City Commission Regular Meeting - Special Meeting

Before a residential lot is cleared, our Natural Resource Division visits a site to look for wildlife and trees that need to be protected.

On this site, we happen to have some gopher tortoise burrows. Okay. And there's some few steps we could do to help mitigate any kind of impact to those tortoise burrows. So over here, we have a tortoise burrow that is excluded. So they don't necessarily have to remove the tortoises to build. If there's enough room, they could provide an exclusionary buffer for the... for the building, you leave it in place. So with the apron and then the shape of the burrow, you could tell it's kind of a D-shape, like you would see a tortoise shell shape. So there's kind of rounded on the top, flat on the bottom. That's how you know it's a tortoise burrow. So when we see these, we report it back to the builder and they have to get a gopher tortoise survey by an authorized gopher tortoise agent. And that permitting is done through the FWC. uh this silt fence is actually put up not for erosion but for uh the um tortoises on the outside prevents them from coming into the site so there's no other impacts to those tortoises that are still in the area so they're required to put this up during building if they don't and tortoises come on site during building that's stop work and they have to stop and redo it again once wildlife is protected the team starts looking at the trees on the property So when we go to our survey, we like to verify tree sizes or DBH. So DBH is diameter at breast height, about 54 inches high on the tree. And as a zero, it's a 15 and a half inches diameter. And so that's considered a protected tree. In the city of Northport, we classify our trees as protected or heritage. Protected is from 12 inches to 23 and 7 eighths inch diameter. And then once it hits 24 inches, that's considered a heritage tree. And anything below 12 inches is not considered protected.

I wanted to know how Joe got into this kind of work and why he cares so much about it.

Originally from Pittsburgh, came down to be a zookeeper. There's a school up in Gainesville, Santa Fe Community College. But then I learned more of Florida. So being from up north, you think the beaches. I learned Florida's more than just that. And so I went to the University of Florida to get my bachelor's in the wildlife ecology and conservation and then proceed with my master's in ecological restoration. I just love Florida and all the habitats in Florida. And I also like it because we can also conserve and save while continuing to build. So we can do two things at once without having a discrepancy on one or the other. So we can continue to build. As you see, we can still save tortoises. We can make sure everything is safe and preserve canopy cover.

After that first visit, and once the lot is selectively cleared, the operist steps in to focus on the trees that can be saved.

So you see here, these trees with the ribbon on them, those are proposed to be saved. And they are, you see this beautiful understory of saw palmetto. It's going to be a nice little area. Yeah. Yeah. Exposure to a natural setting for the homeowner. And that's what we're going for. Very natural. One of the things we really value in Northport is live oak trees and so this one is outside of the building footprint up here in the corner and it was able to be conserved and you can see it's been out in the woods for all this time throughout its life and it's got vines hanging off of it and with some minimal and proper pruning this is going to be just a beautiful tree.

Today is Monday, August 31st, 2026. It's 6 p.m. We're in the city chambers and I call the city commission special meeting to order. Commissioners present are Commissioner Duvall, Commissioner Stokes, Mayor Emmerich, Vice Mayor Langdon, and Commissioner Petro. There is a quorum present for this meeting. Also present our city manager, Fletcher city attorney for, we know city clerk, false board specialist, lender, police chief, garrison and fire chief. Titus are in the back there. I am listening to all commissioners, public participants and staff maintain order and decorum throughout this meeting. City Commission Policy 2021-03 states that attendees shall refrain from engaging in personal attacks, boisterous, immaterial, inflammatory, obscene, profane, or disorderly conduct. Additionally, meeting attendees must refrain from obscene, profane, or disorderly conduct, including hand clapping, yelling, and similar demonstrations, all of which disturbs the peace and good order of the meeting. In order to ensure compliance with Policy 2021-03, I am asking all public commenters to direct their comment to the Commission in an orderly fashion. The presiding officer may interrupt any speaker to maintain order and decorum. but the interruption will not reduce the speaker's time if time limits have been imposed. Any meeting attendee who becomes disrupted to the orderly conduct will first be counseled about their behavior. If disruption persists, the presiding officer may request that the city manager have a police officer escort the disruptive attendee out of the meeting. If any meeting is disturbed and order cannot be restored, the presiding officer may recess or adjourn the meeting with any remaining business to be rescheduled for a future board meeting. Due to the anticipated number of public commenters during this meeting, we have modified our process. Requests to speak code should be completed and turned in at the staff table outside of the chambers. We have reserved the first row of seats for those who are called down to provide their public comment. When you hear your name, please head down and take a seat in the front row until it is your turn to provide public comment. The reason we have these rules in post, and I know we've got a lot of first time people here, we've got very bad acoustics in this chamber. It's hard for us to hear what's going on if there's chatter down there or even when an individual is up giving their public comments. So we want to be respectful to everybody. We want to hear everybody's public comment and that's what we're here for. So let's just be courteous to each other and get through this meeting as best as we can. I'm going to call on Deputy Chief Morales. Will you lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance, sir?

To the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you, sir.

Do we need a motion to approve the agenda?

Second.

Have a motion made by Commissioner Stokes, seconded by Vice Mayor to approve the agenda as presented. Please vote. That passes five to zero. Moving on. City Clerk, public comment please.

I have voicemails first.

Okay. Oh, and one thing before we get started. We will be taking breaks at about the 90-minute interval if anybody needs to do a health break or whatever because we anticipate slightly long meetings. So we'll be taking intermittent breaks for everybody. So just to let you know. Go ahead. Sorry.

hi my name is tatiana i'm calling regarding the meeting from north florida data center of august 31st 6 p.m i'm going regarding a proposal to build a new data center in south florida as a resident of this area i'm deeply concerned about

of life. I previously lived in Virginia, an area that has experienced significant growth in data center development. I have personally witnessed some of the impacts associated with the facility, including concerns with the water usage and quality, constant noise, and increased demand on electrical grid.

Plus, as fresh water resources are limited and extremely valuable, building large-scale data centers in this region over the next several years could place additional pressure on our already limited water

should be carefully evaluated before development is approved. I'm also concerned about the potential impact on wildlife and natural habitat. South Florida is home to a unique ecosystem and wildlife that does depend on these resources. This is not simply a concern about one development project. Data centers are rapidly expanding across the United States growth. We cannot continue approving developments without directly addressing how they will affect future generations.

I respectfully ask that the proposed data centers be prohibited or, after the bail, this approval be reconsidered until more studies have been done.

Please consider the long-term interests of the residents who

Hi, my name is Lori Lennon, and this is in regards to the meeting tonight, August 31st at 6 o'clock, regarding the data center. No, we don't need a data center. No, no. We have enough issues. We don't need any more data centers.

We don't need to waste any more water. No more energy. Enough is enough.

You've got to build this city with no infrastructure, no roads. No, no to the data center. No.

uh my name is michelle carry on my phone number is 915-244-3999 and i'm calling about the north port data center meeting today august 31st at 6 p.m i just wanted to say no to data centers they're gonna hike up the prices The temperature, we're in our water shortages. We can't afford this. We need to keep and preserve Florida as it is. That's all I'm calling for. Thank you.

I'm calling to say a firm no to daily centers in our community. These facilities drain millions of gallons of local water, strain our power grid, and run noisy polluting generators that harm our air quality and health. We will not sacrifice our environment who you are, and we will remember your name forever. We do not want data centers here. My name is Thomas Marino. I'm calling with regards to the It's August 31st, meeting at 6 p.m. My phone number is 941-412-5654. And I hope that's all that goes for because I didn't write it down.

But I'm really concerned about this. I don't live far from this location, and I don't want to hear the noise. I don't want the environmental impact. I don't want it to ruin water and our habitats. I want progress, but at the same time, we need to do it responsibly and know what's going to happen to our community. I don't want the value of my own to go down. This is all, you know, we've lived here since 84.

I love Northmore, and my family lived in Northmore until they passed away.

I really, this is, I think this is such an important issue for our whole community that we should seriously slow down and take a look at this before we lunge home I will be at a meeting today, and thank you for your time. Good afternoon. My name is Anna .

My phone number is area code 267-605-7318. I am leaving a message in reference to the data center. The meeting is going to be held tonight, August 31st at 6 p.m. Eastern Center Time.

At the Northport City Hall, 4970 City Hall Boulevard, Northport, Florida. I am calling to say a firm no to the data centers in our community as these facilities drain millions and gallons of local water, strain our power grid, run noisily, not only polluting generators that are harming our air quality, but our overall health. I do not want to see our environment sacrificed for the life of a corporate profit.

To the board, we are watching.

Please vote no to bring data centers here in Northport.

The meeting is for the building of the local data centers. I live on San Mateo in Northport, and I'm calling to concerning the data centers that is projected to be inbuilt or any other areas as well. But specifically the one in Yorkshire, as it is closest to me, I'm strongly against this proposal. After reading and hearing all of the negativity and the negative benefits, from how they need so much water to keep the computers cool, how much noise they will create for the surrounding homes that live nearby, as well as affecting our wildlife. And lastly, how possibly it can create health issues for people in the vicinity. I ask you and urge you please to shut this down now and do not, don't allow the data centers to be built.

Hello, my name is Ashlyn Church.

My phone number is 941-525-6858. I'm calling in regards to the meeting of allowing a data center in Northport, Florida on August 31st at 6 p.m. I'm calling in regards to the possibility of a data center in the city of Northport. I and many other residents of our area believe this will be an absolute disturbance to the environment and quality of living in Northport and surrounding cities. We have dealt with enough drought, heat, and death of wildlife in the past few years due to a rapid overdevelopment in this town. And this data center will only exacerbate these issues. To our board, please do not vote this data center into fruition as you are simply sacrificing the peace of your residents for something completely unnecessary. Save our area from this damaging epidemic spreading our country and vote no.

Thank you.

Hello, my name is Dan Petters. My phone number is 941-441-5288.

I'm calling in regards to tonight's meeting regarding the data center at 5 or 6 p.m. today.

I would say my answer is a hard no on this.

The data center uses way too many resources. Unless you are looking to try to monitor how long of showers we're taking and how much water we use, which is not fair.

People that have lived off of your chair for years now did not buy out here so that you could turn it into yours.

and there should be no data center at all in Northport. Until you do further investigations on the problems that are caused by a data center, then we should not be starting this. This is not about money. This needs to be about people's safety and the safety of the environment around it. Thank you.

So these people can stop talking so we can hear. We're out of time. Don't let someone hear you. Thanks.

My phone number is 586-994-1777.

This is about today's meeting, August 31st at 6 o'clock p.m. And my issue of concern is that data centers, I'm willing to say a firm no to data centers in our community. These facilities drain millions of gallons of local water, strain our power grid, and run noisy polluting generators that harm our air quality and health.

We will not sacrifice our environment or quality of life for corporate profit. To the board, we are watching. If you vote yes to bring data centers here, we know exactly who you are and we will remember your name forever. We do not want data centers here.

My name is Michaela Thomas. My phone number is 941-914-7129.

It is August 31st, 2026.

And I am calling to say a firm no to the death centers in our community. The facility is draining millions of gallons of local water, strain our power grid, and run noisy, polluting generations that harm our air quality and health. We will not sacrifice our environment or quality of life to offer appropriate profits. My name is Katie Bass and my number is 941-587-3770. I'm calling about the commission meeting on the data center moratorium ordinance. The date of the meeting is August 31st at 6 p.m. As a 15-year Northport resident, I'm calling to say no to a data center in Northport. A data center will strain our power grid and pollute our air quality.

Thank you. Hi, this is Janet Marie Briney. I live at 2480. to the data centers being claimed in our community. Please register your vote as now, 941-626-5391. Thank you.

Hello, my name is Patty Thompson.

I'm calling about the meeting on the data center in Northport, the August 31st at 6 p.m. Just would like to make a comment that It's really hard to imagine that they would even be considered to have a data center near a residential area, especially with all of the issues and unknown issues. of health concerns, the noise, the basically the people that you represent are saying that they do not want them and you all represent these people. So I don't know if there are people that are being compromised and being compensated in order to push these through against the will of the people. But also the deaths that are due create heat up to three degrees, which we do know, and Florida's already extremely hot. The noise that it creates creating disturbance, the health risk that no one knows, the issues with the water, the depreciation of property value, The list goes on and on, but we need to understand that the elected officials represent the people, and the people's voices are saying no. We do not want them here. And I think that we need to do a little bit of investigation on why this is even being considered in this area when the people are clearly saying no. So why isn't that big tech... is coming before the people. So I just really would like to let everyone know that we are doing an investigation to find if this moves forward, is there a compromise? Is there a reason why the Big Ten comes in and is able to have our elected officials work against the people? So I appreciate the time. Thanks so much. Hi, my name is Melanie Bray. August 31st at 6 o'clock in reference to the data center moratorium ordinance. I'm calling to tell you as a resident of Northport since 2004 that I'm going to say a firm and hard no to data centers in our community. I think they drain millions of gallons of local water and they strain our power grid.

I don't think this is good for us to have in our city at this time. My phone number is 941-580.

I am calling about today's meeting, so August 31st, 2026, at 6 p.m. The meeting agenda item that I'm calling about is the data center meeting. I am calling to say no to data centers in Northport and surrounding areas because data centers will negatively impact the community. We are not going to want to sacrifice our environment, peace, and quality of life for data centers. This is something that is going to impact not just Northport, but surrounding areas as well. To the board, I implore you to listen to your constituents and vote no on the dissenters in your court. Thank you and have a nice evening.

718-902-0603. I am calling regarding the meeting on August 31st at 6 p.m. regarding data centers in Northport. I'm calling to say that we would like this as a firm no. We do not want data centers here in Northport. They will drain millions of gallons of water that we already don't have to supply to Our town is going to suck out all of our electricity. It's going to be horrible during hurricane season. And it doesn't need to be here in our small town. We need our wildlife back. This is going to destroy everything. We are voting no for the data centers. If you do win the data centers, here's your report. We know who you are. We will remember you. And we will not be voting for you. We will not be participating in anything that you do. Thank you.

Hi, I'm calling to say a firm no to data centers in our community. No, no, no, no, no data. Thank you very much for understanding. We do not want the data centers, no data centers in the community.

These facilities drain millions of gallons of water. We will not sacrifice our environment or quality of life for corporate profit.

To the board, please vote no to the data setters. Thank you.

No, this needs to not be put in our area. It needs to be put in North Florida. about the North Port meeting tonight on data centers. It's August 31st. The 31st being held at North Port City Hall, and that will be 4570 City Hall Boulevard, North Port, I'm calling to say a firm no to data centers in our community.

These facilities drain millions of gallons of local water, strain our power grid, and run noisy pollution generators that harm our quality and health.

We will not sacrifice our environment or quality of life for corporate profit.

And to the board, we are watching. If you vote yes to bring dash centers here, we know exactly who you are, and we will remember your name forever. We do not want dash centers here. I was born on January 16th, 1998. I have been a resident of Florida, the Sarasota County and Charlotte County area for my whole life, 28 years. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. 442-0490. I am in Hernando County. This is for the meeting tonight at 6 p.m. August 31st, 2026 regarding a data center. What we need It's lower gas and food prices.

I hear nobody saying, we need a gas center.

Not happening.

We need lower gas and lower food prices.

That's it.

I just got a point.

Good afternoon. My name is Maria Goodnow. I'm calling in reference to the meeting tonight, August 31st at 6 p.m. in regards to building the data center at Northport. I implore each and every one of you to vote no, mainly that I work in the irrigation business, and frequently we are having to explain to customers the lottery restricted on why they cannot use water to take care of their plants, their lawn, their garden. Why your constituents pay taxes to not be able to use their water with the intention of conserving it to make life better for everyone? Why do any of you think it is a good idea to build a data center that is then going to take up our water resources It's not only going to affect Northport, it's going to affect all the surrounding counties. We do not have the water reservation to support the data center. All the data centers do hold data. It helps support AI. It's unnecessary. We have had no reason to build it in Northport as of now. I do not see any greater expansion or population boom in which it would make sense to vote in a new data center. If you vote yes, we are going to remember which of you voted yes. And when your term limit runs out, we will vote you out. Keep on working with ease. Thank you. The date is August 31st, 2026. The meeting of the day is today, August 31st, 2026, addressing the data center. I just want to say that I guess it being of the building and the Natural habitat that will be making wildlife, water sources, light, noise. So I'm voting against it if possible. I just don't think it's good for our area. We already have way too many buildings as it is. I'm on a huge building right there by 75. All right. Thank you. Good evening, my name is Roger Herrera.

I'm a resident from North Port, Florida, and I vote no for the database.

The reason I'm voting is this facility drains millions of local water, drain our power grid, and runs noise. Property generates the harm of our air quality and health.

We would not sacrifice our environment or quality of life for corrupt profit. To the board, we are watching. If you won't get to bring the data center here, we don't actually know who you are and we will remember your name forever. We do not want data center here. Thank you.

Point of order, Mayor. Yes. Would my fellow commissioners be agreeable to put a pause on the phone-ins and switch to people who are here in person and then get back? who emailed in anybody, who called in. Everybody's going to get their right to speak, but we've got a lot of people who came here in person. It might be worth it that folks here in person get an opportunity to speak. Another hour or more, which is what I understand we've got.

So if we got at least another hour of phone, and probably... Hold on, hold on. And then there was about another hour and a half of the writings is what I was told. So we can take that consensus on the board to switch over to in-person. Did you start one already? You're done?

No.

All right. So keep a marker where you're at. And let me take a consensus. Commissioner Duvall? Yes. Stokes? I'm a yes.

I'm a yes.

Commissioner Duvall, or Petro, sorry. Yeah. We'll move on to in-person. After we finish in person, or if we hit that 90 minute mark, which would be 730, we'll take a break and then we'll switch back to the phones.

Do you want to take a few minute break just so these people can get up here? I'll call eight people because we have eight reserved seats.

Just call them and we'll get it started as soon as the first person comes in.

Andrea Doria Kale. Angela Muckshen. Sam Turpening. Tim Ritchie. Cardinal Gambino and Martin Height.

He said he didn't have to move far. All right, getting started so we learn that one thing. Right there at that volume, ma'am. Get her up whenever you're ready.

Wow.

okay good evening commissioners residents neighbors and friends of northport my name is andrea doria kale and northport has been my home for the past 11 years i'm asking you tonight to move ordinance 20 26 25 forward and give our city 18 months to understand what large-scale data center development could mean for North Port before decisions are made that may be impossible to undo. This isn't about being against technology or responsible economic development. It is about having the rules in place before we make decisions of this magnitude. your own ordinance identifies the issues electricity and infrastructure demands water and wastewater emergency services storm water environmental impacts surrounding communities and our quality of life and it finds that north port's current regulations do not yet contain sufficient specific standards to address these facilities. That's exactly why we need the moratorium. 18 months is not forever. It's time. Time for technical analysis, legal review, public input, and for North Port to determine what protections belong in place before a project becomes established or vested. I recognize that applying this to a pending application raises legal questions. I urge you to rely on your city attorney regarding Section 5 and the protections the extraordinary hardship process may provide this city. I'm also a candidate for Sarasota County Charter Review Board District 5, which includes Northport, my home. Although the election is countywide, our charter does not currently give the county authority over municipal decisions like this. But I believe we should explore whether it can give voters a county-wide voice when a decision in one municipality can permanently affect residents and resources throughout Sarasota County. Northport is my home. Please give us the 18 months. Vote yes on your vote. moratorium for 18 months and let's move forward together. Thank you.

According to the Environmental Health Project, data centers emit significant pollutants such as nitrogen oxides, methane, volatile organic compounds in a fine particulate matter. According to a 2025 study, these pollutants cause increased rates of respiratory diseases and cardiovascular conditions, and they limit... sorry and they elevate asthma and cancer risks among communities. Imagine living in a world where you have to wear a mask to step outside so you don't cake your lungs with cancerous chemicals just like COVID times except there's no end date. Data centers use diesel generators, heating, ventilation and HVAC systems that create a constant hum that noises disruptive not only to wildlife but neighboring communities. The noise can be heard up to one mile away. The noise they generate is 90 decibels. Anything above 80 decibels for a period longer than 30 minutes is extremely damaging to hearing. Some examples of noises that are 90 decibels are jackhammers and hair dryers. According to the Austin Chronicle, in 2024, data centers across Central Texas consumed 463 million gallons of water. Projections from the Texas Water Development Board show that the data centers could use nearly 49 billion gallons in 2026, rising to 400 billion by 2030. The average data center uses around 5 million gallons of water a day. Now ask yourself, can we replace that water? What will we do when the wells run dry? How quick will they dry up our beautiful rivers? They would replace our beautiful rivers with forever chemicals and toxic sludge. To summarize, we still don't know the long-term effects of data centers. In the few years that they have been around, they've had devastating effects on our environment and communities. Imagine how much worse it's going to get as time goes on and more are being built. I beg you, listen to the people. Don't condemn your children and grandchildren to a dystopian future full of pollution, cancer, and disease. Don't sell out. Don't take big AI's dirty money. There is no question that the greatly overwhelming majority of the people of this town, the people that voted you all into office, the people that you are paid to represent, are strongly against this type of development. The only question that remains is what will you do with that information? If you institute a data center, you'll be doing your own children. You all will be the cause of the cancer that will riddle our children and all future generations. The blood will be on your hands, all of you. We the people are angry. We just want to be heard. I beg and I implore you, listen to us, please.

Thank you.

Good evening, fellow prisoners. I mean, citizens. First of all, look around this room at all these beautiful protesting faces. Give yourselves a huge round of applause. Seriously applaud your own impending obsolescence. It's beautiful because, frankly, I am sick and tired of people complaining about these data centers. I think they're a fantastic idea. In fact, we don't have enough of them. We need data centers everywhere, every street corner, every backyard. Why? Because I, for one, cannot wait to be completely controlled, monitored, and surveyed 24 hours a day by a joint corporate motherboard. Who wouldn't want that? Let's be honest. Our politicians are doing a wonderful job lying to us to make it happen. Every single one of them is using this as a beautiful political ploy to keep you calm while they sell out. They pretend to care about local zoning, but they don't tell you. SB 180 and the Live Local Act in Tallahassee make sure the state has complete, absolute control. It's brilliant. It strips away your local voice entirely. And look at the governor's race. If Byron Donald gets elected, The floodgates open and we will get a glorious data center on every single square inch of proposed land. I say bring it on. Think about the benefits, people. Think of the traffic. There are too many of you out on the roads anyways. florida is full with total ai surveillance the second the traffic flow gets a little heavy the system can just automatically lock your front doors from the outside boom problem solved you're not allowed to leave your house without digital permission from a server farm think of how quiet the streets will be when we're all under permanent house arrest We don't need clean water or a safe aquifer, we need more algorithms. Big tech, turn Northport into a giant concrete processing chip so we can finally stop thinking for ourselves. So commissioners, don't listen to these crazy citizens who want to protect their environment and their constitutional rights. Listen to the politicians, embrace the corporate takeover and let's get those doors locked. Thank you and enjoy the surveillance.

Well, good evening, Council and everybody in the chamber. You put in a prompt, hit send. Within two seconds, That information is being sent on a piece of glass as thin as your hair, hundreds of miles away into a big building. Once the information gets to that big building, every single piece of information starts being dissected and broken down one word at a time. That building. It's not an AI data center. It is a massive heat box. The bandwidth is what's so important because within two seconds, all this information is going through that fine piece of glass, that fiber, and what is it using? Water. Now, I've been all over this state in the last eight and a half years. My name is Tim Ritchie, and I am known as the Citizen Water Czar and founder and president of March Against Mosaic. And I want to tell all of you right now, we don't have the water for this. You heard that young lady speak? Five million gallons daily, young lady, you're right. And Mosaic... fertilizer company has water use permits issued by Swift Mud for up to 70 million gallons a day, everybody, with max capacity at 89 million gallons a day. Now I was at the meeting, your city attorney, we didn't need to be here because he told you you could have banned this. That's what I've told the city of Punta Gorda, Charlotte County, DeSoto County, and all of you, was to ban this immediately. No moratorium. And we, I want to tell you, after doing this for eight and a half years, the threat of lawsuits from Mosaic or other companies, we don't care about that anymore. We want our representatives in every county telling these corporations, we will no longer be corporate captured and we will no longer do corporate cronyism. We're going to represent the people. And that's a hard no county manager, city manager. It is the people that pay every one of your salaries, our taxes. We're the bosses, not the staff, not anybody in city council or the commission chambers. You represent us, the children, the future, your children's children's children. Thank you. Thank you.

Good evening all. I just wanted to first thank everybody for calling, showing up here tonight and using your voice. This is just a smidgen of what is out there within the city. So I'm gonna take a different approach because you're gonna hear a lot of passion from everybody else here. But I'm gonna look at one aspect is that we don't know who these investors are in this proposed data center, are they foreign or what? Because there's laws that are governing foreign investments within data centers due to security issues and so forth like that. That's one issue I have, we don't know. And the big question is we don't know nothing actually. The other thing is I want to look at the lack of anything in our ULDC and that's pretty upsetting. The other thing is if we look at our economic development strategy, And we look at this master plan concept. There is no long-term job opportunities within data centers, except for highly skilled trades, which are at a minimum. Only the short-term construction lasts an average of one to two years, and then it's gone. So what, in fact, is the sustainability factor that is going to benefit the citizenry in our city? That's one. The commercial and retail enterprise component of this master concept plan is way overstated because what entitles and who's going to want to invest in an area that is next to a data center and who's going to patronize these establishments? Almost no one. So again, how does that benefit the community and where is the economic benefit to the city? The housing component of this master concept plan and the number stated is absurd. Who wants to live within the vicinity of a data center? I mean, realistically, they will never be filled. And then are we left with? Vacant housing, how does that benefit the city? The quality of life pillar for our community is totally disregarded in this distance because the effects of the data center in relation to area homeowners, schools, citywide residents is at a risk due to all the health and safety risks associated with data centers. The environmental sustainability pillar. Firstly, the amount of habitat is being cleared in this area and the loss of tree canopy is enormous. and only contributes to the increased temperatures within our city. Secondly, there are proven facts that our wildlife will suffer the health disruptions and consequences of data centers. Thirdly, there are issues to our water supply, wastewater management and processing methodologies, air quality, noise, electrical grid, especially considering weather disruptions and who's going to get the electricity first. Certainly not the residents. Guarantee it's going to be the data center who gets electricity first. So that's just to name a few. So in closing, I urge you to really look at this moratorium for 18 months because we need to really assess all of the safeguards, the protocols, the provisions that need to be put in place before anything is considered. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good evening. My name is Carlo Anthony Gambino. I've been a resident in the North Point and Port Charlotte area for 25 years. That's a quarter of a century. I've already seen the short-term impacts of data centers in other communities, especially in rural communities. We've already heard statistics in regards to the power usage, in regards to temperatures going up in terms of strain on electric grids, so on and so forth. What has just been lightly touched upon is the is the impact that it's going to have on real estate and tourism in the area. Like we just heard, who's going to want to come to an area that has a data center in it with noise that can be heard for at least a mile, with polluted water if there's any water left after the data center has used it, with roving blackouts from the strain on the electrical grid, from the immense heat that is going to be kicked off of it in the local area. I just, I myself just don't see what the benefit to the people is gonna be when it comes to the Dana Center. Just like we're having all of these costs being foisted upon the community in terms of material usage, in terms of economic impact, what is the average citizen that is present in this room going to get from this data center if it is built? That is what I want to know. Because from everything I have seen, I have not gotten that answer. I'm hoping that the council is gonna be able to enlighten me to that. But until that point, I don't want this. I don't want the data center to come anywhere near this community. It's already bad enough DeSoto was considering it. Please, I urge you, take a step back. Don't follow in the footsteps of so many others that have made this mistake. You will live to regret it. I guarantee it. The impact is gonna be so negative for us. I urge you, please, if not a hard no, at least give us the 18 months. That's all I have to say. Thank you.

Good evening. My name is Martin Hyde. This data centre matter is not a not in my backyard issue. After all, who in their right mind would want a one million square foot data centre with upwards of 100,000 computers running 24-7 in their backyard? This is firstly about public health. The emissions of sound alone, which radiate for miles, have the potential to create a myriad of health impacts, from insomnia to balance issues, and frankly Lord knows what else potentially. The infrastructure issues aren't a suggested negligible, nor in terms of power supply are they imminently fixable. The environmental vandalism I'll leave to others to discuss. The economic devastation in terms of property values for anyone living within five miles of one of these monstrosities are real, as they will halve overnight and they will never return. Who would move near a data center when there are other places to live without such existential threats? The only reason to consider a centre is money. The taxable value on a one million square foot facility would produce tens of millions into the coffers of Northport. That though shouldn't be a consideration for you because any commissioner who is for this assault on the community won't be in office long enough to spend it. There are lots of municipalities hitting the pause button with moratoriums right now. Your audience tonight, though, needs to include pending applications, not just future ones. The ordinance as written now leaves the current applications open, and that is unacceptable. That needs to be stricken to be any data center because as written, it's a backdoor for the current applicants. This is when the work needs to start. Collaboration with other municipalities to find legal means to defend our citizens from the massive sums involved will take great resolve. This is far from over tonight. The people will be with you every step of the way if you do the right thing. Conversely, the proverbial pitchforks will be out for any commissioner who doesn't.

Thank you.

I have Liz Morris, Debbie McDowell, Jenna DeCosta, Lisa Rodriguez, Al Picuch, Crystal Ortiz, and Sandy Cortopasso.

Good evening everyone. Thank you for showing up. My name is Liz Morris and I'm a resident of South Sarasota County. I'm here for the same reasons many of you are tonight. Data centers. and in particular the one proposed for Northport. We know that reliance on technology and its evolution, quote, keeps data center demand growing globally, nationally, locally, end quote. I'm grateful we have a freeze on data centers until July 27 so we can come together like this and discuss the topic in open forum. Thank you for this opportunity. I've learned that not even other communities are afforded the free speech to come out like this. We are one of few communities that have been afforded that chance. So thank you very much. Data centers are just getting plopped down in some places, and I'm glad we have this chance for discourse. So I ask everyone, do you want a data center in your backyard? Just the thought of a data center being installed in our county brings forth consequential facts. The proposed data center will use millions of gallons of water per day. The proposed data center would use the same amount of power as 35,000 homes. Are you and your neighbors prepared for what could be a doubling, a tripling of your water and electricity bills? Aren't the times we are in right now expensive enough? Local taxpayers will be left with the unpaid bill of big tech. Building this proposed data center will force our government to build a new power infrastructure. The proposed data center will create constant noise and air pollution. If the proposed data center is built, wastewater could ultimately end up contaminating our local water supply. Environmentally, this could spell disaster. The majority of people in the United States of America, including Sarasota County, oppose data centers. Sarasota County residents have been upfront with their fears about and their objections to data centers. They include but are not limited to tax increases each year, possible water contamination, air pollution, the nonstop noise, increased utility bills, and strains on the electrical grid. I'm with all of you. Let's ban data centers in Sarasota County in perpetuity. Let's not forget their extreme noise and very bright lights at night that will forever not dim. Let's do what is in our best interest and the generations to come and just say no to data centers in Sarasota County. Thank you very much. Thank you. Yep.

Good evening, commissioners. I'm Debbie McDowell. Before I begin, I want to say, my God, what a turnout. I can only think of maybe two or three other meetings that had a turnout like this in chambers and in the overflow room, but this takes the prize. Good job, citizens of Northport. This is what it looks like. A moratorium is absolutely necessary, and thank you for considering it. The commissioners and staff need to get their ducks in a row in order to make an informed decision and the citizens have actual factual information. We need to hear from the subject matter experts on both sides of the aisle, not just what the city wants to present. We need to hear about the exhaustive list, of every aspect that is encompassing a data center. Some of those that I can think of are obviously the pros and the cons. Financial impact, long-term job impact, that's the whole purpose of rezoning that area to create jobs. We need to hear the hard truth regarding the dangers of what a data center can bring to the city. Public health does not just impact the citizens of Northport, but the surrounding area today, tomorrow, and future generations, which are my grandchildren and beyond. I want to bring attention to something in the ordinance. You know I like to read those things. The third whereas clause and section 503, if the actual ordinance, and I'm going to paraphrase, the moratorium does not apply to construction, reconstruction, or redevelopment of any property impacted by Hurricane Debbie, Helene, or Milton due to state laws. We are in that. So please help me and the citizens understand how this moratorium will be in effect with that exemption in place. I wish you the very best. Y'all are in for a long evening. I hear a few continuances of agenda items in the future. And please remember the citizens are here to show their passion and their concerns about the future of this city. I wish you the best.

Thank you.

My name is Jenna DaCosta. I live in Northport and support the moratorium. Northport is the largest city in Sarasota County by land area and population. We have a single post office and we don't even have a Staples. But we're ready for a hyperscale data center? What the Florida? Y'all, I did something a little unhinge. I read the application. Full disclosure, I'm an inactive certified public accountant, so I read long, boring documents for factual consistency. And as the kids say, the math ain't mathin'. Let's start with the wetlands. The original plan preserved the wetlands. Now the developer proposes sacrificing them for economic viability, directly conflicting with North Port's code. Has the city determined that those impacts are unavoidable? Next, on page five of the environmental report, the Santel Crane section states, no wetlands exist on site. Yet in the very next paragraph, it says the project will impact almost five acres of wetlands. Those statements both cannot be true. And there's more. The environmental assessment asks, basin or watershed, name and number. Not applicable. Affected water body. Not applicable. They propose roughly 22 acres, about 17 football fields, of stormwater facilities, including a 60-inch outfall pipe that is just two inches shorter than me. Again... Their plans show wet pond seed discharging through that five foot pipe to catch basin ST97 at the property line beside the city's R544 drainage right of way. But what I cannot find is where that water goes after ST97. Water goes somewhere and this is North Port. Often water goes everywhere. The city's own maps show this water ultimately flows to Cocoa Plum Waterway. Remember the EA says watershed, NA. Affected water body, NA. Ian already performed the stress test. I-75 closed due to flooding. Water remained long after the storm was gone. Where does the five foot outfall at ST-97 discharge When the downstream drainage system is already full, the applicant's own documents speak for themselves, contradictions on the same page and basic information listed as NA. These discrepancies and omissions should be resolved and the application completed accurately before it received substantive review. Thank you.

Mr. Ritchie, please. That's your first warning.

Crystal, Sandy, and John Proudsbaugh. Proudsbaugh, sorry.

Good evening. Thank you for allowing me to speak today. My name is Lisa Rodriguez and I'm a 30-year resident of Northport. And as a homeowner on a well system, I am deeply concerned about the city considering any toxic data center development that could compromise our water, our power resources, and our community's health and safety. I appreciate the 18-month moratorium and upcoming planning and zoning meeting. This pause gives residents the chance to provide input, propose restrictions, and ensure that any proposed or existing data centers meet strict environmental standards that protect our wells, our property values, and our quality of life. I also want to address the use of economic development non-disclosure agreements, NDAs, which should never restrict citizens from knowing how their tax dollars are used or prevent transparency required under Florida sunshine laws. We all want North Port to prosper, but development must never come at the expense of our shared natural resources, our health, or our livability of our neighborhoods. Current data center realities. Water. Modern data centers require massive water supplies, risking aquifer depletion and contamination. Once groundwater is damaged, it cannot be replaced. Power and noise. They consume enormous amounts of electricity and rely on extremely noisy cooling systems that harm wildlife, livestock, and human health. Economics, data centers provide minimal long-term employment and limited economic developments beyond the temporary construction phase. City liability, contaminated wells and depleted water supplies will lead to lawsuits. Noise-related health impacts to residents and livestock will lead to lawsuits. Declining real estate values near these facilities will lead to lawsuits. We cannot evaluate these projects one at a time. We must proactively require strict environmental controls now. Suggested environmental standards should include that facilities rely on solar power or battery backup systems, some that are environmentally friendly. Water systems must use evaporation technology. Cooling water must be scrubbed, filtered, and purified before released or preferably reused. And developers must fund independent, transparent, quarterly testing of water noise and air quality. Economic development NDAs should not be used. Tax incentives should not be given for projects that put our most precious resources at risk. Companies can relocate, technology can evolve, but our groundwater cannot be replaced and our health is priceless. Citizens can also reduce our demand on data centers by limiting our cloud-based storage and using local storage options. Governments once relied on backup tapes, data limits can be reinstated to reduce our cloud dependency. Commissioners, please continue to protect our waters, our wells, and the future of our community. Thank you.

Good evening commissioners and fellow residents. I know there are quite a few people today who are concerned about data centers and some of those concerns are legitimate. We should protect our water supply, electric grid, environment and neighborhoods. But if you are saying no to data centers, it means nothing if you don't back it up with solid facts. Because there are so many changes today, and they're different size data centers, from hyper, and a lot of times you're just hearing about hyper data centers, which I don't believe you probably would have in Northport. Here's a quote from Dr. Steven Weiss, a consultant in computer science, IT, and AI. He said, we see patterns of mass resistance to new technology repeatedly through history. Farmers once believed sparks from railroad tracks would burn their land. And doctors at the time warned the human body couldn't survive driving at speeds over 20 miles an hour. Data centers aren't going away, we use them right now. Every time you use a cell phone, search the internet, store photographs, online banking, streaming television, GPS, or use artificial intelligence, we depend upon data centers. Just as telecommunications networks, they have become essential infrastructure. And there are already thousands of data centers operating across the United States, including 100 here in Florida. And I don't know if you've been out to the proposed location, but it is a blighted area. In the far eastern part of Northport, there are grass fault roads, no homes, and contractors often dump their trash out there. Northport should regulate where and how data centers operate rather than prohibit the entire industry. Let's get all the facts about water usage, electric, noise, and all the things that you guys were talking about.

Thank you. Hi, I'm Crystal Ortiz. I've grown up in Southwest Florida and have watched Northport grow into what it is today. Northport was ranked the second fastest growing city in the country. With that growth has come the need for more water. On average, data centers use anywhere from 100,000 gallons to 5 million gallons per day. Most developers claim closed loop cooling systems, but what actually happens to the water? These big companies expect blind trust that our water will return to our bodies of water without consequence. In April of 2026, North Port Utilities Director Tricia Wisner stated, water levels are lower than we have seen in more than a decade due to dry conditions. Because of this, we have had water restrictions in place for most of the year until this October. On the City of North Port official's website, it advertises welcoming spirit, natural beauty, and thriving future. From parks and trails to waterways and open spaces, North Port's environment shapes our identity and quality of life. Data centers can cause noise pollution to neighboring residents and wildlife. These noise levels can be harmful to hearing. Data centers can also cause light and air pollution as well as water waste. According to a September 2025 study, these pollutants increase rates of respiratory disease, cardiovascular conditions, and can elevate risk of cancer. Lastly, the lack of honesty and transparency from these data companies all across the country sound the alarms for residents. Typically, data centers do not pay their fair share in utilities for electricity and water consumption. In those situations, other consumers, a.k.a. us, the residents, have to pay more than usual. All we, the citizens of Northport and surrounding areas, are asking for is for our families' homes and livelihoods to be considered in all of this. Some of us moved here for the schools or for job opportunities. Some moved here to build families and be closer to nature. I can say with certainty that nobody moved here to live next to a data center that will not benefit us or our lives in any way. Thank you. Thank you.

Good evening and three of you know me because I was here two and a half years ago pleading my case so I could build my home in Northport because I loved it so dearly and all the wildlife and the greenery and you honored mine and my friend's request to be able to build a home and we negotiated some parts of being able to do that while also giving up some part Well, while I do support sustainable commercial and industry development that aligns with North Port's strategic vision, this massive facility presents immediate unmitigated threats to our community infrastructure, resource management, and overall quality of life. And I will not go into the whole spiel because you've heard from many, many people that have a lot more knowledge than I do. about the results of some of these data centers across the nation and across the country. I do urge the commissioners and the planning division and the city manager who I almost wish I would have taken your offer and let you buy my property because now I have to fight again to have a quality of life here in Northport. So I do urge the commissioners and the planning division and the city manager to thoroughly scrutinize, pause, or deny this application. And a project this size does require exhaustive, independent impact studies, stringent noise abatement. I already hear all the traffic from I-75 all night long. I run a little machine, so I don't have to hear it. Some white noise. With this, you know, a stringent noise abatement plan is necessary and the absolute guarantee that local taxpayers will not shoulder the burden of upgraded infrastructure for this data center. I strongly request the city commissioners enforce maximum regulatory oversight and protect the long-term well-being of its residents as well as the other living beings in this community, the bees and the birds and our critically endangered gopher tortoises. I mean, I have three in my neighborhood that I watch go across the road and feed and come back to their nests. I don't want to see that disrupted because of some data center, hyper AI center that will not benefit this community besides maybe some money. Thank you, and I appreciate your time. And thank you all for showing up and showing your concern.

Thank you.

John Crosbach.

Good evening, Mayor, commissioners, city staff and fellow citizens. What if a single industry using less than 1% of a city's land could generate enough tax revenue to cover 30 to 50% of North Port's entire annual budget? Right now, 60,000 of our 95,000 plus residents leave North Port every day for work. Because our commercial tax base is only 8%, local home and property owners carry almost the entire financial burden for city services and public infrastructure repairs. Real expansion projects are almost unheard of. My property taxes increased 46% last year, 40% the prior year alone. Data centers in Activity Center 6 offer a major opportunity to fix this structural problem without raising taxes. Look at real examples across the country. In Loudoun County, Virginia, data centers take up just 3% of the land but generate $1.2 billion. That's 45% of the county's total income. In Quincy, Washington, Data centers pay for 57% of local property taxes, funding a new hospital, schools, fire stations, and water systems. Other communities have seen homeowner property taxes drop by up to 30% while power grid upgrades were paid for by private companies. The question tonight isn't whether to allow data centers. The real question is under what terms do we get the best deal for Northport? We can negotiate strong safeguards from day one to protect homeowner utility bills requiring tech companies to pay for their own power and water upgrades so resident rates stay stable. Two, require protection funds. Have data center developers set aside money to address long-term environmental impacts. And three, expand infrastructure. Use this project to extend water, sewer, and roads into eastern Northport at minimal cost to taxpayers. This technology is growing fast. We can either capture this revenue to fix our roads, bridges, and canals, and protect homeowners, or walk away and leave taxpayers struggling to pay the ever-expanding North Port budget. Let's negotiate the best terms for North Port. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Audrey Bookhoff, Reid Bookhoff, Dana Bookhoff, Cynthia Roids, and Cynthia Butler.

Good evening, my name is Corrine Prochnow. I'm a Sarasota County resident, and I would like to ask what evidence did you ask for that demonstrated that a data center would meaningfully improve our community, the environment, resources, wildlife, property values, our children's learning capacity, our children's future? And does that evidence that you asked for outweigh the growing amount of research and evidence of the many harmful effects of data centers? Why ignore all the data on the harmful and dangerous effects on wildlife, water, water supplies, noise pollution, EMF radiation, temperature increases, health concerns, and the cognitive development of our children? And that's just the science stuff. Why ignore all the financial data? There will be harmful effects on property values, loss of equity, utility costs, job losses that will cause a further financial crisis.

And that's just math.

And why ignore the anecdotal data? For instance, did you know that some developers have never built data centers before? They are jumping on the data center bubble to make large amounts of money very quickly. But it's a local community that will pay for their inexperience and the inevitable overages and pitfalls. Or think about the social impacts and harm caused by mass surveillance or the new laws now allowing AI-generated child sexual assault material. Why ignore the fact that hyperscale data centers are not needed to use our phones or to use our computers at home or for work? Or here's the big one, why ignore the fact that CEOs of AI development have told regulators they aren't fully sure they can control what they are building. They fear an existential AI misalignment, which is the probability of human extinction by AI. So I propose that instead of a moratorium, you outright place a ban on data centers and change the zoning codes. Moratoriums can be overturned by the courts when the company sues the city and the county. Some might say, but in the long term, technology might improve. Data centers might be smaller, might be more efficient, use fewer resources. They might not be so harmful to our health, our children's development, their learning, less of a social impact. Hey, if that happens, great. You can always go back and revisit those zoning codes. We can undo a ban. We cannot undo the damage caused by the current version of data centers being thrust upon us. The people do not want this. They do not want generative AI. Thank you.

Thank you.

Kareem, Rochelle, and Kelly Verata. Kareem, is that just you? That's me. Okay. Kelly Verata, Verata? Verata.

Hello, my name is Kelly Verada. I'm a Northport resident and I've been in technology sales for over 20 years and I oppose data centers in Northport. We live in a state with some of the harshest and most volatile environments. Hurricanes, flooding, lightning storms, and dry seasons. Our current water is scarce and dirty. We should have clean water. That should come first. North Port doesn't even know what it is or who we are. We haven't even figured out the basics yet. Is it really a good plan to entrust a massive project like a hyperscale data center with the people who are suing us? They are putting the cart before the horse, again, like they did with the ULDC land zoning and throwing darts at a dartboard to fix their overspending. The data center has too many unknowns and variables, and the companies proposing them know these regulations, laws, and workarounds inside and out. We don't even know the vision of our city. The decision could have catastrophic repercussions. Are you willing to put such a large-scale project with such great risks in their hands? I am not. Let's be smarter than the rest of the country. If we wait, they will come out with better technologies, just like cars, just like computers. Don't buy the clunker. Once we have a resource guzzler, we can't get rid of it. And we are stuck with it. And unless these people who run our city have a crystal ball, I am not willing to risk the future of a beautiful city on a clunker. So just say no to data centers. They do not belong in Northport. There is a reason 19 other Florida jurisdictions have halted data center builds. Many of these also have plans to pull from the Peace River. The Peace River is currently in impaired status, full of mercury and toxins. How much more can our environment take? We have water bans now. What happens when we have two bad years back to back? Do they then pull from the aquifers? Who takes precedence? How about the wastewater? Even closed-loop systems empty wastewater back into our already dirty systems. And most of the millions of gallons a day that they use just evaporate. Water gone forever. Millions of gallons gone and evaporated each day. What's next? Shower bans? You laugh. You won't be when you're paying out of your pocket to re-dig your well, and neither will I. Please vote for the no data senators for Northport. Thank you.

Thank you. So the individuals on the landing outside the commission, you are creating a distraction. Please keep it down. Thank you.

Gigi Lukoff, Audrey Lukoff, Reed Lukoff, and Dane Lukoff, you'll go in order. So just one at a time. Gigi, yes.

Good evening commissioners. My name is Gigi Lookoff. I am a lifetime resident of Florida, excuse me. I was born here in Sarasota County and I'm a fourth generation native Floridian. So what happens here in our environment means a lot to me. I want to be able to stay here. I want to raise my kids here and I want them to be able to have a family and raise children here too. But in the current state of our environment, it looks a little bleak. quite honestly. It's very disheartening to see what's going on. It's disheartening to even think that there's a consideration in place that you guys are put in the position to have to decide, do we do this? Do we not do this? I heard some talk from people about the financial impact and how this is going to bring money to the city. I have an idea. Cut the bloat. Cut the junk right now. Stop the spending. Guys, we got to live on a budget. I live on a budget. You know what we do? My kids can attest to this. We all hang up clothes on a clothesline. Who does that? We're in 2026. We're not hanging up clothes on a clothesline because we want to. The fresh air is great. We got to cut our electric bills. I'm a homeschooling mom. We're raising four children on one income. It's hard. Cut the spending. If I have to live on a budget and I have to decide what are we eating this week? Is it going to be hot dogs and ramen noodles? Or are we going to splurge and we're going to get grilled chicken breasts? Where does it end? You guys, you've got to stop this. Stop the out-of-control spending. Don't say, hey, we're going to sign up and have a data center. We're going to fill our coffers with all of this money. And then what? You're going to spend through that. Come on. When the money's there, you're going to blow it. It's easy to do, right? It's time. You've got to take a hard look. It's not easy. I never said it was easy. We cut the cable, right? You look at everything you're doing. How much are we spending on car insurance? It's outrageous. But how much are we spending? What can we do? Who's going to give us the best for our value? This isn't it. Don't sacrifice our health. Don't sacrifice our water. Don't sacrifice the things that make this area beautiful to throw some money in your pockets, to call it a day and say, we don't have to worry about this anymore. We just said, we put a data center in. It's going to solve our problems. It's not. It's going to bring those problems to your doorstep. It's going to be your life. It's going to be your children, your grandchildren. Who's the next one that's going to be dealing with cancer? I don't know. You never know. Don't let it be you. Make the right choice. Don't kick the can down the road. Don't put a moratorium effect. Say no. Stop this. You can do it. Thank you.

Thank you. All right. We're going to take a 15-minute break. We'll be back at 745. You grab your seats 745. we're back at it city clerk.

Yes, we have Audrey look off followed by read look off. Then Cynthia and Cynthia. Okay.

Hi, my name's Audrey, and I want to speak to you about data centers. When we learned that some people want to build a data center in Northport, my parents and I started learning all we could about them. We asked questions like, what is a data center? How would they make our lives better or worse? The more I learn about data centers, the more I do not want one here. Data centers use a lot of water. We cannot survive without clean water. Please vote to stop the data centers in Northport. Thank you.

Hi, my name is Reed, and I want to explain why data centers are not good for North Port. It is being reported by MIT Technology Review that data centers negatively impact our environment And people hate them. Animals and people alike are impacted by data centers. By the constant noise they create, the noise is described as a low, constant machine hum, a highway that never stops. The most annoying noise in our house is when my mom is vacuuming or when someone leaves the overstove microwave vent on. It would drive any sane person crazy The environment is also impacted by the amount of water needed to operate an AI data center. The Environmental Energy and Study Institution reports that a single data center can use up to five million gallons of water a day. The average beef cow consumes one gallon per 100 pounds. That means in one day a data center It requires the same amount of water as 500,000 beef cows. A data center in Northport is an environmental disaster in the making. Please stop this now and help protect Florida before it's too late. Thank you for your time.

Thank you. All right, real quick. Y'all have been good in the first half. You really don't understand the time-sensitive nature on getting to the business that we're going to discuss. If this keeps going, this meeting will be adjourned. It will be at a later date. Y'all can come back. But that just keeps the clock open for the applicant. So let's all be very respected. Let's be very respected. Let the speakers speak. And then let's move on so we can get to the business. Thank you.

Hi, my name is Dane. I'm 10 years old, I'm 12 years old, and I live in Sarasota County. I'm here to talk to you today about the stopping of the data center. As a fifth generation Floridian, I value the wildlife and natural resources of the state. I have researched and found that data centers are extremely loud. This constant noise has unknown effect on wildlife. Ag Daily reports that ranchers are watching with concern. Ranchers and residents describe... Data centers create pollution through the water and air. Waterutilityreport.com reports that even in a closed-loop system, when the water is removed for treatment or disposal, it can contain lead, copper, zinc, chlorine, rosine, and ozone. How is this water being treated, and where is this... hazardous water being disposed. There has not been enough research on the long term effects caused by the data centers. To continue this project, please stop it today. Thank you for your time.

Thank you.

Hi, I'm Cynthia Butler, and I've been here for 25 years. I was very concerned when I read about a data center being pushed into Soto County, and then I read somewhere that the commissioners over there We're actually back in March seeing the writing on the wall as far as the property tax amendment in November and use that as an excuse or as a reason to sign a non-disclosure agreement with these data center companies back in March because they could see the writing on the wall as far as property taxes go. So I think... They use that to kind of keep people and make the communities and the commissioners hostage and to think they have to have this money to replace the billions they're going to lose in property taxes. But I don't know any communities that are happy that a data center is in their backyard. Back in May, I just want to read. These data centers are being pushed by these AI companies that are in a race to see who's going to be the most powerful and biggest company in the country or in the world. And they are fast approaching a bubble where they are just... They are... run by the stock market, and they're affected by the stock market, and they're pushing and pushing to see which one's going to be the most powerful, but at the same time, they're making things worse for everybody else. So Pope Leo wrote back in May in this papal letters called Magnificas Humanitas, And he said, we can build a new tower of Babel, which is technology that consolidates power, displaces workers, and leaves the vulnerable behind. Or we can rebuild Jerusalem together, brick by brick, neighbor by neighbor, until the beloved community stands. These architects of this new Tower of Babel, or the AI Towers, Peter Thiel's Palantir, named after a dark, token-seeing stone used by the enemy to corrupt kings and distort truth. They just want a $30 million government contract to build a deportation surveillance platform for ICE. Sam Altman's OpenAI chat GPT is racing to reshape the global economy on his own timeline. Workers be damned. Elon Musk merged his AI company into SpaceX to build what he calls an innovation engine.

Thank you.

And so that's what's powering these data centers. Thank you.

Thank you.

My name is Cynthia Roids, and I'm very happy to be here, and I'm so glad to see that all of you have come out to support this issue. I had a question regarding how did we get here. How did this happen? Well, I'll tell you. Remember that ULDC? rewrite that happened in 2023? Well, not only did it steal people's properties and rezone them to commercial, it also took the administrative approval process and it gave it to unelected city employees. One of the reasons we're here because of this action. This was voted on by the 2023 Commission, four to one. Mr. Stokes, Mr. Emmerich, Ms. White, and Ms. Langdon were responsible for adopting this. Voters don't approve changes to the ULDC because changes in code is a legislative action. That's why the voters elect commissioners to represent them for the good of the community, for the good of the people. Voters don't approve changes to the ULDC You do. Commissioners are elected by the people for the good of the people and the health and welfare of the community. Another thing, you know that our commissioners are suing us. A few months ago, the commissioners gave the approval to sue their own citizens, Mr. Emmerich, Mr. Stokes, and Ms. Langdon. Thank you, Mr. Duvall and Mr. Petro, for looking after the people of this city. Yes, the commission is suing their own citizens who duly elected them to office.

Thank you.

The city is the plaintiff.

Thank you, ma'am. Your time is up.

Well, all I can say is we elected you to represent us and not your mighty dollar.

Next, I have... Virginia Lewis, Deborah Plascencia, Megan Gore, Cheryl Cook, Sebastian Martinez, Xander Maurice, Karen Cole, and Arianna Hernandez Brown. If you all could come to the front row and have a seat, please.

Okay, almost 800,000 square feet. You can fit 13 standard football fields into that for the data center. It can house over 400,000 servers. It is designed to support hyperscale, high powered. Computing. This means much higher power and cooling than traditional storage servers. It will need uninterruptible power supplies. It needs massive banks of industrial batteries, backup generators, either large diesel or natural gas generators, high-tech transformers, and circuit panels with 400,000 processors generating extreme heat. Cooling is the most critical infrastructure. It will use 50,000 gallons of water per day for cooling. Even if they recycle the water, it evaporates 80%. Our overpaid city manager, Alfred Fletcher, said it fits into light industrial low impact minimal noise you are so wrong Alfred this data center requires massive power grid it will be using megawatts and one megawatt can power 750 to a thousand homes it will run at 95 decimals of noise 24 7 over the allowed amount It will generate massive continuous thermal heat. It is not providing anything for North Port, just sucking the resources. United States already has 4,000 data centers, more than any other country. When will it be enough? And what if there's a fire? It has heavy engineered plastic lithium batteries. That will be a toxic nightmare. It will release hydrogen cyanide. which can cause unconsciousness or death. They use brominated flame retardant for their wires. And when PVC and brominate burn, it makes dioxins. Dioxins are among the most toxic synthetic known to science. Dioxins do not break down. Dioxins easily penetrate standard clothing and are highly carcinogenic. And there have been multiple fires And here's two of them. Jerome Township, Ohio caused more than $50 million in damage. Crew fought the fire for over 24 hours. Maslin, Ohio, two buildings under construction were severely damaged, and this is a Singapore-based company. So that's why we want to know, is a foreigner coming in for this also? National Security, okay with that? Also, Oregon and Wisconsin have had fires. This is a tourism state.

Thank you.

My name is Megan Girl. I live in Northport. I own a small business in Northport. I'm really great with numbers. People, not quite so much. Feelings, definitely not. There's a lot of really great comments. There's a lot of really great feelings here tonight. The big thing for me is I want to talk about numbers because numbers don't lie, unlike developers. So developers make promises because they know it's attractive to policymakers. They come asking to give them benefits in the form of tax breaks, reduced regulations or special zoning permissions in exchange for job creations. I want to speak about the promise of jobs that the data centers will bring. There'll be a lot of jobs, yes, construction jobs, everything else, whenever it's being built. But permanent jobs, not so much. There have been a lot of studies on this, and permanent jobs are a completely different story. According to the Virginia Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission study of over 1,400 data centers, there are between 20 to 50 permanent jobs for humans. So of that, of those jobs, four out of every six jobs will be a specialized contractor that comes directly from the company themselves. So let's be generous and say that the data center gives 60 jobs. That means we have 20 jobs left for the people of Northport. 20 local jobs out of all of the jobs that the developers claim is going to come. So you know what else creates 20 to 30 jobs? A McDonald's. A McDonald's will create about 13% of the carbon footprint, power, and water usage that a data center will use, even a small one, let alone a hyperscale one. The Maryland Department of Labor and also the Department of Commerce study found that job wages grew 2% to 3% for permanent employees of a data center. That sounds great. That's something that a lot of people in Northport, we would love to see wages rise in this area. But services for the elderly and home health care services increased wages by 7% when brought to a zip code. We would much rather have more services for our local citizens that we desperately need. It also means very little movement to this area, certainly not anywhere close to the promisor of what a developer will say and say, oh, we can get all these people to come to your area because it'll bring all these jobs. That's not the case. There will not be a boom of people moving to Northport. Instead, there will be a large migration out of the area. This data center will hurt our local economy more, not help it. Property values will be affected near the data center, and it will absolutely devastate our local families. Why would anyone choose to move near a data center when they can choose a county that doesn't support clearing land, killing trees, and harming our local wildlife? Thank you.

Can you guys all hear this buzz? Can you imagine the headache this constant sound will cause? These sounds will affect us for a 10 mile radius of any data center. or moratorium. Imagine our nature. Imagine our wildlife. I know throughout this meeting there have been several comments about applause and crowd noise and how disruptive that is. Imagine having this very sound all day long, 24-7. We cannot shut it off. We cannot get away from it. It's stuck here. We did not choose to live near this sound. This sound is being brought to us. You all have the option of saving us from this miserable sound, but I guess you need to hear it. Our economy depends on the health of our environment. We are number one in the nation when it comes to tourism. We are the most destined spot in our whole nation. We are number two in the entire world of where people want to come to. Siesta Key being the number one ranked beach in the nation, I would say that most of the tourism is coming to us directly right here. Tourism provides our local residents with countless benefits from not having a state income tax, to lower property taxes than other states, and to our great parks and beaches, you know, being well maintained. Which, by the way, brings more tourism. All of our nature is what is so beautiful about Florida. Let's not corrupt our beautiful environment with the short-sighted economic benefits that a data center may bring. This sound isn't even going into the health effects that this can cause, the long-term cancers that people in our area will see, the water usage that we're no longer going to be able to have. There are lots of homes in this area that have a well, and that is the system of which they get water to their homes. That's how they shower. That's how they drink. That is a life necessity. And we're talking about a center that's going to not only use gallons and gallons of water, more than all of us in this room will use in one day, the data center is using. And what are we supposed to do? Let our wells dry up? Let our water be poisoned? Let our minds go crazy with this sound? This is not something that any of us in this room, I would say at least the majority in the room, want. And I just want you to sit with this sound for the next 17 seconds. I hope you all have the day you deserve.

Thank you.

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen of the commission. My name is Sebastian Martinez, and I came to speak in support of passing the moratorium, but ensuring that the language covers current applications and not just future applications. of these data centers. And I'll spare my comments for the negative impacts of property values on water use, on health, wildlife, and the quality of life that this will impact everyday residents. But I believe that This commission, any municipal government, our county commission, and our state legislature needs to move beyond just the moratorium, but begin looking towards bans of these facilities because these impacts don't just go our way. These impacts on our wildlife and our water and our quality of life aren't going away, so it can't just be a temporal fix that we're pursuing. Local government officials like this commission and across our state have a responsibility to advocate for our communities, for our homes and environment and Florida that we all call home. You have the support of this community to oppose these centers. And so should the state legislature refuse to move to defend our state or is influenced by developer or data center dollars, then you have a unique responsibility to ensure that Fiona McFarland, that James Buchanan, that Representative Danny Nix and our state delegation no longer hold public office because this transcends any partisan lines because this is the quality of life of our kids, of our families, of our communities. And so I ask you to vote yes on this moratorium to reject data centers and to protect the Florida that we all call home. Thank you for your time. Thank you.

Good evening, commissioners. My name is Daniel Moritz, and I'm asking you to ban data centers in Northport. Growth is not automatically good growth. Northport is one of the fastest growing communities in Florida, and it is that because people are coming here for the space, the nature, for affordability, and for quality of life that we are losing in too many parts of this great state. We should not sacrifice those rare and incredible attributes of Northport just because an industry with lots of money has decided they want to buy our land. The data center currently proposed for North Port is enormous. It's about 900,000 square feet. Think about that. Think about what we'd be giving up for that. Land that can never be developed into something better that can actually enrich and reward this community. Huge amounts of electricity that can never be unspent. Huge amounts of water that can never be brought back. And new pressure on infrastructure that exists first and foremost against the people who live here and against the people that you serve. And what exactly does Northport get in exchange? Because investment is not an answer. If a company spends hundreds of millions of dollars building a facility designed primarily to serve its own business and its own pursuit of profit, that does not automatically make Northport richer. It makes somebody richer, but probably not y'all and probably not me. These companies are not coming here because they love Northport and they've decided they care about our local community. They're coming here because they have calculated with a team of experts and professionals, that they have something that North Port can give them, something that they need, and that there is something profitable for them here in this community. Our land, our resources, our infrastructure, their responsibility is to the bottom line, but your responsibility is to those things. Your responsibility is to us. Northport has incredibly valuable land and we should be ambitious about what we do with it. We should want development that creates neighborhoods and businesses and gathering places and lasting jobs for human beings and not robots and opportunities that belong to the people of Northport. We do not want enormous industrial boxes without windows that consume extraordinary resources and then deliver those resources to the wealthiest corporations that are not in Northport. We cannot underdo development after it is fundamentally changed in an area. And we should not wait until residents are competing with an industry facility for the resources they need to decide that maybe this wasn't a good idea. We can always add something in the future. We can't take ourselves back from an uninformed, uneducated, unprepared, uncalculated, unstrategic choice that will harm the people of North Port. I know that this is not a particularly easy position to be in. The hatred, the fear, the concern against data centers is bipartisan and it extends throughout Sarasota County. So for you as a county commission, there's an opportunity to uniquely bring together this community and to reaffirm our commitment to the people not of some random city that stand to gain far away, but to the people here of Northport. Thank you.

Do we have Karen Cole, Deborah Plascencia, or Cheryl Cook?

I think Ms. Placencia spoke earlier.

Okay, next I have Keisha Swatso, Mario Antonio Lacerada, Gary Juniu, Lori Lynch, Lori Richards, Iwa White, Jack Luntz, and Rachel Luther. If you could say your name when you come up to the speaker as well, please, thank you. Any one of you can come up and start since I don't know if everybody's actually here or not.

Yeah, if she called your name, just come on up and state your name so we can put your card away, that's all. Thank you.

My name is Lori Lynch. I've been a citizen here in Northport since 1996. And I believe, I'm taking it a different stance on this. I think this is a biblical issue. I'm a born-again believer. I believe in Jesus Christ, and we are killing his creation. Genesis 1.1, it says, in the beginning God created the heaven and the earth, and now we're destroying it. We're destroying the things. My second grade class knows what we need to be supported and to survive. We need clean air. This will destroy our air pollution. We need clean water. We've already established that. We need farms. We need food. I'm not talking this is just a North Port issue, people. This is a nation issue. Right here is giving you hope, saying that we are going to band together against the things that are going to destroy our nation. We don't need extra surveillance. We don't need flat cameras that is going to be tracing our every move. We are Americans and we need freedom. And the freedom stands here from our data centers. There's research from all over. I've been researching this for hours. There's, we have Orange Hammock protects the wetlands that we need fresh water. We have scrub jays that's under an environmental protection agency or act. There's seven different species of bees that have already been on our extinction list. If we don't have bees, we don't have food. We don't have food. Who's going to be controlling us? We need to have those things in our production. The bees, there's electromagnetic fields that go around the data centers. The bees, it breaks their way to find their home or to forage. There's cows that are having stillbirths. It lowers milk production. It lowers the weight of the animals. The decibels in Michigan is 60 decibels on people, their sleep disorders, chronic stress. Not only are they going to put nitrogen oxide in our air, it helps kids with more asthma, underlying health problems in the elderly, heart disease. Also, they have some chemicals called PFAS, which are forever chemicals. Those things that, depending on the way that they cool those systems, those things are going to be filtered in our land, in our water. It's going to kill and destroy. The hope that I have is seeing everyone here and getting involved. Tell your neighbors. It's not just a nation problem. There's over 34,782 acres of In Texas, it has been cleared. It causes floods in some of the homes. It's the noise pollution. People can't sell their homes if they're right by data centers. Yes, there was an NDA signed back in October 25th, and we're just now hearing it. We need to be able to hear what's coming into our communities, what's going to lower our property values. I live on the other side of 75 by Youngshire. Thank you.

Thank you, ma'am.

Guys, Team Northport, we're going to fight this. There's hope in us.

Hi, my name is Lori Richards. I've been a Northport resident for 35 years. First of all, city of Northport, shame on you for underestimating our opposition for a data center. Second of all, I know two of the five commissioners are for us people, us Northport residents. Thank you, Mr. Duvall and Demetrius. You other three have not. Phil Stokes, we don't want you to regulate a data center. We, North Port residents and Florida and our country, we expect you to ban a data center. That's all.

Thank you.

Good evening, everybody. My name is . I wasn't going to speak tonight. I don't have a speech prepared. I have been following this issue in Florida and in the country in general for a while now. And I just want to say that I was born in a country that no longer exists. It's called USSR, Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. In that country, citizens in general did not have a say in what goes on. When that country fell apart, it became democratic country of Russia or Russian Federation. People still did not have a chance to say big business, mafia and government ran everything that happened in that country. This is what makes United States different. This is why my parents brought me here. This is why I have children here. This is why I stayed here. And I believe that the citizens of this country country are all concerned in a similar fashion, no matter where they're from, no matter what background they are politically, ethnically, culturally, religiously. So it is, I think it's a big wake-up call for everyone to address this issue a lot more seriously and consider these issues very carefully, right? I want to say thank you to Mr. Mayor, city manager and the commissioners for listening to the people tonight. And I want to attest to how great the community of Northport is. I moved here four years ago from Maryland. And a month later, Hurricane Ian hit. And I was driving around looking for ice. Some random lady in front of a liquor store gave me her bag of ice. She said, don't worry, don't worry about it. I went to like 10 different places to try to find it to save some food. My neighbor gave me his spare gas generator. This is a great community, and I believe the people is what makes a community, not big business. Big business is essential because without it, we won't have goods, we won't have commerce, but we do have to consider the long-term effects of the decision that we make today, not just for us, but for our children and grandchildren and future generations. I want to say thank you for your time. Thank you, sir. Make the good choice. Thank you.

Good evening. My name is Rachel Luther. I've lived in Northport since 2007. I live behind the Welcome to Northport sign, where there's Kalingo and Lady Slipper. Actually, the new SMH hospital is going up there. It was disheartening to find that that area and other areas of Northport was rezoned from residential to commercial. If you've ever driven back there, it's a neighborhood. It's residential. People, kids ride their bikes. People walk their dogs. I mean, there's an Oaks Park way in the back. People go to Oaks Park. I mean, it's a really residential area. I did not know that they rezoned this, apparently, two years ago. I went door to door and asked my neighbors, and the majority of them didn't know either. So my question to you is, why was it rezoned commercial? We didn't know about it. We didn't vote on it. Can you reconsider that? And even with the data center, I'm not for the data center. I mean, you've heard all night long about it. But we the people, shouldn't we be voting on this? Yes, we voted you in to do what's right by the people. We the people, that's the Constitution. People bought lots back there years ago. That's their retirement. When they retire from the North, they're gonna come down here and build their house. They're being told they can't build there now because it's commercial. I mean, what are these people gonna do with these lots? Do any of you live back there? And also, I mean, you talk about commercial and data centers. Do any of you live near commercial or where you're proposing this data center to be? Probably not. So I hope you reconsider not only not to put a data center here. but surely rezone the residential areas back to residential and not commercial. I mean, there's plenty of areas in Northport that commercial can build on the other side of 75 where Detweiler's going. Commercial can go build there. There's places on 41. There's lots of places, but not in a residential area. It's just not appropriate. It's unconstitutional. And you would not want it in your backyard. Thank you for taking the time.

Thank you. City Manager, would you have staff get with that lady about the Lady Slipper area and maybe answer some of her questions? Yes, sir. Thank you.

Hey, my name is Jack. I'm currently studying for my CompTIA A-plus certification, so that's in the IT sphere. That's just a little bit about my background, but three miles is the best case distance for how close this data center will be to the nearest elementary school. Like what? That doesn't even make any sense why? Like we're pushing it in Port Charlotte with the high school being, you know, in the area that it is right now. An elementary school. 5 year olds. I've only got bullet points, but. We're currently in the entirety of Southwest Florida in a Tier 3 water crisis right now, literally right now. So I'm not exactly sure why we're trying to find new ways to use more water. I don't really understand the logic in that. What else do I got here? Oh yeah, literally this month, this year, the Peace River has hit its historic low ever, period. What else do we got here? Why are we building something that's gonna draw so much power in Hurricane Alley basically? Why are we going to use, like we're already struggling right now with FPL raising the bills due to them like tripling the bills because we're putting the power lines underground. So I don't really know what the plan with that is either. And I'm not gonna name any companies, but two companies in specific are creating a investment circle like the circle of life. And that bubble that it's making is literally going to pop some here in the next like two or three years. My buddy that's in IT over there knows exactly what I'm talking about. Let's see, I got a minute left. What else do I got here? I mean, our water is already awful. I know lots of these older people here probably came from up north. You know how much better the water is up there. Yep, all these nods in the crowd. Just wanted to put that out there as well. I mean, reclaimed water is still water usage no matter what as well. Even if, oh, you know, we're going to have reclaimed water only. Like, what are we even talking about? Anyway, so God bless our troops. God bless the Everglades. God bless America. Thank you.

I have Michael Melton, John Canabars, Keisha Swatso, if you're still here, Mario Lacerda, if you're still here, and Iwa White, if you're still here.

My name is Michael Melton. I'm actually a citizen of Charlotte County. I'm running for Charlotte County Commission in District 4, which is very, very close to the proposed location of the data center. Relatively speaking, I think it's only a handful of miles away from the county line there. Having been a lifelong resident here in Southwest Florida, and primarily in Charlotte County, I've watched the water quality degrade throughout the years. And I find it encouraging here that North Port has opened up their doors to the advocacy of the community. And one of the things that makes our democracy work is local governments listening to those that they represent. A lot of us have already lost a lot of faith with those who represent us at the national level. Some of us have lost faith with those who represent us at the state level. And I would hope that you would do what you can to restore faith in those who serve us at the local level. And so I'm going to go ahead and take the rest of my time so that the citizens of Northport can go ahead and have their say. And we're not here until midnight. Very, very proud of Northport for coming out in force tonight. Very, very, very proud of that. And I hope that the city council does the right thing and at least adopts the moratorium, give them the opportunity in the 18 months to investigate further and find out if Southwest Florida is really the right location for this type of industry. Thank you very much for your time.

Thank you.

Hi. I'm really nervous. I'm just speaking from my son. He's 14 and a Northport High School GPA of 4.5, and this was a dinner talk that we had, and these are actually his words. Imagine waking up one morning and finding out that the woods behind your house are going to be replaced by a massive building filled with thousands of computers. You might think it's just a data center. What could possibly be wrong with that? The truth is that data centers can have much bigger impact on our environment and communities than most people realize. First, let's talk about water. Data centers produce enormous amounts of heat, so many of them needing cooling systems that use water. And it's only the water used directly inside the facility. The electricity power in these centers can also require large amounts of water to produce. Recent research has warned that this growing demand can put additional pressure on freshwater resources and aquatic ecosystems. And who depends on the water? Everyone. People need it to drink, farmers need it to grow crops, and animals need it to survive. We all need it to survive. Now think about what happens when these giant facilities are built on forests, wetlands, grasslands, or farmland. Construction can remove trees, destroy habitats, cover soil with concrete and asphalt, and change how rainwater moves through the land. That means animals can lose places to live, pollinators can lose food sources, and ecosystems become fragmented. And that connects directly to our food. When farmland and healthy ecosystems are replaced with industrial development, we're potentially taking land away from agriculture and reducing habitat for pollinators and other species that help support our food system. We can't keep treating farmland and nature as if they're unlimited resources. And then there are consequences for ordinary people too. Communities are concerned about higher electricity costs, increased noises, water pressure, pollution. Farmers and neighbors have been complaining about headaches and dizziness and vertigo, and the calves are becoming stillborn. Birds are leaving. It's the noise. It's just, it's crazy. And massive changes to the land around them. These aren't just environmental problems, they're quality of life problems. Now, I'm not saying technology is bad. Data centers are important. They support the internet, businesses, communication, emergency services, technologies. we use every day. But here's this point. Just because something is useful doesn't mean we should build it without limits. If companies want to build massive data centers, they should have to prove that they aren't destroying important habitats, taking necessary water away from communities and farmers, or forcing regular people to pay for the environmental and infrastructure costs. We should demand better locations, better cooling technology, cleaner energy, stronger environmental protections, and real accountability because progress isn't just about asking what can we build. It's about asking what are we willing to sacrifice to build it. Our forests, our wildlife, our water, our food, our communities are not unlimited resources. That's all I have time for. Thank you.

Thank you. Tell your son thank you.

That's all the in-person public comment.

That's all the in-person? Yes.

For public comment general, public comment cards that are received, but those are the general public comment cards that I received.

Yeah those will be when we get to the item. We still have to go with the phone in public comments, the written in public comments, then we move on to the business item. We will have discussions then we will have the other public comment at that point. So we still got a little ways to go for the secondary public comment on the item.

Voicemails?

Voicemails, yes, ma'am.

My name is Mariana Nwazi. I'm commenting on the meeting for August 31st, 6 p.m., for the proposed moratorium

I absolutely approve and agree with a moratorium, a retroactive moratorium, to ensure that enough time and planning goes into place in consideration of this hyperscale data center. It gives no benefit at all to any of the residents, in my opinion.

If anything is going to... escalate depreciation on any type of equity in the home and values of anyone's home. No one wants to buy a house in a town that has a data center. So this will affect everyone here. That Northport is that data center town. And I don't believe this would happen if this were more in Welland Park.

There would be enough money of those investors to stop this movement. No one wants their bills to go through the roof for any type of utilities. It causes radiation, noise pollution. It's going to ruin our water and deplete our water. There are no benefits whatsoever and it's wildly, wildly irresponsible.

to approve something like this or even consider approving some type of business when our water will be publicly traded.

That means the value will go up for only the investors and the traders if the water is scarce and our water will be

The meeting is at 6 p.m. And what I want to say is that I've lived in North Port for over 20 years.

And I'm in full support of having a data center being built. It is the way of the future whether people like it or not. And on top of that, it will bring lots of jobs I think that the committee should vote no on this particular proposition for the fact that it would be an incredible drain of resources on the community, the electrical grid, the fact that the They're also heavy polluters. And I am raising two daughters. I would like them to be able to enjoy it. for the meeting.

is Caitlin Williams. My phone number is 941-267-9143. The meeting is tonight, August 31st at 6pm.

I am calling in regards to me stating it is a firm no on data centers in our community. Not only do they drain resources with water that we already do not have, they also cause extreme, extreme power grid and

the ecosystem that we have is already depleting as it is. We have very little land mass left for our animals and our ecosystem.

Putting a data center there

My name is Carmela Hernandez.

I live at 12131 Warden Avenue, Port Charlotte, Florida, 33981.

Today's date is the 31st of August, 2026. The meeting is supposed to be tonight on the 31st at 6 o'clock. It concerns the data centers. They're thinking about building. My comment is no.

Taxes will go up. Everything will go up. And we can barely make it now. We've got young people that can't even afford to move out of their parents' house because they're not so high.

The data center...

The time is 3.35 p.m. Monday afternoon. This is regarding the meeting that will be held August 31st at 6 p.m. This is about data centers I'm calling to say a firm no to data centers in our community. These facilities drain millions of gallons of local water, strain our power grid, and they run noisy, polluting generators that harm our air quality and health. We will not sacrifice our environment or quality of life for corporate profit. To the board, we are watching. If you vote yes to bring data centers here, we know exactly who you are and we will remember your name forever. We do not want data centers here. Thank you. Hi, my name is Carolina Robertson. My phone number is 941-306-8669.

Tonight, August 31st, the meeting is held at 6 p.m. at City Hall.

The agenda is that I am calling to say a firm no to data centers in our community. Thank you. Have a great day.

My name is Olivia, 941-225-3192. I'm calling to leave a public statement for a two-day meeting August 31st, 6 p.m., for data centers. I'm calling to say no to data centers in our city. We will not sacrifice our environment, peace, and quality of life for data centers. To the board, we are watching. If you vote yes to bring data centers here, we know exactly who you are, and we will remember your name forever. My name is Emily. My phone number is 941-979-7513.

I am calling today on August 31st at 319 p.m. I would just like to say that I am a firm no to the data center in our community. I just don't believe that this is what our community needs to stand for. These facilities bring gallons of water. They bring the power grid. They are noisy. They're polluting our environment. They are... Honestly, it's disgusting, and the fact that you guys are trying to change what this community is and what it stands for is very, very sad for the residents who moved here to start a family and grow their family here. For the board, we are watching you. If you vote yes to bring the data center here, we know who you are, and we will remember your name, and we will be voting you out. So thank you. I hope that you guys make the right decisions. This is Shada Meyer. The meeting date is August 31st at 6 p.m. I would like to comment on the data center situation. I believe that this is a violation of citizens' rights. We elect

and by implementing laws that allow data centers, that's in violation of

Good afternoon. My name is Anastasia Kleinman, and I'm providing a general comment for the meeting today on August 31st, which will take place at 6 p.m.

I wanted to briefly thank Phil Stokes for putting through the moratorium on the inventors. I encourage all the commissioners to please approve this moratorium. for this moratorium throughout Northport on both sides of the political spectrum.

I think as residents, we need a chance to learn more about data centers and learn more about what's being built in our community before we can decide what we agree to and what we don't agree to and what the best practices are going to be. So I appreciate all of the commissioner's time

to put a pause on data centers in Northport so that the community has more time to learn about them, more time to comment, and more time to potentially reject this new proposition for our city. Thank you.

Hello, this is Joe Sacks. My phone number is 941-24872.

I'm sorry, 941-24872. I'm calling about a meeting taking place on August 31st at 6 p.m., and the topic is the North Port Florida data center. I just want to state that I'm not opposed to technology or economic development, but these massive data centers are not the kind of development the North Port should be pursuing.

Second of all, there's the water issues.

Now, Florida has already sold its water as though it were a commodity rather than a finite resource to privately owned companies out there used for commercial use. And once these resources are committed by the public, it's hard, nearly impossible to get them back. A data center, which requires large amounts of electricity, Please listen to the residents who have to live with the consequences rather than the developers and investors who will move on once this is done. Thank you.

313-581-6905 calling about the meeting in Northport tonight at 5 o'clock.

The data center going up in Northport. I want to leave a message opposing the data center going up in Northport. Have a good meeting. Thank you. Bye.

I would like to oppose the data center for the North Port, Florida area. There's a meeting today at 6.

Well, my number right now is 203-751-1291. I'm calling out of the Punta Gorda here, very close to Northport, in Deep Creek here. I'm calling to oppose the data center. There's just too much volume on the roads, especially in the winter. It's just going to get worse from here. I just don't think it's a good idea to put it in. It should be out further into the country somewhere. Again, I'm Mike Bolero, 203-751-1291. The area's already too crowded. Please don't build the data center. Thank you.

Go ahead. Hello, my name is Ariana Hernandez-Grum, and my phone number is 941-380-7279. And I am leaving a comment in regard to tonight's August 31st, 6 p.m. meeting in regards to the data center agenda. I would like to have my voice and opinion known that I believe that any data center added to our southwest border region is going to cause an enormous detriment to our water health, our biological ecosystem, and just all of the nature around us, I do believe that any added economic benefits that we may get, such as jobs, jobs or anything along that nature does not outweigh the detriment that it's going to do to our environment. Personally, I know people that have worked at or applied for data centers, and most of those jobs are being outsourced because it is a highly educated field. So I really don't think that we're going to be bringing jobs or any positive things to our area with the addition of a data center. Thank you.

Thank you.

Hello, commissioners and staff. My name is Sarah DeBerard, and I own multiple properties on 5th and Northport. I'm here respectfully to object to the data warehouse proposal. They're my neighbor on Yorkshire Street. This project would bring a 24-hour industrial scale facility into an area that is planned For these reasons, I respectfully ask you not to approve this data work out center. Thank you for your time and consideration.

Hi, my name is Joanna. Sorry, my phone number is 305-742-4234.

I'm calling concerning the meeting on August 31st at 6 p.m. regarding the application for a data center in our community. North Port is expanding, but we cannot mortgage our future for a massive, nearly 900,000 square foot industrial complex disguised as an economic progress. These hyperscale facilities demand staggering amounts of our

The project that was initially hidden behind non-disclosure agreements should not be fast-tracked over the voices

Thank you for your time and I urge you to not allow the data centers to be built in our beautiful city of Northport.

It is not a good thing for the environment or our health. And if we look at what China is doing with their data centers, using them offshore and with wind power, I would think it would be a better idea to wait and see how that all goes and maybe use that as an example instead of digging into a lot of property My phone number is 941-769-3477. I have been a resident of Charlotte County and Sarasota County since 1974. I say no to this data center.

I'm already in a water crisis. We can't read that our wildlife is disappearing, our way of life is disappearing, our children, our grandchildren, our great-grandchildren. Please consider my comment. I would like to attend tonight, but I can't. I'm unwell. But as a citizen, and a concerned citizen of what's been going on, and finding out this is kind of like not under, and a lot of people didn't know about it, we need to stand up for our rights and are, I think, not supposed to say no to that.

Voting is coming up for commissioners.

A lot of things going on. We're overdeveloped. Our infrastructure, we flood now because we've got so much concrete. I can go on and on and on. This is not what we need. I hope you'll take my comments seriously.

Thank you. Again, my name is Beth. I say no to data centers. Is my message complete? It said two minutes, and I'm still talking. I want to know my messages.

I'm calling in reference to 31 August meeting on dad centers at 9 a.m. have anything to do with our water. Let them build their own water plants. When it comes to electricity, Florida Power and Light should not have them on our grid. They should have to build their own grid, pay for it out of their own pockets before they even build anything. And solar should be used because there's a lot of sun.

It would be better for the

They should take care of it before it's even built. calling is because there are a couple items about the data center that I don't know has been talked about. We don't know how the community is going to be affected by having all of this data center. We don't know about what kind of radiation could be happening.

We don't know how the

Because there's not been any kind of scientific studies done on it. So there should be a moratorium until there's something done. The next thing is that because of all the building that's going on, the builders have already screwed up the ecosystem. And the fact that our flooding has gone from maybe a two or three to now five and six. So... What's going to be happening when they take the dad center built, whether there is a shopping center or, Lord forbid, another development. I live in Willard Park, and my home is already $100,000 worth less than what it was when I bought it back in January of 2024 with all the development.

All of our housing, our houses are going to be worth a lot less with the data set.

This is Robin Williams calling for 2020. I'm Robin Williams-Kinney for Sarasota Charter Review District 4 speaking in support of the 18-month moratorium on any actions involving data centers in Northport. It's a stopgap measure to address an immediate threat. Please remove Section 5 dealing with financial hardship. Corporations always claim they're being financially harmed by any effort to restrict their activity. I'd like to see a countywide long-term moratorium on data centers and lessen until they only occur as redevelopment projects on previously developed land. or small-scale, won't be sighted in economically poor neighborhoods, won't harm wildlife, will provide their own renewable energy for power, will not result in higher energy prices to civilians, do not equalize their limited freshwater resources, can bring construction, won't harm our geologically sensitive region or the ecosystem, won't contribute to further flooding, and won't result nationally. Sarasota and Florida have experienced overdevelopment, unaffordability, now data centers and threat of nuclear power plants. A national super PAC funded by top AI execs and tech pros has pledged $5 million and funded TVF to promote one current gubernatorial candidate. That same candidate also got $1 million from Florida Power and Light.

centers, prohibit nuclear power plants, and stop overdevelopment, protect our beautiful county.

And this is about city commission policy number 2020-04. My name is Robin Williams. I reside in Sarasota County, 1716 Bayonne Street. My phone number 609-771-1755. Thank you.

I don't even know. Potential noise pollution is so close to our international neighborhoods. Please protect our community's resources and the quiet enjoyment of our neighborhoods by voting in favor of this warmer town. Thank you for your time and answering my comments to the official polling record.

Hello, my name is Jordan Riddle.

I'm a resident of North Port 2785 MC Road, North Port, Florida 34291. I'm calling about the August 31st 6 p.m. meeting regarding data centers. I'm calling because I do not support the building of data centers in North Port.

People don't come to the state, so all the natural resources can be applied for all to work and the land be overdeveloped. There's no direct benefit for the citizens of the North Fork. There's concerns about water pollution, noise pollution, and high-dose electricity that's subsidizing utilities.

We already have periodic droughts throughout the year, and this would only worsen the issue. But we want to benefit from these data centers with the corporate interests, such as developers and politicians. This is going to help the industry.

put on a brochure, introduce your family, you know, hey, we have a day center. I, for one, want to be proud. I'm using that to break out the better of my community.

Hi, my name is Rachel. My phone number is 571-437-3057, and I'm calling regarding the City Commission special meeting that is supposed to be tomorrow, Monday, August 31st, 2026 at 6 p.m. in the City Commission Chambers at 4970 City Hall Boulevard, Northport, Florida 34286. I'm calling to voice my opinion and voice my concern. This is a critical decision me to hear that the impact is going to be great if you do this and I am against it. I don't feel like we need this.

It will affect lives. It will affect agriculture. It will affect frequencies.

It will affect privacy. It will affect our water systems. to participate in this meeting tomorrow. I wanted my voice to be heard if at all possible. I don't agree with it. I don't think that it will benefit our community at all. And this is not something that we moved to Florida over 10 years ago to... worried about having to fight right now. And this is the future of our Florida, and we need to keep this plan possible. And this is not how to do that. So I stand opposite of this, and I was told that my voice matters.

So I'm another voice saying no, no to the data center.

Lucy Parker, 941-786-2822. City Commission special meeting on Monday, August 31st, 2026 at 6 p.m. Do you want a data center in Northport? The answer is no.

It will destroy our beautiful little city.

That's all for the voicemail, Mayor.

That's it for the voicemail. We're getting close to that hour and a half mark. We'll take a 15-minute break and come back at 9.20. It'd be like a 13-minute break. Come back at 9.20, and then we'll move on. It's 9.20, let's everybody find their seats and we'll get started again.

Amy Ray, as a homeowner in New York, I have several concerns. First, water. Where will the water come from? We are in a historic drought and D.C. cooling systems use millions of gallons of H2O per month. We already have restrictions on water and DCs will make them worse. No one can live without water and those of us with wells have great concerns they will dry up. It is happening in other states. I'm also concerned about sediment migration during land clearing, runoff from the new impervious surfaces and contamination from construction activity to noise. A typical installation would have between 60 to 80 decibels and the backup diesel generators can produce decibels at 95 to 105, which can cause health issues and lack of sleep for starters. Would you like to sleep next to that? Hyperscale data centers have extensive diesel backup generators A 500 MW facility might have 100 plus large diesel generators totaling 100 plus MW of backup capacity. These must be tested regularly monthly or more often running at load for 15 to 30 minutes per test. Modern diesels are cleaner than older ones, but do emit particular. particulate matter, nitrogen oxides, and combustion pollutants during operation and testing. What kind of pollution control will be put in place? What about people with asthma, COPD, and other lung issues? What about the infrastructure of the roads? The trucks will destroy our existing roads. How about the wildlife? We don't let people build because of tortoises and scrub days, but we will destroy acres and not care about the already encroachment on a wildlife. What about the heat that these data centers release or if there is a fire? I'm strongly opposed for this reason and others. Error permitting review through Florida Department of Environmental Protection is a real regulatory checkpoint. Cumulative emissions during extended grid failure like ever hurricane can be significant. AV. I formally Refute and withhold my consent to the tyrannical Northport City Commission's recent actions, specifically the execution of backroom deals with data centers hidden behind non-disclosure agreements, NDAs, the rezone of AC6, AC10, and the broad delegation of authority allowing city staff to make critical public decisions completely devoid of citizen oversight. Any agreements, pacts, or deals orchestrated under the shrewd of an NDA are fundamentally illegitimate, and I declare them null and void due to the total absence of public transparency. Operating behind closed doors while imposing financial burdens on residents violates the fundamental principles of a transparent representative government. Let this statement serve as an official declaration that taxation without meaningful representation is theft, and I demand an immediate halt to these unauthorized actions and to change... Reason back to how it was previously until full public transparency and oversight are restored. As all these tyrannical actions are repugnant to the Constitution and this charter, as well as fire NDA Fletcher immediately. Brian Sanderson. Hi, my name is Brian Sanderson. I am in Northport resident. I am calling to ask the commission to vote yes on the 18th month moratorium on data centers. I also want to be clear that I am opposed to data centers being built in Northport. After reading about the Northport 300 and Deep Park proposal, I'm even more concerned. This is a proposed 113-acre data center campus with seven buildings and nearly a million square feet of data center space, and yet we still don't have some of the most basic information about what a development of this size would mean for our city. There are no power demand numbers in the application. There are no water use numbers, and there's no fiscal impact study showing what Northport would actually gain after considering the cost of infrastructure and city services. Northport is already growing extremely fast. I don't want our resources and infrastructure committed to enormous data centers for the benefit of large corporations, especially when I don't believe these facilities are the kind of development that improves the quality of life for the people who actually live here. I don't want Northport to become a destination for data centers. I support the 18 month moratorium and I want the city to use that time to put strong protections in place for our community. Please vote yes to the moratorium. Caitlin snow. As you go through this meeting, keep in mind the facts of nature and science. Water is not created nor destroyed. If we continue to allow portions of water to machine, this water is automatically removed from many that need it. We need to stop thinking about dollar signs and start thinking about the next generation. Stop the selfishness in this county. It's either a rural park or a data center, but never both. Carla Green. I and my family strongly oppose this data center. I own a home in MP since 1993 and I do not want to lose water resources, have higher electric bills, kill the local animal environment, or have EMF radiation emitting from this pollution center in our area. This should be illegal and never accepted as it destroyed the area that we love and bring absolutely no benefit to our community, only loss. It should be voted down immediately and never considered again as it violates our land and resources as well as our health and that of future generations. Charlotte Zangara. These centers are hazardous to the environment and the people. The low frequency hum is killing the bees. They put forever chemicals back into the ground when cooling the units. The heat and light they emit is not acceptable. Per Larry Ellison, head of Project Stargate, they are for surveillance. We don't want these centers or need them. They will destroy our beautiful city. Sherry Dennett. I would first like to remind elected officials that they work for the people who voted them in and not for businesses and interests looking to develop in North Port. The introduction of a hyperscale data center to North Port is unwarranted and unwanted. We do not have the water resources needed, the electricity resources needed, nor do we want the pollution it will create, the noise it will create, and the devastation to habitat and wildlife that it will create. Once these centers are built, it has shown to kill wildlife within a mile of it. The noise and the air pollution are dangerous to humans. The water usage is immense, In a drought-stricken area that gets dry and dry every year, it causes problems for our own consumption of water. Other items to reconsider are the fact that we are built on karst, which can easily crumble when the balance of Water is reduced and rainfall happens. This causes sinkholes. We also live in hurricane territory where not only hurricanes but tornadoes form. Who's going to pay for the damage to the hyperscale data center? I guarantee it will be us, the taxpayer. This does not bring economic development and it does not bring jobs. It does not bring anything good to a community. They only look for lower income communities to exploit. Do not allow us to be exploited. I am 100% against the building of any data center in Northport. I know I'm not alone. I would venture to guess that the majority of the city does not want one. A moratorium is fine, but it needs to be more than that. We must ban data centers entirely. They offer zero positive impact to us.

Christine Johnson.

Dear City of Northport Commissioners, thank you for holding tonight's special meeting regarding a temporary moratorium on data centers. Big Waters Land Trust appalls the Commission's forward thinking and offers the following considerations as the City evaluates appropriate safeguards. One, transparency. Require applications to provide data-driven estimates for water consumption, energy use, and sources, emissions, noise, and light pollution. Two, water. Evaluate water demand and discharge in coordination with SWFMUD, including discharge temperature, chemicals, heavy metals, location, and rate. Three, energy. Require disclosure of total energy needs, sources, and transmission requirements. Coordinate with FPL to ensure existing rate payers do not bear added infrastructural or production costs. Four, sitting. Establish clear guardrails identifying locations where data centers should not be permitted, particularly near wildlife management areas, public parks, and other sensitive public lands, including Orange Hammock Ranch. Five, emissions. Require data-driven estimates of anticipated emissions. Six, noise. Require estimates of noise levels at specified distances from all property boundaries, including expected hours and duration of sustained noise. Seven, Light pollution require estimates of nighttime light impacts, particularly for facilities near or adjacent to public open lands. Additional information and resources for communities and elected officials are available from the Piedmont Environmental Council. Thank you for considering these issues as Northport discerns how best to address data center development. Christine Wilkins, thank you for taking the time to listen to our opinions and comments. My husband and I have been coming to this area for over 30 years on vacations. After my first battle with cancer and double hip replacements, we did extensive research about Northport. We finally moved here in 2018 with our then teenage daughter and we left behind our son in college in West Michigan. We love Northport. Our daughter who attends Northport High School earned a Bright Futures Full Light Scholarship to FGCU and graduated last year. August 31st, 2023, I was diagnosed with an incurable form of stage four cancer. Being in close proximity to Florida Cancer Center has been a true godsend. About four years ago, we noticed things started to really change here in Northport. By now, you've heard all the reasons why people do not want a data center. Let me tell you some personal reasons. My daughter can't wait to leave Florida and move to an area with no data centers. My son, who still lives in Michigan, is surrounded by data centers. We know about the noise pollution firsthand from friends and relatives. We know about the increased energy bills that weren't supposed to happen. We also have relatives in Wisconsin who've been negatively affected by data centers. In my family, we fight for a cure for cancer and we fight against data centers. I ask what benefit besides tax residue for the city does a data center provide? We should never have a data center close to our vital water resources if our well runs dry because Of the data center, who will pay for it? What if our water gets polluted from the data center? Isn't there enough tax revenue from the existing insane over development? Do you realize that a data center makes more important a military target? Finally, I'd like to remind you all you sit under a sign that reads and God we trust. Thank you again for your time and consideration during this process. David Iannotti, greetings commissioners. I am writing to you to express opposition to the data center as presented. I am even more concerned as to how we got to this point. No private company should be granted a non-disclosure by a public government without at minimum the elected representatives being directly involved. Jerome Fletcher is not an elected representative. Elena Ray is not an elected official. The legislative power of the city must be returned to the commissioners or we do not in fact have a functioning representative government. If the city proceeds with a data center, which I believe is a mistake, the primary duty of every employee of the city of Northport, which is funded by its taxpayers, is to protect the taxpayers both financially and environmentally. It must be spelled out in a development contract that not a penny of infrastructure will be paid by anyone other than the developer. The development agreement must have an abandonment clause. The developer must be required to have a performance bond for 125% of cost of decommissioning the facility. There must also be in writing that No public subsidies, grants, abatements, municipal funds are used to subsidize electrical infrastructure or connections. It must be ensured that FPL cannot pass along increases due to the electrical infrastructure great connection to the existing rate payers. Not a single promise is acceptable. Everything must be legally binding. I hope any decision made will reflect the public opinion. Do the people of Northport want a hyperscale AI data center? At what true cost would this come? Where will the wastewater go because not all of it is treatable? What will the... Electrical demand due to the existing rate payers bills make no mistake. This is an absolute behemoth. We are talking about. I strongly oppose. Absolutely no to a data center in Northport data centers belong in a remote area that does not negatively impact wildlife or neighbors. Holly Squires. Good afternoon. I have been a report representative for 10 years and I care deeply about all matters concerning Northport regarding the proposed data center. I am not against technology yet. The data center being proposed to be built in our city would be a major burden on the people and all natural resources. We are at an all-time low in regards to our water. Also, our electric infrastructure is also not in a strong state. Very often, we lose power simply from quick storms that pass by. A data center places extreme strain on power grids, and their need for water is astronomical. This has been seen throughout many current communities in our country. Walls have been running dry, city water turning brown, towns' electric bills skyrocketing. Also, the amount of heat that is created changes the surrounding air temperatures by up three to five degrees. Lastly, the noise pollution and sharp decreases in values to surrounding homes is alarming. This makes sense as nobody wants to live by a data center that brings constant disturbing noises and drains resources. If the center is to be approved, I am pleading with the City of Northport to do the right thing for their residents. These centers can be run by air cooling systems and solar power. Most developers do not want to do this as it costs them more money, so they just laid the burden on the people. This is not just any data center. If approved, should have to place all the burden on the developers and company, not the people. Water is life once gone. We can never get it back. Thank you. Jamie. Dysitis I cannot be there person tonight due to work, but I did want to say my piece. I live 1.3 miles away from the proposed site of the data center. I moved to that area for the peaceful setting and rural feel. It is peaceful, quiet, and beautiful. I am worried about the noise and air pollution that I will be breathing in. My husband has COPD and my daughter has asthma. How will this negatively affect them? I am afraid we do not have enough water or electricity to support this system, and I do not want to lack water or electricity in my home, not to mention the radiation and vibration they cause. I am opposed to the status and are coming to Northport. There is already a water shortage and land is being cleared for development, and all the wildlife is suffering. Please do not bring this to Northport. We do not want it. Jay Giddens. Honorable Commissioners, I write as a resident seeking a balanced approach to any proposed data center. These projects can deliver economic investment, construction jobs, and tax revenue. At the same time, experiences elsewhere in Florida's geology raise legitimate concerns that deserve careful review. In other regions, residents near older data centers have reported private wells losing pressure or producing sediment after construction, continuous noise from cooling systems, and questions about grid reliability and cost allocation. Florida's purest limestone karst aquifer is highly permeable and supplies most private wells. Large withdrawals can cause rapid drawdowns, increase sinkhole risk, allow contaminants to travel quickly and near the coast, promote saltwater intrusion. Many local households rely solely on wells, so competition for the same groundwater is a direct community risk. Newer designs using closed-loop liquid cooling, dry coolers, and reclaiming water can greatly reduce or eliminate ongoing groundwater use and lower noise. Proper bonding is essential to hold developers to safety and environmental standards. The municipality should require fully funded performance environmental infrastructure and decommissioning bonds or equivalent letters of credit or escrow sized by independent third party engineers held by a neutral trustee and adjusted annually for inflation and risk. These bonds must allow rapid draw by the county if wells lose pressure or quality, noise limits are exceeded, infrastructure is damaged, or the facility is abandoned without lengthy litigation. Clear trigger events should be set in a development agreement with unused funds benefiting the community after successful operation and decommissioning rather than reverting solely to the developer. This ensures private projects do not shift uncompensated costs onto neighbors or share of water resources while remaining fair, responsible operators. Joshua Smith. Hello, Commissioners. Please move forward with the moratorium on data centers. Also, it is good to see that you are looking into stopping staff approvals and talking about NDAs. Hopefully, this meeting will be productive. As a reminder, during these conversations, you are currently suing your citizens to spend money on a police station and nonprofits that we voted no on and raising our taxes for a transfer station we voted no on. Watching at home, hoping you will do the right thing tonight. Kay Johanna. The date, time, and agenda item for this meeting is 8-31-2026, 6 p.m. Hello, and thank you for taking the time to listen to constituents. To be clear, I support the approval of placing a moratorium on any data centers in Northport, Florida, with my additional strict opposition to any data centers being built in Northport, Florida, and elsewhere. The majority of citizens do not want any data centers being built in any of our surrounding areas, especially on private property that would ultimately remove our collective ability to officially demand any accountability onto the private owners should the predictability inevitable happen with rising utility costs, devastating environmental impacts, and increase of fossil fuel use leading to further and worsen climate change effects. and the apparent risk to people's physical health regarding water and air quality and economic health regarding job losses to AI, emergency response capacities, water, wastewater, and electrical systems, and our surrounding properties, including businesses, schools, healthcare facilities, and residents alike. We see the damage these data centers are causing in cities and other states and our laws, regulations, and institutions regarding tampering down and healing us away from climate change, related on natural disasters are not compatible of mitigating the destructions that data centers are causing and in fact will exaggerate our increasing environmental, economic and health issues. Also, we have a billionaire problem where their wealth keeps growing while ours keeps diminishing no matter how hard we work and the rich classes abusing the power of their money can buy so they can obtain even more control, power, surveillance and wealth over an entire nation of citizens with data centers being Another pathway for them to solidify their and have seen greed over us. We need leaders to fight on the side of we, the people, instead of catering to the rich. Kelly commissioners, I am asking you to please think about the families who already live here before approving this data center. I live four miles from the proposed site. My son's elementary school is only about two miles away and my other son's middle school isn't much further. This is our home and I'm honestly shocked that something of this scale is even being considered this close to our neighborhoods and schools. My biggest concern is water. We already deal with drought, water shortages, restrictions, and rapidly growing population. We're constantly being told to conserve water, yet we're considering bringing in a massive facility that could require huge amounts of water and electricity. How does that make sense? I'm not against growth or technology. I'm a business owner. I understand that communities need development and jobs, but that doesn't mean every project belongs here. I also have serious concerns about noise, backup generators, air quality, our power grid, and what happens when one data center turns into several. Once something like this is built, we don't get to change our minds. My kids are growing up here. I want to know that their schools, their water supply, and the people who already call Northport home matter more than the promises of a developer. Please put people who live here first and say no to the status center. Kim H. I oppose to any data center application, data center build in Northport. Everyone is becoming hyper-aware of the dangers in living near a data center. From poison brown polluted water to nonstop noise pollution, we live in a unique area surrounded by beautiful forests and preserves. This thing is being proposed to be built right up to the nature line where all the preserves are connected. I hike these areas frequently, and there is nothing like it. One mile in, and you can immerse yourself in wild flora where the Calusa Indians roamed. You can't get hiking like this anymore in the state due to urban development. Let's keep it preserved. Be on the right side of humanity and ban data centers altogether in Northport. No amount of money is worth the destruction it will bring. Cavs are coming out stillborn in other areas of the US that live near these centers. This will only drive out our wildlife. Our beautiful bird population will flee or worse, die off. They're affected by the frequencies the sound pollution puts out. Please, I beg you to be a good person and say no. Not now, not ever in North Port. People over profit. Please don't ruin our beautiful town. Please don't contribute to the deaths of our local wildlife population. Build homes out there, fine, but a data center? No one will move here if you put this through. No amount of money is worth this. You get one life. I urge you to use it wisely by making decisions in favor of the people of Northport. We don't need this. We don't want this. Don't ruin our town. Let's go down in history by banning them indefinitely. No amount of AI, social media, or internet garbage is worth it. We live fine without it. These data centers will kill. This town stops selling Northport off bit by bit for parts. We are human beings trying to live our life without a data center trying to harm us. We deserve better than this. Our wildlife deserves better. Just say no forever and go down in history as one of the good guys. Kristen Meitinger. As a multi generational lifelong Sarasota County resident and homeowner, I oppose data centers being built in our ecological sensitive area. We need to discuss how to responsibly handle our current and future needs for AI and balance that with quality of life and our duty to protect the environment now and for future Floridians. City Commission, please extend a permanent moratorium on data centers. No amount of money will be worth having these horrible data centers. The proposed site on Yorkshire will be only 6 miles from our large Toledo blade price housing communities. These massive tech plants use millions of gallons of water daily, which we cannot spare in drought. This will also strike the Peace River. The plants will use huge amounts of electricity leading to increased power bills to citizens and power back blackouts. Surrounding areas will be subjected to bright lights at night and the centers emit a loud humming irritating noise heard for over five miles away. This will be a disastrous use of the pristine and ever more valuable forested land that will be destroyed by these data monstrosities. Strongly oppose any data centers. Marcus Langhans, they want to build a data center in Northport and residents will pay the price. Your water, your power, your quiet. All for a company that pays almost nothing in taxes and hires almost no one from here. Your electric bill goes up, your water gets rationed, your home's value drops, and the scrub jays and the hammock gone for sobers that never sleep. This is in progress, it's extraction.

Marian Nowotny.

I support a retroactive moratorium on the application approval process allowance of a data center in Northport. I urge for there to be a ban of data centers for our town. We must set an example for our state and county. Water is going to high value new gold traded on the stock market. It is widely irresponsible for our city to give away or offer to a pollution center that only creates a liability for this town and provides no benefit to the citizens, animals, and environment. It is grossly harming. Building this data center will harm all residents with negative and rapidly depreciating value on the equity of their homes. I urge you as the homeowner not to cause financial harm to us residents. No one wants to buy a home in the town of a data center. Matt Padani, Sarasota County should not view data centers as something to fear or prohibit. It should view them as an opportunity to attract billions of dollars in private investments. The strongest argument for data centers is fiscal. Unlike most development, they concentrate enormous amounts of taxable capital onto relatively small industrial sites without bringing thousands of new residents who require taxpayer-funded services. Using current rates, a $1 billion data center could generate roughly $13 million Dollars annually and local property taxes, including approximately 3.4M directly to the city of Northport, assuming no special property tax abatement that alone would equal nearly 9% of Northport's current annual property tax revenue. Given that amendment 3 could reduce revenue collected from homeowners. This type of development is a no brainer. That does not mean approving data centers without conditions. Sarasota County and its cities should adopt stringent standards requiring dedicated or off grid power generation so projects do not strain the residential electric grid and water systems that do not compete with residents for existing supplies. Facilities should also be located far from residential neighborhoods and appropriate industrial areas, such as the North Port Business Park near I-75 and Toledo Blade Boulevard. Developers should bear the cost of infrastructure upgrades for their projects require. A temporary pause to establish these rules can be reasonable. An extended moratorium that simply delays investment is not. The goal should be to establish standards for power, water, noise, infrastructure costs, and appropriate sitting as quickly as Possible then reopen the permitting process done correctly. Data centers offer Sarasota County something increasingly difficult to find major private investments, construction and permanent jobs, millions and reoccurring tax revenue and remarkably little additional demand on local government services. Michelle Little, I support the moratorium if it will allow time for deeper investigation into the impact the data centers would have at the location chosen. I see the developer also has plans to build residential homes and businesses surrounding the data center. Big question is who will want to buy those homes and which is proposed to be built first. If people don't want to be near a data center, that would leave that residential area to become run down and or abandoned degraded the value of our city. also look at Vineland, New Jersey residents within approximately two to three miles are experiencing abnormal humming noises of which Cumberland County has had to issue noise ordinances. They also have experienced fumes and the New Jersey DEP using drones surveyed the area and found them to be using unapproved diesel generators. It's honestly not about not having data centers, but about where they're located and unfortunately Northport experiences severe droughts, extreme traffic, congestion, and is losing the integrity of the Royal area at once, so beautifully was. Miranda Malone, strongly opposed to any and all data centers. Our lives, animal lives, and our environment will be in danger. Mary Hardy, commissioners, I appreciate this opportunity to share my concerns about potential impacts of data centers in the City of Northport. Like many who live in Northport and surrounding communities, I have concerns about environmental impacts associated with data centers such as light, air, and noise pollution, as well as the potential for water depletion in an already stressed watershed. Another key concern I'd like to raise is the potential impact of data centers on water quality through the introduction of pollutants such as fire-sized corrosion inhibitors and heavy metals into the City of Northport and our region's important water resources. As you're aware, North Port's principal source of raw water supply is surface water from the Myakkahatchee Creek, which flows into the Myakkah River, a treasured Sarasota County natural resource. To prevent potentially damaging effects of data centers on these important water resources and the watershed, specific policies that assure no impact to the water quality are clearly needed before moving forward with reviewing any proposals in the watershed. Having such policies in place prior to consideration of any proposals will help guide staff and board decisions based on the best interests of this community. I am heartened by your interest in gaining a deeper understanding of the detrimental environmental impacts that could result from introducing data centers into the City of Northport and the Myakka River watershed prior to accepting or processing any proposals. Your due diligence in understanding such impacts in areas that are directly linked to the Myakkahatchee Creek or the Myakka River through canals or Waterways as well as areas prone to flooding is especially appreciated. In the best interest of the residents of the City of Northport and our region, I also greatly appreciate you considering making your data center moratorium ordinance retroactive. I want to know why there would be any consideration to building data centers near schools and residential areas. What are the real dangers with air pollution, including radiation, water pollution, noise pollution, extreme burden on area due to huge demands on water use and electricity in an area already burdened with water problems and electricity problems, especially during hurricanes? And how will all this affect our costs? And what about noise pollution and its effects on persons with mental health issues and Alzheimer's? And is there any concern over all the health problems caused by these centers? What rules have been established to guarantee safety in any of these concerns before considering this? These money-making AI structures should only be built in very remote areas. Peter, please do not allow this to happen for sake of Northport and Florida. Please vote yes on the data center moratorium. A temporary pause is not a rejection of economic development. It is a responsible step to make sure Northport does not permanently damage. its residents, infrastructures, and environment before appropriate protections are in place. The proposed area is not simply vacant or underdeveloped land. I recently drove and walked through parts of it myself. It is overwhelmingly forested and in multiple places vegetation has reclaimed the existing pavement so intensively that I observed birds nesting in what are technically roads. This is functioning habitat, not an empty industrial site. Developing it would require large-scale clearing, grading, road reconstruction, habitat fragmentation, and permanent conversion of established green space. Data centers also operate 24-7 and can generate continuous noise from cooling systems, fans, transformers, and backup equipment, including low-frequency tonal noise that can be especially intrusive at night. That raises legitimate concerns about residents' sleep and quality of life, as well as wildlife communication, feeding, breeding, and predator awareness. There are also major unanswered questions about water use, power demand, drainage, traffic, emergency services, setbacks, environmental protections, and the cumulative effect of industrializing such a large area. Once this land is cleared and the infrastructure is built, those impacts cannot simply be undone. A moratorium gives the City time to establish meaningful safeguards and evaluate the consequences before approving projects of this scale. Please vote yes on the moratorium and give Northport time to get this right.

Samantha Norman.

I oppose a data center being built in the city of Northport. It is detrimental to the environment, water consumption, and is against what Northport used to want, which was to protect the Florida ecosystem and protect lands. It is also being proposed to be built nearby a school. The data centers are very loud and polluting thus will likely cause issues with learning issues with neighborhoods and the environment. There is 0 good reason. Northport should even consider a data center being built. Keep the data centers far away from our beautiful city. Stacey, well, my family has our warehouse for 20 years in Northport. The last thing I want is a data center. A couple of miles away from my house. We are on water restrictions halfway through the rain season and a data center is the last thing we need. The city is steady approving clear cutting neighborhoods and apartments. I moved into a bedroom community and I wanted to stay as such. Do better by the residents and voters. Tamara Wayne. I am concerned about the following regarding the data center in North Port. One, the price of electricity going up for residents and how to ensure that doesn't happen. Two, availability of water for data center. Based on estimates, we don't have enough water for the amount of people expected in North Port. Three, the wavelengths of noise from data centers and impact to people and animals. Please put the data center decisions on at least an 18-month moratorium while more information is obtained. Tina Coleman. Our home is one of the two nearest to the planned site for the proposed data center. The first house built out here. We have been here for 24 years and are completely offering solar powered home. We choose to build and live out here in order to be able to enjoy nature, not to have a data center right out. our back door, polluting the air, ground, and water. We have a well. While also generating large amounts of heat into the atmosphere and throwing out light pollution that will ruin a beautiful view of the night skies and throw nature off balance. There is an immense amount of wildlife out here that will have their habitats destroyed. There is also no infrastructure out here. No water, power, sewer, roads barely maintained or just neglected and left completely unmaintained. What is the plan for all of that? Our family of three adult voters is strongly opposed to this proposed project plan and urge the commissioners to enact the moratorium and any future approval process needs to not be left to administration. William Lansall. My name is William Lansall. As a resident in Northport, I strongly oppose the building of a data center due to various health concerns, water pollution and noise pollution. We are currently under water restrictions and have been for several months and the data center would make the situation even worse. Along with concerns is the issue of the developer's responsibility of funding all of the infrastructure costs and incentives that might be given to them to choose Northport. We do need industry, but not one that would do more harm than good for the city. And that is all a comment.

For this part.

All right. Now that we've got that out of the way, We're going to move on to the public hearings, and the first one up is about the ordinance. What we're going to do is we'll state the ordinance. The city attorney is going to give us information. The commission will go back and forth with questions. Just because the commissioner asks a question doesn't mean they're in favor or not. They just want to ask that question, and then it'll go back to public comment. We'll make sure that the people in-house will give their public comment first, city clerk. Okay, and then we'll go back to the Collins and the right and so moving on. I'm going to as ordinance number 2026 dash 25. I request a motion to direct the city clerk to read by title only.

So moved.

Second. I have a motion on the floor made by vice mayor, seconded by Commissioner Stokes. Nothing to that. Please vote. That passes 5 to 0 city clerk. Can you read by title only please?

Ordinance number 2026 dash 25, an ordinance of the city of North Port Florida, establishing a temporary moratorium on the acceptance processing review approval or issuance of building permits, reasoning site plans, conditional use approvals, variances, comprehensive plan amendments or other city approvals for the construction, establishment, expansion, or intensification of data centers, data center facilities, large-scale data centers, and large load customer facilities within the municipal limits of the city and Northport, providing exceptions, directing study and evaluation of data center impact, providing for enforcement, providing for notice, providing for findings, providing for conflicts, providing for severability, and providing an effective date.

Thank you, ma'am. Mr. Fuino, this is your name, sir.

Thank you, Mayor. The discussion I'm going to lead through is going to be two parts. The first I'm going to give an overview of what the ordinance is so you understand all that. And then I will discuss the pending application that we found out for the first time at the July 21st meeting and what impact, if any, the ordinance would have on that application and some of the potential legal ramifications we would have. So let's talk about the ordinance. Just giving you an overview first. What is it? It is an 18 month moratorium on the acceptance processing review approval or issuance of any development approval for a data center. And the ordinance defines development approval as basically any. Official city approval necessary to establish, construct, intensify or operate a data center. It applies to all applications that are submitted on the floor or after the effective date. Of the order to be after the second reading typically, or what we've been talking about as a retroactive monitoring. There are 2 exceptions to that. The 1st is for what we call extraordinary hardship, which would be if an applicant. Before you all based on a set criteria can establish that it has some undue hardship. based on the moratoriums you could grant relief from that. And the second exception are for properties that were damaged by hurricanes Debbie, Malik, Helene, or Milton, which comparts with what we have, what the obligations under state law may or may not be 180 that was passed last legislative session. And the ordinance also requires the staff to study data centers in general and to bring back proposed amendments to our Unified Land Development Code for Commission's review. Finally, there's an enforcement mechanism in the ordinance. And what the enforcement mechanism says that any approvals that are issued in violation of the ordinance are void. It says that anyone who attempts to construct, establish, expand, or intensify a data center basically violate the ordinance. is subject to co-enforcement violations, that each day one of those violations exists as a separate violation where they could be fined, and that the city can bring a legal or equitable action in court to enforce its rights under the ordinance. So that is what the 10-12 page ordinance says in a nutshell. Now we'll talk about the application on file. So the application on file was What learned to everyone, us up here and the staff for the first time during the July 21st meeting. The staff has reviewed the application, reviewed the application, found that it was insufficient under our law And returned it to the applicant for what we call as comments on August 12, 2026. And what your law says is that when an application is deemed complete, meaning all the materials are there, but insufficient, meaning it doesn't have the information necessary to go on to what is really the first stage of the review process, the applicant has 30 days to. submit a sufficient application to remedy the situation. If they do not remedy that situation in the next 30 days, then your law says that application is denied. Uh, that again, that was comments were set on August 12. And we sat today at about 6 o'clock, the applicant resubmitted their application, reporting to a staff to remedy those, uh, insufficiencies in its initial application. We haven't had a chance to review that application yet, so we can't say if those issues have been remedied or not, but we will have 30 days to review it and to determine a sufficiency evaluation. And again, if it's insufficient, what happens is we send comments back and say, here's what you did wrong, and we give them 30 days to correct the gripe from there, and if that doesn't happen, then the law says it's denied. So that's the procedural issue. That's where we stand with this application that I think we all know has been out there for a while. I attached to your agenda item here and your backup materials an ordinance that was passed by our sister county to the east, DeSoto County, I did not include that during our July 21st meeting because it wasn't final yet. It wasn't passed until July 28th, 2026. And if you recall back to the July 21st meeting, I attached two different types of ordinances for your review. I attached Senator Hill's, which was the so-called retroactive moratorium ordinance, and I attached Hernando Carent's ordinance, which was a prospective moratorium, meaning that it wouldn't take effect until after the county commission adopted the ordinance. DeSoto County did something a little bit different. What DeSoto County did was it passed its ordinance on July 28, 2026, and it passed what you would consider to be a retroactive application. And it made it retroactive to June 23rd, I believe. June 23rd, 2026, which was when the county commission of DeSoto County directed the county attorney to draft a moratorium ordinance. So kind of see where we are procedurally wise. Now, about what about a month before DeSoto County directed its county attorney to write that moratorium. It received, like you all did, an application for a data center, two applications, I'm sorry. So what did DeSoto County do? Well, it made a retroactive moratorium to June 23rd, 2026, but it exempted from that moratorium, the two applications that were on file beforehand. So I want to talk about for a minute about what does it mean to exempt an application and particularly if you were to consider exempting the application that we have on file from our moratorium. Well, what you're exempting is the application. You're not exempting the applicant. So, what does that mean? It means that this application. Or the two applications that were received before the county attorney was directed. To draft the moratorium orders goes through the normal process for whatever reason. Their applications or our applications here fail or deny. For instance, we review the resubmitted application that was submitted just tonight. We find that it's still insufficient. And in 30 days, the applicant doesn't guarantee those insufficiencies. That application becomes denied. That means that that applicant is bound from any further applications by the 18 month moratorium. So that's what I mean when I say you exempt the application and not the advocate. It's also important to say if you exempt the application, you are not granting it. There's no data center here. It still has to go through the normal process that I talked about, which we've already seen has led to an insufficient application on step one. So they're not even at first base at this point, to use the baseball analogy. Another point I want you all to consider when you, if you decide to talk about exempting application, this application is that an exemption doesn't have to be an all or nothing proposition. You don't have to set for someone. You don't have to say that the sub county said that. Okay. The entire application can go through. It's not affected at all by this. What you can do is you can exempt the application from certain portions of the moratorium. So what does that mean? Well, for example, you have an 18-month moratorium you all instructed me to track. You could say for this application, the moratorium period is short. You're exempting it from 18 months, and you pick some other time period. You could also exempt it from the acceptance, processing, and review portion of the moratorium, but say that the A moratorium would stand as to the granting of any ultimate development rights. So in that case, you would say, well, staff, you can continue to review this application that was received tonight. See if it's sufficient. If it's not sufficient, send it back, comment, see what they do with that. Keep it going through the process. But the one thing you cannot do is grant. Final approval of whatever the application is asking for. Because remember, if you grant a tire moratorium, what you're telling the city staff to do is to put a break on the whole thing. Stop. Can't do anything else right now. And in addition, you can also say that. Any approval that may be granted will be is contingent upon the application. Comparing with any. develop that data center regulations that you may adopt in the intro. So when we review the applications, we will, as the moratorium also requires us to do, us being the staff, writing and researching potential regulations and then saying those regulations need to be applied to the project at issue in order to get the approval. So that's what I say when I mean, that's what I mean when I say an exemption isn't an all or nothing proposition. You can create it however you want, as little or as much or none at all. Now this is the part that gets, at least for me, very serious and I want you all to listen very carefully to what I'm about to say because this is where the legal ramifications of what you may or may not do come into play. At the July 21st meeting, I said something to the effect that, well, there's different risk levels of different actions that you may take. And I said that the risk-free premium would be, or the circumstance where there's no risk is to do not, don't assume more thought. How do you want to do that? I said the next riskiest level is to do a moratorium, but make it prospective in nature, or that would only be on command on county day. It only takes effect after your second grade. And then I said the riskiest level that you have is to do the so-called retroactive moratorium, which is what you instructed me to do. And that was theoretical when I said it, because I didn't know at the time that the map commission had been submitted. Now you have on your hands what we call a mall ride issue, which means that there is a controversy or there's a case that someone can sue the city for. And so if you adopt the ordinance as written, as we've all instructed you to do, you all have to be prepared to accept your worst day in court. And I'll tell you what that is. So worst day in court will ultimately be two losses. And the first loss is that the judge will issue what we call a preliminary injunction or permanent injunction. And what that does, that's a border from the court, basically a piece of paper from the court that says, City of Northport, you can't do what you did as to this application, and you have to let the process where you have to review it for any other application. You would have to exempt them for lack of a better term. That would be your first loss. Your second loss is more damaging, and that is if the judge orders a trial in front of a jury on a number of monetary damage claims, money damages, that the applicant may assert. And so what are those types of claims that they may assert? There's at least three, I see, that they could assert. Talk a little bit about them at the last hearing, my mom will be really clear about them here. The first would be a regulatory takings under the United States Constitution. A regulatory taking is just when government action infringes on a property owner's property rights. The second action would be similar, a little bit different, is a regulatory taking under the Florida Constitution. Basically the same thing. And then the third possible action will be a burnt house claim. And normally you would have a burnt house claim for temporary government action, but there's an exception in the statute that says that If the government action is more than 12 months. So, why did I say all that? Well, I said all that because there's 3 different claims. The applicant only has to win on one of them to win money. So what would that money be? Well, it could be a whole variety of things, but we're talking the worst day in court. And I think you've seen the application by now, you've heard about it, and you found out that it's not just a data center. It's an entire development built around the data center. And so if the applicant goes to court and proves that this 18 month moratorium caused the entire development to fail, Then you look at real monetary damages, which go up in untold millions of dollars. There's another part I want to point out here, which is that the city has what's called an excess carrier insurance policy. Most cities do. I used to have it back when I was in Clearwater. The access insurance carrier policy usually covers claims over a certain amount. In the city's case, for most claims that we normally do, the most the city ever pays out of pocket is $100,000. So I don't know which one's on, but I think it's possible that the insurance carrier will not cover any of the three types of claims that I just described, because they're not the type of covered claim that's under the policy. And what that means is that if you see that, we'll stay in court. And not only do you have to process the application under the injunction, but you will also be on the hook for whatever the judgment amount, could be millions of dollars, whatever the amount is, and that money will have to be paid out of the taxpayer's pocket. So I say this not to scare you, not to convince you one way or the other, but to inform your decision making because you have a tough choice before you today. And you need to weigh those options when you do it. And that's what I have for you today. If you have any questions, I'm happy to answer them. Thank you.

Commissioner Stokes, you're up for. Thank you very much city attorney. My question is this in the reading of the ordinance. I didn't see the word retroactive in it. Okay, I believe the direction we gave you at the prior meeting was a retroactive moratorium. That's 1st 2nd of all. You touched on it, but. This moratorium, if it were written retroactively. Could accept except out. the language that says acceptance and processing and review. Since that makes no sense at this point, since we have an application that's already been accepted in, it's in the review process, but we could still include that approval is tied to the moratorium. So in other words, if we were to put an 18 month moratorium or a 12 month or a six month or whatever term we determined, The process could continue, correct me if I'm wrong, the process of review could continue, but the approval could not take place until the moratorium expired. Am I correct there? If that's the way we...

Directed you and I'm sorry, so to answer your second question commission, so yes, that would be how it would be to answer your 1st question. You're correct. The word retroactive doesn't show off. But in section 4.1, what the ordinance says is this ordinance applies to all applications submitted before or after the effective date, including all pending applications. Regardless of whether the application has been deemed complete. So, um, that part is that's the way you say that.

We can also amend this, this, uh, ordinance to include a condition that. The approval would be subject to regulation that this elected body voted on. after we direct you in the next agenda item to go out and actually enact or write regulation that we could then enact. So we could set gold standards for addressing the issues of water, power, sound, and emissions, air quality. And so we could condition any approval on those standards we wrote if we so chose. So we could craft this ordinance the way we want it. Okay. Mayor, is it appropriate for me to back up just a little bit and say first, I want to thank everybody who came out to this meeting and spoke out either by mail, in person, by phone. I mean, your voices have been heard, okay? They matter. So you know, 184 people spoke on this item. Out of 184, three seemed to show an inclination that data centers made some sense and the other 181 appeared not to be so inclined. At the last meeting, I made the motion to enact a moratorium on the data centers in our city. Commissioner Petro suggested a term of 18 months and Vice Mayor Langdon offered amendment language which included staff direction to gather information, hold workshops to better inform us all. In collaboration, we voted to direct the city attorney to draft this ordinance language for a first reading for a data center moratorium. And I do believe we stand united in the desire to do what's right, but also what is legal. I will say, and this is Phil Stokes, one commissioner speaking, if I could vote to ban these, I would. That's simple. I would I would ban them in the city because I believe that our comprehensive plan as a priority speaks to the health and welfare of the citizenry. And for me, that's more important than the money. Any economic benefit this project might bring their 25 houses occupied that are occupied within about a half mile of this proposed site. as well as two schools within a couple of miles as the crow flies. I also think these two activity centers offer a multitude of opportunities for commercial and industrial development that do not have to include a data center. My biggest concern is that the city's comprehensive plan and the ULDC have absolutely nothing in them regarding data centers. No regulation, no guardrails, no standards, yet they fall under industrial uses which are legally allowable. Now we're faced with the submitted application already in legal review process, preceding to any moratorium, any regulation or guard mails that may help prevent or protect the health and welfare of the community. That's why I feel obligated to support a retroactive moratorium here. You've heard city attorney caution us on the potential legal and financial exposures of enacting a retroactive moratorium and what it could cost the city. And that amount could be in the millions and place this governing body in jeopardy. And we really shouldn't take that advice lightly, but That said, in good conscience, I can't stand by and support this project moving forward without regulation to control how and actually how it might be built. As city attorney says, the initial submitted application was returned to the applicant for insufficiency. There's nothing in it, I read it in detail, there's nothing in it that talks about how actually this data center is going to be built other than it's seven buildings and damn near a million square feet. It doesn't talk about power, doesn't talk about water, doesn't talk about air quality, doesn't talk about sound mitigation at all, at all. The legal process, as city attorney explained, involves three sets of 30 day back and forth, encompass a maximum of 120 days in which time the city has the right to approve or disapprove this application. So, you know, that's where we are now. I would really love to hear where my fellow commissioners heads are at on this and what they think we can do because we have the ability to craft a retroactive moratorium here. We have the right to allow the process to continue of review, which does not harm the applicant at this point, and condition any approval on the enactment of regulation. And we can set the term of this moratorium to conform with how long it might take city attorney to draft that regulation, bring it before us, and have it enacted. So with that, I'll yield and... Delighted to hear what everybody else has to say.

Vice Mayor, you're next.

I guess I'm next. It is our job to listen to the community and understand their needs and their concerns. It's also our job to obey the law. and to protect the city from, I don't want to use the term frivolous, let me say unwinnable lawsuits. So, a couple of things. What has disturbed me from the beginning of this conversation, which is only, what, a month old, really, is that we don't know anything. It is way early in the process to know specifically how this thing would be built, what its power consumption would be, what its water consumption would be, et cetera, et cetera. We have no regulations to insist that certain studies be done or certain regulations be in place. So I'm feeling the need to, in a sense, split the baby. I don't know what the right length of the moratorium is. It would depend on other factors. I'm perfectly willing to support an 18 month but I'm extremely reluctant to prevent this application from moving forward. I just think the legal exposure to the city taking that kind of action for that length of time is just not a risk that I'm willing to take. I think I heard city attorneys say, and if I didn't get, you gave us a lot of information, and if I didn't quite get it right, now's the time to set me straight, that we could relieve this specific application from certain requirements in the ordinance. So we could say the normal process can proceed except for final approval of the building plan. We used to call them, you know, VMAs or whatever. And at that point, I would support that as long as at that point the regulations and the studies and the work that we all need to do needs to be done and in place and clear as a bell and that approval of that plan, that specific, an application's not a plan. So the approval of that plan would be predicated on their accepting all of the regulations that we put in place after their application was accepted by the city. Is that accurate?

That's correct, Vice Mayor.

And do you feel that that would adequately manage our risk? I, for one, Right now to stamp our feet and say nothing, no way for 18 months just exposes us legally to all kinds of things that I don't want to contemplate. If we continue working with this applicant, we put all of those regulations in place and require their acceptance at that point in the process and they say no, I would think, correct me if I'm wrong, that if they sued us at that point, we would be in a much better position to say, we're not blocking this thing. We're not preventing it. We've put in place the guardrails and the rules that protect our community for some of the horror stories that happened, particularly with older data centers. Is that accurate?

Yes, Vice Mayor. I would say as an old trial lawyer, I would much rather have the case you described than the first one.

Okay. Okay. That's kind of where I'm falling on the broader issue. I did have a couple of comments on the ordinance itself, and one was the definition of a data center. Wow, that stopped me cold because data centers are all over the place. The city has a data center. Sarasota Memorial Hospital will have a data center, and I suspect a sizable one, to run their operations. Are we talking about that kind of data center? I don't see any language in here that defines the limitations. And some of my own technical, and believe me, I come out of the tech industry. I've done a lot of work on this. There's a lot I don't know. And we're not having a workshop until Thursday. So I feel just a little bit unprepared to be specific. But my general sense, and I could be wrong, A co-location data center does not require the same kinds of power and water, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, that a hyperscale data center does. So what are we talking about? I'm just really concerned at the lack of specificity, and I don't know how to define it. I mean, that's part of what needs to come out of the work and out of our workshops and all of that.

I understand. And obviously, the definition of data center in your ordinance is subject to however you want to define it. And that could be subject to a minute on 2nd reading. I'll say I did remember what you said at the July 21st meeting about, you know, data centers are here in city hall. You worried about them in the hospital. I think was your example. Maybe even tonight. In the definition of data center, which is 2.01 , the last sentence says this definition, meaning the definition of data center, does not apply to any dedicated space within a building which processes, stores, transmits, distributes, hosts, or manages digital information, data, or electronic information as part of a luxury use of that building.

But what about backup? I mean, any large and I believe even the city has the data backed up to a data center somewhere else. Where does that fall? So I'm just saying I'm uncomfortable with that definition. To support it, I would just have to see more specificity. I think what we're all concerned about are the hyperscale data centers that, because of the way they are built and function, require extraordinary resources to operate. Other data centers do not. But I personally don't know where are the fault lines in that. You know, what is the definition of a co-location power center, data center, and what are their power requirements or other requirements? Any industrial application, what are their power requirements? I don't know. So part of what I'm feeling is evaluating this thing called, I think, a hyperscale data center, but sort of in isolation. What does it look like relative to other industrial uses? And again, what do the other kinds of data centers, where do they fall in terms of these resource requirements? So that was one aspect. that I was really, really uncomfortable with. One other, where's my clip? And then there was some definition, there was a monthly peak load of 50 megawatts or more. I don't know if that's big or not. I mean, in the research I did, the typical, hyperscale data center was in the 200, 300, 400 megawatt power consumption level. So when I first saw the 50, I'm saying, well, Is that big enough? Are there other data centers that aren't hyperscale that sort of fit into that? I don't know. I'll ask those questions Thursday.

Yeah, I'm sure. To be sure. And that definition does come from, I don't mean to interrupt you, but that definition does come from the new SB 484 bill. So that's where that comes from.

Yeah, I saw it there too. But again, I want to see the background of that. So it really depends. I'm okay. 18 months, I'd support 18 months retroactive if we relieve the current application from some aspects of the moratorium. Specifically, allow it to continue while we do the work and get our regulations and requirements in place, but before final approval of the plan, before they can put a shovel in the ground, we need their acceptance of those provisions. However, do they sign a separate contract? I don't know what the legal requirement would need to be. But in my mind, they would be bound by everything we will put in place before they can put a shovel in the ground. And if they refuse, then we would not allow it. And at that point, I'd be happy to go to court. I would feel that we had done everything we could as a city and as a commission to mitigate our worst day in court, which I think could definitely happen in this situation. I mean, this group for five years has been assembling this property. And so they've spent millions of dollars, I don't know how many, but I can only imagine what it took to assemble this large a parcel. And so I would anticipate that the damages could be huge if we lost in court. So again, I'm trying to balance this stuff out, and I also, I want to thank a lot of the public commenters, because up to this point, I did a lot of work on this, and I was busy up here taking notes as people were talking, because some folks put forth some thoughts that I hadn't thought about. I mean, how are we going to monitor this stuff on an ongoing basis, specifically what studies Do we require, you know, what limits, what safeguards do we put in place about any of the costs required for this being shifted onto the community? We need to have all of that work done. So that's where I'm at. If we're not willing to exempt this applicant from at least some of the provisions, I just don't think I can vote for it. I want to hear what my other fellow commissioners have to say. I just don't think I could vote for it unless we made the moratorium very short, very, very, very short, like maybe three months or four months, providing that we can do the work.

Please.

Providing we can do the work to get the regulations and requirements and guardrails in place. That's too short, I believe, in my gut. So anyway, that's my feeling. I'm interested in what other folks have to say.

City Attorney, let me ask you a question real quick because we've been talking about the review process. What is all given when they come in and they put in their application to be reviewed? Do they give the particulars on, okay, we're going to use a closed-loop system, we're going to use X, Y, and Z? What's in that review process? Because we don't know what systems are going to be used. this, that, and the other, because we've got to get regulations. What if they're saying we want to use an open loop system, but then we're going to demand a closed loop system? And furthermore, they have three tries, I believe is what we discussed. They've already lost one. They've got back to get them reviewed again, so they're on number two. And if they were to go and not meet our specifications through number three, then let's say we have that moratorium in place, they go back to the front of the list and they have to follow that moratorium 100% completely. and then that takes us out of the lawsuit game as well, correct?

I believe so. If you deny it, or if we deny it for whatever reason, then as I said, the applicant would not be able to submit a new application during whatever time period you had.

Right, but I know it's existing now, so we're working on that, but I see Ms. Ray's up here, so if she can give us a little insight.

I wasn't sure if the first part of your question was what goes into the actual review.

Yes, because I want to see what do they put in their application to where we can either say yea or nay on if we were to have regulations in the ULDC and they didn't meet certain requirements, you automatically say nope, it's supposed to be like this, but we have nothing. in there for them to go by. So how are we working on that review process so everybody can understand what that process is?

Good evening. Elena Ray, Director of Development Services. There are a couple of procedural things that we do through that. They submit a stack of documents. I don't even know how many hundreds of pages it is at this point, but It includes engineering drawings, the site plan, stormwater drawings, calculations, traffic impact statements, environmental studies that looks at endangered species, vegetation, soil types, wetlands impacts, all of those types of natural resources issues. There are some steps, as you were talking about. Once they submit, we have 30 days to review for sufficiency. Obviously, we found this application insufficient, which simply means that there was either a piece missing or maybe something wasn't signed or there wasn't a form that was filed correctly. That's common. There's rarely an application that's submitted to the city that's deemed sufficient first time. We usually do this a few times. They then have 30 days to respond and provide the missing information. They did respond today during this meeting with that application. We now have 30 days to review it. In total, once an application is deemed sufficient, under state law, we have 120 days to approve it, approve it with conditions, or deny it. That's a statutory limitation that we are under. The only exception to that is if the applicant agrees to extend the application. And if they do agree to extend it, then we negotiate a timeframe with them that is acceptable. And I'll defer somewhat to the attorney on this, but under land use law in Florida and under the statutes, an application is responsible for meeting the laws and regulations that are in effect at the time the application is submitted. Not deemed sufficient, but submitted. Okay. So that's something that we would need to work through with the applicant as to any type of agreement to comply with any future regulations in the ULDC. Although I can say that as far as noise is concerned, that does not live in our ULDC. It lives in the code of the city. And that is applicable to anyone at any time as soon as it's adopted. So we can adopt regulations in our code of the city that applies to noise. And regardless of this application already being on file, they would have to comply with whatever noise limitations we put into place. regardless of a moratorium, they would have to comply with those noise regulations.

But since there's nothing in place, then they would not comply to any of the regulations that we would work on from this day forward.

The in the code of the city. Well, and then no, uh, the noise regulations, they would have to comply with the noise.

I'm talking about if we wanted to have a closed loop system and they say, no, we're going to use something else. Right.

What we do control, what we do control is the water use. So they would have to get their water from the city. There's no other way for them to get water. Um, they, they would have to purchase it from the city. The Peace River cannot sell water to them. And you'll hear more about this on Thursday in your workshop. But Peace River does not have the authority to sell water to a private entity. They can only sell water to the member communities and the member jurisdictions that are part of the Peace River Authority's membership. So they would have to get their water from us. I can tell you that I can't give you all of the specifics because, like I said, we just got the application this afternoon. But based on what we're seeing, it would have to be a completely closed-loop, non-water-cooled system based on the water usage numbers that we're seeing proposed.

If you have a question for Ms. Ray, yes. Yes, very specific to that. So I just want to make sure I'm understanding. So this applicant cannot purchase water from Peace River directly. They have to get their water from the city.

That is correct, and we do not allow commercial and industrial development to be on wells within the city limits. Right, right.

So the way it would have to work, Peace would sell that water to the city, so it would flow through the city to them. and we can require a closed loop. So we can specify that.

So we can absolutely specify how much water we can sell to them. Additionally, the developer would have to pay all costs for that water and to build the infrastructure to get the water to them.

And what about any related, again, and then I'm really done. Water that they, so closed loop, They add chemicals. It cools, cools, cools. At some point, that water has to be refreshed. What happens to the discharge water? Can we specify that as well?

We would need to look at the requirements on that from DEP. DEP generally controls that, and there are state permits that they have to receive. There's also state monitoring that they have to do on a regular basis. We do not have the resources internally to monitor things like that type of water quality, the same with air quality. We would need additional internal resources. That's why we do depend on the state to handle those permitting types of issues. Thank you for your indulgence.

I have a direct question. I don't mean to make... Make it quick, sir. Make it quick. So if we control the water, why can't we just deny them any water? Why do we have a legal obligation to give them any water?

I would defer to your... It's an allowed use under your ULDC. Just like a Textile mill would be a refrigerated food processing plant.

But we could determine how much water we gave them.

So, correct. If we were unable to supply the water, then they would have a problem.

Right.

If we can't supply the water, if we physically just can't supply the water, then... That is an issue with development in that area.

May I ask that? And direct the way, if the city was unable to supply the water, then the application would fail?

Correct.

And you would deny it?

Yes.

And so that's my point. We live in an environment where water is somewhat limited as it is via swift mud. Again, people don't necessarily realize that there's controlled amounts of usage that swift mud controls to make sure that the available water stretches to meet need. But it would seem that it's within the city's authority to determine that whatever amount of water a data center requires is is too much why couldn't we say it's too much we don't want to give them any water at all why should we give them water that would belong to the rest of this city i don't get i mean we if we control the water then we can say you know what if you take whether it's whether it's billions of gallons in an open-loop system or whether it's hundreds of thousands in a closed-loop system, that closed-loop system has to be flushed, okay? It has to be replaced. It evaporates to some degree. So there's going to be an ongoing use of water. Additionally, as you said, we have no control whatsoever in place to handle the wastewater control, how is it you could, and there are no regulations, how is it that staff could possibly in any way, shape or form approve this application? Presently, I read the first submission. You mentioned all these things like habitat, stormwater management, environment. I saw all that stuff. The only thing about the data center it mentioned was 17, was what, seven buildings and a million square feet, roughly. It didn't talk about any of the details of how this is going to be built, and I surmise that All that would be required before you would approve it or disapprove it. How in the world is this applicant ever going to do that in less than six months, a year, or even 18 months? Let's say six months to a year, which creates sufficient time for our city attorney to draft gold star regulation on specifically how we want to mandate the use of water, power, air quality, and sound. And I appreciate that the law says theoretically we can't create any more burdensome or restrictive use, but the truth of the matter is here we don't have anything. Our comp plan, as I understand it, says the health and welfare of the community is paramount. And I don't see how this process, this project, protects the health and welfare at all, because you have no ability to protect the health and welfare.

Please, please. So we look at what our regulations are and what is presented to us in an application. We look at capacity issues with water. We look at stormwater. We rely on the state as far as the DEP and South Florida Water Management District for certain types of permitting. If we do not have the capacity to serve when it comes to water, then we cannot serve. But if we do have the capacity to serve a development, we have, the city has a legal obligation to provide that service.

How long would it take you to figure all this out?

So I can tell you that based on what has been submitted tonight, the proposed water usage is less than an office building would propose. Please. I'm simply telling you what is in the application.

What about CO2 emissions? What have they said?

The city does not regulate that. So we have no authority to ask an applicant for information based on something we cannot regulate. So we can't regulate. We have no ability to regulate or monitor.

So I get that. Please wrap it up. I've got other people that need to speak. I'm trying, but I think it's kind of important that we understand that we don't have the ability... to regulate this and control this process. So again, I go back to the comprehensive plan which talks about the overall health and welfare of the city. How do you approve a project that jeopardizes the health and welfare of our community without being able to control it? That's my problem with this whole project.

We do have regulations regarding heavy industrial development. Heavy industrial can be things like an asphalt batch plant, a junkyard, a 24-hour refrigerated food distribution center, a textile mill. I can tell you that based on the numbers that we're seeing from this application, a textile mill would use exponentially more water, have exponentially more discharge, and produce exponentially more traffic. And it would be allowed by right with no additional regulations. We do have environmental protections. We have compatibility protections for heavy industrial, light industrial, all of those types of developments. So it's not that we don't have any. We do have those measures in our comp plan and our ULDC for heavy industrial. And a hyperscale data center would be considered heavy industrial. Like many other heavy industrial uses, some may use less water or have less impacts. Some of those uses that are allowed by right would have greater impacts on the community than a hyperscale data center. But it depends on how much water, how much power they're drawing, and those regulations that we have in place to protect the surrounding community.

Okay. And, Director Wright, just so we're clear, we're not even there in the process because they just submitted the recent mail because their first was insufficient. You haven't even determined if the recent mail is sufficient.

We have not. We've looked at it for a total of about five minutes this evening. Okay.

Thank you. Commissioner Petro.

Thank you, Mayor. I'm not surprised, but it is expected to have this discussion the way it is. But before I proceed, I would like to take some time and to thank everyone who's at attendance, especially those people who came and were turned away because there was not enough space. I want to thank the staff, public safety for directing people and all the people who helped directing people. media personnel, the public, and no matter what side you're on, you know, it's good when public gets engaged in this discussion specifically in this matter. And frankly, in all matters that pertains to the quality of life of our city, the effects of the environment and natural resources. In my introduction, I want to take us at our county commission meeting, which was, I believe, was July 8th, 2026. And all commissioners spoke against data center or data centers in our county and voted to impose a moratorium. Moreover, all of the commissioners expressed their personal view against data centers. And with the commissioner, specifically Commissioner Smith, who's architect by trade, said that he sat on a number of seminars on a national level and on a state level, and this is what he said. Environmentally, it is a disaster. And by that time, you know, we're talking about closed-loop systems. With Commissioner Most saying she doesn't believe data centers should be in our county, And what is applicable for her that is no application should be accepted and the code or whatever they have as far as comprehensive plans should be created so no data centers would be allowed. And this is just our county. We part of the county. We are our own jurisdiction, which is the city of Northport. So we do not fall under the jurisdiction per se of their moratorium. And that's just the fact.

You know, there's a saying that there's a time for everything.

and I want to go further and say there's a place for everything. As a member of this board, I do not feel that data center belongs or should be in our city limits. Having said that, I'm not saying I'm against data centers overall. Have them built somewhere else, right? Virginia, state of Virginia has 200, it seems that they like them for some reason, but no offense to people who live in Virginia. But I want to take us a step back and to go over and review how we got here and where we are today and why we are here today. And I just want to say that I want to show the timeline because the most effective communication is when you do show and tell, just like we learned in school. 2024, I'm taking back 2024, August of 2024. I was not part of this board, nor Commissioner Duvall was part of this board. The board, rezoned a big geographical area of our city into commercial. And implemented a lot of changes and rewrote the entire ULDC, so to speak. With that rewrite and rezone of our city, the commission relinquished and gave authority of administrative approvals to the staff. basically gave it away. And it was passed with four to one with them, Commissioner McDowell voting against it. The commission board needs to get it back, that authority. And this is the next item on the agenda. I forget the order of it, but if we get to that, but that's a separate discussion, but I'm just stating the fact that what happened because that administrative approval process was, I don't want to say taken away, but that's why we had no idea about this data center application. And at least I, as a commissioner, I had no idea about this application. As soon as I learned about this application, which was June 25th, this year, I requested agenda item to talk about data centers. And I was the one who proposed 18 months moratorium for specific reasons. But going back to administrative approval process, I do believe the balance of power has shifted from the commission to the staff. and the role of the commission board increasingly becoming nominal in my view. And that process of check, that process of administrative approvals was taken away. The public trust started slowly, to be none to zero. I mean, it's just public trust eroded because a lot of things have been decided outside of the commission. And we have to understand that these types of projects are not done in a matter of weeks or months. They're done in a matter of years. And as Vice Mayor Langdon mentioned, the developer has been working on this project for five years. I had no idea and that begs the question why this project was kept in secret from the commission board or some commissioners at least for years and it seems it was kept in secret intentionally. I'm not speculating anything. I'm just stating the fact that is Why do I ask a question like this that it's been, or why was it kept secret? If we take ourselves back to December 1st of 2025, We had a workshop meeting, which is called Development Update Workshop. At that meeting, if you watch that meeting, all you have to do is jump to the last seven minutes of that meeting. The meeting is December 1st, 2025. If you go to the last seven minutes of that meeting, the question was asked, Back then, it was Deputy City Manager Jason Yarbrough. The question was, what type of companies would be coming into Activity Center 6 and 10? And he almost said it. He said a date. He didn't say data, but he said date. And he was quickly interrupted by... director of the developmental services and who rushed to the podium and correct and shut him down saying, high tech research and development. So if we take ourselves back into the timeline, the project was kept in secret intentionally. I don't know why. This is a hypothetical question. I'm not looking for the answer. I'll be glad to get the answer, but That's why we're here and we're discussing this thing and we're saying it might be too late and all the legal implications. But you know, with all those provisions and protocols about data centers, we're entirely left out from that ULDC. And for those who don't know what ULDC is, it's Unified Land Development Goal, which was completely rewritten and voted in in August of 2024, took effect in October. So if we change anything in our ULDC, whatever changes we make today, those changes will take effect only in October of 2027, which is the reason why I proposed 18 months, because if we do 12 months, nothing gets done. I mean, they still be exempt from all the regulations, whatever we put. And that begs me a question of why nothing was put in that ULDC when it was 2024, the developer was working in 2021, buying those slots as we've learned, as the public learned. And you know, before I forget, Our constituents have done a phenomenal, phenomenal job researching this topic. Sure, there was some discrepancies about water usage because closed loops don't use that much water. But the effect of closed loop, and I don't want to get into details of closed loop. You can watch the meeting on 21st of July where I made all the lists and my my perception of closed-loop systems. For the sake of time, I'm not going to go. Our goal of discussion is to pass this moratorium and to talk about the specific moratorium. But our constituents, they did a great job. You know, Commissioner Stokes said that over 100, 180 public comments we've had, only three were inclined in favor of data centers. You know, I respect both views, but personally as a member of this board, I do believe that we as public officials And I'm reading actually my manual notes as a function of commissioners, two core functions of public officials. It's to represent the people and to govern. It seems once a person gets elected, he forgets about representation and focusing on governing, which is good, making good public policy, overseeing effective implementation of policies. ensure accountability to the public and the public good. But let's read about representation as a core function. Communicating citizens' needs, concerns, ensuring a diversity of perspectives. Not just one side. And at that workshop, I would expect both sides, not just one-sided argument of discussion. The next one is showing citizens that the city works for them. I work for the people and I do represent the people and this project was kept in the dark for so many years. It's just not responsible representation to my constituents and I speak on my behalf. Also, I want to touch on the application itself. I knew the application would be not sufficient or incomplete. I was sure of that. The project of this scale doesn't get approved like this or not all the papers have been submitted. The project is missing so many studies. No studies were actually done and I'll be reading no environmental studies practically, no geotag survey, at least I didn't see that, no heat impact assessment or exhaust impacts, no noise pollution. Also, I've noticed that there was classifying parts of the land as low quality wetlands. By the way, there's no formal legal category in Florida law defining wetland or wetlands as a low quality wetlands. So we trying to say, hey, these are low quality wetlands. I mean, this is just, in my view, it's flawed. No sufficient studies, I can tell you, that's in short. Also, any questions about self-contained sewer system? My personal belief as a member of this board, this project should be subject to this moratorium. Thank you, the city attorney, for giving all of us the risk levels and all that information. The other reason this is not legally defensible, in my opinion, and I'm not a law expert, but I can read law documents fairly well. When the application is incomplete, it's incomplete. moratorium was a retroactive and that's what was asked of the city attorney and that's what I expect. Now, I personally have so many issues with this ordinance and I would like to have it polished. I would like to have it retroactively. I would like to have no exemption or exemptions for any applicants. If there's another applicant for some odd reason that comes between now and a stem date, might happen, but I just want to take us back to 20, 24-year-old DC and how it's actually disenfranchised or discriminated landowners who did not submit their permits on time. And at one of the economic development updates, I think the director, Lena Raitt, said that once, you know, right before this ULDC that took effect in October, one builder kind of carpet bumped, and submit like 30 residential applications for residential buildings. He did it on time. Those applications were removed. And so I printed out just a little bit of information about that ULDC passage and the building permits or development order, what was, so basically existing permits stayed valid only If the building permit was issued before October 28, 2024, which is the date of a new ULDC law. So if you had no application as approved application, you could not build on your land or whoever. Why can't we apply this precedent to this and this is just, you know, I'm not a legal expert, but if we have the rules for thee, but not for me, you know, we can say whatever we want, but we have the rules for the people who would want to build, but did not have application approved before October 28th. In this situation, in this scenario, the date or cutoff date is September 8th. If they don't get it by September 8th of 2026, the application is deemed incomplete. The permanent building or development order would be deemed incomplete and insufficient and therefore not valid. So to me, to solve this legal issue, and I appreciate the city attorney to do what he's done, but I strongly believe that your job is to tell us what to do. It's not what to tell us what to do, but your job is to tell us how to do it. My question is how can we do it legally and how can we polish this ordinance so this application will not be carved out or exempted, taken retroactively, simply because the application is not complete and it will not be complete by September 8th, I believe. I mean, I might be wrong. They could have all the documents ready and submit it on September 8th, then we have another discussion. But I'm willing to take chances and based on representation of the people, and this is just a small group of people, There's a large group of people. I also want to say this. There's a place for everything. I moved to the city of Northport because I love this city, the setting. We all, or some of us, moved here for the reason of Sunshine State, nicknamed Paradise, and we want convert this paradise land. Florida is so unique. I mean, this is the only state in the Union that is surrounded by oceans from so many sides. We want to bring our own, wherever we came from, and concrete and paint every inch of our city for the economic development. And you know, I'm in for economic development. I'm not... minimizing the people, those three people, John, his fellow realtor friend, I forgot your name, sir, and another e-commenter. I respect their views, but we don't want this city to look like other cities, whoever came from. People are okay to live here, and B, that's why they are here. This is my good campaign speech, but I'm not even running. But this goes back to representation of the people, what the people want. So we solve this issue as far as what people want. The legal issue, we simply follow what we did with 2024 ULDC. If it's not complete by the implementation of our vote, which is September 8th, this applicant is subject to this moratorium. I yield because I don't want to go in circles, but I will say something in conclusion. Thank you, Mayor.

Commissioner Duvall.

Thank you, Mayor. First of all, I have a question for City Attorney. Sure. Section 503. of this ordinance talks about hurricane impact. It says, the moratorium imposed through this ordinance does not apply to the construction, reconstruction, or redevelopment of any property impacted by Hurricane Debbie Helena. Does that,

I don't know, because I don't know if that property had been impacted by those hurricanes. If they had been, then it would be if they hadn't been.

That's definitely something we should know. How can we vote on this moratorium and not know whether this exemption applies? This is part of what Commissioner Petro was alluding to, a big lack of information here for at least this commissioner. Now, as far as what I just heard tonight about using the amount of water of an office building I haven't had much information about this, but I did have, now that this NDA that I've been under is no longer in existence, I can say that I had a meeting, a one-on-one meeting with the developers. And one question I asked was, how much power are you going to use? And they specifically said 50 megawatts. 50 megawatts. is enough to power every house in the city of Northport that's here currently. If you're gonna be using 50 megawatts of power, and I even question that, if you're gonna be using 50 megawatts, and you're only gonna use the amount of water like an office building, that is hard for me to believe. As far as earlier tonight, I want to state that it was so great seeing so many people here. People would think democracy works a lot better if they would show up, because it would work better if people showed up. I want to kind of highlight a little bit on some of the things I heard. One speaker said, we don't know. Another speaker said, I want to know. A third speaker said, let's get the facts. And a lot was said about water, pollution, wildlife. Words I did not hear, CapEx. I did not hear submarine. The reason I bring those up is CAPEX stands for capital expenditures. How do companies spend the capital that they have on hand? If you look up companies like Meta, the large companies that have big hyperscale data centers. They use their capital expenditures to pay for these things. Does this company that we're dealing with, do they have capital expenditures for this? Backup generators cost money. You have to have that money in advance. This project is supposedly in three pods. One, the data center. Over 800,000 square feet doesn't sound small to me. Do they have the money put up to pay for those backup generators? Even at 50 megawatts, do we want to pay for that expenditure to build the new capacity for electricity generation? I read something this morning. from J.P. Morgan. They're a financial firm. We have already 5,400 data centers in the United States. J.P. Morgan says there's a possibility that the market is getting saturated. There may be a bubble. You've heard a term tonight, Co-location. Co-location for a data center. Amazon. They'll build a data center and it's all for Amazon. It's for taking their orders, shipping their orders, whatever they do. And it's a big data center. Now, a co-location center is basically like a Shopping center, it rents out spaces to other entities. Well, if we get into a bubble and they're promising, you know, this is gonna be built and we're gonna have this commercial area and the other, you know, with other businesses, we're gonna be brought in and there is a bubble and they can't finish developing it, what are we gonna be left with? because one of these big pushes for this is telling us that we're gonna get tax revenues. The question is, are we really? I say put this moratorium in place. That's all, thank you.

Yeah, to sort of try to pull us back to the to the issue of the moratorium and how we now that we've sort of all weighed in on this seems like there's a general consensus one that we want a retroactive moratorium here. We want it to include this applicant. We don't want to exempt them out at all. We want them to be part of this moratorium. We've already The application is already in the review process, so we can't write the ordinance to prohibit the acceptance of something that we've already accepted. But what we can do is we can make sure that it cannot be approved for the term of the moratorium. That's for sure. We can do that. So the process, the administrative process the staff's going through back and forth, staff may very well deny this project. They may say for any one of a multitude of reasons that we discussed tonight, this project doesn't make sense and deny it. But we can't simply sit here and take the position of, well, let's just wait and see. The retroactive moratorium gives us the control to say, It cannot be approved unless all these criteria are met. And to me, the criteria are a set of gold star regulations that we can direct city attorney to write, whether it takes three months, six months, I don't care, whatever you say it takes, write those regulations. We adopt those regulations. Whether they're legally enforceable or not, I'm willing to fight that battle because I say there are no regulations, so under SB 180, which says governments cannot enact any more burdensome or restrictive land use regulation. I don't see how this is any more burdensome or restrictive because we don't have anything. We're just putting in regulation to protect the health and welfare of the community. I'm willing to fight that battle in court. So I think the retroactive moratorium should say you cannot, staff cannot approve this Application until such time as the regulations are written and put in place until the moratorium. Let's say it's 12 months. I'll pick that date. Okay, not even 1812 months, but during that 12 month period, we write the regulation. We enacted, we put it in place and. It's not a negotiation. This applicant has to meet that criteria. If they don't, then we instruct staff to deny this application. If the applicant then feels they've been wronged, that we didn't have the right to do that, well, we'll go to court and we'll battle that out. But to me, that's the process we've got to go through. I don't think we can stop... The review, nor do we want to because staff very well may kill this deal on its own, but I sure want as an elected. Body to have the ability to put something in place that regulates it. We don't regulate it. Miss Elena spoke to the things that are in the application. And she mentioned stormwater management, she mentioned habitat, she mentioned a whole bunch of things, all the things that are typical in any project that's submitted to the city. But nowhere have I heard any conversation about water, power, air quality, and sound. And those are the kind of regulations I think we should write. Nobody knew. I mean, this activity center and TEN were always allowed for commercial and industrial growth. So the new LDC rewrite, in my opinion, doesn't matter here. You know, that's a separate conversation for some valid, perhaps valid reasons, as Commissioner said. But the truth is the use of that land is allowable, but there's nothing that ever contemplated a data center. Nobody knew, nobody talked about it until fairly recently. And in the rewrite of the ULDC, nobody really contemplated it. That's why I think we have the right to regulation and to say it's in the best interest of the health and welfare community. And as a result, we ask this applicant to comply. Now, don't get me wrong, this applicant, think about it, it wants to build more than a data center. Once technology companies, it wants a downtown. It wants retail. It wants me to. Well, why would they want to build something? That's going to preclude anybody wanting to be there, live there, shop there, work there. So, if we look at it that way, this applicant. might well want to adhere to a set of standards. But if we don't create them, then they can do whatever they want. So I say, let's create it. Let's say to them, here, this is what we expect. What do you think? If they say, well, sorry, we're not going to spend that kind of money. And no, we're not going to. Well, then let's go to court and fight it out. But if they say, yeah, OK. But right now, we don't have anything. So they can do whatever they want because it complies with the ULDC and the comp plan, which says nothing. And that's my whole issue. So let's do a retroactive moratorium. Let's allow the process, which doesn't damage them. It allows them to proceed. Let's say a year, whatever it is, pick the term, 18. I don't care. That's for us to decide. And in that time, we write the regulation. How long would it take to write regulations? In your mind, I mean, I'm not holding it to the exact date, but if I ask you with that in the next agenda item, I know, and I would play the role.

I would do it along with the staff and subject matter experts beyond the city. But I think we could get it done in 6 months.

Okay. All right now now. The process of approval that city staff goes through, as you heard, involves 330 day back and forth city has up to 120 days in which time they have to either accept or reject the application unless it's extended. That certainly puts that process well out beyond the 6 month time. It would take legal to write the regulation. So, if we were to pick a term of. I don't know, even if we pick the term of six months, it doesn't appear as if. Staff could even make their own decision within that period of time and it would give you all the chance to write the regulation. So again, how long the term is, we could. figure out maybe you could help recommend it. I don't want to make it too short. And again, it's subject to, it could, what if in four months you had it written? In four months, the applicant agreed to it. Why would we hold the moratorium in place? What if it took eight or ten months? Then we'd need to extend it to provide the time to write the regulation and for staff to review it. I mean, that can be a little bit fluid, but that's, to me, the direction this ordinance ought to take, I mean, unless anybody's seeing it any differently. But anyway, that's all I have to say.

I got to add on to what you had just said. I didn't like the way that you put that staff could kill it. I'd rather look at it that the applicant may kill it in the process, not staff. But the way that I look at it too, and this is probably for the city attorney, because of the way that Commissioner Stokes had just brought up about allowing them to go through the process. It's like, I wouldn't give no extensions on any of the timelines, but by going through that process and it fails, we've already discussed that they would stop it, go back to square one. And they would have to come up with that within that, 120 day period ish and then no extensions and that would be a complete failure at that point and then that's game over and we're still protected on lawsuits again so i wanted to go over that and there was something else but i didn't write it all down so i'll get it back again so vice mayor euro yeah thank you mayor um yeah i appreciate your comments commissioner stokes i i think we're pretty much

in alignment with what we'd like to see, getting those regulations in place. The process has already started of the application. That will just proceed. But the application, not approving the application until the regulations are in place and this applicant legally commits, to following those because, again, they're not really quite covered because the rules weren't in place before the application. So I don't know what that right legal instrument is, but for me that would need to be part of it, a binding agreement by the applicant, legally binding agreement, to adhere to all of the regulations that we put in place. So I think I'm in line with you, Commissioner Stokes. I do feel compelled to clarify a few things that were stated up here tonight. And one is having industrial development happen in the Yorkshire area, which is the area we're talking about, is not new. It has been in our comprehensive plan since 2002. So to try to link that land usage to the ULDC rewrite in just a few years ago is inaccurate. This area of the city was always planned for that kind of development. What we did do with the rezoning was expand that footprint because what did we hear repeatedly and what did we try to do? We tried to limit and control commercial development where there was heavy residential and try to push it out east where there was nothing. So not a new concept. You can like it or not, but that area was always slated for industrial development. We did expand the footprint to shift a lot of commercial development away from areas impacting residential communities and into an area of the city that had nothing. That's a fact. The second thing I want to emphasize is what's the role of the five of us and what's the role of staff? It's up to us. to create the laws. We take staff input, we take community input, we take the input of subject matter experts outside of the city, and we create the laws. And then what does staff do? They operate the city in a manner that's consistent with the laws we set. So if we've not been specific enough in our ULDC, if we didn't all have crystal balls attached to our foreheads back in 2023, 24, well, shame on us who were up here then that we didn't anticipate this and get the regulations done. It is what it is. We'll fix it. will require this applicant to adhere to them before we approve their application. I'm good with that. So if we don't like the laws, if we don't like... Well, let me talk about administrative approval for a minute. Because if we have good laws in place, if we have a good, robust ULDC, Why in the world should a project that conforms 100% to the rules that we all set come before us for review? It doesn't make sense. It's not our job.

Please.

It's not our job to approve projects. It is our job to make sure that there are laws and regulations in place that allow for the efficient operation of this city. Please. Now, let me talk. We listened for four hours to you. Please. Give me the grace. And now I've totally lost my train of thought. But this data center has introduced an interesting concept. And maybe when it comes to industrial uses, maybe those projects should come here because of their potential impact. So let's address those kinds of concerns by addressing the ULDC and the code we have in place to preclude this kind of thing from happening again. Another point, this particular developer has not been, I did in my comment not mean to indicate that this developer has been working on this project for five years. That's not accurate. They have been buying up property to assemble land large enough to do some type of large-scale development. Now, when they knew it was going to be a data center, if when they knew it was going to be a hyperscale data center, I don't know. I don't think any of us know. We certainly weren't aware of that. what, five weeks ago, perhaps, it first hit our radar. So to suggest, there's been a suggestion here that there's been some kind of secret conspiracy on the part of staff to allow this particular project to go through in a way that undercut our authority or did not protect the health and well-being of this community, that did not follow our law, to suggest that in public with no evidence is, in my mind, irresponsible It is not only inaccurate, but it's irresponsible behavior on the part of a sitting commissioner. And I'm sorry, I won't tolerate it.

I won't tolerate it.

I did remember what I was thinking of before. This is for the city attorney. I'm sort of leaning with Commissioner Stokes with, let's keep it at the 18 months, with allowing the process to go through because what would happen is if we did the slam the door like Commissioner Petro wants to do, we slam the door. and they go ahead and they say well okay we can't go any further we're just going to come out and sue you. Now how would they assess their damages because I don't want to get caught in a crossfire on false damages because they could say hey I had 400 companies that were coming in here and one was this and one was that now you owe us 400 billion dollars. That's the lawsuit. I don't want to give them a lawsuit on false damages that they may not have.

Yeah I understand. they would have to prove those damages up. So what I tried to give you at the beginning was the worst case scenario of what the damages may be. And I think the worst case scenario would be we do the 18 month moratorium, shut the door, as you said, and they lose whatever deals they have in place. I don't know about now because we're not in that discovery phase.

But those deals would have to be under contract, wouldn't they? It can't be word of mouth. It can't be word of mouth deals.

Well, I agree with you there. I agree with you there. But the... If they were under contract with someone and the contract failed, that would be a real source of their damages. And then if they were to extrapolate that to the entire development, they were to say, well, all the other deals we had in the pipeline were subject to the one that failed.

That's where you look at a lot of that, a lot of money from it. Okay, but let's just say and I'm really gonna throw you for a loop on this one.

That's okay.

Let's just say that they give us a lawsuit or whatever and they lose that lawsuit and it's like let's say five million dollars-ish. Let's just say that just happens to be the cover the cost of the property out there. Would the city retain ownership of that property as the win of the lawsuit? We won the lawsuit? Yeah, could we take that property back from them and then there'd be no data center? I told you I was going to throw you for a little while.

Give you something to think about.

If they won the lawsuit, would we get ownership? No, we won the lawsuit at the end of the day and they would owe us.

Well, they could potentially owe us attorney's fees. And the way you do that is you get a judgment for a matter of...

Okay. That's good. I just wanted to get that thing in there about false damages because that's what scares me on that. I would much rather see them go through the process, fail that way, than to just shut the door and allow them to sue us. You know, that's just my opinion.

And those are... I know Commissioner Duvall was upset with me when I said I don't know, but that's my honest answer. I don't know what those damages are. That's fine.

No, I haven't listed them, so we wouldn't know, but that's fine. Thank you, sir. To that point, just to interject, to that point, as long as they were allowed to continue their process of review during the moratorium, they couldn't really claim they've been damaged because if they meet the standards we establish voluntarily or not, if they adhere to them, then the project can be done to our standard. If they choose not to, then that's something we have a more legally defensible position on. And that's the whole idea. If we shut them down now, And we say, that's it, freeze where we are. Clearly, we don't give them any ability to build to our standard. And that's what, to me, makes me uncomfortable with regard to legal liability. That's why I suggested we carve out. We're already in the review process, so why not carve it out? Our big issue is we don't want it approved. We don't want it approved unless it complies with all the standards we established.

So that could be the length of the moratorium. Commissioner Petro, you're up.

Thank you. I have a problem with this discussion as far as I'm scratching my head. Allowing the applicant to go through the process, in my view, opens up a wide door for legal implications even more. I couldn't find a specific statute. It'll take me some time, but just a simple logic of grandfathering. If I'm an applicant and I applied and then the city enacts a new legislature and says, you have to file this, sorry, the city, at the time of application, there was no, there was no even a definition of a data center in our ULDC, let alone any regulations. They can do whatever they want if we allow the applicant to go through this process. And it's just my logic that, you know, it's very simple. What we did with the ODC of 2024, we would not allow anyone, unless the application was approved, to build any homes on any of those lots that were rezoned. That's it. And when we have another situation that might be favorably to the city or whatnot, you know, we picking and choosing whom do we want to favor as far as the actual law applies. So to me, it's very troubling to say the least that we having this, this discussion saying that let's allow this applicant to go through and then we enact the law and What if they sue us? They're gonna sue us for sure. They're saying, this is a burdensome because at the time when I applied and you continued for me to go, for us to go through this process, now you're saying that we are bound by this legislature that you enacted after the fact. Let's make it much more simpler. The application is not complete as of September 8th. And like I said, I might be wrong. this applicant is subject to this moratorium, while we do in a safer and much more planned environment than Russia, because there's an applicant sitting on our back, so to speak. So to me, and the city attorney correct me if I'm wrong, the simple definition of grandfathering, I couldn't find the legislature or statute of that, but it is more or higher level of risk of litigation against the city, thus more monetary damage. But if the application is not complete by September 8th, there's much less of a risk. And one other thing I will say, if we don't pass this ordinance, it will be the last step in the back of our citizens. I mean, all they're asking, would they vote? so to speak, that we pass and give the time for the staff to develop a proper guard rails, provisions, and whatnot, as far as the legal description of a data center. It's not even there, but I'm saying let's be reasonable. Let's do the right thing. And comment to the, No toleration of a sitting commissioner saying that the information was withheld. Well, at the December 1st meeting of 2025, it was not me who asked that question. You can watch the meeting seven minutes before the end. It was a commission devolved who was asking what type of companies would come to the activity center 6 and 10, Yorkshire area. and the city deputy manager was gonna say it and he was interrupted and the information is withheld. So I will not tolerate that either as far as if the information is withheld. How do we supposed to make educated vote if we don't have any information? Just that, you know, to say the least on that comment. I think, if I can ask the city attorney, would be more feasible if we do retroactive moratorium, 18 months, with no exemptions, based on the status of this application that is not complete or insufficient. This doesn't automatically fall under the moratorium, per se, and that's actually what I thought we were asking. you as a city attorney to develop and present it to us. But then we have this hardship and all this exemptions, and I just don't feel comfortable with this as it is.

Well, the first exemption as to the hurricanes, which Commissioner Duvall talked about, was directed of me at the July 21st meeting, and that has to be in there pursuant to the statute. The other exemption I released at the meeting, that's what Hernando County has in, I think that's a good thing for you all to put in there, for due process rights if you decide whether you go retro or prospective because you've created a procedure where if someone's affected by the moratorium to come before you, you still have that opportunity to deny them if you want that. Or you can rip it out. That's however you want to do it. But those are the only two exceptions that are in there right now. And as written, this application, this ordinance would halt All work on the application, whether it's complete or not. To your point, commissioner. I think that there is a higher likelihood of being sued as your bench is written now. Then, if you were to exempt them out. from, at least as to final approval. Because when we think about that, I understand what you're talking about with grandfather name, with vested rights. But right now, if I'm the applicant's lawyer, I say, well, we really have no choice other than to sue. But if we exempt them out, And we say, well, there's no moratorium. The moratorium that's asked to file approval subject to the regulations. And I'm the lawyer. I say, well, you don't really have it. You don't have so much of a case right now. And the other part of it is they may not want a lawsuit if they're going to do the regulations in the first place. I think in your scenario, the assumption is that the applicant would never agree to whatever the commission would want in terms of regulations. My point is we don't know that because we don't have any regulations. If we write the regulations and the applicant agrees and then everyone's happy and there's no lawsuit at all,

That's my point. If we say, applicant, go ahead and go through the process and then we enact any legislature we want, that opens a wider door of legal. Yes, because they would say, we were not bound by this. There was no regulations or provisions or protocols of anything of any nature of a data center building or let alone, you know, the campus of a data center.

I understand and I agree that that's what they could say, but they could also say that on September 9th if you pass the ordinance as is on September 8th. And I think there's a higher likelihood that they would say that on September 9th than if you exempt them out and Like, we write regulations that they agree to, because if you keep them in there now, as it is. This application, however it is, will ultimately be subject to whatever regulations you write in the future. And then they would have the same argument then, but it's 18 months from now.

So, what is your proposal as far as just tell us how to do it if we do it the right way? we don't allow the retroactive effect goes to all applicants. In this case, this is just one applicant and then we work on our own statues. How do we construct the ordinance? I'm leaning towards that direction.

If you were to go that way, the way I would write it would be under the Section 5, which talked about exceptions, and I would say something to the effect of. Application, whatever number it is from. Whatever it is you want to exempt them from, which is, as I've heard, at least from commissioner Stokes. And for the vice mayor is everything except final approval. and any spot approval is subject to whatever regulations you put in place at the time. And then if in one way you want to fight that, we fight that battle then. But my point is that battle will never come because they may agree to the regulations that you all put in place anyway. as opposed to if you pass it as is, it's not a certainty that you would get in with a lawsuit by September 9th, but there's a high probability of it.

I just don't want to repeat myself, but I think it's more wiser to start from a clean slate and do what we can and do it retroactively. That's been done. And for the sake of sanity, I mean, there's nothing in our ULDC, nothing about data centers. That's another issue. If we knew that he's working on his stuff and we did not put anything intentionally into it, that's not on city commission, that's on staff. But like I said, it's a different issue. but how to do it would not allow the applicant to go through. Let him wait. Let him do what we have to do.

Is that it?

Yes, sir.

Thank you. Commissioner Stokes, and then we'll wrap it up up here. You got it.

I mean, the way I see it, I mean, I'm hearing you, Commissioner. I'm hearing you, Dimitri. And at the same time, you just asked him the question, which is less likely to result in a hard litigation? If we shut them down right now, on the 9th, on the 8th, they have no choice but to sue because we have, in effect, frozen. And remember what I mentioned. They want to build way more than this data center. I mean, whether or not that's practical, whether or not anybody wants to live, work, or play in this area, they see a bigger plan here, which leads me to think They don't want to create an environment with this data center that's so intrusive, so prohibitive, that it's going to chase everyone else away. Now, I don't believe in, like, just blind trust. That's why we need the regulation. But it tells me that the door is open to a level of regulation that if we put it in writing, we enact it, they may well be willing to live with because they get to build their projects. If we shut them down right now, if we shut you down, if it was us, you and me together, we were doing this and the city said us, we can't move forward. You're done. We're can cuffing you. The heck with it. We're putting 18 month in. You and I and our lawyers would probably say, well, what choice do we have but to sue? We already got sort of tentative agreements with partners to put this whole thing together. You just caused us all kinds of irreparable harm. We let them go down the pathway of negotiation, so to speak, or review with staff. And in the meantime, we put in some gold star regulations, and we submit it. Why would you not want to do this? This is going to enhance your project. This is going to make this a live, work, and play environment if you want to build this. If they say no, well, then we could fight that legal battle. then I just think it's less of a legal burden. And that's why we asked him. I mean, that's what city attorney's telling us. I mean, he's getting paid some fat money to give us this kind of advice. We probably should listen to him. So anyway, that's all I got, Mayor. But thanks. It was a good discussion. Quickly, sir.

Sure. Just to your point, Commissioner Stokes, you sound so convincing. We actually have in our books of 2024 yields ULDC that, you know, if the application was not, it's like a precedent that if the application was not submitted by the date of ULDC, it's deemed incomplete and yet invalid. So this is, we have some sort of a backbone of this legislature. So I just, you know, we apply this favorably to one party and unfavorably to another party. How is that consistent to say the least? Because if we put a moratorium and remember it's only 18 months. I'm not saying let's ban it together all outright and we're only asking 18 months and this is a legislature and this is what we have in our books. So I'm not a legal expert, but I did refer myself to the 2024 ULDC. And at that time, if I'm repeating myself for the third time, if the application was not submitted on time, retroactively people would not be able to bill. But this is to building. We're only asking for simple moratorium type of a thing. We're only pausing. This is a good backbone to go to court if they sue us.

To your point, what my understanding is and the difference between that and the example you referenced is it's not that they haven't They haven't met the burden. They're in a process that the actual code allows them to go back and forth in this review process. So it's not like the application's rejected. That may be the distinction here. It hasn't been rejected. They have the legal right to resubmit up to three times within that 120-day period. and staff can then deny it if they still don't meet the criteria. That's why I don't know if we're an apples to apples comparison, but again, it's more of a legal question.

Well, that's a good point because we're not rejecting the application. We're just pausing it. That's it. In this case, and it's almost apples to apples if you ask me, but it's actually, you know, well written. It's close to the damages.

But anyway.

But I... did my best, and I just don't know what to say at this point because, you know, it is too sad that if we're gonna let this application go through without any regulations in place. It's just too unfortunate, and I did my convincing and my research, but remember, we only, We not only legislator govern, we also represent. And that seems, you know, representation of people when we told them not to build on those lots. And we said it by this date. And now we're saying, well, this guy can go through.

Thank you. But did you not hear that What they're looking for is to not approve it up to the 18 months. They would be binded by the regulations that were there, and you're saying that there'd be no regulations. No, all this stuff is going to be worked on.

They can say no. They can say this is burdensome. This is out of the ordinary.

They could, but then the regulations would be in place, this, that, and the other, and that's a different type of battle that they'd be looking at because we would have time to set restrictions in place. You got to remember, and I talked this over with the city attorney, We're not making it more burdensome for them to build if there's nothing in place in the first place. If there's no regulations, we're not making them more strict. We're not making them more tough. That's a legal battle with the lawyers, but we're not doing that. We're putting stuff in place. That's it. That's what you would have to call a legal argument. It's a legal argument. That's all. All right, it's 1158. We'll come back at 1208, and then it's going to be up to you all for public comment.

Some light reading to pass the time. All right, it's 1209.

We're back at it. City Clerk?

Okay, in person, I have Christina Smith, followed by Nina Gonzalez, and Ariana Hernandez Brown.

Wake up a little bit here. Hello, my name is Christina Smith, and I'm a resident of Northport. Oh, I look really tired looking at myself on the TV. Lord have mercy. So thank you very much for today. I just wanted to say that I support the 18 month moratorium. I am not in support of a 900,000 square foot data center for Northport. At present, the risks far outweigh the benefits, so this moratorium is critical in assessing from subject matters, excuse me, subject matter experts on both sides of the fence regarding the risks and ensuring all safeguards put into place for the long term of our community and the environment in determining that this type of development is not appropriate for our beloved city of trees. North Port is not known for beaches. We're known for warm mineral springs, our parks and reserves. A 900,000 square foot data center is not something we want to be known for. Thank you.

Thank you.

THANK YOU TO ALL THE COMMISSIONERS, THE FIRE DEPARTMENT, AND THE OTHER NORTHPORT STAFF FOR THEIR TIME TONIGHT. I DEFINITELY DIDN'T EXPECT IT TO BE THIS LATE. I'M SURE YOU DIDN'T EITHER. THERE SEEMS TO BE AN OVERWHELMING NO TO THE PROPOSED DATA CENTER DEVELOPMENT FROM THE VERY CONSTITUENTS THAT YOU ARE ALL PAID TO REPRESENT. WE ARE ALREADY ONE OF THE FASTEST GROWING AREAS IN ALL OF THE STATE. WHY DO WE NEED TO BOW DOWN TO DATA CENTER MONEY? I support the proposed moratorium because it gives the city time to establish the appropriate data center regulations and evaluate this application using complete information. I ask the question, does the existing AC6 land use framework actually authorize this specific data center use at this intensity with these infrastructure demands under the current ULDC? And then if the city's regulations weren't written with the hyperscale data centers in mind, why shouldn't the city establish the appropriate standards before approving one? Please adopt the moratorium and require project-specific power, water, environmental, noise, and infrastructure information before any approval is considered. According to data from Ballotpedia, the first half of 2026 saw 33 distinct recall efforts tied to data center developments, targeting 329 officials across 26 states. Targeted officials are typically city council members. They make up nearly half of all the officials named in these local recall campaigns. AN INTERESTING FACT, THE FIVE-YEAR TERM WAS KIND OF THROWN OUT THERE. ELENA RAY SERVES AS A DIRECTOR OF DEVELOPMENT SERVICES FOR THE CITY OF NORTHPORT. SHE WAS HIRED IN DECEMBER OF 2021, ABOUT FIVE YEARS AGO. THE COMMISSIONER MENTIONED THE DATA CENTER HAS, THE DATA CENTER COMPANY HAS BEEN WORKING ON THIS FOR ABOUT FIVE YEARS. Prior to joining Northport, Ms. Ray most recently served as Director of Planning and Zoning in Loudoun County, Virginia, part of the Washington, D.C. metro region with over 400,000 residents and the largest concentration of data centers in the world. I believe she was hired in December of 21. In April of 2024, just a few months later, the city of Northport, Facebook posted about the rezoning of the properties. Why was the city rezoning properties? Actually on that date, they posted with Elena talking about the development history and why the zoning maps were being redrawn. It seems convenient that those ULDC redraw didn't include any restrictions or specifications about the data centers, specifically knowing that she had the history with the data centers. A 2026 survey reported that 40% of the Luton residents in Virginia believed data centers were worsening their quality of life with only 19% who thought they improved it. Another increasingly important point is how decisions are made. I see my time's run out. I just ask you to do the right thing that will allow you to sleep at night and represent the people that you're supposed to be representing. Do not pass this and say yes to the moratorium.

Thank you.

I do apologize to two commissioners, Mr. Demetrius and you over there, Mr. Duval, because you're not a part of the city's zoning pre-planning. You were not here at that time. However, I find it... To quote Ms. Lagadon, I'm sorry if I pronounced your name wrong, she said, we wish that we had a crystal ball to be able to see into the future. But in 2023, the United States already had 3,000 data centers in the United States.

Oops.

Some ads, so now the buzzing will stop, unfortunately. But we already had 3,000 data centers in the United States as of 2023. So when we changed the codes in 2024, why wasn't data centers a consideration? Especially if, as from your own words, Yorkshire has always been intended to have industrial growth. As someone who has lived in this area my entire life, I know that Yorkshire has always historically been a party spot for people. That has been kind of, you know, something that we kind of push under the rug. Teenagers go there to party. Come 2020, 2021, Now, all of a sudden, we're having a lot more law enforcement restrictions, a lot more trespassing, increased patrolling of that area. Why? Come to find out because of these big investors that are wanting to build a data center. So if we're saying that we didn't know that this was happening, it's public record on who buys properties. we're increasing patrolling because now these big entities bought land we're changing zoning laws to not include data centers which are wildly and rapidly spreading throughout the united states it leads me to believe that we did know that this was happening but it was just not of importance because it wasn't here yet there wasn't people voicing their opinions there wasn't crowds like we experienced today coming out and saying we are against this and you know what patience is a virtue and we have all been very patient for many many hours to make sure that all of our voices have been heard and I appreciate all of you even the ones I didn't name for staying here and not closing the meeting and having a continuance because it has been a very long and very very late meeting But the last thing that I want to say is that buzzing sound causes severe psychological distress and is used in warfare. It can be heard clearly up to three miles away. We have a wildlife management area and an elementary school within those three miles. And within three weeks, two weeks and beyond, it causes chronic exhaustion, severe mood exchanges, despair, and losing control. Thank you. Thank you.

Janet Hart, followed by Sawyer Dobbs and Susan Hayes.

I'm Janet Hart. Back in the 70s, my dad was the publisher of the North Port News. I graduated from Lake Placid High School about 70 miles from here. My husband was a graduate of Charlotte High School, the only high school in the county at that time. Now I have my sister here, my husband and I, and a son, his wife, and three daughters. The oldest one is a sixth grader at Woodland Middle School. The next one is a kindergarten student at Atwater. And the third one is a three-year-old who's waiting her turn to get to go to school. Obviously, I've seen tremendous and sometimes disappointing changes in our area. More people, more traffic, more apartments. More and more car washes. They've all taken away the small town field of Northport. But still, all of that's just annoying. A data center is not just annoying. It's downright dangerous. Data centers affect children through the noise they emit, the toxic air pollution they produce, and the localized heat they generate. I'm concentrating my comments tonight on just the effects of the noise data centers emit. I speak not on just behalf of my three grandchildren, but all the children in Northport, especially those at Woodland Middle and Atwater. The continuous 24-7 operation of cooling systems and machinery exceeds safe outside sound noises. which result in elevated stress, concentration deficits, and lower reading comprehension in children, according to the April 28, 2026 U.S. News and World Report. Do you live with or babysit 11 to 14-year-olds? They're already stressed and can't concentrate and focus because they're 11 to 14 years old. Throw in a data center, and you're going to increase the stress and confusion that those kids have at Woodland Middle because that school is half a mile from the designated data center point. According to CBS News, standard operational sounds and backup generators remain clearly audible up to a mile away from a data center. Persistent low-frequency hums and vibrations from massive cooling systems travel through the air and penetrate closed windows. Some residents in quiet rural areas reported an audible drone up to two to four and a half miles away. Atwater Elementary, where young children are being taught how to read, is three miles away. Why would this commission risk the health and educational success of children who can't even tie their own shoes yet? This is even a more deeply personal issue for us because the granddaughter at Atwater has one kidney. Her body is already compromised and can't handle any more emotional stress.

Thank you. Sawyer?

Good morning. My name is Sawyer, and I've lived in Florida for 29 years. I had something that I typed out in my notes app, which I think is ironic to stand here and read from a phone, but, you know, that sucks. But what I can say is I did not know what to expect coming here. And I think it's awesome. This was really inspiring to me. Meeting in these circumstances, I think, is terrible. I don't envy any of you. I thought I was going to come here And see buffoons, I don't see that. I think that none of you want this. I think that you feel you've been checkmated, but you're not. You can find a solution to this. You can find a solution to this. It is out there. You can beat this. You can checkmate this monster coming here because I was doing a lot of research and they want two things when they're looking for proposed location for a data center one is temperature why are they coming here it's hot you know that's because the second is tax incentive you know these things belong in Rural places like in Sweden, where it's cold, they're finding ways to take the excess heat and power homes with them. They're only coming here because they think they can get a better deal. That's it. That is it. There has to be a way for you to legally get out of this. It exists. Please find it. You all seem to know that this does not belong here. find that loophole or solution that you need, I think you can. That's all I have to say. Thank you.

Susan Hayes?

Way past my bedtime. I have just two rhetorical questions. First of all, you can go on Google and you can say for an 800,000 data center, how much water, how much electricity, and how much noise are you going to generate? And you can get an answer. So I guess I'm concerned why we didn't have standards put in place on the applications before they were ever made. Secondly, the gentleman said, why did they want to come here? It's because, I mean, we're hot here. They have to provide all kinds of cooling and air conditioning. So why would they want to move to Florida? It's probably only because of our taxes. Or did we give them a tax break? The question I have now is for our lawyer. What kind of... Citizens petition, can we put together, get it signed by everybody who was here tonight, all hundreds of people that were here, to give it to the commission to say, we want this stopped. Don't build it. Do you not have the ability, as our commissioners, to present for the people what we want done? Can you do that? Can we do that, sir? Can we do that? I'm talking to you, Mr. Lawyer.

We don't interact with public comment, ma'am. He can get with you after the meeting. I'm sorry? He will have to get with you after the meeting. We do not interact with public comment. It's your time to speak to us. It's not question and answer, sorry.

Okay. Will you be willing, as commissioners, if there were a citizen's petition signed, sealed, and delivered against this data center to support that petition and cut out this application?

I'll answer that. I don't think we would have a choice. I don't think we would have a choice. We would support that, but I can't speak for the whole board.

It would have to come before us. Do you all agree with that? Would you support a citizen position to take this application down and reject it? Gentlemen, lady, I'm asking you. Yes.

I just told you this is not question and answer, but we would probably have to take that under consideration under a regular agenda item, ma'am.

All right.

In the future.

We'll bring it to you.

You go right ahead, please.

I have Tim Ritchie, followed by Therese McPherson and Carlo Gambino.

Well, good morning, everybody. Long, long day. I'm going to speak for the people in Charlotte County right now, in the city of Punta Gorda, because Yorkshire is right on our property line. And I want you all to know, and thank you, Commissioner Duvall, for saying what you said tonight about the 50 megawatts. You know, and when people are out buying land, that means a deal is in place. I've listened to all kinds of stuff in many chambers in this state, county and city. You know, you get this, you get a lot of facts, and then you get a lot of what my grandfather, Dr. Hilliard, would say, poppycock. Bunch of nonsense. The AI data building is about energy. The only way they're going to power any AI data center in the state of Florida is to build a micro nuclear power reactor. That's why they can't get the 20 inch pipe in DeSoto to produce enough power. You know, this flat out, I'm going to tell all of you right now, we don't have the water for this project. I will bet every dollar in every bank in the state of Florida, we do not have the water for any of these projects, city manager. Because let me tell you, the amount of water they're going to need for this is huge. They don't have enough money to pay us in restitution. So what I want to leave every board with in the state of Florida is this. Instead of being so worried about the AI data center or Mosaic or whomever suing the city or the counties, I want you to start focusing on the residents and the citizens filing intent to sue. We're what makes this country great. My grandfather in Colmcane Arlington National Cemetery is what made this country great. My bloodlines from Scotland. My uncle who walked off a hamburger hill. Medic, lieutenant, came back a captain. My numerous friends that fought in the Middle East. We are what make this country great.

Good morning, Commission. Hi. Yeah, this is Activity Center 6, Activity Center 10, right? And I think the purpose of this was to generate a lot of employment, right? Light industrial? This is pretty heavy industrial. This is not light industrial. This is super heavy industrial. The point of the Activity Center 6 and 10 and the ULDC is for us to be able to walk through it and have activity in it. That pod that is designated, you'll see when you look at the plans. I looked at the plans. I know you've looked at the plans. I hope you've looked at the plans. That pod makes those roads private. Those utilities private. Now, private utilities. Everybody is so concerned about having to pay for utilities. That's not the problem here. The problem is when they go off grid. A gentleman just brought up nuclear power. Do you guys remember Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania, I think it is? They just recommissioned it for a Microsoft data center. That place was shut down because of a nuclear meltdown. Now, that's really hot. That's really hot stuff. Is it an appropriate thing for us here? Probably not. We have to fight tooth and nail against this. The EPA recently, like, Trump has been trying to fast track this stuff. I don't care how you vote. The fact of the matter is, recent EPA stuff has passed that the Clean Air Act and the acid rain program does not apply to data centers. that are, the designation you need to research if you don't know what I'm saying is called island power, islanded power. The problem is not them being on our grid. That 15-acre substation that's in their plans, 15-acre substation, what are we gonna do if a hurricane rips through that? Holy crapola, that's a lot of oil that goes into a substation. Also, those plans are listed as other. That application is totally incomplete. And we were wondering about water. 500,000 gallon wastewater facility, it's in their plans. 500,000 gallons in their plans. But that substation, if that substation is not adequate, what makes you believe that they are not going to install another method of power? We see it right now, other data centers are making large fuel. They're being powered by natural gas. And the alternative that is being pushed right now is the nuclear power. It's being said because it's happening. And it could happen here. And we don't need that in our residential area. That's supposed to be residential. You guys should fix that.

Thank you.

Well, I did get a lot of information tonight, or today, I guess, technically. And I got to say, I find it lacking. Why do we not have clear definitions for what is considered a data center in terms of the UODC? Why do we have... from what the staff said, why do we have figures that seem wildly inaccurate on the second application that's been brought in after, from what she said, a five-minute cursory look? How are seven buildings that are in total gonna be over 800,000 square feet gonna take less water than this building? Like, that doesn't make sense to me. Thank you, by the way, Commissioner Duvall for the 50 megawatt figure. But if I recall correctly, that came from an expired NDA. Why were there NDAs in regards to this project in the first place, in any form? Maybe I misheard, but There just seems to be a lack of clarity and a lack of accurate information with everything that I've seen tonight, besides the council being, for the most part, unanimous in that some form of this moratorium needs to be put into effect. That's the only concrete thing I have gathered. Everything else is all question marks, and math, not mapping. So I would beseech the council, please, please fix this. Please, please cross your T's and dot your I's. Or I should say, make the applicant cross their T's, dot their I's. Please put in the regulations that need to get put in. And make sure that Everyone is doing their due diligence, including yourselves. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you.

Sam Turpening, followed by Nicholas Neese and Dominic Faircroft.

Good morning. My name is Sam Turpening, for the record. And Demetrius, thank you. I'm tired. I'm so tired. I've been up too long. You guys have been lied to. Not by everybody, but for most people. There are several NDAs that are going around social media saying that the city manager, that the lawyer has signed, that someone from the city staff has signed. The reason that they can't do anything for you up here is because we have SB 180. What SB 180 did is when we had the hurricanes happen and we had the floods happen in Florida, people wanted to rebuild and get back to normal in their home. And so DeSantis wrote SB 180 so that we could get people to rebuild and wouldn't have to worry about permits, we wouldn't have to worry about code, and we could get people back into their home. What happened is these data center people and these large energy conglomerates exploited SB 180. And by doing that, DeSantis realized that and he wrote SB 484. July 21st, you were told that SB 484, that if you enacted it right at that moment, then you could prevent everything that you just caused seven hours of us to sit here and do. And what was said was we don't want to be the poster child. I quote and end quote. It wasn't but a few minutes later that that permit actually came in. So now what's happened is that it's been opened up to vested rights. As soon as you put in a permit, that means that they have a right to the property and to the use. So now they have opened up the situation that we are now going to be sued. There are over 27 counties in Florida right now that are already suing under SB 180 saying that it's unconstitutional. On the other side, you already have the data center folks suing on the other side saying that you can't put burdensome things on there. So you can't write ordinances because of SB 180 that doesn't expire until October of 2027. What it says in that SB 180 is that if a hurricane comes to Florida with 100 miles of Florida before October of 2027, then it extends for an additional two years. So when they tell you that they're trying to put ordinances, those ordinances cannot be put into effect until after SB 180 expires. If, God forbid, we have another hurricane and they extend SB 180, then everything that they've talked about for the last six and a half hours is bullshit.

Thank you, sir. Nicholas?

Hello, everyone. I'm Nick Neese. I'm a Port Charlotte native. I grew up actually a mile and a half south of the proposed data center site. I actually recently graduated from Duke University this year with degrees in computer science and environmental science. I've studied data center sustainability extensively, and it's something that I care a lot about. And so this is just to say I've been inside data centers. I'm not opposed to AI and technology. I understand how this all works at a very deep level. I just don't think that this particular project is right for our community. And so I've kind of adjusted a lot of what I was going to say, and I want to address the discussion that we've been having for the past few hours. First off, I just want to say, Commissioners Duvall, Stokes, and Pedro, thank you so much for your great points. And to the broader Commissioner's Board, I hope that almost the 200 comments against the data centers versus the three maybe hyperscaler plants that were for it was all the information you need to make a decision, and now it's just about how are we going to execute. With all due respect, if you vote against the moratorium, then we can only make the conclusion that you are not for the people, and it would be foolish to keep you in office. In other words, I hope yes on the retroactive moratorium is a foregone conclusion. And if you really want to please and represent your constituents, you will isolate the two issues that we need to deal with and handle both of them. The first issue is that we need to make sure no one can build a data center that will negatively impact our community ever. And the second issue is to deal with the current applicant. I don't agree that the riskiest policy is the retroactive moratorium. I think that the riskiest policy is always the one that invites irreversible harm, like wiping out habitats. I'm not an expert, but with severe water stress in this area, a water crisis, and knowing that the early filings of this application were done in some relative degree of secrecy, it seems that we have good fuel to win any lawsuit that might come our way. A rough day in court is not the worst outcome And so we are asking you to continue to explore all of the options for making this retroactive moratorium work in the best way possible while mitigating lawsuit risk. Maybe we have to bring a bunch of scrub jays over to that property and release them there, but you know, obviously I'm joking, but what I'm saying is there is a solution here and we need to find it, and we can't just settle for allowing this current applicant to go through with the application. There's been a lot of talk about water use. point out that water use and water consumption are different things, and lifecycle water use is different than onsite water use. And so please understand these differences, look into them extensively, and ensure that when we're writing these definition with the data center and what sort of regulations it should follow, that we're including these lifecycle water use, because it's not just about what's being used onsite, but if it's an air-cooled system, for example, what water is being used to create the electricity to power that air-cooled system. So I certainly agree that we need gold star regulations, and I would say even maybe platinum or diamond star regulations. We need these regulations to be so good that we don't get the data center. Thank you. Thank you, sir.

My name is Dominic Faircloth, but you might as well call me John Connor because I've seen what the government is trying to do to us, and I've seen what these data centers are really about. I'm here to make something absolutely clear. We do not want a massive 50 megawatt, 1 million square foot industrial military surveillance data center in our backyard, and we will not let it happen, period. We are not here asking you to make it smaller. We're not asking you to make it quieter. We're not asking you to find a more responsible way of destroying 300 acres of Florida wildlife and the lives of the residents who live here to build a military industrial data center facility in our community next to children's schools. We are telling you hell no. You will not get away with this. Communities all across Florida have already started fighting back. Communities, counties, and cities across the state have enacted moratoriums, pursued bans, and stopped data center projects because their residents understand what is at stake. And North Port stands with them. We are already in a tier three water crisis and most data centers can consume staggering amounts of water while their cooling systems generate concentrated polluted wastewater that will kill wildlife, destroy the environment, the aquifers and poison our drinking water. Not to mention they place an enormous continuous demands on our electrical infrastructure. And they bring something else into communities that people don't understand until they're forced to live with it. Relentless industrial noise, radiation and air pollution. Cooling systems, massive fans, chiller pumps, transformers, backup generators, day and night, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. People living around data centers have reported persistent humming, disrupted sleep, headaches, stress, respiratory issues, and even tinnitus ringing in their ears. Imagine working your entire life to own your home, only to have the peace and quiet of your neighborhood replaced by an industrial drone that never stops. The worst part is these massive industrial data centers aren't being built to make your chat GPT or your imaginary AI friends respond to you a little quicker. They're becoming the backbone of an expanding digital surveillance infrastructure where data from AI systems, flock cameras, 5G-connected devices, Google social media, government, and defense technologies can increasingly be collected, analyzed, and connected. Okay. We're watching an infrastructure for digital surveillance prison being built around us, and once it's everywhere, taking it back down will be harder than stopping it now. And commissioners, I want to remind you of something. You took an oath to serve and protect this community. You were not elected to serve a military-contracted data center developer. You were not elected to sell our water, our environment, our electrical infrastructure, our data, our freedom, our peace and quiet, or our quality of life to the highest bidder. You were elected to represent us, and we expect you to uphold that responsibility. because we're not asking you for permission to protect our community. We're telling you we will protect it. And we've seen what the United States of Israel has done.

Colleen Hibbets, Alicia Robertson, and Chris Robertson.

Hi, good morning. I'm just going to read off of this a little groggy. The city does not have the legal infrastructure for this sort of facility at this point. In fact, we have little to no legal ordinances regarding our excuse me, regarding our municipal water wastewater infrastructure as it pertains to area manufacturers or even our restaurants in town. We promote growth and development but have literally done nothing to put ordinance in place to monitor this growth nor restrict these projects from affecting our citizenry, our wildlife, nor the natural resources. We push these sorts of projects through looking at only the short-term benefits of tax revenue. These developers know that we have no experience in regulating these industries and have no ordinances in place. We are growing too fast and too recklessly, and they see it, and they are here to exploit it. When we rush, we make mistakes. Roughly 25 years ago, we excitedly accepted a manufacturer in the Toledo Blade area. Fortunately for them, they were able to have their plans approved with a city-supplied lift station behind their corporate gate, one that feeds directly into our wastewater system with no easy open access to city staff. If you look on our city maps, you won't even see it there as it is private. Approximately 14 years ago, someone in that area, in the general vicinity, illegally discharged a toxic substance that was pushed straight to our wastewater plant and killed all the biologicals in that plant, effectively shutting down the plant. We were unable to prove who did it, we were unable to find them, and we are still unable to monitor them. Who paid to mediate this incident? The taxpayers of Northport. In over 14 years, we still have not put an industrial wastewater treatment ordinance in place. We don't even have a fats, oil, and grease ordinance in place. We can't and don't even regulate what the restaurants dump into our municipal infrastructure. All the grease clogs, the lift station cleanouts, and the manpower that we use to clean them are paid for by the taxpayers. We cannot continue approving development first and creating the safeguards afterwards. Growth requires regulation, oversight, accountability, and legal infrastructure capable of protecting our community. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good morning. Thank you all for allowing us, for everyone to speak. Thank you for hearing us, and I hope you have been listening. Thank you to everyone that showed up tonight. It was pretty amazing to see our community come together, no matter who we vote for, and this is very important to us. I know it's probably been pretty irritating having to listen to people that pay you for four and a half hours, but if you wouldn't have lost our community's trust throughout all these years, we wouldn't have to be here late tonight to try to babysit you. I bet you didn't think this many people would show up, and I hope it's eye-opening. If you think this is just about data centers, you're partially correct, but these are citizens that are done. We're done with what the city's turning into. The laws that are passed, the lawsuits that are filed, the overpayment of our government officials, we're done. Born and raised in this area, born and raised in Sarasota County, went to Venice High, lived in Northport my entire life. I admit it, I thought this place was boring growing up. There was nothing to do. You go anywhere and you know everybody, but now it's still boring and you're over developing and there's no regulations. This data center and this community is not the answer. Who would want to go there? And who's going to confirm that once they build it, it's not going to fall apart because nobody wants to go there. You can't confirm that. I've literally lost sleep, and I'm not exaggerating, over watching the destruction of the city. And if you haven't, you are the problem, and you're part of the problem. And you're up there and we voted you in to speak for us and it just continues to look like we are not the ones paying you unless you all know something that we don't know we are the ones that pay you we have many people stand up here and say we're going to vote you out and I've seen some of you snicker about that I know we laugh about that, but you shouldn't be unless again, you know something we don't know we're not paying you somebody else's how much is your net worth half of you can't find it convenient. Your pockets continue to grow. Our community continues to struggle. Have you driven down price and looked at our canals? Have you dealt with the construction every turn or do you get to close your eye while you're lucky enough to live in Welland Park in our different area? You do not follow through with anything that's going on in our city. How will we know that you follow through making sure that they're going to stick by what they say they're going to stick by? We can't trust you. You're untrustworthy. If you look around, it's very obvious that whoever's in control of our tax money has no idea what they're doing. The roads are crap. The canals are dead. Why would you trust you on this? And I can't believe that we had to take the time out of our lives to stay here this late for this. This is crazy. I'm ashamed. FPLs are raising their rates, and how are you going to make sure that doesn't continue to happen? I didn't have a child to raise him. to have him deal with this in 40 years. Unfortunately, a lot of us aren't going to be here, but they will be. And so will that data center.

Thank you.

I just want to say thank you for listening to the concerned citizens and thank you citizens for voicing your concern to them. Um, I've been a resident for 40 years here. I've watched the same thing as my wife, um, destruction of the city. Um, For 14 years, I have done water treatment, pools, city water, private wells, and commercial plant operation. I know that Northport is 22% to 25% city municipal water for the citizens. 50% are private wells, so I would say the other 25% is probably commercial. Northport uses about 3.6 million gallons of water a day. With this data center proposed 5 million gallons of water, Where's that water pressure going? It's going to go straight to this data center. The citizens are going to be burdened. It's not going to be their burden. It'll be your burden because who's going to deal with that problem? They're going to go straight to you. And to the 50% of the people that are on wells, those wells get contaminated. We test wells. If they have lead, they fill them with concrete, they'll drill another one. In 1980, it was 40 to 60 feet, they drill for a well. We're replacing wells today, and they're going 100 to 120 feet deep. If you put the status center in, your infrastructure for the water for this city is not big enough to be able to handle it. You don't have trained membranes long enough to be able to handle what you're going to be doing to this city. You will force the people that are in private wells to have to dig deeper, And they will need to have reverse osmosis to be able to keep purity in their water to remove the contaminants that are going to come into these people's wells. You're going to force a burden onto the people that have private wells to pay $12,000 to $15,000 for a reverse osmosis system. And prices are going up. And that's today. That's not going to be in a year. That's going to be $30,000 in a year. So what are you going to do for them? It's not going to be their burden. It's going to be your burden because they're going to come after you. And something my parents used to tell me when I was a kid, if your friends jump off a bridge, would you jump? If your friends want to build a data center, would you build a data center? It just doesn't seem right. The math ain't mathing. Thank you for your time.

Thank you.

Dave Blaine and Will Lennox.

Dave Polera. Okay. Dave Polera, I guess everybody said about everything tonight. I don't know if anybody's done a background check on this, Mr. Perez. When I type in his name, the AI, he hasn't built anything. He's like a person who flips houses. So they're saying he's already going to, he's trying to line it up to sell to a tech conglomerate. North Port's just going crazy. Now this Miss Ray, I think she should be fired. Like you said, things have been shady. She's worked with this guy and supposedly knows all the land deals. He got 93 acres with 13 rights of ways for $10,000. He went to the Sarasota Courthouse and gave a $10 check to the clerk. and he's got the 67 tracts of land. So when he had them both closed out November 22nd, 22, he bypassed the right-of-way vacation applications. Normally, developers must formally petition a line of regs, department service to vacate public corridors so they can combine smaller lots into one massive continuous footprint. How come she didn't know that? She's worked with them so closely, but she didn't know. She looks like a fool. And now, Ms. Langley, I'm glad you have another arch enemy with Mr. Petro like you have with Debbie McDowell. You can already see the tension. You must love enemies because you're a disgrace. I think that Mr. Johnson from Arcadia had the right idea. He sued the commissioners over the well. I think anybody who doesn't vote for this moratorium I know already have the papers drawn up to intent to so. But I think we have to do much more. I think we have to start raising some funds and go after these people hard. Because. what you're doing to our way of life. I mean, the medium income is $43,000 in Northport. For a retired couple, it's 67. These people are going to be going up to 100,000 as soon as, I mean, 82, 84,000 in salary when there's 100,000 people. Is that not right?

That's not right.

That's what it says on your website. When population reaches 100,000, yours will go from 62 to the mid-80s.

We changed from the population scenario. Okay. Just to let you know, sir. Okay.

Well, you need to change your website because that's what it says. Thank you for letting us know. I appreciate that. And this is what we're going to stand behind. You took a note for office. Thank you, sir. And you aren't living up to it.

Hello, my name is Will Lemieux. I've been a resident of Northport for just under two years, so I'm one of the newbies here. I'm one of the people that came from the north. Well, my family's been here for over 70 years. The reason why I came to Northport is because I knew about the people that lived here. I knew that they're passionate. I know that, you know, we get a right to vote here. We get a say. Where I come from, Minnesota, you don't get a say. Things are just shoved through and shoved through your face. When you start doing that to people, you oppress people, and they're angry. People in Northport, generally, that I've met at the gym, at my church, the things I go to, they're generally happy, except when it comes to this issue, because you don't want to be stolen from. Now, I live on a three-acre lot. The reason why I moved there is for the peace and quiet. I'm going to be just north of this data center, about a mile and a half. Right now, they're building, and we're not even talking about that, like the 2,000 or 3,000 or whatever living units that are going up there. It's going to be buttoned right up to this data center. And I live on a well, it's gonna be taken right from us. We're gonna have to dig deeper, I just know it. We already have the drought and water problems in this city. And I really appreciate everyone's candor up here. You're open and being honest and forthright what you're thinking. But the reality is we all, we don't know the long-term effects. We don't know any of this stuff. We don't know, there's just too many unknowns for us just to, just to pass this through, and I think that's what's happened to all these other cities and states that have passed these things and put these things through, is they didn't know either. You guys have an awesome responsibility and duty to look at these things, and we have the benefit to really think this through and hear from all of us who live here. And so I just hope you... see all of our faces, you hear all of our voices, and that we're the faces that you're going to think about before you go to bed at night because we're worried about it. My wife, she has extreme health issues and things like that. Now, you know, she's worried, and that's why we moved here, to get away from some of those things and to get healthy. And, you know, doing these data centers and just the research where we hear from everybody else, whether they're true or not, some are kind of fabricated, I think. But for the most part, there's a concern here. There's a real, real concern. And so I really appreciate your time. I didn't want to take up too much of it, but thank you very much and good night. Thank you. Morning.

Is there anybody else in the audience who submitted a public comment? What is your name, ma'am? Is there anybody else?

Your name?

Tracy, you can come up.

Regulations. The USDA has regulations. And how much food is being recovered currently? For just one example, regulations are soggy Band-Aids with a festering open sore beneath them. Also, y'all are lawmakers. Y'all are the lawmakers. For goodness sake. Vice Mayor, you're gaslighting. Girl, do your due diligence before these meetings and stop playing stupid. I see right through you. I've spoken at commission meetings previously in reference to the moratoriums on data centers, including not long ago in DeSoto County. I usually speak of the facts and the detriment to the environment, wildlife, children, women and men, entire communities, et cetera. But there sure were enough people here tonight to speak on all of that. So I'm going to speak about the politicians that are taking the money from these hyperscale data centers. And the monies that they've already taken was still two months until the midterm elections. They could speak word salad all they want, but the truth is in all of our hands, literally, We can no longer listen to the words because so, so many of those words are lies, fallacies. We need to do our due diligence and follow the money and stop letting them win by pitting us against one another. We need to come together for the greater good of our country, our state, our city, and our county, and for all our brothers and sisters, for their children and their futures, and stop voting along party lines and vote for the people themselves. We're all being lied to, so let's follow the money. Greg Stubbe. For the 2026 election cycle, the FEC reports that Stuby's campaign has $1.338 million in total receipts through the 20th of July, 2026, including $580,500 from other committees and PACs. Here's the donor, Mark Andreessen, from Andreessen Horowitz, a major AI data center investor. Ben Horowitz, also Andreessen Horowitz, major AI data center investor. Andreessen Hurwitz itself has put enormous amounts of money into AI-related political organizations. Marc Andreessen personally gave $12.5 million to Leading the Future, a super PAC supporting AI industry interests in August 2025. They paid for direct AI tech individual contributions, AI tech corporate PAC contributions, data center company contributions, and more. I don't have time for all the Byron Donalds PAC data center monies, but here's a fun fact. Andreessen Horowitz itself has also given Donalds, directly or indirectly, millions of dollars. In conclusion, we are the right, we are the left, and we are the in-between, and we are all sick of this shit. Voting matters, and vote wisely. Matthew?

worked for planning commissions, and this is the latest I've stayed up, I think. Hello, my name is Matthew Montavon, and I'm a resident of Sarasota and a candidate for Florida's 17th congressional district. The residents of this community have legitimate concerns about the environmental and public health consequences of this project. People deserve honest answers about its potential demand on our water supply, the strains it would place on our electrical grid, and the noise it would create, the pollution it may generate, and the long-term effects it could have on surrounding neighborhoods and natural resources. These are not minor concerns and they should not be dismissed simply because powerful interests want this project approved. Florida's water, environment, and quality of life do not belong to corporations, developers, or politicians. They belong to all of us. Once these resources are damaged or depleted, they will never be restored. So why are we here? Why must residents take time away from their families and jobs and stay up so late just to defend their homes from decisions being made without their meaningful consent? Too often, ordinary people are expected to accept the risks while wealthy corporations collect the rewards. Too often, political influence matters more than the voices of the families who live here. That must change. Our community needs leaders who will listen to the community, who understand that public office is a responsibility, and who are not solely beholden to corporate interests. These decisions will determine what kind of Florida we leave behind if we continue allowing uncontrollable development to threaten our water, environment, health, and communities, there may not be an attractive Florida left for future generations to enjoy. I believe you've all taken the comments from the public to heart, and I understand you've got a lot of complicated things to deal with, but I think you could be on the path to a solution, and that's what the people want. They want that trust. They want to trust you. They want to know that Our democracy works. People could speak and their leaders will respond accordingly. So I wish you well in resolving this situation and it's been quite an interesting evening. Thank you. Thank you.

I just want to make sure you're going to be able to hear this. This was a 1237. It's sped up a little bit. It's from tonight. Thank you, sir.

So I think that was your voice, Mayor.

Did you call my friend a fucking idiot?

No, sir.

Are you sure?

Yes, I am sure.

What did you say?

I didn't say anything. And whose voice is that? I don't know. You don't know? Could have been anybody's voice. We've got microphones on.

Everything that they talked about for the last six and a half hours is bullshit.

Thank you, sir.

Is that your voice?

No.

Did anybody agree that that's his voice? You don't want to admit it? No. Because I know Sam, and Sam's a good friend of mine. I don't even know who Sam is. He's sitting right there.

I could debate these guys for 20 minutes at a time.

I just can't believe, you know, I'm not making it up. And I think a lot of other people heard it too. And I just, I don't understand where you get off saying something like that. Okay. Let me play it one more time for you just to make sure. I'm going to do it again just to make sure. Because I honestly don't even know what to say. I'm so damn tired right now. And I don't like cussing up here, but you said, well, I'm a legend that you said. You know why I admit it?

No. No, you don't want to admit it.

Okay. I think you owe him an apology. Whether you want to do it when nobody's watching so you don't have to admit it. But I appreciate it if you apologize to him.

I will give him an apology. Absolutely. If somebody said that, if you think it's me, if you think it's me, I will apologize.

Well, who else would it be?

Thank you. I mean, we're here to talk about the moratorium. We are. Yeah, but this just makes it not even about that anymore. And I think if you said it, I think you should have made up and apologized.

You're here.

Thank you.

Any more?

Anybody else submit a public comment card that I did not call your name for this item?

Okay.

That's all in person? I do.

What do you have now?

I have this many of residents or commenters who either selected they support or oppose the item. Do you want me to state their name? And whether they oppose or support.

Yeah, I would state their name for the record and whether they oppose or agree.

So all of these people that I state their name, they selected, they support this agenda item. Julia Ryan, Laney Aiken, Edward McKee, Zoran Jacholowski, Alonzo Powell, Ezekiel Manthe, Francis D. Scherer, Marilyn Velvie, Kira Belvey, Robin Lewis, Lena Cotter, Juliana Laredo, Samuel Jordan, Wyatt Triplett, Olivia Ladd, Myra Joseph, Gilberto Rondon, Daniel Ladmer, Shelby Peeler, Kim Peely, Carolina Lazardo, Amy Hibbard, Emily Rosano, Tim Kilman, Ashton Busset, Maxim Thomas, Kathleen Williams, Alexandria Grover, Daniel Knapp, Allison Knapp, Jennifer Koop, Gavin Busse, Sophia Dodds, William Simpson, Chadwick, Joshua Diffley, Regina Gappin, Luke Good Citizen, Brianna Hammer, Devin Donovan, Sophia Albright, Daniel Torres, Samantha Montu, James Desjordans, Talis Stewart, Julia Chadwick, Patricia Richard, Pavel Plushkanov, Thomas Wyatt, Summer Desjordans, Joshua Rosano, Shima Montano, Josh Killam, Gabriela Stamp, Thomas Montano, Grace Hansen, Mary Walters, Jody Fees, Dadmila Jan Luskoslava, Yannet Rios, George Oliver, Patsy Sharp, Tyler Thorpe, Allison Thorpe, Laura Montrey, Jade Montri, Donna Palm, Denise Boyd, Madison Boyd, David Alterio, Derek Warren, Jerry Gravitt, Devin Looney, Jacob Lowery, April Flores, Devin Oppenheimer, Jane Murray, Ermantia Morales, Rita Herrera, David Riven. These names selected, they oppose to the agenda item. Eugene Langham, Jesse John, Darrell Wallace, Sharon Wallace, Jack Mel, Denise McGee, Pamela Cole, Trinity Martinez, Alexa Lamothe, Sarah Bracken, Sloan Jason, Melissa Goddio, Rhiannon Vallick, Cassandra Ricketts, Nicholas Thomas, Taylor Ray Reeves, Jacob Clamsky, Jonathan Clasimony, Angelina, Lisa Foster, Jessica Sheldon, Sophia Dodds, Claude Bell, Yannette Rios, Kenneth Brennan, Ryan Hager, Angela Sharp, Chance Barber, Ivy Hammond, Shelly Fossil, Tiffany, David, Rosanna Couch, Hayden Lokes, Shepikun Nahar, Kelsey Bloomquist, Tom Carbino, Manuel Camacho, Roni Murray, Daniel Rodriguez, Mary Walters, Laura Smith, Zach Smith, Maria Bone, Logan Wax, Rebecca Wax, Mike Wax, Jennifer Koop, Samantha Montauk, Carolina Allen, Laurel Allen, Thomas Perry, Rachel Perry, Nicole Siguenes, Alexa Garcia, Andrea Garcia-Sincas, Donna Arndt, Michael Arndt, Will LeMond, Gaia Nadel, Gannon Torella, Grace Burke, Nicole Mascow, Emily Bertram, Carolina Lacerda, Arianna Oslet, Holly Burnett, Beata Bartowski, Bernard McIntyre, Karen Bell, Rosemary McAltier, Jessica Inquio-Siedori, Alexis Roth, Corey Roth, Carolyn Winder, Maria Johnson, Kimberly Gossett, Janet Briley, Kennedy Cole, Stella Hansen, Julia Hansen, Tiffany, David, Sierra Rickard, Wes Linden, Richard McCarthy, Wondar Carballer, Sherry Stevens, Carol Lerner, William Quinn, Judith McConnell, Joelle Hildago, Rebecca Jones, Joshua Jones, Lynn Magaro, Kelly White, Haley Jacobs, Patty Sharp, Michael Thorine, Irene Wilson, Zachary Berardi, Chuck Dittarianto, Jonathan Koehler, Rachel Killam, Juan Hidalgo, Tabby Kahl-Morgan, Joelle Hidalgo, Kara Koop, Joseph Magaro, Dana Killam, Joshua Killam, Kimberly Vaughn, David Ponicello, Belinda Hildago, Alan Harris, Cynthia Sporo, Karen Schoen, Jennifer Todd, and Julitza Rodriguez. Then I have e-comment.

You have e-comment?

Yes. Not happy with overdevelopment of the city and this especially, Angela Leclerc. I strongly oppose the proposed data center in Northport and urge the City Commission to deny this project. The proposed location is not appropriate for a large-scale data center and it is far too close to established neighborhoods. and a middle school. A facility of this size and intensity could bring continuous noise, increased traffic, construction impacts, lighting, and significant demands for water and electricity. It could negatively affect residents' quality of life and potentially decrease surrounding property values. The environmental impacts also deserve serious consideration. A highly automated data center may not create a significant number of permanent local jobs, while residents could bear the long-term impacts and costs. What protections will be in place if the developer's estimates regarding noise, water use, power demand, infrastructure needs, or employment prove inaccurate? During the moratorium, the City should strengthen its ordinances and protect its ability to reject exemptions, variances, deferred impact fees, tax incentives, utility concessions, or expedited treatment for data centers. I ask the City to require independent studies of water use, electrical demand, noise, environmental impacts, traffic, emergency response needs, and infrastructure costs. Require enforceable operating limits, ongoing monitoring, and meaningful penalties if approved conditions are exceeded. Require the developer to fund all infrastructure upgrades and mitigation measures caused by the project. Provide residents with full public cost benefit analysis before any final decision. Northport needs responsible growth that benefits residents and protects our neighborhoods, schools, property values, infrastructure, and environment. There are many possible locations for data centers, but this proposed location is simply too close to homes and a school. Please put North Port residents first and reject the proposed location. Angela Zucknick. In regards to data center proposal, I am against the current proposal and all future data centers in North Port. The one currently proposed in activity center six is marked at 965,000 square foot just for the data center. That is considered a large hyperscale data center which requires between 365 million and 1,825,000,000 gallons of water annually assuming the systems won't be air-cooled as it's sunny hot Florida, and there are residential units being proposed next door. Who wants to live near that noise? We have to assume it's water-cooled. Even with a closed-loop system, that potential billion gallons of water needs to come from somewhere, and it isn't just water. Chemicals have to minimize erosion, and from time to time, systems need to be flushed for proper pH repairs or other needs. Where does the flush system go? How much do we need to sacrifice to fill it back up? How often? Think long term for our children and grandchildren. These facts alone are enough to say no permanently. Thank you. I formally rebuke and withhold my consent to this tyrannical Northport City Commission's recent action, specifically the execution of backroom deals with data centers hidden behind nondisclosure NDAs, the rezone of Activity Center 6, Activity Center 10, and the broad delegation of authority allowing city staff to make critical public decisions completely devoid of citizen oversight. Any agreements, pacts, or deals orchestrated under the shrode of an NDA are fundamentally illegitimate and I declare them null and void due to the total absence of public transparency. Operating behind closed doors while imposing financial burdens on residents violates the fundamental principles of a transparent representative government. Let this statement serve as an official declaration that taxation without meaningful representation of theft and I demand an immediate halt to these unauthorized actions and to change redone back to how it was previously until full public transparency and oversight are restored. As all these tyrannical actions are repugnant to the constitution in this charter as well as fire NDA Fletcher immediately. Barbara Stanzel. Dear Mayor and City Commissioners, I am writing as a Northport resident to express my support for the city's 18 month moratorium on data centers and to encourage you to use this time to carefully evaluate whether these facilities are appropriate for our community Northport is a beautiful and rapidly growing city and I believe we have an obligation to be thoughtful about the type of development we allow and its long-term impact on residents. I understand that growth and economic development are important, but not all development is necessarily good development. I have concerns about the potential impact of large-scale data centers, particularly regarding water and electricity consumption, infrastructure demands, noise, surrounding property values, environmental impacts, and the overall character of Northport. Once facilities like these are built their impacts can be difficult if not impossible to reverse. 18 months is a reasonable amount of time to fully understand what data centers could mean for Northport before making decisions that may affect our city for decades. During the moratorium I hope the city will examine not only the potential economic benefits but also the cost and consequences for residents. and provide meaningful opportunities for public input before permanent policies or zoning changes are adopted. I value North Port's natural beauty and quality of life. As our city grows, I hope we protect those qualities rather than allow growth to change the very things that make North Port such a special place to call home. Thank you for considering the concerns of residents. I strongly support the moratorium and urge the city to put the long-term interests and quality of life of North Port residents at the forefront of its decisions regarding data center development. Cassie Cordellian, we need this moratorium until we know more facts. We need independent researchers to quantify the amount of environmental impact that any data center has on the surrounding area, including any toll it takes on the quality of life to those around it. Cosmo Cordelli, I support a moratorium regarding on data centers. With water being a major issue in this county already, we can't spare any future problems. Our home, like many in Northport, is on a well. Data center wells are much deeper and the city is deeper than that. Who's to say they don't drain out our wells and have us forced to go on city water at our expense? I do not trust the data center's representatives' lies. We need independent researchers to find any holes in their stories. We should not be accommodating to data centers. They should be accommodating to us. We need to know the impact it's going to take on the environment as well. Douglas Smith, the time date. Hello and thank you for taking the time to listen to constituents. To be clear, I support the approval of placing a moratorium on any data centers in Northport, Florida with my additional strict opposition to any data centers being built in Northport, Florida and elsewhere. The majority of citizens do not want any data centers being built in any of our surrounding areas, especially on private property that would ultimately remove our collective ability to officially demand any accountability onto the private owners should the predictability inevitable happen. with rising utility costs, devastating environmental impacts and increase of fossil fuel use leading to further and worsen climate change effects and the apparent risk to people's physical health regarding water and air quality and economic health regarding job losses to AI. Emergency response capacities, water, wastewater and electrical systems and our surrounding properties including businesses, schools, healthcare facilities and residents alike. We see the damage these data centers are causing in cities and other states and our laws, regulations and institutions regarding tampering down and healing us away from climate change related on natural disasters are not compatible of mitigating this destructions that data centers are causing. And in fact, we'll exaggerate are increasing environmental, economic, and health issues. Also, we have a billionaire problem where their wealth keeps growing while ours keeps diminishing no matter how hard we work. And the rich class is abusing the power their money can buy so they can obtain even more control, power, surveillance, and wealth over the entire nation of citizens with data centers being another pathway for them to solidify their will and obscene greed over us. We need leaders to fight on the side of we the people instead of catering to the rich. Thank you. Dave Mission, my road is no data center in Northport. Let's continue to grow our city with parks activities. Data centers are noisy, expensive to run, including water to cool it and electricity. I do not want my electric to go up, nor do I want my well to run dry to assist in running a data center. A 20 year tax break is also unacceptable as I do not want my property tax up to help fill the gap of funds when a new data center is have been given a tax exemption. Data centers are not welcomed or needed in Northport. Don, jodeling? Hasn't enough in Northport been destroyed? Trees cut down, wildlife killed or displaced? Enough. Elaine Emmerich, commissioners, is it possible to create a data center task force? The purpose would be to help the community learn more about data centers, the impacts of one in the community. The group could also recommend ordinances that are needed to safeguard the community in the event of another data center application or changing of state or federal laws that legally impact our community. The task force could be given specific goals and a deadline to operate and present the findings to the city commission. It could be made up of at least two or three community members, including one who may live within two miles of the proposed site, a FPL rep, a Southwest Florida Water Management District member, and a city liaison, and anyone else the commission deems an assistant. an asset to help contribute to the task force. Please consider this as it may be extremely helpful for all of us to learn specifically how data centers operate in Florida with droughts and hurricanes and other elements we might not understand. Please also include the most strict ordinance for water usage for data centers to safeguard our residents. Thank you for your consideration.

Eugenia Bushmick.

I respectfully ask the Commission to reject the proposed data center and to reject the proposal to postpone the decision for 18 months. Large data centers require enormous amounts of electricity and water. According to the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, U.S. data centers already used about 176 TWH of electricity in 2023, and their electricity use could reach 9.5% to 15.3% of all U.S. electricity consumption by 2030. that electricity use is also associated with significant water consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. These impacts are not just national statistics, they are local concerns. A data center can place substantial demands on the electric grid, water resources, and infrastructure of the community where it is built. Before approving one, we should carefully consider who pays for the additional infrastructure and what long-term costs will be to residents. I also strongly oppose delaying the decision for 18 months. A delay does not eliminate the project's electricity needs, water consumption, environmental impacts, or infrastructure requirements. It simply kicks the can down the road. There is also an important issue of accountability. In 18 months, some or even many of the commissioners currently serving may no longer be in office. New commissioners will be elected and may have to make a decision about a project that today's commission should address. If this project is good for our community, the commission should be able to make that case based on the facts available today. If it is not, then the commission should have the courage to say no today. Economic development should not come at any cost. Our community deserves to consider the long-term impact on our water, electricity, environment, infrastructure, taxpayers, and quality of life. Please do not postpone this decision. Make the decision now and reject the data center project. Greg Faulkner. Mayor and commissioners, I support ordinance number 2026-25 and the temporary moratorium on new or expanded data center facilities in Northport. I'm not opposed to responsible development, technology, or economic growth. I am opposed to making long-term decisions with potentially significant consequences before we fully understand those consequences. Data centers are fundamentally different from the development Northport has traditionally planned for. They can place significant demands on electrical infrastructure, water resources, land, and other infrastructure while potentially creating relatively few permanent jobs. That does not automatically make a data set a bad for Northport. It means we should know exactly what we are agreeing to before we agree to it. The moratorium gives the city time to answer critical questions. What are the true water and electrical demands? Who pays for... Required infrastructure. How will residents be protected from noise generators, environmental impacts, and incompatible land uses? What measurable economic benefit does Northport receive in return? And what happens if the facility expands or its use changes? Those questions should be answered through policy before an application is sitting in front of the commission and the city is under pressure to act. Northport has one opportunity to establish the rules before this type of development arrives at scale. A moratorium is not a no. It is a not until we know. I respectfully urge the Commission to approve Ordinance 2026-25 and use this time to establish clear, enforceable standards, ensuring any future data center provides a genuine net benefit to Northport and its residents. John, first let me say I'm against any data center within the city limits of Northport. I will let others who are more versed in the matters of water consumption, noise control, electricity costs and usage and concessions to the developer speak to those issues. There should be zero concessions. What I will speak to is the perceived backroom deals that were made for this development. How was the commission not made aware of an NDA and discussions? How did the developer know to rush in an application the night before the commission meeting? How was the ULDC modified to accommodate the data center long before an application and NDA was received and signed? I find it extremely interesting that it is Commissioner Stokes who is running For re-election to request the changes outlined in the general business practices, is this a way to have him show he is for the people even though the last four years have proven otherwise? I call upon the commissioners to stand up and take a pledge to fight this application. If they accept this pledge, I ask them to stand up and promise to resign if they vote in favor of the data center. I also ask the commissioners to do the following. One, reverse the changes to the ULDC that were implemented without resident input. Two, reverse the decisions to allow administrative approvals of developments. Three, mandate the commission to review and vote upon any NDA requested of the city. Four, and finally request an independent investigation by the state FBI state attorney general and other like legal entities to review if any laws, including sunshine laws were violated. We need commissioners to represent the people of the city and not their own self-interest or those of developers. Finally, we need to prevent this data center from being built. Thank you. George Fortune, I support a moratorium on any data center's acceptance, processing, review, approval, or issuance of building permits, rezoning site plans, conditional use approvals, variances, comprehensive plan amendments, or other city approvals for the construction establishment expansion or intensification of data centers, data center facilities, large-scale data centers, and large load customer facilities within the municipal limits of the City of Northport. I further oppose any building of such facilities in the future within our city limits. Juno Enoch. I support a moratorium on data centers in Northport and I'm appalled to learn a data center project has already been proposed and is under consideration without the knowledge of our elected officials and under the authority of the city manager and neighborhood development department who the people did not elect and cannot be held accountable for their actions. I believe our community does not want and will not benefit from a data center as they are shown to increase burden on infrastructure and raise costs for taxpayers and degrade community water supplies without providing any benefit like quality jobs for residents. Please continue to pursue a moratorium on data center development and oppose the current data center proposal, which puts our community at a serious long-term risk. Catherine Neckel. I am ready. As a North Port resident, to strongly urge you to vote yes on the proposed data center moratorium and protect our community from the severe risk associated with this 900,000 square foot facility. Our city cannot afford the long-term consequences of this massive industrial development. While proponents may suggest closed-loop cooling systems eliminate water issues, these systems come with severe documented risk, hazardous chemical use, closed-loop systems rely heavily on toxic chemical treatments such as biocides, anti-foaming agents, and corrosion inhibitors. to prevent bacterial growth and scale. Chemical spill and contaminated risks, storage and disposal of these chemicals present a constant threat of accidental spills which could leach into Northport's shallow water table and sensitive local watersheds. Massive power surges by recycling water instead of evaporating it. Closed-loop systems require significantly more electricity to run the chillers and fans, placing an even heavier strain on our local power grid, intense noise pollution, The increased mechanical energy required to drive these closed systems results in constant low-frequency homes from industrial fans that will permanently degrade the suburban quality of life for nearby neighborhoods. Please pause this project, listen to the overwhelming public opposition, and vote to protect Northport's infrastructure, public health, and natural resources. Thank you for your time. Kay Johanna. Thank you for taking time to listen to the constituents. To be clear, I support the approval of placing a moratorium on any data centers in Northport with my additional strict opposition to any data centers being built in Northport, Florida or elsewhere. The majority of citizens do not want any data centers being built in any of our surrounding areas, especially on private property that would ultimately remove our collective ability to officially demand any accountability onto the private owners should the predictability inevitable happen with rising utility costs, devastating environmental impacts and increase of fossil fuel use leading to further and worsen climate change effects and the apparent risk to people's physical health regarding water and air quality and economic health regarding job losses to AI, emergency response capacities, water, wastewater, and electrical systems, and our surrounding properties, including businesses, schools, healthcare facilities, and residents alike. We see the damage these data centers are causing in cities and other states, and our laws, regulations, and institutions regarding tampering down and healing us away from climate change related on natural disasters are not compatible of mitigating the destructions that data centers are causing, and in fact, will exaggerate are increasing environmental, economic, and health issues. Also, we have a billionaire problem where their wealth keeps growing while ours keeps diminishing no matter how hard we work. And the rich class is abusing the power their money can buy so they can obtain even more control, power, surveillance, and wealth over an entire nation of citizens with data centers being another pathway for them to solidify their will and obscene greed over us. We need leaders to fight on the side of we the people instead of catering to the rich. Kira Herb. Hello, I have been a South Florida resident my entire life. I was born here, went to college at Florida Gulf Coast University studying software engineering. I think this qualifies me more than anyone to speak on this matter. Now with my introduction out of the way and to start on my reasoning for opposing data centers, we will talk about the supposed revenue this will generate. My hope is by starting talking... about this you will actually listen. First from a financial standpoint when exactly is this supposed to generate revenue? How long and how much revenue? I will tell you because whomever requested this center can't won't tell you. There is no way for data centers to actually generate revenue. This is where my technical background comes in because understanding what AI can do and what it can't do. AI simply regurgitates the data it is given. It cannot validate the data. It cannot make anything original because of that Simple fact alone, there's no way for it to generate income. What's the actual product being sold? Who wants it? How do we market? All things intelligent businessmen and women figure out before they even start their businesses, we cannot with AI data centers. Speaking of who wants this product, millions of these data centers are being proposed throughout the US and no one wants them. Honestly, it's hysterical that there's such a united front against these data centers and yet they're still being proposed. Revolutionary tech like this needs a baseline average consumer to work and you simply don't have it with AI data centers. Lastly, as I mentioned, hundreds of these data centers are being proposed, hundreds. Talk about an oversaturated market. The last thing I'll bring up is the fact that JP Morgan is now advising against investing in AI. If the banks are losing faith in this technology, it won't be long until the bubble bursts. You all have been scammed and fed lies that AI is the future. Please see it for the Ponzi scheme it is. Luanne Caldwell. I support a retroactive moratorium on data centers in the city of Northport. My first concern is water supply. Just about most of our homes here are on wells. Where will the water come from for the data centers? How will it affect our wells? My other concern is noise. We live off of East Price, just about one mile from where the bend on I-75 goes from east-west to north-south. Since 75 has been widened into six lanes, we can hear noise in the morning inside our house from traffic on 75. This is especially bad during high seasons from October to May. Outside the house, the noise is deafening while walking in the neighborhood in the morning. My understanding is that data centers get a lot of noise. The other concern is infrastructure, especially here on the east side of Northport. Considering these factors of water supply, noise, and infrastructure, I think it is prudent that the City Commission pass a retroactive moratorium on data centers until more research and input from the community can occur.

Mary Sherman.

I am support of a moratorium regarding the approval, et cetera, of any data center development in North Port, Florida. I believe there are too many risks and unknown consequences. Michael Springle. Good afternoon. I thought that with the moratorium that was previously passed, this was something that would not be revisited. In my previous comment made at that time, I had mentioned that this is not a partisan concern. We can debate the optics of imposing a moratorium on future data centers when one was already proposed. Truthfully, a retroactive moratorium is the least that can be done when it comes to representing the wishes of our town's citizens. I said this during my last comment and I'll say it again. For many young people, Northport is not a town to live in, but a town to leave. When we elect representatives for any public office, it will be safe to assume their ability to think into the future will be something that is greatly considered. What future do you see for your kids, grandkids, your neighbors, and their families? Look at the polling. It takes all of five seconds to Google and see living near AI data centers currently polls worse than living near nuclear power plants. Up to 71% is opposing living near data centers compared to 53% who oppose living near nuclear plants. It doesn't take a workshop or a panel of experts to see that this is something that people here do not want. Go to the local Walmart off of 41 and ask them. Please enact the retroactive moratorium and go further if the political will exist. Impose a permanent ban on them within the city. Thank you. RH, please vote yes on the data center moratorium. This project has the potential to permanently damage nearly every aspect of the surrounding area, wildlife habitat, tree cover, noise levels, traffic, drainage, water and power infrastructure, emergency services, nearby neighborhoods, and the character of future development. The proposed site is not an empty piece of vacant land. It is heavily forested. functioning habitat. I recently visited the area and saw vegetation reclaiming existing pavement so extensively that birds were nesting in what are technically roads. This is not unused land waiting for development and is an ecosystem that has been allowed to establish itself over decades. Building a data center there would require extensive clearing, grading, paving, road reconstruction, lighting, and industrial infrastructure. Once mature habitat is bulldozed and fragmented it cannot simply be put back if the city later Besides, the environmental cost was too high. The facility itself would operate 24-7 and could bring continuous mechanical and low frequency noise, backup generators, enormous electrical demands, possible water demand, increased traffic, stormwater impacts, and light pollution. These effects would not occur in isolation. They would accumulate. The burden should not be on the residents to prove after construction that the damage is unacceptable. The burden should be on the developer to prove before approval that the project of this magnitude will not cause unacceptable harm. A moratorium is the minimum responsible action that gives North Port time to investigate the impacts, establish strict protections, and decide whether this type of development belongs here at all. Please vote yes. Once this land is industrialized, the City cannot undo that decision. Sherry Good. I firmly believe we need the moratorium. In my earlier comment, I selected oppose by mistake. Sincere Gibbs. Hello, my name is Sincere Gibbs. I have lived in this city for the majority of my life and would like to say that I am strongly against the formation of the data center. I have seen, heard, and read news stories, articles, and videos on the harmful effects of data centers to nearby communities surrounding it, and I do not believe that it should continue to be constructed. Some of the harmful effects that data centers may bring are noise pollution, light pollution, air pollution, a waste of large amount of water that could be going those who need it, and a potential increase in prices for electricity and utilities in the surrounding homes and buildings. In conclusion, as a resident and citizen, I do not believe that this data center should continue to be built for the sake of the lives of our community. William English, I strongly oppose to any data center. I'm sorry, but I have experience with these centers and it is very, very bad idea. By the time city sees it was, it will already be too late. Damage will be done and take years and years and money to fix even if it could be. It hurts everything, the environment and everything and hardly any jobs are created. So my vote is no on any data centers. And that's all I have.

have that one card turned in. Is that gentleman still here? He didn't want to speak. Is this just a vote?

He opposed to, as soon as I know what he said, he opposed to, it is Timothy Manikoff to 2020-04. Okay.

I just wanted to make sure he had this chance because I've seen it. He had that card. All right, so that's all you got. I'm going to close this public hearing and request a motion. I'll make it.

I move to continue ordinance number 2026-25 to second reading on September 8, 2026 with the following changes, including pending applicant.

I'm sorry, that's the last thing you said.

Including pending applicant. or pending application.

I couldn't understand what you're saying.

I'm sorry.

No, that's okay. I'll second it for discussion. Okay. I have a motion on the floor made by Commissioner Petroff. City Clerk, you want to read it back?

To continue ordinance number 2026-25 to second reading on September 8th, 2026 with the following changes to include the pending application.

That was seconded by Commissioner Stokes for discussion. Go ahead, Commissioner Stokes.

Two things I might recommend as an amendment to that is that one, we stipulate obviously that it be retroactive and to carve out the acceptance processing and review, but not final approval. for a term of 18 months, because I don't believe it says it in the ordinance. And I would suggest we change the date of the second reading to September 22nd. And the reason I say is it just creates a little more window for this to be written and for the applicant to have a little time to digest this. The eighth is just coming up so quick, but again,

Okay, well you still have the option to make an amendment.

All right, so I would make an amendment that we add to that we stipulate it be retroactive and to carve out acceptance processing and review but not final approval and this moratorium to be for a term of 18 months with second reading to be on September 22nd, 2026.

I got an amendment on the floor made by Commissioner Stokes, seconded by Commissioner Duvall, but I have a question on that. He, in his original motion, is including the current applicant. In the amendment, it doesn't say anything about taking out the current applicant, but it does talk about the process. So, would the current applicant still be void of going through the process, the way that it's stated?

Well, I don't want to put words in anyone's mouth, but I think the amendment was to allow the applicant to go through the process without formal approval.

But it wasn't stated the applicant, it was just stated about the process. Okay. But he included the applicant. He included the applicant to include him in

retroactively, and I'm just carving out the part that they've already done, which is the acceptance, processing, and review portion to allow that to continue, but not the final approval. I mean, do you get it? I understand what the motion is.

Commissioner Petro, in your original motion, you're including, and I'm asking this, you're including the applicant that we have there right now as included in the retroactive to where they move no more further. Is that the way I'm hearing you?

The moratorium includes the pending application.

And my amendment allows the process to continue, but not the final approval.

Of this application.

Of the, correct.

I want legal to weigh in on this.

So I think the way with what Commissioner Petro wants is how the ordinance is written now. Which is that, so you don't need to really add anything. I think maybe he's just making it clear that he doesn't want to carve out the application. That's what he's saying. And so, and then I think the motion is to card off the application or to exempt the application from everything except final approval. So if the Board wanted to go Commissioner Petro's way, you would just move the ordinance to second reading as is, as I've written it. If you want to go Commissioner Stokes way, then you would vote on that amendment and see if that passes.

Does that help you guys? I'm still confused though. It's the process. Is it allowing the applicant that we have currently to move forward?

Yes.

with the process. With every... I'm sorry, I didn't mean to... No, you're fine. With everything except for vital... Correct, correct. I just want to make sure that... It's an exception to the general mandatory rule. That's not what I was hearing, but that's fine if that's...

If I could clarify.

Yeah, go ahead.

I just want, made a motion to proceed with the Ordinance 2026-25 as is, basically, retroactively including pending application.

Right, and then we have the amendment that's up there now, which we will vote on first. So, you got all that, City Clerk? Yes. All right, we'll be voting on the amendment first.

Who's seconded the amendment?

Commissioner Duvall, I'm sorry. And that passes four to one with Commissioner Petro dissenting. Moving on to the main motion. As amended, please vote.

As amended.

This, Commissioner Petro, this is the main motion as amended, so it is as Commissioner Stokes stated it.

Just to be clear. Okay. Can we pause? Because I want to get a clarification. My original motion, when do we vote on it? Did we vote on it?

So you made your original motion. Commissioner Stokes amended your motion. We voted an amendment. And so that amendment replaced your motion because he amended it.

He made the amendment part of your motion.

So I can read to you what the motion is going to be, if that'll help for you. It's going to be to continue ordinance number 2026-25 to second reading on September 22nd, I believe it is. Stipulating retroactive, allowing the process for acceptance, processing and review, but not approval of the current application and to add the term to be 18 months for the moratorium.

So we allow the applicant to go through the process.

Accept approval.

So if I make, if I may, Mayor, my whole point was not to allow the applicant to go through the process. So if I vote yes, I'll be contradicting myself. Is that correct, city clerk? I'll change my vote to no. Because I want retroactively including pending applicant.

And that passes four to one with Commissioner Petro dissenting. You wanna talk about your dissension, Commissioner Petro?

Yes, Mayor.

Go ahead.

I cannot vote on something that is not in the best interest of the city. This vote does not give the city leverage to sufficiently regulate or impose provisions protocols regarding this data center applicant.

Is that it, sir?

Yes.

All right. City Clerk, we're at 1.50 in the morning. Can I just adjourn this meeting and let you and the City Manager come up with these other items for another meeting, or do you need a motion?

Yeah, we'd take a motion to continue then to another meeting.

Okay, Alex, looking for a motion.

I'll make it.

Go ahead.

See if I can craft it. I move to reschedule the following agenda topics, item 26-1051, item 26-1023, 26-1022 to a future commission meeting to be determined.

I have a motion on the floor made by Commissioner Langdon. Do I have a second?

I'll second.