% of Columbia County has a bachelor's degree. What kind of degrees are needed for a data center? Bachelor degrees and higher, 24%. How are we gonna fill those positions? We're gonna have to outsource or they're gonna outsource out of the county. Where are those jobs? How is that gonna help our economy? They're gonna fill our hotels, They're going to fill our restaurants and they're going to fill our coffers for 18 months while they're building that big, ugly building. And what is going to come afterwards? Are all of our business owners are going to get used to that 18 months of money? And when they leave, what's left? A big, ugly building and a big footprint that has to be decommissioned. And then what are we going to do with it? We already have some big, ugly footprints in this county that we need to reuse and repurpose instead of building new things. Let's reuse some of the footprints we already have in this county. Thank you.

Thank you. Julie Bassett.

Hi there, good evening. I appreciate all that's already been said, especially the lady from A Thousand Friends of Florida, and I'll try to not repeat many of the points that she brought up. But, you know, just some of the other adverse effects to our community could be persistent noise and infrasound pollution, continuous hum. Data centers require massive cooling systems, chillers and fans that run 24-7. The continuous hum frequency exceeds local noise ordinances and causes chronic sleep deprivation for adjacent residents. A low frequency noise, acoustical studies have highlighted the issue of low frequency infrasound and vibrations that travel directly into nearby homes, causing physical discomfort, headaches, and inner ear pressure. On thermal pollution, the continuous operation of servers and cooling exhaust massive amounts of heat into the atmosphere. Studies have documented a data heat island effect which can increase locally and surface temperatures by an average of two degrees. This can drive up nearby residential cooling costs to the summer months. air and health hazards, diesel backup generators, as she mentioned, I believe to ensure maximum uptime data centers rely on large banks of diesel backup generators. Studies show that these generators emit high levels of nitrogen oxides and fine particulate matter, which are linked to respiratory and cardiovascular illnesses on site power plants to satiate massive power needs. Some operators build on site gas fired power stations, further degrading local air quality for adjacent property owners. strain on the grid and utility bills. She mentioned some higher rates because AI facilities placed an enormous burden on the local energy grid. Utilities often upgrade infrastructure and pass the multimillion dollar cost onto residential rate payers. Studies, including research from Harvard, point to rising everyday utility bills caused by big tech's power demands. And one thing that's of particular interest to me, as I have a real estate license, is property values and visual issues related to properties next door where real estate analysis and studies indicate that homes situated to the immediate shadow of data centers can experience a five to fifteen percent decrease in valuation as the visual blight noise and infrastructure concerns deter future home buyers resale difficulty buyers frequently cite the proximity to data centers as a major not in my backyard factor causing longer delays on the market for adjacent residential properties um i believe she mentioned there's at least 20 cities counties in florida that have put moratoriums or considering outright bans i you know many of us showed up here because we love our community we grew up here in columbia county you know it's just let's just shoot to the chase and recommend an outright ban i mean we want to protect And we all love our community that we live in, and we appreciate y'all listening. Thank you.

Okay, I've got one more card here before I switch it up. It's Samuel Bassett.

I recognize that thing you just showed us.

Slept here, sir. Appreciate the opportunity to speak. I'm not dressed for the occasion, kind of the last minute that I'm here. Just a few points to notate. Once again, these are just simple things you can literally Google, okay? And I just want to stress this, and this is things I've been following for like six months as well. A lot of articles out there. There's a lot of information on the internet. um when it comes to these hyperscale facilities we're talking about a possibility of five million gallons of water a day okay and that's talking about equivalent of a city of 50 000 people we have roughly 76 000 people here in columbia county not even 13,000 in the city, but 76, two-thirds of it. Some of these things might have been mentioned, but it is important. Direct consumption, you realize the water is being used in these cooling towers, these servers, all these processing units to dissipate heat generated by these AI chips, which are normally built in another country, by the way. Water evaporates. So now it can be returned to the local source. And just like the city and the people of this county and the city have said no to Jacksonville about contaminating water, we're saying no to the data centers. What's it gonna do for us? It's not gonna bring up jobs. Simple searches, 50 to 25 people at best. Most people will be working offsite. It was mentioned by the first patriot here that stepped up to this microphone. And this young lady had a great presentation from the thousand friends of Florida. A lot of information. But I just once again, we're hitting on some simple stuff here. Talk about water consumption. The fact that these companies, Amazon, Google, you notice they're not building where we want to talk about jobs. This is not a Google building that's going to house people. This is not an Amazon warehouse. This is a data center that will be here and not apply jobs. And it will strip resources from our city and county. It will stress everything like the young gentleman said about the fire department. We're not capable of handling the power grid, the water. What do we get out of this? Nothing. It's not for the good of us. It's here to hurt this city and county. It affects us in only a negative aspect. There might be some taxpayer funded or some tax money. Is it really worth destroying our land for it? I say no. I say no. And just remember these units, we're talking about they can get as hot internally in these systems up to like over 150 to 187 degrees Fahrenheit. Fahrenheit. If I've said anything wrong, you can Google it. You can look through any DuckDuckGo. You can look through any site. You can find these things. The government is not going to protect us because the federal government, they're way behind. They don't have laws passed. Even for people who are trying to do it, they don't. It's so far ahead. Like the first gentleman said, we're too far ahead of it. It's not going to help Columbia County. Please say no. That's what we're asking for. That's what we demand. I appreciate your time. Thank you.

OK. That's the last card I have. But what I would like to do, and please, so far we've been a very, very civil group. And I've been here a pretty good while. And I've sat in that audience many years. So I'm going to ask for some, if they are willing or want to, whoever they may be, Anybody that's got some pros that they may want to share with the group, and please, group. Y'all have been great so far. Please don't make me call nobody down. But, again, everybody's opinion, in my opinion, really, really matters here. So, you know, that's what we're here to do is learn and listen, and we'll go from there. Yes, sir. And again, as best as y'all can, please remember to give your name to the clerk where she can put it in the file, please. Mike?

Yes, sir. My name is Dylan Adams.

And Dylan, do me a favor. pull them things a little bit closer because can you hear me? All right.

Can I get my time back please? Tim, can I have my time back? Thank you. So common theme I'm hearing here, which is great. And I love to see it, right? You're against hyperscale, right? All the consumptive use, all the extra electricity, although we're going to drain the river that the politicians are saying on TV, right?

All that's great.

I also heard the lady from friends of Florida, right? She said something about multi-tenant, right? You said something about co-location data centers, non-hyperscale, which was great. So there are locations and data centers that do not require the same type of resources that everybody's scared of because AI and Facebook has put it out there. There are hyperscale centers. They're not coming to Columbia County. We don't have the infrastructure from a utility perspective to do so. All these commissioners who I've talked to about development in this county can attest to that. Some places we have water, some places we have sewer, some places we have gas, right? We don't have all three in the trifecta there to be able to supply enough for a hyperscale center to begin with. now is it a great idea to have regulation and guidelines around it absolutely okay a special exception under the industrial land use regulation that you already have in place would allow 13 criteria to be in place for those data centers. The centers that I've spoken with that are looking at Columbia County seriously and that we have paperwork with to look to move forward here are 50 megawatts or below. We have folks in the audience from FPL. They can attest that's a medium to light load that is significantly less than all of the solar fields that are all over our county. So I can tell you the tax implications because we're doing a project here in the county, someone that affects taxes here that's not a constituent. We've done the research. You're gonna be in an $11 million a year tax hole if the governor institutes no property tax, okay? There's an $80 million tax incentive happening in Savannah for a hyperscale project right now, okay? We're not talking about hyperscale here. We're talking about small projects. I would never try to have a hyperscale project here. We don't have the infrastructure to do it, number one. Number two, you don't have the gas lines. You don't have the water availability. And we just gave a water treatment plant to the city. We have a mega industrial park. It's industrial. What does that say to users if you do a moratorium on any and all? I agree with no hyperscale center 100% with the entire audience here. Okay, it's not a popular opinion. And when you talk about local jobs, there's a gentleman that has a steel manufacturing company in Jasper. They're building data centers right now. Okay, so they have 100 employees. So I can tell you that there are tax benefits and there are benefits to the county. You just place them in areas that do not affect the residents. So if you're worried about the utilities, that's not a concern. You need to be worried about the implications and the volume and size of the center.

Thank you, Derek. Okay. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Okay. Thank you, Dylan. Not a problem. Okay. Okay. Whoa. Okay. Listen. Listen. I just told you. I'll shut the meeting down. Everybody's going to get their opportunity, okay? We're going to be civil about it and do the best we can. And just for the record, for everybody that's here, I just want to make a point. And, yes, ma'am, I will get you. I've seen your hand go up. This, I'm not sure what he just gave us here, but my point is, is that, it will go to the pio and it will be online so everybody in here will be uh i want to make sure nobody thinks we got any kind of secret information here okay so this will be posted online i'll assure you that so yes ma'am if you would please oh christy bradley

I was just wondering, he didn't introduce himself. Like, who is he with? Who does he work for?

We were just wanting to know.

Real quick.

So I'm Dylan Adams. I'm actually a resident of Columbia County. I grew up here. I grew up on the Chautauqua Springs. Love Columbia County. Kids go to school here. I live locally here. So, yeah, so we have a consulting firm. We do land entitlement. We're not, we're not, no, no, no, no, stop. No, no, hang on now. But I mean, I want to have facts. We're talking about an open discussion. We're having a workshop. There's facts, right?

That's right.

Right. So I want everybody to have full education on things. Hyperscale is a problem.

Okay, Dylan, that's it. Have a seat. Okay, is there anybody else they would like to speak for? I think she's still, are you done? Are you done or do you have more to say? Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry, ma'am.

I just, to add to that, I just wanted to say that everything starts out with, it's not a problem. And then it ends up somewhere else.

We promise, we promise.

Then it's somewhere else.

Thank you.

Hello everybody. I'm Philip Harwick. I live up in district two. I know that some of y'all here on the board are as old as I am. When you're talking about data centers in the old days, when we were growing up, they were called email server farms. However, they have grown in their scope and their capabilities. but you could have the entire nation's emails being processed in this room right here in 1980. What they are offering is absolutely absurd. Also, on this young lady's slide for Senate Bill 8484, if you read the last two lines, it gives the data center people a one-year moratorium Well, they obligate you to an NDA for up to one year to decide whether or not they're going to tell you what the consumption of that particular data center is. That is, when I grew up, I am fully aware I'm a native Floridian, born in Sarasota in 1955. We understood government in the sunshine, and there was no such thing as a nondisclosure agreement. under the government and the Sunshine Law. Why is that something that is being accepted nowadays? To me, it's just kind of irritating, because it does not work for me. But in any event, I'll let you all go. Thank you very much, and you all have a great day. And absolutely, a moratorium forever, not just one year, but at least until we know better.

OK, anybody for? anymore yes ma'am I'm just trying to give a little bit of equals representation here hello

Jennifer Johnson. I'm relatively new to Lake City. My husband and I moved here about five years ago from Washington, D.C. Spent the last 20 years there. I'm an accountant. He has a Ph.D. in computer science. Thank you. He has a PhD in computer science, so a bit versed on the subject. Because we're so new to Lake City, I'll keep my opinions to myself. Y'all seem to have that well in order. And I just want to say that my faith is there. So thank you for being trustworthy, apparently. wanted to make sure that a few questions were asked if this were to go forward like who has the priority after hurricanes with electricity would that be residents or the data center so I'm literally just giving questions to be asked who defines terms like water sources and feasible and You can't hear me, sorry. I was saying like who defines the terms like water sources, reclaimed water, feasible, the term feasible, will the data centers be defining those terms or will you, Columbia County, be defining those terms? Does that make sense? Just a little bit of doublespeak. I didn't have a lot to add while I was listening, but I was in DC for a very long time and I thought that i would bring to the table to make sure who is defining the terms so who defines the term feasible who defines the term water source i heard the thousand that was a great presentation what i didn't hear is who's defining the terms that are going to be used so if the data center is saying if the water sources are affected If DeSantis is telling them that the water sources are affected, you'll have to ABC, et cetera, the standards set out. Who defines water source? It's just a little nugget that I thought I could add to make sure you're defining the terms, whatever the terms may be, moving forward. That's all.

Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Is there anybody here to speak for it?

for or against how about that okay I'm Joseph Thompson I've been in I love Columbia County I've been here since 1992 I've been 45 years in the computer business I worked for AT&T for 31 years I worked in about every data center in Florida Alabama Georgia okay every day y'all pass by data centers and don't even know it okay there's 14 of them in Jacksonville y'all passed by inside the city limits on major highways that y'all the size of the ones we're gonna have here that's reckon okay and I hear a lot of information that is correct and I hear a lot of information that is put out to scare people and I'm not for or I'm I don't want a big data center but we're in a position now where we got the opportunity for the county commissioners and the taxes of Columbia County to be a lot lower than what they are now. Our property taxes is high. That's what I'm concerned about, okay? Our water is good, okay? Right now we're in a low water level, right? We've been there before. But these data centers are not going to collect water. I bet Publix uses more water than these small data centers will in their day. Okay? I've been in every data center here, and you're right. They're not going to provide a lot of jobs locally, but they're going to be a lot of support people that works on these data centers, on the infrastructure, on the generators, on the electricians, all of that. And that's the side I come from. Okay? And so I just want to say I'm not for them or against them, but there's a lot of information we need to check to make sure we know what we're talking about.

Thank you. Okay, I'll let you try it one more time. Is there anybody else in the crowd that speaks for him? Yes, ma'am.

Hi, my name is Theoni. I do have something else to mention about the data centers. So I know that you're wanting to know who's more for it or against it, but I can see in these people's eyes that a majority of them are against it, and I'm with them. The reason why that I am strongly opposed to data centers is because of the environmental impacts like the water. As you can see, I mean, the springs are already having a hard time enough with the droughts. So, and another thing is, like, I don't want to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but what about those data centers being used for, like, flock and mass surveillance? So... I ask those who want to build the data centers to do some soul searching because once the environment is damaged and the water is polluted, then what? Thank you for your time.

Okay. I think we pretty well covered that part of it, but, and I know there's a lot more you'd love to And your opinion is greatly appreciated. And I'm going to ask, I'm going to do something real quick. Just by raising hands, not hooping around and carrying on, how many people are here that are against the data center? Okay. How many people are for? so my point is simply this the we're gonna have a lot of discussion up here with the board and I've got a very anxious young lady right here she's gonna be our last public speaker but if you would ma'am please make your way up here I've been seeing her I thought she's gonna throw something at me directly but the I ain't got my helmet on but hey y'all I'm Lori Peacock my only question to everybody is

How many people have y'all heard of anything good coming out of these data centers? Okay. All I've heard is not good. And my sources, they're having water issues. Their cattle are not having babies. Okay. That's huge, y'all. Thank you. I mean, I'm not a real smart person, but I have common sense. And I think the rest of us, the rest of y'all do too. Okay, so I haven't heard one good story. Tell us a good story. to make us believe. We need proof, not speculation or, you know, whatever. We need proof that if we do this, we're not going to be impacted in our children's children. I'm going to die soon, but there's kids this big that need a life and they need wildlife and they need the same opportunities that we had. I'm 64. i'm going down pretty soon but there's a lot of young people that ain't going to have no opportunity if we don't speak up and educate we need to make people aware of what's really going on and flock is involved in these data centers make no mistake about it our fourth minute my amendment right thank you and uh and then she hit the nail on the head uh one more

No, sir. You can't speak to the crowd. You've got to come to the podium, please.

My name is Stuart Rowan, R-O-W-A-N. Point of order. When we came in, we were told we didn't need to sign cards to speak. We were told that it would be open to the floor. So to cut it off before those who had a chance to speak would probably be a difficult point. I want to speak against the data center. I live at 174 Rowan Tree Terrace on Lake Jeffrey, and I want to speak specifically about Lake Jeffrey. For the last few years, we have had hurricanes that have kept water levels fairly high, unrealistically high. This drought has pointed out a problem we have, and that is that our aquifer is under stress. Lake Jeffrey is at the lowest level I have observed in my lifetime, and I've been on Lake Jeffrey for over 70 years. It is under a tremendous amount of stress, and I appreciate your presentation when you said that the data centers would be able to generate some of their own power. To use bad grammar, they ain't generating water. It's not happening. They're not going to make new water. and we are already under tremendous stress. A data center that collects between 300,000 and 5 million gallons of water per day creates unrealistic expectations. And on SB 484 that we had up on earlier, point number three was very specific, prohibits water permits harmful to area resources. That is one of the points, prohibits that. Lake City, Columbia County, One of the biggest sources of tourism are our underwater resources, our aquifers, our springs. Those are the things that generate in our community income and revenue. It's wonderful to talk about a certain amount of hypothetical jobs, but when we understand that tourism is under attack because of the use of this water. Secondly, you all took a bold stand a few months ago to stop the intrusion of water, polluted water, into our aquifer. That was a tremendous move on your part. I would hate to see us reverse that by allowing data centers that will draw this water help out whatever they want, as much as they want, and put our communities and resources under stress. Thank you.

Thank you. And audience, constituents, the point the gentleman make is exactly right i'd love for everybody here and and if y'all want to write it out one two o'clock i'll find that too but my point is please we're gonna have my pet peeve is the environment and that's going to be my next call meeting and uh because just like the gentleman said we're sitting on top of our number one tourism in the state of florida outside agriculture is your tourism you know so you got to protect your assets and we all understand that but the uh but we will and please please please say to your neighbors your friends your family please attend these meetings and we will do a very good job of making sure that these future workshops and these things ain't going to be spread out over the next six months or something like that we're gonna i've got a question for friends of that 1000 real quick because she one thing she said uh she's got to explain that to me Why is Florida under attack, as you said? Why are they coming to us so much?

didn't necessarily i want to clarify too that we did not we're not taking a position on data centers well our position here is to let you all know that it's important to ask these questions to have as much information as you can when you are setting your policy and then if you are handling an application so um i my statement essentially was that we are not a hot spot for um data centers but it feels like we are sometimes because we're seeing them throughout the state comes so quickly

okay I understand now okay sorry about that please the last week I have been reading everything about these data centers right read a lot so one of the things I have read is invidious data centers cooling process it relies on a closed-loop liquid architecture a mixture of 75% water 25% propylene Basically, it's chip level heat absorption. And it does not require any more water at all. Basically, once you mix this mixture, they just recirculate.

They recycle, yes.

I mean, what it says is zero on-site water consumption and energy savings by eliminating massive power hunger, hungry chiller plants, and fans. NVIDIA's DSX reference designs can cut cooling-related energy cost by 40%. Are you familiar with this system? Has anybody looked at this system?

I haven't, but again, it's it's evolving so quickly and I am not an expert on energy use, so certainly that's something to be asking questions about. If someone comes to you with a project, I will say that some of the things that I've heard are that even these closed loop systems, although it sounds like they're trying to resolve some of the energy, the water use potential with the energy consumption, that has been the biggest thing is the indirect water use with the closed loop systems are still concerning.

I'm just reading this stuff and I'm just saying, so yes, I think we're all trying to read a lot of stuff and you don't know how to take it if it's true or what, you know what I'm saying?

So I can't speak to whether that compares as a different technology than something that we were even discussing six months ago. But somebody here might have a better.

Yeah, I know technology moves fast. Yeah, for sure. I'm going to tell you what I remember. cell phones come out. You know, it was a big old bag phone on our dash. Now we got these handheld computers, you know, with our hands and everything else, you know, in a matter of 30 years.

That's what we need to go back to, the bag phones.

You can call somebody. And you don't use no water.

One other question. How large is this data center got to be to use 50 million gallons of water? I think 5B, yes.

That is a question I cannot answer because I think it depends on the technology, the cooling technology that would be proposed with one of these systems.

Well, you know, that's kind of what I've kind of figured out. How big is that going to be?

Okay, okay. Please, please, please, please, please, please. I'll hold your comments.

Go ahead, Ms. Hawthorne. And to the point of the questions, the questions I have are numerous, and I don't think they're getting answered tonight, you know, because like the young lady said, she doesn't know what the loop system, I don't, because I'm going to be honest with you, I got something to say, but I have a guy that's been in computers since 1990 when the And he gave me advice that, well, maybe a closed-loop system, but I'd see how it's going to benefit the account. In other words, a guy that probably should be for, and this is a huge computer company, the one in the world. And he said, but I would have to see what the benefits are. So that's not a guy that does this for a living going, yeah, I mean, the data centers are great. Do it. you'll be okay no he said i would still have to see how it's going to benefit the county and i understand why counties do this look we got developers in here i've got friends that say they want to do it i've got you know all kind of people but and it sounds great to us you know small counties everybody talks about the property tax talks about all our taxes well i think that's why some of the small small farming communities up north have fallen for this and i'm not saying falling for it because it's a bad thing but they've fallen for it because they're They don't have property tax anymore. They have so much money coming in that they can do everything that people in their communities want and do it with money from these data centers. You know, it's really a thing that as a county commissioner, you look at it, man, what will people say to no property tax or no, no taxes on and more, more softball fields, more of this, more of that. So I think that's why governments kind of get caught up and go, let's do it. And I think some of them are maybe places way up north. I saw some interviews with people where their water's gone bad, the noise is tearing them up. And I think at the beginning people just didn't know and they made decision that were probably weren't good decisions. They didn't have things like this. They just went out right out there and went after the money. So, One thing, we're in a bad time now for water use. I have a place on the river. I'll be there tonight and I have been in my springs that don't have enough flow now to keep six inches of dark water out of them. That's never happened in 30 years of me being down there. and 50 years of me being around the river. So I don't know how you cure that, but I know it's not by using more water. And that concerns me about that, you know, because that is the first time I've seen brown water inundate when it came up that far. It usually has to come six or eight foot up. So I don't really understand why we're a hotbed for people wanting to do these here. Maybe it's our geographical location or whatever it is. We're already in a water shortage. Another thing that, and I'm not saying, I'm just giving you all the things that in my mind are saying, it's saying to me is, I'm not completely saying it's terrible, but I don't know why we're a target for these things because our water management is the most stringent in the state. You know, this is a fact, y'all. All the other water managements don't have as stringent water. And us, with all the water we have and all the springs we have, we have less stringent, the most stringent rules. So one of our water management has the most stringent rules. So when I see these things coming here, if I were the head of one of these, I'd go, you know, go down there. Water management, they're not going to let you do anything, you know. because we're even dealing with with more stringent rules on our waters and cups a cup is what we use to provide you guys with water or provide companies with water so my problems are how much water well we have some people saying their loop systems there's this there's much how much noise you know reclamation when it goes obsolete and it will go obsolete i'm i'm with everybody on that it will go obsolete and then these companies just go out i mean are these contractor companies that just go out of existence and then we're stuck with a building in the middle of the country or the middle of this county somewhere so i i think there's just too many questions just like i think we're Look, West Palm put a moratorium on something, and West Palm's got plenty of lawyers and money. They know what's going on. So you got people like that that have gone into, let's put a moratorium on them. And I just feel like I know why they're doing it, because they don't have the real answers. And with our stringent rules, we have farms here, and farmers use a lot of water. But they're making food. They're not making computers. That's a big difference in my mind. So I just believe that we have to do something to make sure we get more information.

We don't have enough now.

I don't have a whole lot more than I had when I came in here. But I know that there's studies being done. We've already heard there's a study coming out in January, one coming out in October. There's probably more. There's probably going to be tons of studies coming out on this. So I'm... I would love to have money to help people not have to pay as much taxes. That would be wonderful.

But I don't know if this is the way to do it.

So I don't mind a moratorium. We can do whatever we want. But in these things, though, I'm going to tell you, it doesn't matter if we had a moratorium or not. They're not going to be approved by some person at the county that works for us. It's going to be approved. If we ever approved one, it would be right here with all of you sitting here watching us. Because this would be a special, in my opinion, I don't know what everybody else thinks, but before we ever did one of these, it would be a special exception. There would be huge. You know, there would be so many stringent rules put on it. And I'm not saying we're doing that. I'm not saying we're doing it. I'm saying, but if it happened, it's not going to just pop up. next to Tudney Springs next month. It's not going to do that or next year or 10 years from now. So I'm just saying this would be something that we would be, it would be like, if y'all know what I'm talking about, special exception, you would not be able to just go fill out a form, get one of these and go to building and zoning and they say, yes, you can do it. Or the zoning board, it would be, in my opinion, they would have to come before this board to let this happen. But I'm not saying that's going to happen because I'm still not sure. These NDAs y'all talking about, that's not happening in Columbia County, I can tell you that. Not going to be no disclosure in this county when you're dealing with that. So I just want to say we can do whatever we want. i just don't know enough to make any decision even close to letting one of these even come anywhere near our county so i i need more information how we get that i believe that's why nassau county put a moratorium i think that's why west palm did it i think that's why a lot of major cities and small cities are doing it because we just don't know enough that's my opinion you know whatever y'all y'all do is fine but You know, I just wish people try to slow down using AI, I'll be honest with you. But anyhow, I see politicians putting out AI ads. I'm like, people don't want to see that. They want to see you. But anyhow, that's my opinion. And I'm with y'all. I understand what you're saying. And this part of the state is just, you know, is just inundated with,

right now so I appreciate it thank you thank you all for coming thank you just a second just a second it's board discussion right now if you would please okay real quick robbie just hit on uh mr holland's worth i've done them all his life so he's robbing me but uh he just hit on something i just want to re-emphasize we use this board we've got the power and uh it's something i was explaining to me just the other day that we can do an amendment to our ldrs i know that's very you know uh greek to a lot of you but uh we can simply put it as what he just said we can go ahead and amend and get this into us take probably a couple months or whatever that no data center will ever be approved in columbia county without it coming to the point that that's a simple fix right now and and and and i'm not gonna water the you know water this down in no form fashion whatsoever there's built-in moratoriums as we speak right now and i'll just give you a couple of these are facts look them up right here in columbia county we worked for almost two years to get a two million gallon cup and that's a consumptive use permit right out here at the mega industrial yard we pretty well sold our souls to get it am i correct david yeah and uh so my point is is this uh we're not using the water out there at this point in time okay the city of lake city has got a four million gallon cup That's all the permit that they have today. They're pumping somewhere in between 3.3 and 3.5 a day. So that puts it in perspective. When you sit there and talk about, like Mr. Phillips just said, he put it in the best way. Five million gallons a day, you know, and our water usage around here, Mr. Ford has been in the tank business ever since he could walk pretty much. And, you know, he's seen it on both spectrums, you know. So when you put that into perspective, in my opinion we've got a moratorium in place and i'm just beyond myself that's why i want to go through a lot of educational process here because i cannot put it in my mind how somebody can even consider bringing one of these huge data centers to the state of florida when they got such an uphill climb from day one i mean the minute you come across that line you know and i've worked on it now for 10 15 years you can go to tipton georgia get you a hundred thousand five hundred thousand dollar cup i mean gallon cup in about two days but it'll take you there i don't see no engineers in here but it'll take you a i don't know how many years a lot of and a lot of money and a lot that's what like so my point is there's something else here you know and i and i think it's been steered by this AI thing. You know, that's Tim Murphy's opinion, and I'm not very smart, but my point is that, you know, there's a, I think we've got a lot of built in, when you sit there and say moratorium, just my opinion, it's, there's an order that comes with that. You know, we're doing everything we can to try to build, you know, our community and bring in the growth that we as Columbia County is one you know we're not going to sit as long as I'm sitting here I'm not going to let nobody come in to pressure us to deteriorate our quality of life here in Columbia County and the general I've never even thought about this all the two years I've been dealing with this the gentleman joseph i think of the fire thing never thought about that and here we are you know we're in the middle of dealing with a ems issue you know something just that's a big deal but then again on the spectrum of what we're all talking about that's a little small piece of pie but but that was a perfect point you know he's correct you know because uh that is a large cost and uh but one of the uh we're going to take our time and please please please i want each and every one of y'all involved in this thing to the to the end because without y'all we're not doing the right thing we're going to bring the power companies in we've got a great representative back here i'm not even going to point her out but uh but she's uh she she's she's number one to columbia county she looks out for columbia counties with florida power lights she really really does and their whole company is great to us but I sat in a conference a couple weeks ago me and Mr. Parnell down here and TECO power was involved in that we learned a lot we went in there one thing and come out and got a commissioner hopefully I can get him down here from Georgia that deals with the agricultural aspect of it because we got it's our duty all of us to make sure what growth we come here is that You know, we're smart about it. But personally, I think our moratoriums, we've got them built in place right now because we, as us five, can simply give direction to him and tell him if anybody knocks on our door as far as economic development aspect, we're not discussing it. It's just that simple. See you later. the end of the deal we do not have to discuss it so with that being said that's just my opinion but the and one thing i would one more thing i'm going to take robbie's glory here what how where are we ranked in the state of florida as far as taxes per capita per capita 12th we're the 12th lowest community county in the state of florida for taxes per capita per capita that's that's that's the fact right there but Mr. Parnell he's been he's he's our newest Commissioner but he's most patient so far because he can deal with a bunch of old guys but but I know he's got I know he's got some information he likes to share word and sometimes y'all get going

So first of all, let me just say, let me thank everybody for coming out, spending time with us for a few minutes. This is exactly why we have this discussion today, was to get the thoughts of the community. So thank you guys for coming, taking time out of your day to come to the meeting. It was great discussion, great conversation. Secondly, I think the reason why Robby was asking why we look so attractive for maybe a center wanting to come here is because we don't have the restrictions and the parameters in place yet to make us not look attractive. So therefore they see that and they want to come here and start that up. Let me tell you, anybody who knows me for 15 minutes knows I'm an ad guy. You ain't coming to get my land and put a data center up. I'm sorry. It's not going to happen.

Furthermore,

We want to have these discussions and we want to have a plan in place so that this doesn't turn out something like the solar farms have. Solar farms came up, it was great, everybody was all for it, great idea, second and third. In the grand scheme of things, initially it looked great, looked good, yeah, let's go for it, let's go for it. Well, anytime entity comes in, I'm just going to call a spade a spade here, anytime entity comes in, they offer you a bunch of money, a bunch of discounts, a bunch of this, a bunch of that, they shine on the front of your face. Yep. there's a good line of bs somewhere in there and we just got to work that out get through that so we so if the moratorium is what we need to do we need to do more trouble we got to do more research to ensure that we're making the right move here and i think we're on the right path so discussion is what we needed to have and we've had that here today thank you guys for coming and uh oh one more thing so we talked about decommissioning don't we have a um crap off strength out here don't have old jail or prison or something that's not in use anymore they got illegal aliens in it right now if something had to come let it go there versus going there but we can't we're gonna put the people

We're going to put the people that build data centers in those. Is that what you're saying?

I'm good to be. Let's go. After we send them home, okay? After we send them home. Hey, hey, hey, the government has air conditioned the whole place. Oh, boy, yeah.

It will be cool. Right, right, right. so and that was another aspect too was the decommissioning you know that we plan for the future and you put something like this here 10 years down the road they say hey we're going to take this thing and do something different with it send it outer space now we've got a structure here that we can't do anything with no one is in it what do you do with that now and then the tax break that we had for them being here we don't ever have so now we go back and we tax our constituents again to make up for it it's just not it's just not kosher and then sit well with me so That's my view. Somebody else can have the floor now. I'm good. Mr. Phillips?

Well, I want to really appreciate everybody being here, and I hope y'all come back again, because we're going to have some more information when y'all come back, and we're going to know what size of... I didn't want to put a lady on the spot about the size of the building, but we're going to find out how big this building is going to be if you use 5 million gallons a day, okay? So y'all come back, be with us, we're going to go the right direction we're not going to go just out there and jump off and fall off a limb and say this is what we need to appreciate y'all coming mr ford yeah i just thought

not say also i appreciate all y'all coming out i think one thing about florida we're kind of behind the eight ball a little bit on these data centers because everything i can read florida's climate is not conducive for these data centers because of the heat and stuff and the hurricanes so something changed for them to start oh i agree with i agree with the rest of the commissioners here you know anything that comes into columbia county is going to have to come before us and we will have all the answers at that time before or i will i know before i prove anything

And like Mr. Ford said, if it comes for us, it comes for you, just like it did today. There's no secrets. We want to know, but we've got to educate ourselves more. We've got to get some professionals to educate us on what we need.

Okay, I'm sorry. We've got Mr. Joel Forbin.

I'm sorry to cut you off. No, you're fine. We've obviously already started doing due diligence on what moratoria look like. We've got one out of Madison County. We've got several. The smaller the county is, the less likely it is to be doing anything about this because they don't want the exposure of potential lawsuits. But what you're seeing, like we talked about a while back, is you're going to reach a critical mass of counties that have adopted moratoriums. The thing I want people to understand about a moratorium, a moratorium is not a ban. A moratorium is actually what Commissioner Murphy just described. Somebody comes in and says, hey, I want to file a building permit application or I want to file a site use plan. If there's a moratorium in place, our folks down in those offices can say, we're not allowed to accept that right now. To be clear, without a moratorium, if somebody walks in and says, I want to file an application for a site development plan or I want a building permit, we have to take it. because our land development regulations set out the rules and commissioner parnell's already had a bad experience with that if the rules say a plus b is c and they give us a and b we are obligated to give them c unless there's a moratorium that doesn't allow them to do the math in the first place and does that open us up to a potential because we don't have any rules about these things that opens us up to if we say no to maybe a lawsuit so we may need to do a moratorium so in florida I like this about for we have what are called for Paris claims and we very strongly protect private property right great state for that right we've a real proud tradition of that that means when a private property owner wants to do something with their property yeah the government has to have a real good reason to tell them no which is why you do a moratorium to pause what so that you can gather the appropriate information to know what the reasons are because again I know all five of you gentlemen you also believe in private Yeah, so the government has to have a strong basis if we ever tell somebody no. The other thing, the rule that you want to have everything come into this boardroom, we do that with special use permits right now. We can adopt a very similar rule for anything that qualifies as a data center. The young lady who brought up definitions, excellent point. We have to define data centers because they don't exist in our code right now. Right. You talk about what Florida, the Florida legislature has only addressed the 50 megawatt facilities. We're not getting a hyperscale. So we have this huge gap between zero megawatts and 50 megawatts. We have to fill. And they told you guys you have to fill it. So I want to be clear before I go back to my office. Everything I've heard in this room today suggests I need to start finishing up my due diligence on moratorium.

Do we need a motion?

No, sir. I just want, if any of you hear differently, I need you to tell me.

If this could potentially get us in a lawsuit because we don't have rules and a moratorium and we don't know, we don't even have LDRs to cover these, like Rocky said, maybe that we do need to do the moratorium. It doesn't matter to me.

but we can do whatever you wanted. And once you have the rules and again, the rules would be would be developed through that research and that due diligence that every other county in the state is doing right now. You can lift the moratorium, right? So it may start for a year, but you can lift it after six weeks if we get everything sorted out, right? But without the moratorium, what you're doing to your staff downstairs is putting them in a position where they will have to accept the application. And I don't want to do that.

So no vote necessary. We just need to give you the direction.

I've heard what I've heard, and I'm going to go do that tomorrow, unless one of y'all tells me different right now. So you're going to go do the moratorium? I don't need a motion. I know what I'm going to do, but I just want to make sure before.

Mr.

Chair, no matter what you do, it's going to take legal review and to go through the legal process, even if it's to change the LDRs. None of that can be done quickly.

And like Joel said, it's all over the state. Everyone's trying to figure out legally how we do this. Where do we go? What works? So even if you just wanted to pass limitations or whatever, it still has a process it has to go through. None of that can be done tonight. Okay.

I just have a quick statement.

Real quick, and you're the last speaker tonight.

My statement is that everyone has been hearing about all these horror stories, all in several cities and several states. And the problem I had is the data centers never disclose how they're designed, what they're using, or the criteria in which they're operating. So when you go in, the transparency, there's no visibility to any of this. So once you put it in, you're dealing with the consequences in the aftermath. That's all I wanted to say. Thank you.

Okay, real quick, we're going to take a little five-minute pause for the people that want to leave. And from there on, and ma'am, please, when you come up here, you've been putting your hand up real quick. Yes, yes. Out of the break, if you don't mind.

Yeah.

Okay. So we're at pause for five minutes for a bathroom break.

okay at this time we'll reconvene David the Europe next all right I only have two items are relatively short you have 45 days from when the property appraisers put the certification in place so we have to do this that's why we had to call a meeting to get this done we need to set the maximum proposed millage rate of for the county um again this is just the maximum proposed it's not the final millage rate the final millage rate will be set at the public hearing on september 3rd you've not increased the millage rate in over 30 years in 2021 in fact you lowered the millage rate from 8.015 to 7.815 which was approximately 900 000 annually say that one more time yeah in 2021 you lowered the millage rate from 8.015 to 7.815, which was a reduction of equivalently $900,000.

And when was the last time the millage rate been lowered?

30 years.

No, no, millage rate lowered? Lowered. 30 years.

No, 30 years, it's stayed pretty much constant.

I think it was.

Except that one year in 2021 where you lowered it.

Yeah, that's right.

But you don't know how long it had been before that it had been lowered? It was some back, it was like 25 years ago, and they raised it right back up the next year.

It's been a long time. Longer than my memory. So basically, there's a lot of questions out there. So we're asking, we're recommending you keep the millage rate the same as it is. There's the impact of Amendment 3 that we don't know and the economy that we don't know about. You wanted to fund the two ambulances and the staffing of the two ambulances. the growth in the per capita capital projects, including the jail. We know there's a lot of requests for capital projects out there. And of course, that's why we're recommending you keep the millage rate the same. Now, if you do, it will generate 39,072,979, which is roughly 2,557,117 more. I move we approve the maximum millage rate of 7.8150. Got a motion.

Got a second. Any other discussion? All in favor say aye. Aye. All in favor?

Did we miss anything, Joel? Okay. These were the charts that was mentioned earlier about per capita tax levies and personal property levies. which all show that we actually are not very high in comparison to the 67 counties across the state. And most of the ones that are lower than us are ones that don't offer the level of services that you demand of the county and that the citizens demand of the county. And we will post these on our webpage. There's a government, there's a transparency webpage, and we'll also have other posts out on this.

the people this actually came i'm going to tell you i'm going to tell you something right now this is a credit to not only and i don't we don't have a lot every commission doesn't have a lot to do but this is a credit to this commission for years and years this is a big deal because i know that the counties i'm seeing below us on the property tax don't do the things we do as far as grading as far as picking up limbs in the winter. That's become a normal for us.

That's not a normal for most counties.

And I know Baker County doesn't. So I just am real proud of that, that we are that way on the scale. It's a great scale to be on.

And we have been very conservative in our finances. The board has put us in great financial condition. We've kept our millage rate low. Like like the commissioner said, on a per capita basis, we're number 58 out of 67. That's a pretty good ranking.

David, if you would, before we go on, I'd ask that, and I'm sure everybody agreed, I think that needs to be posted on our page and uh that's just good information yeah some some that's a that's a big benefit and i i when i looked at it i talked to a friend in putnam county and it's i'm at the very early stages comparing what they get for their dollar and and it's uh the first conversation yesterday afternoon was quite amazing uh the difference what clinton county does to you know somebody as close as putnam county can you go back let's look at putnam and and there's no no come on one more 967.1 there we go they're more than double what we are and they're the same size county as us that's a big deal and so we want the public to understand this is not our numbers

This comes from the tax watch group.

Yeah, the other one I looked at was not. I looked at a different one a second ago. This is 926. They're 17, whatever. But what was the other one? Go back to the other one. You had another one that was not per capita total property tax. It was something else.

The numbers were completely different. Go back one more.

Go back. You had it up here. Okay. Government property tax. Yeah. Okay, all right, for the county government.

And then we also have this one. This is the case. That's the one that makes the difference right there.

And that one makes a difference too. All of them, y'all, all of them are huge. But one's for government, for the whole government. One's just for the county. But they're all ranked about the same.

And this one's the total property taxes levy.

They all have coastline. That's right. And none of those grade it 2 to 3. You know what I mean? Their property values are way higher now because of it.

But you take $20, 31 cents per individual that lives in this county, young, small, old, and ugly. I'm the ugly one. They're getting a lot for their dollar. That's my fee.

And Putnam's about double there, too. So that's a big deal. they got a big they got a big string of water runs right through the middle there i read this last night and i said who wrote this we gotta find out i was happy but again it's an independent organization that did the study uh it's not something that we produce i've heard that the governor watches these studies sometimes yeah and cuts funding sometimes to different counties so it must be real you know the governor watches it

what i heard that might be those ain't over there on them counties on the right over there they're hanging out over here on the left yep so the last item on the agenda is the proposed millage rate for the industrial park you established an mstu a municipal service taxing unit for just for the north florida mega industrial fund last year we set the rate at the same rate counties is we're proposing you do the same keep it as it is which is seven point

eight one five zero um it will generate a whole six seven hundred and sixty nine dollars more next year than it did this year motion to approve second got a motion second any discussion all in favor say aye aye thank you very much thank you okay uh at this point in time we have open public comments anybody like to speak about anything for three minutes yes sir

Hello board. Thank you for taking the time to let me speak on this. So I was willing to speak early in the public comment, but I had not really had to sign up for it. One thing I noticed about the data center discussion that was originally not mentioned is that as Ms. Daniels has stated before in last week's EDAD meeting, every project, there have been data centers that have approached Columbia County. Every single one of them, or not every single one of them, the majority of them were over 100 acres. which is a very large project for reference. That's a majority of the softball complex. That is three quarters of it. The County owns 136 acres. It's a hundred minimum. That is over the 50 megawatts. And that is the water usage that, how do I word this? That is the water usage that would put you in a predicament, which was for example, the cups that you mentioned. Another thing I want to bring up is that the only reason that these didn't go through was because of SRWMD denying their water permits. So these things almost did happen. They could have happened, and only SRWMD stopped them, which is a very big issue. And I thank Mr. Palmer for bringing it up, that that was the reason they were stopped. But I just wanted to address that and said this can be a big issue if they can get that water permit. If they can get that, the county at this point in time can't do anything. And that's all I have to say.

Thank you. What do you do for a living, son? What do you do for a living?

You're a computer man.

We're in good hands.

Everybody needs a computer man.

He's pretty sharp. Okay, anybody else? Okay, not seeing any. Board, it's not on here. Mr. Parnell, do you have anything?

No, it was a good discussion today, good meeting. I think it was relevant. It was needed. We needed that community involvement on that. We've got to continue to have a community involvement on this matter. It's a great ordeal, but they need to be involved because, again, we're here for the people, and this is a great showing of how we are here for the people. We had a discussion. Let them be involved and say what they want, don't want, just give their whole opinion on it. So it was a good meeting.

I wanted to talk to two cataphones. How much water do they drink?

They wasn't drinking much the other day because the well wasn't out. We had a hole of water.

One thing about it, my cows don't drink five million gallons a day.

You'd be shooting them to the end, wouldn't you?

I'd be in a world of trouble.

Yeah, our well wasn't out the other day. We had the hole of water. I think we had some thirsty cows.

I don't have anything. I don't have nothing. I'm just glad everybody came in.

listen to what we had to say so they know what we think about down the center we don't really know so we're we're going to find out about it before we come back okay okay and uh board i'd like to say we had a uh our meeting this week uh you know last week with the uh relevant to the north florida water utility got a lot of things moving in that and uh and mr ford definitely was uh one of the instrumental factors and uh establishing this utility I want to publicly you know thank him for the efforts that he's put forth on this myself and Rocky you know we're off of that board now and the point that I wanted to make I mean just a suggestion to the board myself and Rock you know we're we've replaced ourselves but the meeting that caught my attention the other day there's a possibility that the water utility may have to cause some special meetings in between now and August 1st or you know wouldn't we I'm pretty sure that we said you know we'll do this I'm just simply asking the board I'm suggesting that the two appointees go ahead and be set in the place if there's any special because they're the ones that's going to be dealing with the issues that me and Rocky have been dealing with for a all this time they're going to be dealing with the budgets and stuff like that it ain't like we ain't got nothing else to do i'm sure you're that so i think they're both ready that's okay with the board i'm i'm i'm fine with that I thought that's what we voted on when me and you was in there the other day we started talking about possible special meetings and I said you know that's what I just got to think about I think they're ready I mean I'm sure me Rocky and other commissioners would be attending the meetings anyway but I just thought it was a proper time I just wanted to do it officially rather than just say just say Joel yes sir this is for Commissioner Phillips and the public

please announce down in Ellisville today we'll button up all three phases next week of the road construction next week we'll start a punch list out of all the construction will be complete so we did button that up bottom up that schedule so all three phases down in Ellisville the road part will be complete I do appreciate the little short road down there at the cemetery really made that come through there yesterday had all the red lights working and everything yeah that's

It looks good.

We're doing the milling and all tonight. About time.

You sound to me like somebody that's got $900,000 bonus. It's about time.

It's about time. When you're working 12 hours a day, you've got something to do.

I like the way they've done the offense.

That's good. Real fast, Kirby. So, a while back, we talked to... i know it's not just it is kind of but we talked dlt about getting me some flashing stop signs out there on my off ramps on i-10 i rode to ellisville man it's real nice down there i need the same thing north of town we need to reach back out and get some info and we need to get some some stuff on exit 303 right there let's go hey you give us a b and b up there we'll make it happen while we're addressing that kevin could you could you give us a report at the next meeting

the intersection. I got people calling me about that intersection at 240 and 247. Do you know where they're at at that?

Yes, I can tell you right now. Okay. So this week I've been working on what we call ask for capital projects of next year. One of the top ones on my list, I met with the DOT and unlike what we did in Ellisville, where they turned everything over to us with the procurement, the construction, all nine yards, we've decided my memory says $262,000 they're already starting the process i've committed we come in this boardroom and we committed that would be a project for us that cost on our side is 262. we write them a check for 262 and they're going to do everything so we're flipping it we're all right that's just a tab of what that cost but 262 and my members right that was surveying the proposed property acquisition there was a list of how we got there but if you guys say i hope you do because we committed to it we write the check for 262 and they're off to the races and i think it'll be a real project their their fiscal year against in july and i know they got it in july but no sir next july okay right but that that will be when i do the capital project ask that's one of the top three items 262 for the intersection of the 247 240. while we're talking about brandon highway too i'll send you a text

I don't know. Have they done anything with that road in front of that house?

We did.

That was a bad fire right there.

That's a clay hill. That's the fourth time in my career it's been tended to. But I reached out to DOTF. He texted me. And they worked with us, as we always do. They sent a mill and a paper crew in there. They cut out, I don't know, about a mile where it was so terrible. They finished that about two weeks ago.

Oh, okay. It was sunk down that deep there. I had people call me. There was a sink over there. I mean, it was bad. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Take care of that. Okay. We're adjourned.