City Commission Regular Meeting - workshop

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 it's a zero and 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 it's got vines hanging off of it and yeah with some minimal and proper pruning this is going to be just a beautiful tree We come here and do an inspection to make sure the trees are properly excluded from the construction area. There's no fill on top of the critical root zone, which can impact the tree in a negative way, obviously. We see obviously the tree is above ground, but there's a whole network of roots below ground that we wanna also make sure are protected.

For Jeremy, this is more than just checking boxes. It's about the future of the city and its environment.

I've been in environmental work. I went to school for environmental work. So it's something that I took on at an early age. And here in Northport, I was... you know lucky enough to be an arborist and we really want to see the value and I see the value and in the city in the future in the environment and making sure there's that balance between development and environmental protection and trees is a big part of that right there's a lot I go three hours

Today is Thursday, September 3rd, 2026 at 6 p.m. We're in the city chambers and I call the city commission workshop 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 are City Manager Fletcher, City Attorney Covino, City Clerk Ross, Board Specialist Linder, Police Chief Garrison, and Fire Chief Titus. I am requesting that 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 handcuffing, yelling, or similar demonstrations. all of which disturbs the peace and good order of this meeting. Thank you. I'm going to call on Ms. San Vicente, if she would lead us in the presence.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Point of order, Mr. Mayor, before we get into the actual presentations. I'd like to make a suggestion. I'm sure we have a lot of people here who are anxious to get the information that will be covered tonight. We have external presenters here. And I don't want to hold them up too, too long before they have an opportunity to speak. So I'd like to put a motion and see how everyone feels about it. Anyone who wants to speak before the meeting who is here in the room, we would hear those. But any of our voicemail public comments or email public comments, that we hold those to the end of the meeting. JUST TO KIND OF MOVE THINGS ALONG A LITTLE BIT AND GET US INTO THE MEET OF THE PRESENTATIONS AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. SO...

YES.

YEAH. SO IT'S KIND OF, LET ME KIND OF PUT IT SUSTAINABLY. EXCEPT FOR IN-PERSON PUBLIC COMMENT, I'D LIKE TO MAKE A MOTION THAT WE SUSPEND POLICY NUMBER 2021-05 and hear all general public e-comments and voicemails at the end of the meeting.

You can make administrative motions at workshops.

I have a motion on the floor made by Vice Mayor. Do I have a second?

Second.

I have a second by Commissioner Duvall. If there's anything to that. And that passes five to zero. Okay, moving on to in-person public comment. For the first public comment, city clerk.

I have Ashley Sini, followed by Jenna DaCosta and Anna Schelzer.

Good evening. My name is Jenna DaCosta. I live in Northport, and yes, I did something a little unhinged again. I read the resubmitted application. Full disclosure, I'm an inactive certified public accountant. Last time I stood here, I showed you an application that contradicted itself. Well, apparently, we're doing this again, y'all. The math still ain't mathing. North Port may not have a staples, but we can match numbers across documents. City staff specifically required this applicant to reconcile two different project sizes. The applicant responded that the plans had been corrected to 896,000 square feet. Except they weren't. The resubmitted utility plans repeatedly identified buildings as 137,921 square feet each. I won't make you do the mental math, but that's essentially the old project square footage, not the supposed corrected 896,000. And my personal favorite, one revised utility sheet identifies building number four as 1,137,920 square feet. I hope that's a typo. But why is it the city's job to catch it? This is the resubmission. And there's more. Staff told the applicant its title information was outdated. Their response says the revised title is in progress while asking to move beyond sufficiency. Meanwhile, their 2021 land title survey references the public records of Miami-Dade County. Twice! This property is in Sarasota County. What? The Florida. Then there's the water. The entire water calculation starts with one basic assumption. This data center equals exactly 100 ERCs. But I cannot find the project specific support calculation for that starting number. on which every subsequent calculation is based. I cannot find the cooling technology or the industrial process assumptions the city specifically requested in auditing that's called unsupported assertion. In 2026, that's, trust me, bro. These plans claim 15,500 potable gallons per day, yet they also include a half million gallon per day wastewater treatment plant. We've all experienced AI slop, but these documents were prepared, reviewed, and submitted by humans twice. So the original application contradicted itself. So does the resubmission. North Port residents are expected to get the details right for a fence or a shed. Surely a project of this magnitude can do the same. Thank you.

Ashley?

Hello and good evening. My name is Ashley Servai and I'm here today to express my opposition to AI data centers in North Florida. I will focus on the negative health effects created by them. The American Law Association reported increased air pollution due to electricity demand from AI data centers, releasing nitrogen oxides, particulate matter, and other harmful chemicals linked to asthma, heart disease, and premature death. Research by Virginia Commonwealth University estimates this pollution contributing to 1,300 premature deaths annually by 2030. Would you really be able to live with yourselves knowing that you contributed to this tragedy? These data centers require several pieces of technology that are known to be sources of PFAS-corrupt forever chemicals linked to cancer, reproductive harm, immune dysfunction, and many other adverse health effects. On top of all this, data centers emit infrasound and ultrasonic noise, frequencies outside of our hearing range, which impact sleep, stress, mental health, and cognitive performance. They also produce low frequency noise that when humans have prolonged exposure to, can not only reduce productivity, but also impair the immune system, stress hormone concentrations, and even elevate respiratory and heart rates. With all of this, do you truly think it's worth putting us, your constituents, through this struggle? We gathered here first on Monday to express that no, we don't want an AI data center and we're willing to stand up for that. And now we are here today to do the same. I urge you to think deeply on this and consider not just mine, but all of our words. Thank you.

Hi, my name is Ana Shlajka. I live for 11 years already in Northport. And when we moved in into this town, it was a quiet, beautiful town with a lot of greenery. Everything has been changed through the 10 years. And when I learned that there is a data center supposed to be brought up in the township, I was just thinking I need to pack and move because I really don't want to live in this environment. I came for the beauty of the serenity of the nature and now we're coming and we're going to stay in an industrial place? That's not for me. That's not my choice. It's not. Everything is money and we have to remember this, the quality of life. And actually, I'm really surprised, I never, I didn't have a chance to see any due diligence information from this project. And therefore, I'm gonna list what is really, should be included in this study. First of all, traffic impact study. Stormwater drainage study. Environmental and wetland assessment. Noise study. electrical utility capacity study, water and waste water impact analysis, fire and emergency response assessment, air quality, emission assessment, environmental impact on nearby homes and wildlife, which is very, very important. construction impact study, heavy trucks, dust, noise, road damage. I'm not talking about a dollar amount because somebody has to support all this. And I would really like to find a place where I can read everything about these studies before moving forward and make any decision.

and Al Picoch, Pam Terhors, and Lynn Riepe.

Good evening, commissioners and fellow residents. We now have an applicant proposing a development that includes a seven building data center complex. That applicant must already have invested a substantial amount of money in engineering, planning, and development. We are now open to possible lawsuits. How did we get to this point? I'm not surprised. The current ULDC is open to many possible lawsuits. No wonder our former attorney left town. One of the concerns is that too many major land use decisions appear to have been driven by staff recommendations without early involvement from the residents, property owners, realtors, and builders who are directly affected by them. Let me give you a couple of real world examples. Recently I called a realtor who had just sold a vacant lot in an area that the new ULDC rezoned to commercial. I asked her what the buyer intended to build there. Her response was, they are going to build a single family home. The buyer apparently didn't even realize the property had been rezoned commercial. Would they now sue the broker, the city? This isn't an isolated problem. Here's an example of an MLS listing, which I took at random, and I've seen many of them, that they have zoning RSF2. In the public descriptions, they say, build your dream home surrounded by Florida's lush landscape. Now, this is in a commercial area. It's been two years since the ULDC has been in effect. Why hasn't the city... work directly with our local realtor associations to make sure every realtor in this area understands the zoning changes. Buyers should know what they can and cannot build before they purchase a property. In a small section of southeastern portion of AC10, there is an established area containing a number of existing single-family homes, yet the new ULDC has designated that area for commercial development. That doesn't make sense. Imagine the reaction from those homeowners when someone eventually proposes a commercial development next door. And I can give you the property IDs on those. Finally, we need much more community and industry involvement before making major land use decisions. I recommend a advisory committee made up of local residents, property owners, realtors, and local home builders, particularly the builders who construct single-family homes on individual lots through Northport. Thank you, sir. Thank you. Thank you for your service. Thank you.

Hi, Pam Tokars for the record, and I have to use my glasses because I can't read my handwriting. And I did write it myself. I didn't use AI. North Port, we have a problem. With this recent data center application and the NDA involved, the majority of the residents have lost all trust with our city government. Yes, the NDA was legal and the developer had every right to request one. City policy was followed and staff were following proper procedure. But to many residents, things are just not adding up. They have lost faith and trust in the people who represent them and the staff that taxpayers fund their salaries. It's just not the data center issue. There are other issues that have been building up throughout the years. I can offer examples, but that's not the point of my speech. My point is to at least start the conversation on how to fix this. Will there be people unhappy with everything? Yes, there always will. But we elected commissioners to represent 100% of the population. I've been asking since 2024 that we need to have a town hall style meeting where commissioners, staff, and residents can have a meaningful dialogue and honest conversation and not the politically correct talking points. Since the data center is the straw that broke the camel's back, we can start with that. An honest timeline of the events from when the North Port Holdings first contacted the city looking for property to develop up till today. Will it be a perfect solution? Probably not, but it's a start. I'm ready to try. The relationship with the city and 100% of the residents has to improve, otherwise the future of the city is at stake. This is not to blame one side or any other side. We'll always have different points of view on how something should be done. But that's okay. There should always be two sides. It's the relationship of the different opinions that need to meld or meet in the middle. I've already given the compromise speech, but it needs to be taken seriously this time. A North Port provider cannot stand. Thank you, ma'am.

Ms. Ruppe?

My name is Liz Riepe. I've been a resident here for 13 years, 10 of them happy. Then I watched three years of the deterioration that we're watching. I was a member of Northcourt Friends of Wildlife. I think at this point we need a Northcourt Friends of Human Life. I won't repeat the obvious negative issues. They've been said over and over again. What I want to do is give you a background of how very close this Yorkshire property is. From my residence, Garden Side neighborhood, by car it's six and a half miles. As the crow flies, it's about four. Surrounding this location are two preserved areas. To the northeast of this, we have the Orange Hammock Wildlife Management Area, 5,800 acres. It's a preserved purchase by the state to prevent residential development. Then, three miles from this property, the Yorkshire Hammock helps to form what is the conservation corridor where wildlife goes through. This area collects heavy rainfall that helps to supply North Port's clean drinking water. via the reservoirs. Currently, it's a remote pristine area, oak hammock, scrub forest, and over 200 interconnected wetlands. Wildlife, deer, bobwhite quail, sandhill cranes, crested carrot-carrot, black bears, the occasional endangered panther. Now to the east of the property, is the RV Griffin Reserve. It was purchased and managed, and get this, it's managed by the Peace River, Minnesota Regional Water Supply Authority, who I believe is one of the speakers. It was purchased to protect regional water resources. It has a drinking water reservoir. Drinking water. It has, you know, the trails and what have you. The kicker is it functions as an active cattle ranch. And a Texan cattle rancher that had a data center open next to it, all the calves are coming out stillborn. I'm guessing all the wildlife we used to see has relocated, and this city manager and the commissioners have done some unattractive building, but this is outrageous. This is the epitome of destruction. I will close by thanking you for bringing to my attention that I now have to, I no longer trust you, and I have to remain on high alert from now on.

Tim Ritchie, followed by Samuel Tugning and John Prespa.

Good evening, everybody in the chamber. Thanks for all the public speakers. You know, stillborn calves. I've been hearing that for quite some time now. We have a real problem with water. I coined a phrase almost eight and a half years ago. It's called the Florida water quality crisis. It's a lot more serious than most of you think because you're so disconnected from reality. And I mean seriously disconnected from reality. We have all these college educated geniuses in FDEP and all these corporations, and they're experts on everything except life itself. And I want to reiterate this to you right now, because this goes for all 67 counties in every city. you're going to be getting letters of intent to sue. Because I don't want this in Charlotte County on the border in the Yorkshire neighborhood. I don't want it near the city of Punta Gorda. I don't want it in the city of Northcourt. I don't want any of this stuff anywhere. The main thing we don't want is that nuclear power facility being built. And I want you all to know this. If you think you want to shower or drink water from toilet to tap, you all better get ready. We want way better government. We don't care about the corporations anymore. We want the government to be for the quality of life for the citizens. Commissioner Dimitri stated that very eloquently at the last meeting. We don't have the water. Southwest Florida Water Management District doesn't know what they're doing. Nor does FDEP and the Peace River, Minnesota Regional Water Supply Authority. I've told them their numbers have been off for a long time, starting back with Director Patrick Lehman. The expansion they want to do is inadequate. Do you know how much water evaporates daily in the reservoir?

Thank you, sir.

Thank you, everybody.

Good evening, everybody. Council, my name is Samuel Turpening and I'm standing at this podium to deliver yet another reality to the representatives this time from Florida Power and Light and the Water Authorities and this commission. We're here to talk about infrastructure demand, so let's look at the actual math. The United States electrical grid is facing a D-minus structural crisis. Here in Florida, our storm-prone grid barely scratches a B-minus. Yet your plan to fix the structural deficit for a massive power-hungry hyper data center is to introduce absolute insanity. Nuclear micro-reactors. Let's talk about the geography of the ground we are standing on. Florida sits entirely on top of highly porous, fragile limestone topography. Building nuclear utility infrastructure on a porous karst aquifer is an accidental threat to the state. Any seismic shift, any structural failure, any severe hurricane event will cause an immediate catastrophic leak directly into the Floridian aquifer, permanently destroying the drinking water for 10 million people. These data center conglomerates want us to believe they operate in a digital vacuum. They don't. Their immense energy lines, their substations, and their massive cooling plants require millions of gallons of water every single day just to keep from melting down. Where do you think that water is coming from? We're sitting right here, right now, under strict phase three water extreme shortages. Everyday citizens are being legally restricted on their own private wells because our water supply is desperately gasping for survival. We do not have the water to keep our corporate data centers cool. We barely have enough water to sustain our own communities. You are trying to sacrifice our natural resources, endanger our public safety, and gamble with the little lifeline of 10 million Floridians just to secure a corporate tech footprint. Local well-filled ordinances must protect the entire aquifer because there is no safe location within the state to place these industrial utility systems. The corporate takeover of our water ends at this podium. The citizens of Northport are a unified, resounding no. And I yield my time. Thank you, sir.

Thank you.

Mayor, commissioners, city staff, citizens. Once upon a time in a sunny city called Northport, a growing community lived but the leaders could never borrow a single coin for new projects unless most of the townspeople voted, wow, yes. Decades passed, the town grew bigger, but the roads, bridges and canals aged and development of neighboring communities sped ahead. Because 92% of North Port's treasure chest came only from the pockets of homeowners, life grew less and less affordable. The leaders kept asking for more coins, but frustrated townspeople kept shouting, heck no. Then a magical merchant appeared at the Kingdom's Gate data centers, and this was called Plan A. These giant vault keepers promised to shower the town with gold to fix broken roads and restore canals, lowering the tax burden on local families and restoring affordability. Yet many citizens still cried, heck no. So I must ask the leaders and the citizens tonight, what is plan B? What is plan B? you the homeowners are plan b if the plan a is turned away residents will pay far more coins while receiving far fewer services a true fiscal death spiral replacing the leaders won't correct the problem only a shift in wisdom will Inviting strong commercial partners is the fastest way to keep our town affordable. I urge our leaders to welcome this data center, but do not hand over a blank check. Write smart, protective rules into the charter to guard our woods and waters without scaring the data center away. We do not have to choose between protecting our city and securing an affordable future. With the right balance, we can coexist and thrive together. Let's make Plan A work. Thank you. Thank you, sir.

Lori Torriero, followed by Randall Hess and Virginia Lewis.

Good evening and thank you for the opportunity to speak to you tonight. I am neither for nor against this development. But I do have some questions that I hope will be answered by some of our guest speakers tonight. And if I have these questions, my hope is that you also have these questions and have thought ahead and will find out the answers to these questions before you approve any development of this size. My first question relates to power. Any large structure is going to require a lot of power to operate, especially in our climate, because air conditioning eats a lot of power. So one question I would have is, has anyone considered requiring solar panels and battery systems for any development or any large commercial building over a certain size. And I don't know what that size should be. That's up to y'all. But I think, having put such a system on my own home, that, you know, we don't want to turn into another Texas where our power grid fails every time there's a storm. And God knows in Florida, we get them. So that's one question I have. The other questions I have relate to water. Does this data center need potable water for coolant? If it's only going to be used for coolant, why does it have to be treated water? That's one question. Another question is, is the developer required to inform you and us what chemicals would be added to the coolant water? And I'm sure there will be chemicals added to that water, because I add chemicals to my own condensation system in my own air conditioning system so that slime mold doesn't grow and other contaminants that might clog the system. And the last question, and this is one of those, you know, I've worked in government for 40 years. I get it. I really do. But you've got to think beyond tomorrow. What happens if and when that coolant system fails? in any amount of that treated water, that chemical-filled water, ends up on the ground, as I have now heard, so close to the supplies of our drinking water. And 10 years down the road, 20 years down the road, 50 years down the road, when that data center is no longer a viable concern, Because technology is changing that quickly. What happens to the hundreds of millions of gallons of now contaminated water in the coolant system?

Thank you, ma'am.

I wasn't going to speak this evening, but you know what? You commissioners need to strip Emmerich of his title of mayor for calling a citizen a fucking idiot Monday evening. It's all over YouTube and it's all over Facebook. How unprofessional. And then you try to deny it. I have no respect for you. And you know what? No data center. We don't need it. You just put us on restriction for water and then you want to build a data center? Does that even make sense to anybody? Does it? No, it doesn't. I don't know. I don't even know how you guys became commissioner because it doesn't make sense. You're not representing the citizens of Northport. I'm disappointed. You guys are a mess. A mess. We don't need it. I'm for just getting rid of all governments.

good evening everyone my name is randall hess i'm glad to see everybody here tonight not quite as big of a crowd as was the other night but still a good crowd so thank you all for showing up so one thing i do want to say is that Commissioners, you guys are the reason that we're here right now. You're the reason that all these people are upset and pissed off. It's not anybody else's fault, but yours. You guys are the ones that changed the ULDC, allowing all of this stuff going in the way it is. You guys allow the nondisclosure agreements, and I know it's approved by the state to be able to do that, but it's still something that I think should be open to the public to be able to see what's coming into the city before it's even approved or the plans are even submitted to the city. So a couple of things that I do want to talk about about the data center is, one, I am definitely against it. So I have seen firsthand the water consumption If you do your own research, talk to some of these other jurisdictions that have these data centers in and the closed-loop systems. They use way more water, and more water is being used because of these data systems than what's being told to you. So just for example, there's one data center. I've got a buddy of mine that works on the mechanical side on one data center. And there's, I think, 12 units or something on this one. But just two banks alone, or two units alone, take 1.6 million gallons of water to fill. All right? Think about that. 1.6 million gallons of water to fill. From what I heard, oh, no, these aren't going to use any more than, what, a restaurant or a building or something? That's ridiculous. Not only does it take 1.6 million gallons of water to fill, but you have to fill that data center three times. before you do a final fill because you gotta flush out all the impurities inside of it before you can use that water for a final use. So a couple of things also is the water's not only being used by the data center. Think about the electricity and stuff that you have to produce for that data center. That water has to cool that electrical plant. So we're using a lot more water in the back end than what they're selling you up front. So there needs to be studies, and you guys really need to do your research and stuff into all this. It is not fair to the citizens to have this noise and stuff in the area. And when I say noise, just the one, just the units that my buddy's working on, think about this. There's 1,200, okay, 1,200 compressors running these chillers, all right? On top of the 1,200 compressors running the chillers, there's 2,400 bands that are running just to keep those compressors going. So imagine that noise and stuff in the neighborhood. And yes, you can hear it about a mile out. I've experienced it myself. So anyways, I'll just say that, again, in closing, again, it's your guys' fault. That's all I can say. And I just wish you guys could do a better job. I've only been here for three years, and it's gotten a lot worse in those three years. So thank you. Thank you, sir.

Thank you. David Lee and Anna.

My name is David Lee. I've been a resident of North Ward for 20 years plus. And I, like others, have seen the degradation of the care that you guys have for life and the residents of this city. And it's very upsetting because you're our only go-between between anything that happens here and everything that happens with all the buyouts and the payoffs and all the corporate greed. We just want to live. We want to live happily here in this country, in this city, where we've been happy for many years. I don't understand this whole race to AI to begin with. We're racing against China for AI. What's the race for? What do we accomplish in this race, and what's the goal of this race? Number one. Number two, why is it that money is worth more than life and health? We live in a society now where we can't even get food, honestly, that's good for us. Because our medical system makes more money off of sick people than they do off the healthy people. And that's why we have the worst medical situation in the world. I don't understand why you people can't understand. You have families too. You live, you breed, you drink the same water. Our aquifer here in Northport goes from northeast to southwest. So anything that happens in the northern end of the city and the northern eastern end of the city is going to directly affect the whole city eventually if there's any problems. Now I understand a lot of these cities have had problems with this and they do a contained water system that doesn't draw from the aquifer and they do a contained system. They still need that water to start up from. I don't understand why they can't use salt water It's cool. Boats run on coolant water for all the time right in the ocean, and there's no need to affect drinking water, potable water. That's just ridiculous. Our wells are already getting affected from the constructions going on in the north and the east end as it is through the rest of the city. electrical. We know that this processing plant that they're talking about building is going to easily double the supply of electricity that your city is able to provide right now for the residents that live here in the city. Our city is one of the largest cities in the state, if not the largest city of square mile area. It's not even built out yet. I've been here 20 years and seen the build out go crazy. So what about that electricity and future use for all the residents? Number one, And number two, all these transformers that are around everywhere up in the air, we've yet to start putting all of our wires underground to protect them from power line problems and storms and hurricanes. Other cities are putting them underground to protect them so that we don't have these major catastrophes during a storm. So why aren't they putting the power lines underneath? And what's the plan for all these aging transformers that are around our city now? Many of these have 40- or 50-year life expectancy, and they're all nearing or past that now. And are they still taking that into consideration to be proactive so that we're not having people that are shut down for weeks at a time for electricity only because of aging equipment that a penny worth of maintenance could have taken care of $1,000 worth of repair? So my last thing I want to say is I'm completely against the data centers here or anywhere in the world because I don't think that they help anybody live any better. And they're only worried about 10 employees at most at these buildings. They're not going to bring jobs either. All they're going to do is pay the people that approve it.

Good afternoon, everybody. My name is Anna. and I've been living in this lovely Northport.

Can you step closer to the microphone? We're having a hard time hearing you.

Oh, okay.

My apologies.

Okay, so let me start all over again. Yes, ma'am. Good afternoon, everybody. My name is Ana, and I've been living in this lovely Northport for the last 26 years, so I saw a lot of changes. I really don't have more questions for you representatives. because I believe my neighbors have addressed not 100%, but the most concerns that we, the citizens of this city, have. So I just want to bring to your attention, and I'm sure you already know, since the last two weeks, the government, meaning the White House specifically, has been pounding power plants, data centers is the only way to ease the concerns to the residents of that cities about electricity, about water, about climate, air, you name it. Even this afternoon, the vice president was saying, oh, what is the problem with the data center? You just have your power plant. You need the power plant before the data center, and everything is going to go perfect. So my question to you, and please forgive me, are we talking about building one, building center, infrastructure, however you want to say it, or we're talking about two, power plant and data center? If you're going to follow the instructions, for the lower government. And to all of you, please forgive me. The next time you need to go and vote, do your homework thoroughly. Because when they are going for elections, they're gonna tell you what you wanna hear. know what the reality is. And I know that from fact, because I come from South America. And I know about from the A through the C. And I also know how it's to live within terrorism. Walking to your grocery store and the car bomb just exploded next to you. So I hope that you can address the question. Our plan, data center, which one is going to be built first? Thank you for the time.

Thank you. That's it for public comment. Okay. Moving on to presentations. Item 26-1098, city manager, this is your item.

thank you this is presentation regarding data center research and information from regional experts including representatives from florida power and life peace river mannesota regional water supply authority and the florida digital infrastructure and security alliance um if we can pull up the presentation on the screen please all right so tonight's presentation will include a report an overview of community feedback that we have received I have tonight a look at the state and local legislation that applies here, presentations from some of the matter experts, an update on the current application and the report, an update on the proposed moratorium and next steps. There will be time at the end for questions to people presented. Mr. Mayor. So our conversation is a community-led discussion. We surveyed the residents ahead of time to find out what we wanted to know. And tonight's agenda is built around that same feedback. Education is not a private discussion. This is not particular to any one particular project. It is about understanding what the answers are and how they work. We want to provide information out of advocacy. Our job tonight is to put the facts expert perspectives on the table so that the Commission and this community can make informed decisions. Those perspectives today will lead today's discussion and will include insights from information we received from Gartner, Global Research and Advisory Company, Peace River, Minnesota Regional Water Supply Authority, Florida Power and Light, and Florida Digital Infrastructure and Security Alliance. During our process, we also reached out to environmental regulation agencies and regional environmental consultants, but we were unable to include them tonight. We may not be able to answer every question today, and outstanding questions will be researched and published online. Information is presented today at nofomore.gov slash data center info. So we want to make sure that everyone understands that there are just A handful of recent headlines nationally in Florida that show how much attention this issue is getting and how differently it's being covered depending on the community you live in. We will not read through each one, but I encourage you to notice the range. Some focus on economic opportunity, some focus on rain and air protection, some on water and environmental concerns. and some on just the politics of it all. All of that is part of the same national conversation that the real court is now a part of. Knowing that this conversation is not unique to North Fork, there has been rapid growth in artificial intelligence, cloud computing, and digital services in broad demand for data center infrastructure across the country. And everywhere that's happening, communities, utilities, policymakers, and industries are asking the same questions we are about power demand, water use, environmental impact, infrastructure costs, economic development, and what the community actually gets out of it. Those questions are being worked through right now with every level of government, from the White House and the state legislators, to utility regulators, to city halls, just like the one that we're in now. Some communities are moving fast to attract this kind of investment. Others are pumping the brakes with moratoriums of their own while they study the impacts. And you'll see a sample of that national coverage on the next slide in a wide view of where they are. but the point is elected officials and communities everywhere are wrestling with the exact same trade-offs we are and our goal is to make sure that we gather the facts follow the law and hear from people who are qualified and let that guide the process and that will be including the commission's deliberation which will tell us where we go from there to help Brown tonight's discussion is based on facts. I wanted to talk about some information that we did receive from Gardner. They could not be here in person, but they gave us information on technology trends. And it's meant to give us all a shared factual understanding of what a data center is before we get into local specifics. This map from Pew Research shows where data centers are concentrated nationally. You can see Virginia and Texas and California lead the country in markets like Chicago. Columbus, Phoenix, and Atlanta have also seen significant growth. The point is, North Port is on this map, and it isn't that North Port is on this map. It is to show the scale of what's happening across the country and give us the context for why this industry has become such a common topic for local governments everywhere. What is physically inside of a data center? So that's one of the primary questions we heard in the survey that we did. You've got what's called gray space, the supporting equipment like cooling modules, power systems, and battery backup. And you have white space, which is the primary equipment, the high-density server racks, storage, and network equipment that actually do the computing. Understanding this layout will help frame a lot of the questions we get into tonight around power, cooling, and water use. With that ground in place, let's take a look at what our community showed us, starting with the results of our pre-shot survey. An online survey was shared by the city head of this workshop to determine which topics the community was most interested in. It went from August 10 to the 21st of this year.

We had 476 people start the survey and 253 people completing it.

And the total data points collected was 4,160, meaning out of the ones that were not completed, they still provided some information that was helpful to the conversation. So which topics would the city like us to cover most during this workshop? Number one was water use and conservation practices. Number two was the environmental considerations. Number three was health considerations. Four, energy use and efficiency. And five is how our data centers pool. The question was, how familiar are you with details on data centers and community impacts? Some were familiar, like the way of the 40%, 31% said they were very familiar, 23% said I've heard of them but don't know much, and 4% said I know little to nothing. This slide shows a question of what services do you think rely on data centers and select all that apply. And the answer was that all of them do apply. But the top five were AI services, cloud storage, health care systems and medicals, social media, and defense and national security. As you can see, that's a large, wide range of responses we received from our community. Which level of detail would be most helpful to you as we learn going forward? The momentum was an in-depth explanation with detailed technical information and examples at 45%. At 41%, there was a balanced explanation combining key concepts and supporting technical details. At 13%, there was a high level where we focused on key concepts and practical takeaways. Which types of sources would you find most valuable? The combination of these sources, depending on the topic, is 59%. Research, data, and analysis from professional or academic sources, 20%. Practical guidance with no word examples from other organizations, 14%. And then official guidance, policy recommendations, and industry standards. Here you can see a word file based on the most common words and written responses. No surprise, there's water impact, city, residents, citizens, environment, wildlife, all the things that we talk about and continue to talk about are in our word cloud. It's important to know that there's existing legislation and regulations regarding data centers that you may or may not be aware of, so we want to go through that briefly. You might have heard of the Florida Senate Bill 484 and what does it do. Preserved local authority. It's confirmed that local governments retain authority over comprehensive planning, zoning, and land development regulations for large-scale data centers and other large load users. It protects existing utility customers. It requires large load customers to bear the full cost of the electric infrastructure and service they require, rather than shifting those costs or financial risks to other ratepayers. It defines large scale. What is large scale? It establishes a threshold of 50 megawatts or more of anticipated monthly peak electrical demand at a single location. It establishes water protections. Water permits cannot be issued with proposed use when harm local water resources or conflict with the applicable local zoning or comprehensive plans. IT PRIORITIZES REPLAINED WATER, REQUIRED USE OF REPLAINED WATER INSTEAD OF SERVICE OF GROUND WATER WHEN SPECIFIED AVAILABILITY, CAPACITY, AND FEASIBILITY AND OTHER REQUIREMENTS ARE MET. IT ASKS REQUIREMENTS FOR SUBJECTED WATER USERS. LARGE-SCALE DATA REQUESTING 100,000 PLUS GALLONS A DAY MUST PROVIDE DETAILED WATER USE INFORMATION TO YOUR WATER CONSERVATION PLAN AND THE PERMIT CANNOT BE APPROVED WITHOUT A HEARING. REQUIRES FURTHER state study directs the office of program policy analysis and government accountability to conduct an independent study examining economic tax land water energy rate public health and safety impacts along with cycling and mitigation recommendations due by july 1st of 2027. Told us in Bill 180, also very often spoke about limits new moratoriums after a hurricane. For one year after a hurricane big landfall and impacted local government, generally they did not propose or adopt a moratorium on destruction, reconstruction, or redevelopment of property. No, the law of positive municipalities located within a county included in a federal disaster declaration and within 100 miles of the hurricane track. It could restrict a data center moratorium. If those conditions apply, a new city moratorium intended to pause or prevent development of data centers could potentially fall within the bill's prohibition on adopting a development moratorium during that one-year period. It also limits more restrictive development rules, but one year after a hurricane makes landfall and until October 1, 2027, the Senate generally may not adapt more restrictive or burdensome amendments to its comprehensive plan, land development regulations, or development review procedures. Existing applicant-initiated actions have exceptions. The law contains exceptions for certain privately-initiated applications. And some planning actions are already underway before the Hurricane McSlander fall. The legal challenge provisions. The law allows a person to challenge a local government action that allegedly violates these restrictions with potential injunction of police and attorneys. The Burke Harris Jr. Private Property Rights Protection Act. This protects private property rights. Provides property owners with legal avenues for relief when a new government law, regulation, or ordinance unfairly avenges the use of their property. It could apply to city land use decisions. Government actions covered by the act include adopting or enforcing an ordinance, resolution, regulation, or rule affecting real property. The potential relevance of this to the Datsun moratorium is that if a moratorium permanently restricts a property owner's existing use or vested right to develop the property for a particular use, the owner could potentially pursue a claim that the city's action created an inordinate burden. Temporary moratoriums are treated differently. That act specifically excludes temporary impacts from its definition of an inordinate burden. However, a temporary impact on development lasting longer than one year, depending on circumstances, may qualify. The potential of financial exposure. If a court finds that the city's action is an inordinate burden, a qualifying property right, the property owner may be entitled to compensation for the resultant loss in their fair market value. and clinically litigate litigation costs. A prevailing property owner may also recover reasonable costs and attorneys from the government's own entity. Here you see the permitting agencies and their authority. The city of Guilford is not just the only regulatory and government that is involved in the process. It's a very multi-process. You see Florida Flower and Light, Florida Public Service Commission, Southwest Water Management, this is also known as SWFMUD, Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation, Florida Department of Environmental Protection, DEP, Department of Health, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the U.S. Bureau of Wildlife, as well as Federal Agents of Equipment Commission. So these are some of the agencies that are put in place to make sure that things are followed properly. The sufficiency review, the development review process, Planning is going to examine and determine whether the application materials are sufficient to send to city departments for development review and the municipality may request additional information for more than three times unless the applicant waives that particular limitation. Continuing once an application has been deemed sufficient, the land development applications undergo extensive review by our certified staff. The review and approval or denial cycle is required to be completed by law by 120 days for administrative approval or 180 days for those requiring public hearing approval. Some of the entities and reviewers of this particular process of fire rescue have the resources, parks and rec, planning zoning, police, public works, and utilities. The DRC area reviews for the comprehensive plan goals, objectives, and policy include the future land use element, transportation element, utilities, conservation elements, as well as the recreation, open space element, inter-government coordination element, housing element, capital improvement, economic development, property rights, and coastal zone management. Here are some of the other zoning is included as well. It's like development standards and technical specifications. All that you see there are things that we ensure, as I heard earlier, that we need to make sure is our content before we get in the process. The unifying then development code for concurrency management, that is to ensure the availability and adequacy of public facilities or capacity at the adopted level of service concur with the impacts of the proposed development, affordable water, public safety and fire, beautiful water, recreation and open space, sanitary sewer, solid waste and transportation. So what is within the city's control? The existing regulations can be strengthened and require sound measures or eliminate potential impacts surrounding properties. New data centers or data centers built to higher standards have less of a noise impact. Tax exempted. Incentives, which we've heard a lot of. No tax exemptions have been offered or requested for this project, and that is very rare, but we are not giving and they are not asking. Children of Power and Light had intended to be here today, but unfortunately they could not be here. We do believe that they haven't been seen. Now, if this was the only time we were going to speak to you, I think I would feel the exact same way. But this is not the only time we're going to speak to you. As I said earlier, we don't have anybody from the environment here either. I didn't hear a groan, but they will be here. This is a process that we are going through. And if we don't keep you included in said process, then we cannot get to wherever we're going to get to and wherever we're off when we get to together. So if this was the only one that you wanted them here, then they're not going to be here. So please, think that they will be here. These are the questions and information that they actually sent over so that you could have information regardless of whether you're here or not. The information that they provided were questions that they had received from many people before today. So as a regulated entity, FDL has an obligation to provide electrical service to all customers in our service area, including Jacksonville. I'm sure that we continue to provide reliable power to our existing customers. Our large load rating structure is specifically designed to protect existing customers by requiring qualified large load customers, including those, to pay 100% of the costs associated with their facilities. This framework helps ensure the costs of new infrastructure needed to serve these projects are borne by the customer requesting the service, not other FPL customers. In addition, FDL evaluates each large load request to ensure we continue to meet the high reliability standards that they have. Any generation, transition, or distribution infrastructure needed to serve a new large load facility is planned and constructed as part of that process. Ensuring reliability is not affected for responsible growth while maintaining the reliability our customers expect. So how does an application come to FDL? Data is the defined process for onboarding large host customers, including the data centers. The centers tell FDL the maximum power they need and how fast they plan to reach that level. Both are essential for FDL to plan the infrastructure required to serve them. From there, FDL conducts a system study, which typically takes about six to nine months to estimate the time and cost to interconnect. The study is paid for by the center customer. Once the customer accepts the study results, the party will move towards execution of agreements, payment, and provision of formal security. So how does NPO review its ability and capacity to serve? It's important to note that they are not simply plugging it into our grid. The power and infrastructure needed to power their data centers will be built and added to their grid at the expense of the data center company. They will then evaluate the requested project at the customer's preferred site and determine what is required to reliably interconnect it and serve it. They will conduct rigorous engineering studies at the project's expense to determine how best to serve it while maintaining reliable service for all customers. They plan ahead for systems growth. Their planning, operation, transmission, and distribution, hardening, and other system improvements are detailed in their 10-year site plans filed annually with the Florida Public Service Commission. How will the capacity measure the current demand versus the future build-out? For large load projects, FDL asks the customer to provide both its peak contract demand and its load ramp. That means the review is not just limited to what the customer may consume on one day and considers the requested demands as the project ramps. The study allows FDL to identify the facilities and timing required to accommodate that expected load, So if more infrastructure is needed for a requested use, who pays for it? The central principle of FDL's large load framework is that incremental large loads should bear the appropriate incremental costs of serving them while protecting FDL's general body of customers. As part of the BAFTA's power process, the customer may be required to pay their contribution in aid of construction associated facilities necessary to interconnect the project. The large load rate itself includes an incremental generational component to be paid for by the data center with FPL determining the generation type and location. So what are FPL regulatory requirements for electrical supply to the area and to new development? FPL operates, as I said, as a regulated electrical utility with system planning and rates subject to oversight by the FPSC. The large load structure was unanimously approved by the FEC last year. It aligns with the Florida data center, SB 484, requiring data centers to pay their full cost of electric service, including 100% of the new power generation to serve. Our plan, the FBO plan's system improvements and expansion are detailed in their 10-year plan, and that is fine. But the rates and cost allocations are also subject to regulatory oversight. So there are guardrails in place. When you think about what is FDL's current capacity compared with the potential needs of a data center, FDL has a system capacity of about 36 gigawatts, serving more than 12 million customers across the state. And that capacity includes the required reserve margin to account for emergencies or equipment unavailability. But again, a data center will not simply start using power from our existing capacity. They will pay for the incremental infrastructure and power added to the system to support their facility. And this will add infrastructure capacity and maintain reliability for our existing customers as well. When you look at how many users fees or access to services be impacted if a large user like a data center came online. In short, existing customers will not be affected. Protecting the general value of customers is an explicit design principle of their large goal framework. In short, our existing customers will not be charged with the incremental generation needed to power a new data center. The rate structure will include a minimum demand charge, a long-term commitment for at least 20 years, and financial penalty penalties if the data center fails to meet its obligations or become online as a player. Now I would like to welcome Mr. Richard Anderson, the Executive Director of the Peace River of Minnesota Regional Water Supply Authority, to walk through a few slides down under his authority. Thank you.

There we go. Thank you, Mr. Fletcher. Mayor, commissioners, appreciate you all inviting me to be here today. I think I saw the FPL guy at Chili's before the meeting. Sorry, I don't know. Need to make way.

Good morning, Richard.

Thank you. Here today, I have just a few slides. I wanted to spend a few minutes talking about the authority covering some of our background, who the authority is, our history, and really our role in your water supply. As you can see here, we are a regional wholesale water supplier. We serve the four county area bounded by Manatee County, Sarasota, DeSoto, and Charlotte County. We were actually created in 1982 as a special district of the state. We're an independent special district. under Chapter 373 for the statutes. And we operate our facility, you can see here on the right, just inside of DeSoto County where the star is. It's right on the Peace River, as some folks have mentioned here tonight. We acquired that facility from General Development in 1991, shortly before you all acquired the same surface water treatment plant, the Myakahatchee Creek facility. Yes, that's always, always, that's a mouthful for me all the time. The original facility that we operated was 12 MGD back in 1991. We've gone through two major expansions and one minor expansion. That capacity is now 51 MGD. We also operate a regional transmission system. We have 88 miles of large diameter pipes from 12 inch to 48 inch diameter that are dispersed throughout the four county region. We have 11 wholesale delivery points to the city of Norfolk. That's at the Cirrus meter and the Price meter. So we deliver you an average of about two MGD. Actually, that was the number for this year. You have a capacity of 2.9 MGD right now. We also operate three remote pumping stations and multiple emergency interconnects, both with our members and customers and with non-members, like the city of Punta Gorda. and the Englewood Water District. Some of the information on our governing documents. We have three major documents that guide our principles, and the first one being our interlocal agreement. That defines our service area, which is the four county area, our members, the board structure, our organization, and operating structure. The other agreement that guides our principles is the master water supply contract. That defines our obligation to provide water, your obligation to pay for that water. It covers procedures on how to build new supplies, how you request new supplies, and things like day-to-day operations, system pressures, water quality, and average day and peak day flow requirements that we have to meet to serve your needs. This is just a quick slide of a short timeline of the history of the authority. I kind of covered a little bit of it already. We were established in 1982. The original makeup was five members. Hardy County dropped out two years later in 1984. We were basically a planning agency for the first nine years. Again, in 1991, we acquired the Peace River facility. And that same year, North Port became a customer of the authority. Our first major expansion started in 1995. That was the PRO or the Peach River option. That added 12 MGD to the facilities. Then again, we did another expansion 10 years later, the REP or the Regional Expansion Program, which added another 12 MGD. That brought us to 48 MGD in capacity. And then we did a minor rebuild. of the original 1991 facility in 2015, and we're able to add about three MGD to that, bringing us to the total today of 51 MGD of capacity. We're currently, as has been mentioned here, we're in the middle of a construction project, expanding the facilities. We're adding a nine billion gallon storage reservoir on the R.V. Griffin property, as well as a 24 MGD expansion of our treatment facilities. just a little more of a deep dive on some of our statutes that govern our principles. As I said, our main focus as a wholesaler is developing, storing, supplying, and operating a regional water supply for wholesale purposes. We cannot engage in local water distribution. We are prohibited by statute from selling, unlike FPL, we can only sell to our members and customers. We cannot sell to a developer or an industrial user directly, we have to go through a customer such as yourself to supply that water. And all that is spelled out in our interlocal agreements and by Florida statutes. Again, the matched water supply contract drives all of our decisions. The four members make up our board, one member from each county. All members have an equal vote. The contract grants preferential rights to those four counties and the city to purchase water from the authorities. although Northport is a non-voting customer of the authority, you do have contractual rights and you are party to the Master Water Supply Contract. The contract establishes water allocations, and this is where the contractual obligations for us come into play. You request water from the authority and we have an obligation to supply that water. As I said, right now your allocation is 2.9 million gallons a day, average. If you have, you know, there's peak Factors and things like that, but annual average, you are authorized to take up to 2.9 million gallons a day. So how do you ask for more water? That's described in the contract, and we have an annual planning process. Each year, all the customers provide us with your demand projections for 20 years and a seven-year window. And that seven-year window is a commitment that you are going to buy the water and that we're going to build that water. Obviously, you can't ask for 20 million gallons tomorrow because we can't supply that. We can't build and permit that facility in that short of a time. So the contract contemplates that, allows us seven years to respond to your request. So if you ask for water today, I have seven years to build the facility, permit it, construct it, design it, do everything, and then start delivering that water after that seven-year period. And as kind of been mentioned so far today, we are in a drought right now. Wanted to mention that. That really is the main reason we drive our planning purposes. You know, some years are wet years. Some years, like this year, are extremely dry. We have been in a water shortage order since early this year, I think since March or April. And it does extend through October 1 of 2026. It limits, you know, irrigation and car washing, things like that. In response to that, we were given an emergency order by Swift Mud to withdraw extra water off the Peace River if we should need it. Shell Creek had a similar emergency order given to the city of Punta Gorda. I'm not sure if they're actually taking water or not under that provision, but we continue to use our aquifer storage and recovery wells. Those are wells that we inject water in in the wet season. If we need it, we take the water back out in the dry season and use it to augment our surface water supply at the facility. And the last slide I have for you here just gives you an idea of the allocations I mentioned earlier. Right now, the total allocations for the authority customers and members is 34.7 MGD. So you can see Sarasota's 15.1. The city is 2.9. With the construction of the projects that are going on now, we're adding another 18 MGD of allocation to the authority contract. So Sarasota is going up by 12. Charlotte's going up by 3. Northport, the slide was cut off, so it doesn't show it here. But Northport's going up by 2. So your future allocation will be 4.9 MGD. And then DeSoto's going up by 1. There'll be 1.7. But those allocations are spoken for based on the contractual obligation that we have with you. So any new water would have to be put through that process I mentioned, that seven-year process. And with that, I'd be happy to answer any questions.

OK, sorry. Sounds good. So next, we want to turn it over to Mr. Imran Siddiqui, the Executive Director of the Florida Digital Infrastructure and Security Alliance. Thank you, sir.

Thank you. Let me just set this up a little quickly. All right. Good evening, Mayor, Council, and the residents. I always love civic engagement, so I appreciate you guys coming out here tonight. So thank you for the opportunity. So my name is Imran Siddiqui, and I have the honor of serving as Executive Director of FIDISA, which is the Florida Digital Infrastructure and Security Alliance. We are a nonpartisan trade association representing Florida-based companies and experts from technology, energy, infrastructure, healthcare, and national security. Just want to say off the bat, we don't represent this builder. I don't even know this plan. I just kind of Googled the news article. We're kind of generally supportive of digital infrastructure across Florida, and I appreciate the opportunity to address you guys tonight. Our perspective is that Florida should compete for data center infrastructure and investment and the economic opportunity that comes with it. And the way that we believe we best grow the industry in Florida is to do it responsibly, thoughtfully, and based on facts. And that's why FDISA exists. We are Florida's evidence-based resource for elected officials and communities to help these conversations stay grounded in verifiable data, engineering, research, and actual lived experience. And we also believe credibility matters. So if we're going to advocate for this industry, we should be able to answer questions with facts. And we recognize that communities have reasonable questions related to noise, water use, aesthetics, or other impacts. And I want to just acknowledge those at the outset. We also believe that Florida is uniquely positioned to take advantage of this opportunity by addressing these matters through our existing regulatory and legal frameworks. So let me just start with something very simple. All of us here, right, at some point, I'm sure, or a majority of us have used, and by the way, I forgot to mention, this is our leadership. So this is the folks who are on our board. So feel free to review it. Who in this audience hasn't used Google Maps or checked online banking or streamed something online, a movie or music, or used an AI tool to create a flyer or to edit a text message or a newsletter? Every one of those transactions rely upon digital infrastructure. And that brings me to the simplest idea of what a data center is. The idea that the cloud is somewhere, right? Our family photos live somewhere. Our financial transactions are processed somewhere. The applications that run our businesses, the applications that run our hospitals, our schools, our governments, our banks, every major institution in society, it operates somewhere. That somewhere is a data center. And inside of that is something you're going to hear more and more about. compute. Compute is essentially computational horsepower. It's our ability to store information, process information, analyze enormous amounts of data, and run increasingly sophisticated applications, and yes, power artificial intelligence. What we are talking about is the physical infrastructure supporting the digital economy powering everyday life. So what exactly is a data center? I wanted to include this slide to give you a sense of scale. At the most basic level, a data center is a physical space where computational equipment is housed and operated. Servers operate and store information, data comes in, data goes out, right? On the far left, you see what would essentially be an IT closet that you'd find at a law firm or an accounting firm or a doctor's office. These are small facilities. They operate mostly in the kilowatts. Moving on from there, you have edge centers. They are primarily measured in the hundreds of kilowatts, sometimes up to low megawatts. Edge centers emphasize speed, right? So where you're talking about telecommunications, advanced manufacturing, healthcare, gaming, or autonomous vehicles, edge centers are critical. An enterprise data center is comprised of An enterprise data center is typically operated primarily in one organization. A co-location center, think of it as like an apartment building. So a company doesn't want to build out their own data center. They will rent out a portion of an existing data center. And then when people talk about the cloud, the cloud is somewhere visited, right? It's in all of these spaces. So that's how we get ultimately to the hyperscale data center. These are large facilities. You're talking about in the scale of hundreds of megawatts all the way up to AI campuses, which can be up to a gigawatt, right? So a kilowatt, think about it like a micro facility in your house or at your law firm. A thousand kilowatts to megawatt, a thousand megawatts is a gigawatt. So just keep that in mind as we are exploring this conversation. So all of these data centers, when we talk about data centers, It can mean a variety of things. It really ultimately comes down to scale. Each of these have different power requirements, cooling systems, wiring needs, acreage, investment levels, construction timelines, and community impacts. So, Commission, when a proposal comes to you, the first question should not simply be, do we want a data center? We all live off of these things and we're surrounded by them. It's about scale. The better question is, what type of facility is being proposed? How large is it? How much power does it need, initially and at build-out? What cooling technology will be used? And does this particular project work for our community? And I want that to be the framework, you know, as I present to you this evening. Zooming out, right, I'm a lifelong Floridian. All of our stakeholders are all Floridians and Florida companies. Florida has built the future before. We go back to Henry Flagler building the railways that connected Florida to the nation. We can go out to an enterprising Californian who bought up land in Central Florida and launched what we know and love as Disney World. We can look to the federal government seeding our space coast with NASA, which launched. Blue Origin and SpaceX and the entire space coast and ecosystem in that area. We can go to Naval Air Station Pensacola, which established Northwest Florida as a national center for aviation expertise, laying the foundation for today's robust defense tech corridor from Pensacola all the way to Jacksonville. Florida is now home to three combatant commands. I'm sure many of us know that here. CENTCOM, SOUTHCOM, and SOCOM. A quarter of the United States military's commands are in Florida. These commands rely upon digital infrastructure. Let me repeat that. These commands rely upon digital infrastructure. This is as much a local issue as it is a national security issue. And I want to drive that point home as much as I can. Zooming out a little further, we think about the idea that every generation builds an infrastructure that powers the economy. The electric grid enabled the transformational industrial economy of the 20th century, which ushered in an era of record economic prosperity. Our interstate highway systems of the 1950s paved the way for our logistics economy, which allows us to order an item on our phones using a data center and have that item arrive at our home that evening or the next day. Internet and fiber unlock the modern digital age, which we all rely upon. This presentation relies upon it. All of our phones rely upon it. Digital infrastructure is our generation's, is our ability to lay the foundation for the next great economic leap forward. Yes, artificial intelligence is a part of that. It's accelerating the transition. And it's easy to hear chat GPT, or hear AI and think chat GPT editing an email or creating a flyer. That is just the consumer facing tip of something much larger. Advanced computing is helping researchers analyze extraordinary amounts of genomic and clinical information in cancer research. It's accelerating drug discovery. It's helping scientists model proteins. It's helping improve weather forecasting, right? Analyzing tremendous amounts of data, which is relevant to us as Floridians during hurricane season. It's being applied to cybersecurity. It's being applied to agriculture, also relevant to Florida. It's being applied to aerospace, also relevant to Florida. It's applied to medical imaging when we want high quality MRIs. My wife is a physician. She works in the hospital. She leads hospital teams. They rely upon the highest quality technology, the most accurate scans. Guess where that data is stored? That data is stored inside of a data center. Digital infrastructure is critical to that. All of these require computational power, and computational power requires physical infrastructure. The cloud is physical infrastructure. It ultimately means servers, fibers, electricity, cooling technology, cybersecurity, and buildings. The world is only demanding more compute. The infrastructure that serves that demand is going to represent, yes, hundreds of billions of dollars of investment. That's not the main point here. It will be built. It is being built. Look at that map that Gartner just shared with us. The question is where? And our point is that Florida should be competing for it. And why? Florida has an advantage. Florida is not the first mover when it comes to data centers. Not one, not two, not three, we can quote AI, 13 other states, numerous other states have moved on data centers before us. Have they maybe made moves that we would not? Absolutely. But Florida is positioned to benefit from the lessons learned from those states. We can look at so many different areas, right? Virginia with data center alley. You can look to Texas. which has a robust ecosystem, and I would agree, we would maybe not make all the moves that Texas made, but we can learn from them, absolutely. Tennessee has a massive meta-facility that's thriving. Georgia, Ohio, Arizona. I just learned today, Oregon, my wife's state, right? We live basically part-time in Portland, Oregon. Who here thinks of the Pacific Northwest and envisions a technological wasteland? They have had hyperscale facilities for 20 plus years, and they are very environmentally clean. Their water is still clean. Google is operating a massive hyperscale facility in the Dalles just outside of Portland, and they have since 2006. The Pacific Northwest from Portland up through Vancouver, let's just stop at Washington, has no less than 30 large-scale facilities that would qualify under SB 484. So these things are happening, and they are happening elsewhere. Other states have spent time working through infrastructure, utility, land use, workforce, and economic development questions that are associated with these projects. That means Florida does not need to invent this from scratch. We get to learn. We get to look around the country, identify the best practices. We get to look at how land use standards have evolved, understand utility structures. We can look at different cooling technologies, different fiscal impacts, evaluate workforce programs for effectiveness. And I think that's an important distinction. Sometimes data centers are presented as though this is an alien technology that we have no ability to address. We don't believe that. This is not alien technology. At the end of the day, these are four walls with computer servers and a roof and some air conditionings on the top. not unlike any major retailer or supermarket. The scale is larger, obviously, and there are questions that are real related to energy and water. And with our existing framework, we can address those. Florida also knows how to accommodate major investment. Do we or do we not permit power plants? We permit manufacturing. We permit residential communities. We permit hospitals. We accommodate distribution centers. We support agriculture. We support aerospace. We have spent decades building regulatory systems that evaluate large, sophisticated projects. And digital infrastructure is just another major economic opportunity that can be evaluated through those same principles of evaluating the project, applying the standards, and making an informed decision. And because others move first, Florida gets to do it better. And that brings me to this point. It was covered a little bit in the presentation, but I'll touch upon it here. Florida has the existing framework to pull upon, and I respect the questions that were asked in public comment. These are real legitimate concerns regarding water, regarding power, and regarding land use. And let me address all three right now. Florida Chapter 373 requires any major development to be approved with a consumptive use permit. What does that mean? It needs to get a water permit. What does that mean? The project needs to present a plan that shows its water consumption. The Water Management District and the Department of Environmental Protection approves that plan. Not only does it approve or rejects that plan, by the way, if it does not pass the threshold of being reasonable, of not harming the residents, and of adequately serving the goals of the project. The Water Management District and the Department of Environmental Protection also maintain ongoing enforcement power. What that means is if a developer says, hey, it's going to do one thing and it doesn't end up doing that, they can be punished along the way. Chapter 373, not a new law. This goes back to the early 70s. We've used this framework for every major development. We've used this framework for all the rockets that we shoot up off of the Space Coast, every theme park that we've put up, every neighborhood, every golf course, Everything that we've done has fallen under Chapter 373 since the early 1970s. Power, SB 484, we need to underscore this one. SB 484 ensures for any project that is a large-scale project above 50 megawatts that the local rate payers will not bear the brunt of any increased infrastructure build-out or any other costs related to power generation. So we have water that is addressed through a 50-plus-year-old framework. We have SB 484, which is a good law that ensures ratepayers are protected on power. In land use, we have an existing framework that we have utilized for development across this state and in this community relating to noise relating to aesthetics and we encourage conversations i loved hearing the public say i just want to talk this through more i just want to learn more i just want to hear more agree and the way that we do that and i'm not going to get ahead of myself is every project needs to be evaluated okay And I will save that point for later. Let me just make this final point before moving on from this slide. In 2026, Florida went even further with SB 484 and Chapter 373 requiring specific consumptive use permitting relating to large scale data centers. Yes, requiring them to use reclaimed water when possible. REQUIRING, NOT OPTIONAL. SO YES, THAT IS A POSSIBILITY. SO WHEN SOMEBODY ASKS WHAT ABOUT THE WATER, I SAY FLORIDA ALREADY HAS A SYSTEM FOR ANSWERING THAT. THEY SUBMIT THE ENGINEERING, THEY IDENTIFY THE SOURCE, AND THEY DETERMINE THE PROPOSED USE. 50-YEAR-OLD FRAMEWORK THAT EVERY DEVELOPMENT PROJECT HAS LEANED UPON. SO WHAT I WOULD SAY IS I would encourage us to stop asking, how could Florida manage this new industry? And instead recognize we already have the tools necessary to manage it responsibly. I won't lean too heavily on the economic impact, although it is sizable, it is important. These are huge revenue generators for communities. It's not just the tax base, right? I mean, I can give you examples. In Loudoun County, they reduced their property tax rate year over year from 2016 to 2026. That's a burden that was reduced on the residents while increasing services. In Tennessee, Meta, I'm sorry, in Louisiana, Meta, based on sales tax revenues from their facility, they were able to give teachers a $60,000 bonus, right? In Oregon, that I just mentioned, the Google facility in the Dalles, outside of Portland, the revenues from that facility were reinvested into more efficient power infrastructure, which actually ended up dropping quite significantly the estimated rate increase that they expected. In Florida, there will not be rate increases because of SB 484. In Oregon, because they had the money to reinvest, they dropped the expected increase from 26% down to eight, or 23% down to eight. so that all to say right i don't want to harp on this issue because then folks get lost in thinking it's just a money matter this is important the money part is important we have a major issue coming up on our ballots in november that are going to severely impact our libraries our police our fire our day-to-day life and i'm not going to take a stance on that topic what i'm going to say is that's a massive vote that's coming up which is going to severely one way or another affect our lives this actually is a massive opportunity to bring revenue into our communities In addition to that, there is a meaningful workforce impact. Labor is not, you can't think of data centers as a corporate HQ relocating to town. Big ribbon cutting, thousand jobs announced. That's really not the headline. There is a job impact. In the build up for about two years, it'll take about two years to build a data center, It'll be anywhere on the tune of, you know, let's say like 800 to 1,000. You know, these are good jobs for a guaranteed period of time, right? Builders, contractors, electricians, pipe fitters, you name it, right? The gamut. From an ongoing basis after that, ongoing you're talking about hundreds of jobs anywhere let's say 200 to 500 depends upon the scale six figure paying jobs in your community okay is that an earth-changing amount of jobs for some people it is for those people it is for those 500 people in the community making now six figures of guaranteed income that's meaningful employment opportunity and then these companies also by the way invest in workforce programming, which allows average people to on-road into the digital economy. So capital investment, tax base, construction, employment, permanent employment, and workforce development. This is what we're talking about when we talk about capital investment. So that leads me to a broader point that I would like to make. Florida has spent decades establishing itself as one of America's leading states when it comes to industry and innovation. And that posture has served us extraordinarily well. When an innovative company has approached us, our instinct has not been, how can we prohibit this industry? Our instinct is, how can we make it work? What standards apply? What is the right location? What investment will it bring? What job will it create? What infrastructure does it require? And FIDISA believes we should take the same approach when it comes to digital infrastructure. That's why we do not believe bans or moratoriums are a way forward. Because fundamentally, no is a conversation ender. Once you say no, there is nothing to evaluate. You never get to determine the site. You don't get to determine whether a project can satisfy water requirements. You don't get to determine whether that utility can serve it under a structure that protects your customers. You never calculate the tax benefit. You never negotiate the workforce impact. You never get to ask the company to modify their design. You never get to determine the proposal and whether it would be a tremendous economic development opportunity for your residents. the conversation is simply over at that point. And I don't believe that's consistent with the Florida that we know. We've found a way to balance being open for business and being good for consumers in a way that works for all of us. And in Florida, if an advanced manufacturer or a biotech company or a new aerospace company was willing to invest a billion dollars in your community, our response wouldn't be no. Our response would be, let's evaluate the project. Let's establish the rules. Let's ask really good, really smart questions. Let's negotiate. Let's make informed decisions. Let's compete for the investment. And digital infrastructure deserves the same treatment. So the framework that we say is don't start with yes, because flatly there are projects that should not be approved. Don't start with no, because that's a conversation ender. You're not allowed to even negotiate whether it's good for your community at that point. Start with the facts. If you start with the facts and have a conversation, you can evaluate a project and whether it works for your community. So we believe, and so I say that all to say, The capital in jobs and workforce will go somewhere, right? That's obvious from the map that we saw. The tax base will go somewhere. The innovative ecosystem that springs up around these centers will develop somewhere, and we believe that somewhere should be Florida. So in closing, I want to be very clear with where FIDISA stands. We believe Florida should compete for the infrastructure powering artificial intelligence, cloud computing, cybersecurity, advanced research, and the next generation of the digital economy. We believe our communities should have the opportunity to capture the capital investment, the tax base, the jobs, the construction activity, the workforce development, and the economic development that comes with that. And we believe Florida can do that while maintaining the high quality that our communities expect. That's what responsible growth is. Florida does not have to choose between innovation and good governance. We don't have to choose between economic development and protecting our resources. We know how to do both because we have been doing both for decades in multiple industries. And unlike states that went first, we can do it better. We take the best practices, we apply Florida's framework, and we try to make it work, right? So in closing, for real this time, underscoring the idea that every generation builds the infrastructure that the next generation benefits from. We prefer to keep Florida open for business, to keep Florida at the forefront of innovation, to make decisions based on facts rather than fear, to continue the conversation rather than end it, and to decide what projects make sense for your community. That's why we're here. So that's our QR code that you can visit our website. We believe in building it here and building it right, and I appreciate your time. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Mr. Mayor, we have about four more slides. We're going to wrap it up, and then we'll turn it over to the question of where you want us to move forward. That's fine. Thank you. So now I'm just going to wrap up with the current status of dinosaurs here in North Florida. So the city received a site and development plan application for a data center and office project on the evening of July 20th of 2026. The application is on the go on a sufficiency review by staff. Northcourt 300 addressed insufficiencies that we submitted back on August 31st of 2026. The project has been under a non-exposure agreement and in accordance with Florida law, the applicant requested confidentiality of this project through an NDA. The confidentiality under the statute expired on August 28, 2026. More details can be found out about the application online at newport.gov.gov slash data center information. The current status of the data center moratorium. On July 29, the City Commission directed the City Attorney to draft an 18-month moratorium related to data center development with retroactive applications. On August 31, the Commission voted to move ordinance number 2026-25 to a September 22nd second reading establishing an 18-month retroactive moratorium while allowing the current application to be accepted, processed, and reviewed but not approved. Today, we're following the Commission's direction to hold this informational workshop to answer questions about data centers. On September 22nd, the Commission will hold a second reading of the updated moratorium ordinance for final adoption. All right, our next steps are, we want to continue the conversation. We invite everyone to visit the city's website at phil.gov slash data center information for information resources, workshop material, and future updates. Questions that we couldn't answer today will be researched with responses shared in the follow-up closing the loop Q&A. Member residents are encouraged to continue sharing the questions and seeking information as discussion moves forward. Questions can be submitted online with follow-up and routing to the appropriate subject matter experts as well. And we want to tell you this is how we are closing the loop. And when you see it from the loop, you can ask a question and contact us. But we want to thank you for letting us speak today, Mr. Mayor. And the experts are here to answer any questions the board may have.

Can we get the Peace River gentlemen down here? And do we have anybody from utilities, representing utilities here? Because I have a question for both of you.

We have an assistant city manager who is quite familiar with this. I thought so. Sheldon.

Sheldon.

Sheldon. Now, earlier you had stated we're at the 2.9 MGD, but we're going to be going up to the 4.9.

Correct.

Yes. And that's for current services that we have currently right now for expected use out there in the community?

Yes.

Nothing new coming on board, not a data center coming on board is what I'm saying.

I'll say we rely on your numbers that you give to us for your demands. So I don't know where that 2.9 or 4.9 is going. I just know that I I'm obligated to supply you with that water.

That's why she's standing right behind you to fill in the blanks.

I'm not trying to dodge your question.

I'm just saying that's what you stated. We're going from 2.9 to 4.9, and now it's up to her to give a little bit on that. And you can stay up here close because I'm sure other commissioners have some questions for you.

Good evening. Tricia Widener, Assistant City Manager. We do provide the numbers with projected growth. to Peace River of Minnesota Regional Water Supply. Right now, that water is just kind of like a safety net water. For the very most part of the year, we're able to supply all the water that we need. We have 6.2 million gallons per day that we supply. On average, we have about 3 to 4 million gallons per day that are used. But if there's ever a problem, a plant goes down, there's a drought, something that happens, they're our backup.

Okay, and with that, another question is, when we get our water from Peace River, it's not tap ready. It has to be treated at the plant and then dispersed out to the community?

It does come treated, but it goes through booster stations so that we can test it and make sure that it's up to quality by the time it travels all the pipes.

Because the reason I asked that is because where they're located, which was close down in the bottom of DeSoto County, which is very close to the Yorkshire area that we're talking about. Yes, sir. But our main water plant is back up in North Port Beaumont. It doesn't need to go to the plant. All the way down there and then all the way back up because we don't have that infrastructure.

it would not need to go directly to the plant. We do have some that goes to Hillsborough booster station now, gets treated, tested, and goes back out.

But is that big enough to handle this water supply that we don't know what the water supply is going to be yet?

Now, that would be a very difficult question to answer without knowing what the numbers are. But there are possibilities. There's some capacity there. We also, you know, you could build a booster station that's not the same level of infrastructure as a plant.

but that would be reliant on the applicant to build that for their water usage, not on the city taxpayer, correct?

Yes, sir. The developer would be responsible for any infrastructure related to their project.

And also, when we were talking about reclaimed water, I know that we do make reclaimed water here, and we are pretty sparse with all of our users out there with developments, golf courses, moms, stuff like that. Do we have the capacity of building that up to possibly use the reclaimed water?

We do not currently have reclaimed water in that area, but we would greatly look for a partner with a developer to help us build that infrastructure to bring that water from our existing plant out that way. As we grow and we have more users on our system, that means we have more water that goes back to the wastewater treatment plant, which then can go out towards users that would look for reclaimed water.

Okay, so with that said, then part of the talks down the road would be that if it is required that they use reused water, because I heard in the statistics here that some are required to do that, then maybe they would have to put that in at their expense to make that available to them.

I do believe they're required to use reclaimed water if it is available. I think it would be a conversation with this group to make that a requirement so that we would have that infrastructure. But these will be great conversations as the project moves forward.

I just wanted to worry about the water when we were here right here and how it would be distributed if we even had the possibility of doing such. So there is a lot to look into, especially with what the demands could be in the future. So I'm going to open it up to Commissioner Stokes. You're up.

Thank you. One, thank you, folks, for coming here. I appreciate it very much. I hope everybody else does.

The information is valid. I'm sorry.

I want to thank you very much for coming, because any information helps. The more we learn, the better we are at making smart decisions. My first question revolves around water. At present, we've got a pretty good supply of water, I think probably more so than the average city county in this southwest area. But my question is this, that even with a closed loop water system, a data center that uses closed loop, electrical power to power, that closed-loop system goes up dramatically, and estimates I've read approximate the need for water to handle that I don't know what you'd call it, a power system, electrical grid, whatever it might be that has to be built in order to power a hyperscale data center, could approximate two to three billion gallons a year. A year, okay, 2 billion gallons. So my question is whether we use reclaimed, if it's available, or whether we have to use water elsewhere. Where in the world are we going to find 2 billion gallons of water? Even with a closed-loop system, unless technology uses wind or solar, which we have no idea, might be contemplated here. So my concern is, as I see it, and I'm no expert, but it sure does seem to me that whether it's an open roof or a closed roof system, there just isn't adequate water. to support a hyperscale data center?

So I can not respond directly, because I don't know this project. But I can provide a framework for the latest technologies around COVID, right? So there's opening, right, which is like a spigot running constantly into the machine. And now there's closed loop, right, which is like a radiator, right? How the closed loop releases the heat, right, because cold water goes over hot chips, is now warm water has to become cold water again so that warm water, the warmth has to go somewhere. There's two ways to do that, evaporative cooling, which is literally like cooling towers and water steam evaporating away, which requires water consumption, additional water consumption, or there is basically using fans to cool the water, right? To cool the water down to the temperature. That is more power consumptive. So it's a trade-off that you would have to decide and the staff would have to decide, right? And so what I would say is just really quickly, on average, right, so like a 30 megawatt facility, let's just say a very average sized facility in terms of like a sizable meaningful facility, 30 megawatts. If it's a closed loop system, it's a 1.6 million gallon one time fill, okay? It's a water glycol mixture, just like you find in any coolant, just like you find in your ice rinks, at a hospital, at a university, at a convention center, at a cold storage facility, it's a water glycol mix, For a 30 megawatt facility, 1.6 million gallons. Filled once, lasts about four to five years. And a member of the public asked, what happens to that water? What happened to your radiator fluid? What happens to the water in the pipes under our ice rinks? Ice is on my mind because my son plays hockey, and my wife just texted me. He crushed his fingers. I'm sorry. So he's in practice. He just damaged his finger. I don't mean to interrupt. No, please do.

There's a lot of questions people are going to have, so I am going to interrupt you. I get it. A closed-loop system is going to mitigate the amount of water that's needed. But the substation that's going to power this data center, which in a closed-loop system is going to require a whole lot more power than an open-loop system, utilizes darn near 2 billion gallons of water a year at the substation level. So where does that water come from?

So first off, I wish we had representatives from FPL to address this specifically. I don't know that that number, I don't know that number. Yeah, I don't know that number. But what I would say is we should probably come to terms with the fact that our lives require resources. Everything we do, this meeting requires resources. The burger that I had for lunch required a lot of resources to raise that cow and slaughter it and bring the meat over. So there is water consumption involved and I would say a later workshop you could probably dive deeper on that topic.

Okay, switching over to the comments made about the fact that we have in Florida all these wonderful land use regulations in place and the ability to manage new technology, this type of technology. And so 484 addresses certain things. Certainly, it ended up being a pretty watered down bill. And then you look at Bill 180 and Birdhouse, which very clearly hamstrings any local government from enacting any more burdensome or restrictive land use regulations. Clearly, the preemption that state government has imposed upon local governments puts local governments in a position of really having no say over land use regulation. So consequently, I guess at the local level, what we're looking at is we'll trust DEP, right? We'll trust the state legislature to legislate this. And at the local level, for all our citizens, they could ask us, gee, why are you idiots allowing this to happen? And we can say, well, gee, we have no control. So I say Florida's not really a good place for this to happen, not in this political climate, not where local government doesn't have any ability to regulate its own land use. Most municipalities in the state of Florida have no clue about data centers. There's nothing on our books at all that regulate this kind of a project. How is it we're going to assure ourselves, or any municipality could assure themselves, that this is going to be built to a state of the art that addresses all the concerns of water, power, air quality, and sound? There's a dilemma that we face. I don't doubt that technology exists. I don't doubt that in a perfect world, we could compete and we could find ways to mitigate issues. My problem is that as a local government official, i feel impotent to do anything to control this process and i find that to be a big problem since i guess i supposedly represent all these people at least until november and nobody's answering those questions for us so what is it exactly we should do trust

I would ask that you re-read SB 484 and that it specifically gets local government. I would consult your city attorney on whether SB 484 grants local governments the ability to control land use. Burt Harris liability would exist if you were to do a moratorium that would affect a project that you've already approved. That's why we're saying don't do the moratorium, evaluate the project, regain the power that you have to evaluate the project.

It might be the only thing we're left to do, huh?

I yield. Commissioner Petro, you're next, sir.

Thank you, Mayor. I'll start with this. The break-even point is one of the cumulative costs. I'll say this. When technology improves the economy but makes the community materially... and environmentally worse to live in, that's the point where policymakers should pause and reassess. And this is our first duty to do. And not taking sides for or against data center, but our ULDC has zero regulations about projects like this. There's zero regulations and protocols, guardrails, for these types of projects. And I say more that we failed our residents by not making this project subject to a proposed moratorium when we unanimously voted on July 21st to proceed the implementation of our own vote on August 31st. And obviously, we did not make this project subject to this moratorium by the majority of this board. We are processing this application as we speak. without any variables whatsoever. And I'm so glad that we asked this question about SD-484 and let me read part of it, if I can find it. Just give me a second. It says, local gallery, and I did make this SB 484 on many levels. Now, we'll get into the power level. You know, the data centers have to, on a large scale, have to provide their own facilities and pay for their own facilities. But before that, I'll read this section. Local governments shall maintain the authority to exercise the powers and responsibilities for comprehensive planning and land development regulation granted by law with respect to large load customers. It's a clear authority given, and this is specifically what Governor DeSantis wanted for the local governments to have, and not preempt us. This is reading from the actual statute. But then I did look into, and you think your rates will not go up? Think again.

And

It might look nice by saying that the customer is not responsible for the burden shifted to them. I will quote, the minimum tariff and service requirements must reasonably ensure that each large load customer bears its own full cost of service and that such cost is not shifted to the general body rate payers. Reasonably is a wiggle word. That gives them the F.B.L. and the order supplying the power. And I'm not taking sides. Like I was saying, I'm just objectively assessing the situation we are in right now. So we ourselves got in ourselves. into the situation by keeping, as a city, and I'm saying as a city overall, commission, staff, that this project was hidden from the commission, at least for me, until June of 25th. And that's why we're here. This reasonably legal word, it means the utility and PSCS, Public Service Commission, must make good faith, defensible effort to put data center costs on the data center. But what's interesting to know, it's a reasonably... not that every dollar is guaranteed never to touch a home bill. Reasonably, means the tariff does not have to isolate every dollar perfectly, meaning no dollar for dollar allocation. I don't know if you understand this, but in five years, they're going to say we need to update our infrastructure. Everybody's rates go up. And with this monstrosity that is coming into the city, and I'm saying this word carefully because what do you mean? And I wanted to ask Mr. ,, if you looked at the plans, I did not look at the second set of plans or the second submission. But we don't even know how much megawatts this data center will be using. From the building footage, I mean, the first, it has to be at least three times of 50 megawatts, if I'm not mistaken.

I don't represent this project, so I have no idea.

But it's a good presentation, and I thank you for that. It's a one-sided presentation. I really value your expertise. But we're against something that we need to evaluate for ourselves as a city. And again, I'm going to come back to this point of And on your slide, 57, you say Florida does not have to choose between innovation and good governance. We forget the representation of the people. The people ask us to pause this application so we can at least put some guardrails. You know, we're not even saying... Ben's project. They are saying and asking us Let's at least start positive we're not even doing that I'm thinking that you know as a representative of this City I failed them because I and obviously the board operates by the majority and I was adamant the last meeting that you know, I'm Asking pleading with my fellow commissioners to put a pause so we can have proper regulations. You know what's gonna happen? They're not gonna be able to get the load that is required. There are seven buildings that will be, and this is my estimate, there will be seven generators, 50 kilowatt generators, because each building has to have two generators. You gotta remember, these facilities, they cannot have outage. Even when they update their service, one generator goes on. As soon as the other generator comes to a halt or whatever, the second generator goes on and on and on and on. So what I'm foreseeing, and I wish the FPLs would be here, I have a list of specific questions that would be driven down in a good way to get the information for us as a body and for you as citizens. But they're not here, unfortunately. But this is what might happen. And we keep hearing about this proposal, embrace data centers and power. A lot of people don't realize what it means by that word power. What they mean are politicians on the state level They mean a nuclear power. That's a whole different subject, and then we're going to go back to water usage, because nuclear plants, they require a lot of water. But going to the utilities, I want to ask a question of In that area, we certainly don't have the resources to lay the pipes needed for construction or supply the water. Who's going to supply that water? And not the water, but who's going to supply the construction of that water to be provided for that area?

As we work through the development, we would work with the developer to pay for and install all the infrastructure necessary for their development. We do very similar things As our community grows, we have some building going on at Star Farms. They're paying for the connection for the water and the pipes. So this is a standard process that the city uses.

Okay. I just have a list of questions for electrical provider for the power, actually. Because it comes down to this. that this project is not going to use a lot of water. It's obvious because it's a closed-loop system, but it does not answer many, many questions on power. And just remember, you know, you can search and... Bill 44, that a reasonably insured that each large load customer bears its own full cost of service. Reasonably, at least another will. So just be prepared. Thank you. How are you?

Vice Mayor, you're next.

Thank you, Mayor. Again, I want to thank both of these gentlemen for being here. And I apologize. Our Peace River partner, what's your name, sir? Richard Anderson. Anderson? Richard. I'll call you Richard. Okay. We have all agreed that the most important piece of work we need to accomplish during this moratorium is coming up with the guardrails and the regulations that we will insist that this development follow should it continue along the path. And so what I was hoping to learn tonight is what are those best practices so we can make sure we include them in our regulations. So while I'm delighted you gentlemen are here, I'm in very similar vein to Commissioner Petro. I'm very disappointed FPL isn't here because I had a lot of power related questions. But Mr. Sadiq, I think I'm going to pick on you to answer these questions. Again, not specific to this project, but sort of at a high level in general. In my research, I learned that hyperscale data centers tend to like to locate in cooler climates and in areas with a lot of hydroelectric power because it provides a lot of the necessary resources. So I was really surprised when I started looking at where the current data centers are that so many of them are in environmentally sensitive areas, the desert, Texas, Florida. So my question to you is, given that we have water, and I trust us to figure out how much water is needed, but what are some of the best practices in other ways of cooling rather than being totally dependent on water and close youth and all of that.

Well, ma'am, thanks for the question. The first thing I'll say is FIDISA does offer model ordinance guidance. If you ever want access to our speakers, we're happy to connect you guys at a future workshop if we can help. Our goal is not to push projects. It's to improve the conversation, to offer more facts. And that's kind of where I want to start with. It's hard to, you know, without a doubt, right, we're seeing massive data center production in Texas. As I mentioned in my remarks, I would not advocate for some of the methods that they've utilized. I think it's been a bit much. But we can learn from them. We are seeing it done very smartly in Arizona, another arid, hot climate. And let's not forget It's not just Americans having this conversation. We're seeing lots of folks around the globe that are experiencing this. And we're seeing announcements by countries across the globe that are in very hot, arid climates that are saying, we will take all the data center product. And that relates to your point. which is, you know, we are lucky in this country to have laws and regulations and standards and citizen engagement and elected officials and process. That's why generally it's important that we pursue this in our country and in our state certainly because There are other countries that will do this without laws and regulations and citizen engagement and elected officials and may also say, in exchange, I'd love access to your frontier models. And I don't think that's something any of us want here, whether you're in Georgia or Florida or Texas. So let me just start there. In terms of cooling, it's really a trade-off. It's water or electricity. There's really no other way to cool it. It's like a car. You can either have liquid cooled or fan cooled. That's it. So it's a decision for the council to make. And it's a standard for you to hold the developer to. I can't speak to that project. I'm not familiar with it. I don't even know the details. It seems pretty big. That's not a bad thing. That can be a great thing if done properly. But really, when it comes to cooling, it's a water consumption issue or a heat consumption issue or a power consumption issue. And that's just a trade-off that you have to make. And that's just kind of where it's at.

OK, to come back to, so let me back up. I have come to understand that a proper, well-designed closed-loop system is sufficient for cooling the data center itself. The server is . I want to come back to a question that Phil had, Commissioner Stokes, regarding that power plant. and the cooling requirements for that. I don't have any data to refute the, I don't know how many, two billion gallons of water per year, I think is what he said. What are some of the newer well-filled data centers in Arizona, what are they using? What cooling, because they don't have water either. And they're pretty hot. I lived here for a year and a half. So what kind of cooling methodologies are they using? What trade-offs are they doing?

between water and yeah it's it's the same dynamic so first off um you know cooling technologies have evolved but there was a point where we would just pump the entire room full of cold air right like as if like we have food in our fridge and so we're gonna cool our entire house to 50 degrees because there's food in the fridge it was very inefficient it's evolved now the technology to where there's water literally running along the chips so out that is cooling the chips and outside of that these are basically empty buildings so the power consumption i can't speak to specifics but it's not like there's a ton of other activity the chips are being cooled by the water which is taking the heat away so there's not ambient heat floating throughout the facility Obviously, there will be air conditioning units like a Costco. There will be water consumption in the bathrooms for security guards and the workers. There will be landscaping requirements. That's standard water consumption. But the cooling, when you're talking about other successful projects, it really comes down to open loop, closed loop. If it's closed loop, is it evaporative or is it fan cooled? And that's just where the technology is at. It's really efficient. Water, obviously, is the best transmitter of cooling, right? It's more efficient, but it obviously consumes more if you're going to have evaporative. So that's just a decision for the commission.

OK, let me ask you some other general kinds of questions, and then Richard, I have a couple for you. Is there any... Have any studies been completed on the health impacts of people living within certain proximity of one of these superscale data centers? And what do we need to be aware of in order, again, if this moves forward, and there's no guarantee of that, but if it does, what do we need to be aware of so that we can protect people and businesses and animals in the immediate area.

Yeah, it's a valid concern. I'm sure studies do exist. I can't rattle them off the top of my head. We do have health experts on the board. I'm happy to connect the board with them if you guys want to have that conversation with them, or we can do some research afterwards and provide some studies. These are legitimate questions to answer.

Good, good. There have been data centers that were valid

25 years ago, the really early ones, and I think not built well.

You mentioned several times you have learned a lot since those days. Have any of those data centers been repurposed? I was thinking of writing down a lot of questions that I heard particularly on Monday night, so I'm trying to get some of those out there.

I don't know specific instances of data centers being repurposed. But the general point is, I hear a question often of, what if this is no longer needed? What do we do with this space, basically? And the answer is, well, what do we do in my hometown in Palm Beach County? When, you know, we had a major corporate leader, I'm not going to name them, but they left. They went out of business. They had a massive space, massive space that was left behind. We chopped it up. It's mixed use now. It's a commercial real estate answer. It's ultimately the answer. So these things will succeed or fail, right? These are businesses at the end of the day. What we're seeing is demand is not just increasing, it's rapidly, exponentially increasing to the point where we are exploring innovative ideas like putting them on the bottom of the ocean, putting them in space, because the demand is such that we need to find solutions. If there is a reality in which these go bad, or if there is examples from 25 years ago that they're no longer utilized, they're just cross-purpose for other commercial purposes.

Okay, thank you for that. I might have to go back and forth. So Richard, you had mentioned, and Ms. Wisner, you might have to chime in here too. So the number, the water number that the city has given to our Peace River partners, if I understood you correctly, Ms. Wisner, included some anticipated commercial and residential growth in the city. but not necessarily a hyperscale data center. Did I understand you correctly?

Correct. We do a master plan, and the water master plan was done in 2023. We did not have this on our scale. However, when I'm hearing that it's about 23,000 gallons a day for that evaporative top-off, that's less than half of a percent of the water that we currently have. Not even the projected water, but the current water that we have in our system. knowing that we do definitely have capacity for that if those numbers are accurate.

I'm just uncomfortable. Just what I'm reading in other areas is that the water requirement would be more than that. Again, I'm not an expert. And we don't have, I don't believe, any... concrete studies yet that really give us hard numbers. So we're kind of floundering a little bit in the dark. But Richard, if I understood you correctly, if that work is done and we have advances, we know what it's going to look like, we know what the technologies are, we have really definitive power requirements and water requirements, and it requires I don't know, 2 million, 3 million, 4 million additional gallons per day. Did I hear correctly that you would need up to seven years to be able to build that capacity into the system?

Yes, that's correct. That's the language in our contract with you. You know, as Trish said, we partner together very well. We update these numbers every year, but you don't know what you don't know. These numbers were not included in even last year's projections, I don't believe, so... Any additional water over that 4.9 that you're going to be receiving starting in about 2029 would have to be constructed, designed, built as an additional quantity to you.

Okay, thank you. So a question for you, Mr. Spook. If there's a data center being built in seven buildings and it's over 700,000 square feet and maybe 50 megawatts a day of power consumption. It takes two years to build. On day one, is that the power they need? I guess what I'm getting at seven buildings, is it like a phase one, phase two, or phase three? Or do they go boom?

open on day one i think it's project dependent uh i don't know what the plans of the project are i would assume the staff that's reviewing the project the plans could answer that question okay yeah it's very project dependent on how they roll out and how they operate right mr sadiq you also mentioned that um and and i think it was

chapter or Bill 373. I wasn't familiar with that one. But you mentioned that any developer, but certainly a data center developer, who doesn't deliver what they said they would can be punished. What are those punishments? And are you aware of any data centers that have been punished because of this provision?

So Chapter 373 is a Florida law, like I mentioned, going back to the early 70s, that requires, there are exceptions, but it requires basically any major development do in and out provide an estimation of their water use. And then that is evaluated by the Water Management District and the Department of Environmental Protection. to get that consumptive use permit to then launch so so literally to say a data center will launch and drain in the floor the florida aquifer or the aquifer in my area it could not launch without the proper evaluation done to get the permit right if if some malfeasance was done and some trickery was done and or it just by accident, it's consuming more. The answer to your question directly is we have not had any major data center build out in Florida despite numerous other states in the country. So we have not tested that enforcement. However, we have a 50-year framework of Chapter 373, giving enforcement power to the Water Management District, to the Department of Environmental Protection that are enforcing the standards and do have enforcement power. And that's probably a better question for your city attorney, but I would say we don't have, we have not approved a single project of that scale in the state. So we haven't even tested that. My assumption would be IT WOULD BE A CONTINUATION OF THE ENFORCEMENT PATTERN THAT WE'VE RELIED UPON IN THIS STATE FOR MY ENTIRE LIVING LIFE AND THE LIVING LIFE OF, I'M SURE, MANY OTHERS IN THIS HOUSE, IN THIS ROOM, THAT HAS BEEN EFFECTIVE. BUT WE WOULD, I GUESS, WE SHALL SEE BECAUSE WE DON'T HAVE THOSE DATA CENTERS JUST YET.

AT THIS POINT, MAYOR, I'M GOING TO YIELD. I NEED TO GO THROUGH MY NOTES AND DIG UP SOME OTHER QUESTIONS I'VE HEARD FROM THAT COMMUNITY.

COMMISSIONER DUVALL?

Thank you. The very first thing that comes to mind is where. I heard that mentioned. One of the overall major questions here is where is here? And is this proper for this place? For that question to be answered, There's a lot of other questions that have to be answered. And this isn't for your organization or your organization. I thank you for being here. But my questions need to be answered by the developer, by our staff. And these questions are all numbers. How many servers? How many megawatts? Are they going to be using a gas line for power? And I would like to know. One question I do have for you is, Can you show me a 50 megawatt data center? Tell me where it is that has 200 to 500 employees. Once it's built, okay, construction jobs, you're correct. You know, you're going to have, you know, 2,000, 5,000 workers temporarily, you know, and most of their money leaves with them when they go. Once it's built, those permanent jobs, you know, other than security guards and whatever, the actual well-paid technical jobs, this is electricity that's traveling, okay? And a server is basically a computer it just sits there and switches trans billions of transistors operating and people will come in and do some testing on them to make sure they're running okay occasionally they'll do thermography They'll take a gun and they'll run it over the wires. If there's high resistance there, it's going to show a lot of heat that shouldn't be there. That heat gets taken away by the cooling systems. How many compressors, how many fans are going to be needed and built, and how much power do they use, and where is that power going to be generated? If it's going to be generated on site, then that's going to make some noise.

these are the questions that I need answers you know before I could consider this that's all I have thank you thank you we're going to be going into a second round but first city manager we have talked about like since FPL is not here this evening as a representative we have talked about doing more of these in the future are we looking at trying to do one let's say every single month moving forward with at least some sort of informational speakers and current updates and once we get information on what the actual plans are maybe do a deep dive type meeting or workshop on that just because the public knowing that we're not slacking is not going to be six months down the road. It's going to be, we're going to try to do this monthly to where we can update the citizens, keep them on board and have them come in and maybe they can contact their commissioners with, because we don't allow questions and answers from the public except for your public comment, get with your commissioners on some of the questions you may want to have asked during that commission workshop. So I just want everybody on board to understand that. And we've been here for almost two and a half hours. We're going to take a 15-minute break. It's 825. We'll be back at 840, and we'll do second round starting with Commissioner Petro.

Back one last time to make sure everything that...

Still learning every day. One of the greatest things about the job is it's... We're back in session.

Commissioner Petro, you were up on time.

Thank you.

I just wanted to confirm what Commissioner Duvall said. We don't know any specificity of this project, so therefore our questions are not as detailed, or the answers are not as detailed as we wanted to have about this project. And it's almost like we cannot go forward unless we sit or have a presentation from the staff or staff and the developer or vendor to have more information. But I just know to point out that this project, if it goes through, and this is conservatively speaking, 50 megawatts, that this would be the largest data center in the state of Florida. And I'm not sure if the public realizes this or commissioners, but I want to touch on studies. When the state legislatures drafted SB 484, they relied on a lot of studies. So it's very accessible and easy to access those studies. And the question from the board member was about the radius, safe radius. And one of the studies that I read that it's up to five miles. For the animals, The two mile radius is not safe. And I'm not sure, I don't recall to what extent it's not safe for the animals. If it's not safe for animals, I don't think it's safe for humans. But this is just to think about the... enormous uh about the you know the magnitude of this project that we're discussing and that's why it's very imperative to have all the data about this project and like i said fbl would be the great source if someone would be here but i'm sure we will have more workshops about that. But just to give you a perspective, when you hear this, you know, we have to win this race with the technology, with China, and become, so if we don't embrace the data centers, you'll be poor and backwards and stuff. For example, China's population is 1.41 billion people. As of yesterday's count, according to census, the population of the US is 342 million people. Now that being said, China has about 370 data centers. the US stands over 4,700 data centers. And we have probably more than the rest of the world of data centers. And to be fair, The only reason that this stuff is popping out everywhere, and I understand the technology and I use it every day, but it's more for the profit. It's purely profit driven because they sell space, storage and all of the above. I just want to leave the board with this, you know, what type of legacy we're going to leave with the city of Northport, data center and nuclear power plant. That's what is going to come up. Because I'm almost certain from what I've studied that the amount that is needed to supply for this project is not going to be sufficient and might not be right away by electricity provided by PLA. Thus, it will be, you know, it will guide or it will force the vendor to have something innovative, and that is being, it's either generators, and if we don't put prohibitives, you know, measures, financial burdensome as far as, you know, don't run generators over seven days or whatever. At least let's put something into discussion to discuss. So we'll be leaving a legacy for North Florida with the data center and nuclear power plant. Which brings me to my final conclusion. That is my question. Can we and do we request a water study if it comes to, you know, whatever, not even if it gets to the power plant, and initial stages. But can we request a water study? That would be the question, I guess, to utilities. And is it being considered for this project?

Yes, sir. As part of our normal development review process, there will be the review of what the demand would be, a capacity review. We would go through a deep dive in this process. We're just unfortunately not there yet.

And how long does it take to do it? Well, this is a specific project because it might be not just a simple commercial office space where you do a study about water usage or water implementation or whatever. How long does it usually take?

That can vary greatly. When we do our water master plans just for the city and how we evaluate it, it takes about a year for a master plan.

Okay. So that's a long way to go. I will yield because I just, like I said, I don't want to go in circles, but I think, you know, there's a place and just like there's a time for everything. I think the city does not really need this magnitude of a project. Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you, Commissioner Stokes. To sort of cycle back a little, so everything to me, from my perspective process here, you know, I said it when I first spoke. I think it's pretty obvious that while we don't have any details yet on exactly what type of data center these people plan on building, one can presume that it will be a closed-loop system. That said, what powers this data center is, I mean, there has to be power. If it's an electrical substation, the evaporation, the evaporation, the power of that substation is going to be 2 billion gallons a year. That's reality. That is fact. It might be a little lower, a little more, depending on how much power is being generated. The only, and clearly, there's not the capacity to provide that kind of water. An open-loop system is going to take that much water. We already know that. So it depends on whether you're going to use it over here or you're going to use it over there, which lends you to moving the process along, which says, okay, what's available out there technologically to avoid having to use 2 billion gallons to replace the evaporated water from an electrical substation. Well, yeah, you got solar, you got nuclear, you got wind. Nobody knows whether or not this applicant has any plans. I don't think the applicant has any idea, to tell you the honest truth, because we aren't there yet. So the retroactive moratorium that we enacted which puts a hard stop on any approval. It does not stop the process. If we stop the process, okay, if on second reading we kill this deal, we decide, you know what, let's amend it and let's stop it, what happens? we will never have a pathway we will never find this out if i was the applicant if any of you were the applicant the only solution for that applicant is to sue this city because they spent time money they've developed they bought this land we've given them no opportunity to mitigate anything to address anything to solve anything they may never be able to solve it to our satisfaction But they never get the chance. So we box them to the point where they have no choice but to sue us flat out of the box. That is why I support making darn sure there is no approval before we know the answers. Because right now, there's no way electric's going to be able to power this thing. There's no way it can be an open-loop system. I don't know if it's even feasible that you could use solar, nuclear, wind, or anything else to power this baby. So the reality is, I think this project is never going to happen, quite frankly. ourselves, I think we open up the citizens of this city, the city itself, to an enormous liability. I'm fearful. I don't feel that's being a good steward of tax dollars. So I feel the need to learn more. And I don't think the applicant even knows it. I don't think they have a hardened partner to build the data center. If you look at that application, which I did in red, it cards out the power portion. It specifically cards out of this application The power portion. So the data center itself may meet the comp plan and ULDC from the city standpoint. That only moves us to the second step, which is what's going to power this baby? A whole new application, a whole new ability to look at what technology is going to be used, how it's going to be done. Does it meet our standards? And all in this interim, we get to write regulation, strong regulation. And we need help for that. Our city attorney will go to work and pull all the resources he needs inside and outside the city to do it so that we can assure ourselves that ultimately whatever plans come forward, they gotta even meet those standards or this deal's not happening. I don't see any other way to proceed with this because I'd love, as I said way in the beginning, if I could vote to ban them in the city, I would, but legally we can't do it. And if we shut them down, At second reading, shut them down hard. We're going to get sued, just like if we said we're banning them. I just don't see how this ever happens. This is an ill-conceived plan in my book. I don't see any way this is ever going to happen, because I don't see how they're ever going to be able to do it. I just don't. But it's like, I feel like we've got to go through these steps before it becomes extremely obvious that it can't get done to our satisfaction. So, you know, I just want to try to keep this in perspective because this is going to be a lengthy process, okay? It isn't going to get solved overnight. And the one thing as elected officials, I really, really implore the public to work, to have the patience to allow us to work on some of this because The last thing I want to see is what happened in the county when the county commission simply chose to reject live local projects because they didn't like them and they didn't think the law was right. And now they're getting sued four times over, big money. And taxpayers in the county of Sarasota are going to pay for that. I don't want us to pay for that. What I want is to make sure that this isn't going to happen for the right reasons. I don't think it's going to happen. It shouldn't happen. But it shouldn't happen for the right reasons. And with that, thank you. Vice Mayor.

Yeah, just a couple of quick ones. A couple of general questions for Mr. Sadiq. All different kinds of I think I'm getting a clearer idea of what a hyperscale data center is and isn't. But my one question is, the cloud data centers, do they generate the same need for power and cooling that a hyperscale does?

So the answer to that is no. Any data center could be a cloud data center. Cloud is just a physical infrastructure of the, you know, when we sign up for our Microsoft subscription and it goes somewhere, that document, it goes somewhere, right? So it could be a co-location, it could be a hyperscale, very likely it's a hyperscale if it's Microsoft. But so essentially the short answer is any size could be a cloud data center, you know?

So you could have small and big and it would vary.

Yeah, they're all essentially operating in that capacity.

Okay, thank you. And a co-location, which is more like you rent your space, lots of different... What are the power implications of that? I mean, my sense was AI requires so much power and cooling because the entire infrastructure is all connected and doing their thing, where co-location is sort of carved out. In general, what are sort of the energy... power and water requirements of a co-location?

Yeah, for sure, for sure. Co-location data centers can, they're generally not large-scale facilities, right? We're seeing those all over the state. those are operating i'm sure tampa i'm sure in your community i don't know i'm assuming they are everywhere um they can be in a uh it can be in like an office uh like a warehouse area district it can be in a a storage unit i mean these things vary in size um so they can be anywhere from I mean, I would say they're definitely less than 50 megawatts is what I would say. They're generally significantly less, which is why there's really not the controversy around them. Around them. And they don't generally increase to these massive numbers because that's, it's like owning, it's like buying 100 homes in a neighborhood and say, I'm going to rent them all out. So most operators want to, you know, buy up five homes and rent out those homes. So that's generally the size.

Okay, that's a good analogy. I appreciate that. Monday night, one of our residents came up with an interesting suggestion, and I'd like to see if you're aware of any municipalities requiring this or any hyperscale data centers doing it. But they suggested that the developer should set aside money, either buy a bond or set aside some kind of protective money to correct any potential unanticipated environmental impacts. Are you aware of that happening?

I'm not. I'm happy to research it and send results back. I think the core principle there is these things need to be negotiated intelligently. And the discussion has to continue. So for this particular project, because it seems like it was carved out, I believe, the other night. But yeah, when communities are instituting these moratoriums, you're not able to have these conversations.

Thank you. That's it. I'm done.

Thank you very much for being here, gentlemen. We really appreciate it. I mean, the information, we will move on with that and probably have you back again. So be prepared. And Ms. Wisner, thank you very much for coming down and giving us the input from utilities. All right, city clerk, I'm going to call on the public comment on this item.

I'll do it in person first. Yes, in person, please. Jenna DeCosta and Tim Ritchie.

Good evening. Jenna DeCosta again. I appreciate the information we heard from the experts tonight. As everybody has made the distinction very clear, this presentation is not the application. We can hear stories what data centers can do, what they typically do, and what they may use. But what matters to Northport is what Deep Park will actually do. We still don't know what cooling technology Deep Park will actually use. Commissioner Stokes himself said, presumably. That's one of those wiggly words Commissioner Petro was mentioning. And that's particularly important because the city's own correction comments specifically required the applicant to provide details on industrial processes. We still don't have the project specific support calculation for the 100 ERC assumption underlining its water calculation. We still don't know why a project claiming average potable demand of 15,000 gallons per day proposes a wastewater treatment plant capable of treating half a million gallons. Those aren't questions about data centers generally. They're questions about this application. Can, may, could, presumably, assuming, and typically are not commitments. Anyone remember the bridge on Tuscola? And Northport understands why that distinction matters. A benefit discussed during development review is very different from an obligation that is actually written down and enforceable. The city isn't approving a hypothetical data center. It's evaluating this one. If a representation about water use, cooling technology, or infrastructure is important enough to reassure this community tonight, it's important enough to put in the application. After two submissions, we shouldn't have to rely on what this project could be. The application should tell us what it is. And just for everybody's knowledge, just yesterday, Congress held a hearing on legislation to designate all 34 miles of the Myakka River in Sarasota County as wild and scenic. That bill specifically recognizes Northport's commitment to protecting the river through its comprehensive plan and land development regulations. That makes getting the watershed and receiving water analysis right especially important. Thank you. Thank you.

Well, good evening everybody. That was Quite a workshop. No FDEP. And I am really disappointed, Richard Anderson, you left, and Mr. Siddiqui. Now we had to sit here and listen to them, and I want to tell you right now, Mr. Siddiqui's group, it's like mosaic. It's well polished. It's a lot of lies. It's a bunch of bull. Commissioner Phil made it real clear. Two billion gallons of water. You know, the best thing Richard Anderson said up here today is, it will take seven years. Not several, seven. The expansion at the Peace River, that water's already allocated. So where are we gonna get the water? We're gonna pull it out of the toilet, Vice Mayor Linden? You know, I have been so civil and kind for the last three, four years at the podium. But I want to tell you, at 2 in the morning, that went out the effing window with me. We deserve better. And every one of you that's corporate captured, we're going to start making an example of you. And every one of you that support the developers and this crap, like the AI data, we're going to expose you. And we're going to make sure you're not re-elected. And you should be listening to your city attorney, because I've heard a lot of attorneys in this state. Good job, sir. And I don't like attorneys. I don't like them at all. When I come up here, I am a top expert in this state. My father was a management consultant. Do you know what it is to go up with a management consultant in your house? But not any. My father was one of the top in this country and around the world. Ivy League scholar from Drexel. I don't need a college degree. When I come to your dais, you are blessed and fortunate to have my expertise. This is a hard no for the entire state of Florida, city manager. Thank you, sir.

Sam Turpening, Elaine Emrich, and Dan Rader.

My name is Sam Turpening. As you all know, for those that are still here, if anyone is out there and wants to interview me because we only have three minutes, then please reach out to me and let me know. Because this has been a farce, a complete farce, this workshop. Each and every one of these people are trying to convince you and jumble up your head. First of all, they kept showing you SB 484 as though they could use it. They cannot use it. The reason they cannot use it, the thing that they kept leaving out all night was that you have to preemptively use it. So when I was here on July 31st and Robin Sanvente was here on July 21st and says use SB 484, you guys said you don't want to be a poster child. That is a fact. It is recorded forever. So anything that you talk about SB 484 is non-applicable. They cannot use it because they didn't use it preemptively. That's why DeSantis wrote the law so they could preemptively use that law. There's not a single municipality in Florida that has had the balls to use SB 484 as DeSantis intended. That is why all of these lawsuits are being opened up and that's why there's over a dozen, two dozen Counties now suing the state on SB 180 because they're saying that it's unconstitutional. So on one hand, the reason for SB 180 is that they're saying that the state has the power and they don't have any power. But then DeSantis turned around and wrote SB 484 because they were complaining they didn't have any power. So DeSantis wrote 484 to give them power to then say, we don't want to be the poster child and use what DeSantis gave them. Does that even make sense? I only have three minutes, so I have to talk like this and try to give you the information as quickly as you can, but please reach out to me and I will educate you. This has been a complete farce. The seven year water situation, you're going to get the water in seven years. They told you that they've doubled the amount of water already. They're already telling you that they're going to pay for the pipes, and then they're going to be able to sell the water. Because of SB 180, they're not allowed to put any Ferguson Act on any regulations once a permit comes in. So in the state of Florida, under the Constitution, once you receive a permit, whatever laws are applicable at the time that the permit comes in, they have to abide. by those rules and regulations. So when they tell you that they don't have anything written, that is how all these lawsuits are now happening in the state of Florida. They have no control over any of this now. The judges do because of the lawsuits.

Thank you, sir.

Thank you. Reach out to me. I'll teach you. You're being lied to.

Hi, I'm . I would like to advocate for a data center task force that would be made up of stakeholders, including at least one resident who lives within two miles of the proposed site, and others like Robin or Pam and Barbara Lockhart from the Environmental Conservancy, and others who would study the appropriate zoning districts, maintaining separate distances of data centers from schools, and neighborhood noise mitigation, acoustic studies, cooling, water discharge requirements, backup solar and other generators, fuel storage, noise and air pollution, health issues, lighting visible visibility requirements and the public notifications and community engagements as required by Florida law. Data centers have been held up due to state water permits and diesel issues. These are some of the things that the committee could in fact research and then make recommendations back to the city commission when they're working on doing ordinances. I believe that a committee made up of stakeholders in this community and others will be a great asset to the city during the 18-month moratorium. Thank you for your consideration.

Thank you, Mary.

Hello. I'm Dan Rader, resident of Northport. And I wanted to come here and thank all of you, the commissioners, city mayor, city attorney. This workshop is what everybody needs. We need to understand what is really a data center, how often each of us use it every single day. The average person uses a data center, accesses a data center 40 times a day. That's just showing your smart device. I'm asking you to not go through with this moratorium. The reason is it's not necessary. These day centers, as we've heard tonight, it takes two years to build them anyway. On top of the fact you gotta find out about the water, the seven year plan, maybe it's gonna take longer anyway. We also don't know enough about what this development's going to be. Is it going to be a 50 megawatt site? We don't know that. There's a lot of assumptions tonight that I've heard. And I learned a long time ago, never make assumptions, because you're almost always going to be wrong. I've worked in the IT sector for 15 years. I've been inside data centers. I've installed a lot of network equipment. I've ran cables. I've ran fiber networks. They're not loud. I'm not deaf. I've been in many of them throughout the country. I've traveled the country doing it, out through Canada. Now I'm here in Northport, and you all may not understand or realize it, but Florida has anywhere from 110 data centers planned for obviously a lot more. They range from anywhere from 10 megawatts to 40 megawatts for the smaller scale. We have them in Northport, I guarantee you. You just don't know they're there. They don't advertise it. They're just a blank, empty building. You drive by it every day and you won't know it. There's also Walmart has data centers. Publix has data centers. I guarantee you Cocoa Plum has them. Every time you access anything on your phone, you're accessing data centers. Everybody in this room, even on Monday when there's maybe 500 people here, everybody on there is on a data center. Every time they want to complain on Facebook about you all up here, they're using a data center. The one thing I really want to get across to the commissioners here, you have IT people that live in North Fork. It's not just people here opposing this, OK? Technology is not going anywhere. AI is not going anywhere. We are just in the beginning stages of what's about to happen. We're in the next big boom. This is like when the internet first started. This is where we are. It's not going anywhere. They're going to be here. What I'm asking you all and what I would challenge you to do is look in your districts, find out who's in the IT sector for you. Thank you, sir. Thank you. Thank you all.

Talis Stewart, followed by Graham and Kevin Milhouse.

Hi, I don't really have a script. I'm just talking my mind. Everybody here is talking about the logistics of how we can build this data center. And the salesperson who came up was going, you know, we shouldn't say no, we shouldn't say yes, we should say how. How about nobody wants this? Nobody here wants this, except for that one guy, I guess. We had 500 people here on Monday, and three, no, there was four in total, right? There was four people who showed up to say that they wanted it. Regardless, the majority do not want it, the vocal majority. People have brought up concerns, but why is it not enough that nobody wants this? This was planned in secret. It wasn't ever brought to the public to be vetted. There was no votes. We don't really know how many people want this or how many people don't. It's just the word of the developers and that one, I don't know what his name was, the technology guy. Apparently he doesn't work for them. He sure sounded like he did. He was really selling it. This is more just like fun facts. Epstein was really good friends with Marvin Minsky, who was one of the founding fathers of AI. That's kind of like not a very good thing. Same with Bill Gates. The people who made this technology, not very trustworthy people, not very great people. I just don't really trust it. And of course, plenty of people have brought up very valid concerns about the environment and the noise and the pollution that haven't been addressed, that have no answers. And we're still going, how can we make it work? How can we make it work?

We don't want it to work.

We don't want it at all. Nobody asked for it, except the developers, who apparently are going to power through. So that's all I've got to say. And Mayor, your comment on Monday was gross. Shout out to you.

Thank you, Mayor.

My name's Graham. The lack of knowledge in this room is alarming. You guys accepted this application. You have no idea what you accepted. You don't know how it's being powered. You don't know where the water's coming from, how much water, what kind of system. That's alarming. You guys are supposed to be protecting us, and you don't. Something no one else seems to have really brought up, what kind of data are they collecting in here? You guys put out nice, fluffy images. It's got your pictures of your grandkids, all this kind of thing. What if it's a flock center? What if they're collecting our data? That's a Fourth Amendment violation. You guys are not addressing the moral side of this. Should we do it? That's all I have to say, but I think you guys should really do some homework and get your act together. Thank you, Sarah. Thank you.

Kevin Milhouse?

I'm one of the clowns that you bought.

Passive? That's it.

Hello there, my name is Kasia. I have been a North Port resident my entire life, so this is an issue that deeply resonates with me and my community, as we have seen. So I just want to start and say I'm a little confused to hear them say that we need to approach this issue objectively with fact and reason, but then immediately go against the monetarium. If we as a community want to do what's best for us, then we need to be critical in how we view and consider the plan for this AI data center and what it requires of us. And that's exactly what the morotarian would give us, time. And just a disclaimer, I'm completely against the AI data center. I do not want that in our community. I don't think anyone should be in support of that because of the impact it will leave. on us. But with that in mind, the time invested in this project seems unreasonable. They're saying that it's going to take seven years to approve, repair, and construct the necessary infrastructure for the water, and then another two years on top of that to build the data center. That's already nine years, and we're not even taking count of the delays. Hurricane Ian came through. That took us months to recover from. We don't know how many hurricanes we're going to have over the course of nine years. That's going to push it beyond a decade. So how much more time, how much more money will be invested into that? So in a time where our natural resources are diminishing at rapid speeds, and climate change is showing its effects across the world, and more and more species are becoming endangered, let alone extinct, And we as a society need to be incredibly mindful of how we manage our resources and what impact we leave behind in our community, in our state, in our country, in the world. So you guys are making the decisions for us, the next generation. Whatever you decide, those effects will come back to us, and those responsibilities will fall on us. So I just ask, please consider that, please be mindful of that, and I appreciate the opportunity to speak. Thank you.

Thank you very much. No, no, no. This is just for the item. We're doing the online ones for this item. Then general will be next. Excuse me.

I have my name up.

Did you put it in for this item? Because we have a general comment coming up next. I'm just saying we're not done yet. She's going to do the online ones real quick.

Can I guarantee that they will not raise our...

Hello, my name is Alicia Martin.

My phone number is 813-416-4046.

I am calling in regards to the City Commission workshop today, September 3rd, 2006, for the data center. This is for a presentation that will begin. I have a few questions. I would like to know from SPL, how can they guarantee that they will not raise our rate in Northport again on top of what they've already done?

How can they guarantee that electricity will not flicker or that we will not lose electricity once this data center is in place? My electricity constantly goes out, minimum one time a week. So what is the guarantee that that will not continue to happen and get worse? For as far as water, what is the guarantee that this will not put us into a further drought? What happens if our river drops down to a record low? Are we just going to continue to pump and not bring any awareness to that? What if we are affected by water shortages? What is the plan if we lose water? Is there any plan going forward for that? the big corporations that we have here. If they lose water and have bad water sources, what if they come after the city and them too? How can you guarantee none of this will happen? I'd love answers to those.

Thank you.

Good morning, this is Leo Labiere, phone number is 203-339-1051. I'm calling about the 6 p.m. meeting workshop at 9, 9.3 at 6 p.m. tonight regarding the data centers. My comment on that is I've driven through the area. The locations are remote. There are a few homes around.

The issues seem to be recycling water and electricity or water issues.

My suggestion is as part of the previous work, the data center going in, they're required to build their own recycling water.

air cooling type of facility.

They build a power plant to make their own electricity and any excess be brought back by the community.

They do everything possible to protect animals on proposed land, especially moving to go for tortoises and anything else that needs help to survive. For the hormones in the area, provide sound barriers for the potential noise that has been addressed. Um, and I think the report part of all this is to show the residents of Northport how the tax revenue will be used, approximately how much will be generated. And on that money, I would suggest putting into law that 25% be used to, uh, for land conservation, specifically to buy land for conservation.

25% be used specifically to reduce property taxes and 50% going to the general fund. Another way to look at this also for community to evaluate is to compare the electric and water usage of all homes being built in North Port over the last year or two to what the potential use would be for an AI center, a data center.

James Burke, 9-4-1-6-2-6-9-4-9-3, comment for the city's mission workshop at 6 p.m. on September 3rd, 2026. Look, I'm sure the mission that's been painted at this workshop so far is one where large-scale technological progress, safe, healthy living, and a clean, well-established environment can easily coexist. Let me be perfectly clear. I'm Noah Hispy. I was born at the perfect time to witness arguably the steepest advance in technology in human history, and for all the damage it's done on the world, I have a cautious level of optimism for the overall outcome.

But it's possible it is, and I'm not here to tell you how foolish.

All due respect to the gas of the heavens, but of course our budget income is a subsidiary of a publicly traded for-profit company that constantly longs to keep our energy bills climbing ever higher, and has failed to directly benefit from an increase in power demand, is going to say everything will be all right. Maybe the Peace River Water Authority has regaled you with assurances that the river can handle this facility, And no doubt that the United States will probably move into proverbial waters of jargon and promises of jobs, even though those usually dry off once construction finishes. Or maybe they'll try to spook you most likely where national security will be threatened or will fall behind if we don't bolt over and break them around right away. But their voices shouldn't be any louder than the people's voices, and the people have spoken loud and clear.

They don't have to deal with the problems of the people. They're not the ones who have to reset their clocks every day in the summer because the power grid already can't handle a light breeze in the midst of rain. And if, God forbid, if the human does get built someday, they're not the ones who are going to have to deal with the headaches and the nausea brought on by heat or sound. We are going to be just talking about it in the end, though, and I promise it is not the end of the world if we don't have one. But if the city puts this much effort into fixing the crumbling sidewalks, its traffic on all that, and refining Carol Riles.

I oppose any data center in Northport. Data centers will negatively affect our surrounding natural environmental, are incredibly loud, constant exposure to such level of noise is known to cause nausea, dizziness, anxiety, panic attacks, changes in animal behavior, sudden death of chickens and ducks, use as much electricity as 100,000 households, and require vast amounts of water for cooling process. There's no employment benefit for Northport residents that will justify building a data center. There may be 10 to 20 jobs. but they will be maintenance oriented or security. Certainly not enough to upend our city with the presence of a data center. I implore city commissioners to reject construction of any data center in Northport. Thank you. John, I would like to comment on the city's presentation for the proposed data center. I would like to compliment city staff on assembling this presentation. It is easy to read and covers many of the hot topics. But that being said, this presentation fails to follow commissioner instructions to present both sides of the argument for a data center in Northport. It is extremely one-sided, favoring the data center, almost to the point of making us believe it was assembled by the developer wanting to build the data center. It does not adequately address quality of life and environmental noise pollution. Continuous cooling fans, HVAC units, and periodic testing of diesel backup generators generate high decibel noise levels that disrupt nearby neighborhoods. Air pollution. Emergency diesel generators emit high level of nitrogen oxides and find particulate matter. Raising local public health concerns, land and habitat loss, massive footprints required hundreds or thousands of acres leading to the loss of agricultural land, open spaces, and natural habitats. Water discharge methods and loopholes in the consumptive use permits. What is the economic impact on the city as a whole and specifically on the homeowners within five miles of the data center? But what do I know? KG, data centers are notorious not just for their power consumption, but for their staggering water usage. Because this proposed facility is directly in our regional environment, we need absolute transparency regarding where its cooling water comes from and where it goes. I request that water managers and city engineers answer the following four questions tonight. Daily gallon consumption, exactly how many millions of gallons of water per day will this seven building data center require for its evaporative cooling system? How will this massive... Draw. Impact workforce long-term water capacity, especially during our dry season when regional supplies face natural strain. Drinking water prioritization. Will the city guarantee tonight that residential drinking water availability and local utility water pressure will always take priority over the cooling needs of this commercial data center during a drought or water shortage emergency? Chemical contamination risk. Data center cooling towers frequently utilize chemical biocides, scale inhibitors, and water treatments to prevent bacterial growth like Legionella. What specific protocols are in place to ensure these toxic industrial chemicals do not leach into our local groundwater surrounding wetlands or our broader regional watershed? Waste water discharge safety. When water is evaporated from cooling towers, the remaining on evaporated water becomes highly concentrated with minerals and treatment chemicals. Where does the developer intend to discharge this toxic low down wastewater? Will our local water treatment infrastructure safely process it, or will it risk contaminating our surrounding environment? Our water supply is our most vital resource. We cannot afford to risk its safety or quantity for corporate data storage. Thank you. Kate VanHartelsen, The DATE Club, and thank you for taking the time to listen to constituents. I strictly oppose any data centers being built in Northport, Florida, or anywhere else. 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 accountability onto the private owners. Should the predictability and 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 capable of mitigating the destructions that data centers are causing and, in fact, will exacerbate our increasing environmental, economic, and health issues. Also, we face constant existential crisis from billionaires and a corrupt, plebiscite, and institutionally abusive Trump admin where their wealth explodes while ours diminishes no matter how hard we work, worsening climate catastrophes compounded by the rich technocratic class abusing the power money can buy to seek greater control, power, surveillance, and wealth over an entire nation of citizens with data centers and flock cameras being other pathways for them to cement 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. And that's all I have for this one. All right.

And now we will move on to our final public comment and in person first, please.

Randall Hess, followed by Chuck Angle. Chuck's still here?

He's left.

Tim Ritchie and Sam Turpening.

Good evening, and thank you. That's one place I definitely would not want to be tonight, or the last few nights is up there where you guys are at. So I just want to say a couple of things. One thing I would like to see after this big debacle is for maybe the city attorney to work with everybody in creating a data center ordinance for the city. I think that would be a good thing moving forward for everybody, at least set some type of ground rules saying either we want this or we don't want this. And obviously from public comment the last couple of meetings and stuff, that's something that we the people or the citizens of Northport do not want in this area. And I don't think it's because people are against data centers. We all enjoy picking up our cell phones and being able to access Facebook and being able to read our emails or making notes. That's not a bad thing. That just keeps us moving and keeps us working. The bad thing is when they build these data centers in cities that are deprived of natural resources already or we're low on water as it is where we're creating restrictions, And yet these guys want to come in and take up a bunch of our resources that we just don't have. And I think that we need to set some ground rules and stuff in the future. And I think that's a good idea moving forward. A couple of things that I want to bring up is in regarding to the ordinance, the data center ordinance, there's a group out there called Sierra Club out of Pennsylvania, I believe it was. They've got some modeling data center ordinance information and stuff on their website at sierraclub.org. I mean, it's a great resource just to look up to see what some of the other jurisdictions and stuff are doing. There's also some studies and stuff that I think you guys should look at. They're doing studies at, I think it was Texas A&M, regarding the environmental health impacts, showing that there is an increase in asthma and premature deaths and stuff due to these data centers and stuff in the area within this two and three mile radius and stuff. So that's something that we might want to look at as far as some air quality monitoring, noise. I know you guys talked about noise ordinances and stuff earlier. One of the other areas, Arizona, Maricopa County. It's a pretty famous county, but they're canceling construction permits right now for new homes because they don't have the resources because they're used up. from all the data centers that they allowed in. They allowed in, let's see, there was Mater, Google, and Microsoft, all built within their jurisdiction, and they had dwindling resources as it was. Now they don't even have the resources to be able to provide for any new residents coming to the area. So our resources are valuable. And like I said, I'm not against data centers, but I am against putting them in areas that are you know, even within a couple miles of a house, you know, they need to be out further and they need to be in areas where their resources can support what they need. Thank you.

Well, good evening everybody again. It's 9.33 p.m. That's... It's a lot of time for a private citizen to give, to relinquish some of their oxygen and their blood and their time and their mental horsepower and capacity. What have we all learned in the last few weeks here with this whole AI data thing? And then tonight, what did we all learn? I'll tell you what the general consensus is, is nobody wants this. And yeah, we like our phones, and we like our data, and we like all that. But when we only have so much water, when it's going to take 2 billion gallons to cool the place down, we can't get down on our knees. and lick the boots of greed. You know when the big fat cat's in the hospital and he's dying and he's grasping for his last gasp of air. Do you know what gland is going to go out? Their greed gland. You hear me talk about quality of life. We don't see that in any of the brochures anymore. Because it's way down when it should be number one. Our children, the children who were up here the other night, we don't want to get up and applaud them and we're told no. That's some serious bull shit. We should be applauding every one of our children that come up here to speak and encourage them. Let's shut the door on them. You should all really be concerned because I want to tell the majority of you on this board what i'm telling you is the truth about the water anybody that doesn't want to believe what i'm telling you about the millions of gallons that are not available you pay attention you want water to come out of the tap right city manager when you turn it on forget about water quality quantity

Thank you, sir.

Hey, guys. For the final time tonight, my name is Sam Terpening. For you saying that there were data centers in Northport, you're wrong, because I've used AI while I was sitting there. There are no data centers in Northport. So check your facts before you keep. SV180, it's a hurricane law. It's where this all started from. Before SB 180, every rule that they were talking about when the guy was over there talking about the rules from the 1970s, the ordinances, all the writings, all the blah, blah, blah. That was in the 1970s. I was 10 years old. Because of SB 180 and the hurricane law, it preempted everything from the 1970s and 1980s and 1990s, the 2000s, the 2026 now we're at. It preempted all of that. So all of those ordinances and regulations are not applicable right now because SB 180 was written to get everybody back into their homes because of the hurricanes and the floods. When the corporation started exploiting SB 180, DeSantis wrote SB 484, preemptively giving the dais back the power to be able to write their LDRs and their comprehensive plans in order to prevent all this. They choose not to do that. So now, as we all know, it is all in the court system now. It will be the judges and the lawyers that make the decision. There is no one up here on the dais that could do anything for anybody in Florida in all 67 counties in Florida because those lawsuits are now pending. That means until they start making their rulings, their judges, everyone's hands are tied. There are people over two dozen municipalities suing SB 180 saying that they want to take, that is unconstitutional and they want their home rule power back. But the corporations that want the hyperscale data centers, which is completely different. Data centers have been around since the 70s. That's how your phone works. That's how Netflix works. That's how you get your pictures of your freaking grandchildren, regular data centers. Hyperscale data centers are completely different. They do not operate your phones. They operate the flock cameras. They operate holding your information to be able to track you and to control you. They are the prison gates for the 21st century. They are the Jetsons from the 1970s coming to 2026. Their hands are tied. So they are all wasting our time as most of the people in the room left.

Thank you, sir.

Lisa Rodriguez, followed by Joseph Powell. And Jess Johnson?

thank you for the opportunity lisa rodriguez 35 year resident here in northport i live on a well so i have a vested interest in ensuring that whatever we decide to do that it's done environmentally safe friendly and protects all of us so that is my concern i am going on record that i am in support of developing this area as a 35 year resident i know we need this internet um interchange for emergency evacuation purposes. We also need it for employment. I want to see distribution and manufacturing done in this area. I don't think we need residential. What I don't want to see is a data center because of the fact that the technology is just not there to make it safe for us. and the reality that we have thousands already in the United States. Why does Northport need to be another one? We have more than enough. My God, when we're looking at China, for example, that has much more people, and the fact that they only have 400, why does the United States need thousands? And I don't want to be a skinny pig. I would like to suggest that we get with Elena, and she can get back to this developer and see if they can change their business model to be something that's more conducive to our current needs. Hopefully they see the reality in that because whatever they're projecting now is not something they're going to be able to build today. It's going to cost them billions of dollars to even get it done. And the community would not even benefit employment-wise whatever they're suggesting right now. It's a limited employment opportunity, limited in any construction. So I see more potential in an industrial manufacturing distribution than a data center. The other thing that... I would like to see what we can do because I've been here long enough to know that Mosaic had a tremendous sinkhole. where millions of gallons of toxic water was displaced in our aquifers. And I don't hear about any testing of that. And as a well consumer, I am concerned. Florida has a lot of PFAs. We have neighboring toxic wells and sites. Here, we live in an area with some protective water shells. So I would like to recommend that we do some testings. I asked Peace River if they actually test for heavy metals, and they do not. Swiftwater. uses chemicals in their water. And one thing that I note here, the city also uses herbicides in their maintenance. And herbicides, as far as I'm concerned, are toxic. Some people think that, oh, they don't stay in the environment that long. I don't believe that. I do believe that they're harming our frogs, our fish, our birds, and stuff like that. So I would like to see some testing on the waters now so that we have a basis. so that we can determine, is the cadmium from this mosaic or other contaminants that we have or other chemicals? Because I don't believe we're testing for heavy metals. We seem to be dousing our drinking waters with bleach. They don't even use hydrogen peroxide or other more environmental . So that's it. The only thing I wanted to ask you, Florida Digital, he was only received his LLC July 27th of 2026. I don't know how he makes it to be an expert . His LLC was only adopted July 27. Thank you, ma'am.

My name is Joe. I've lived here in the city since 2020. I moved to this quiet residential community because it was a quiet residential community, okay? And that's why I think a lot of us are here. Yeah, we needed a few more restaurants, a few more things, not car washes and apartments, but okay, they're here. This is not what we moved here for. And I'm speaking now mainly to you, okay? You've done us a disservice, all of you. And the only one who stands up and says no is this gentleman right here, okay? There's a movement of foot to get rid of you. I'm going to get behind it. And I've got a big mouth. I've worked for government all my life. I've seen some dog and pony shows. What else I heard tonight with this guy from FDSA was the worst dog and pony show I've ever seen. Florida Power Light was smart enough to show up. I wouldn't show up either for this kind of crap. Okay? You may be listening to me and thinking, well, who the hell is this guy? Well, don't worry about who I am. There's a movement of foot to get rid of all of you. My support goes back to this gentleman right here. The rest of you, no. Fix your game. Fix your game. You backed into us. You did us wrong. We're not going to forget it, are we?

No.

Okay? It's not the first time, but it's going to be the last. All of you think about what I'm saying. It's not a joke. All of you. Everybody understand, except these two ladies here, need to think about it. I've heard good things about you, Mr. Attorney. The rest of you, no. Have a good evening, folks.

Jesse?

First of all, I've had like three of these Mountain Dews sitting here at this meeting, so sorry about that. I kind of think outside the box a little bit, so some of this is definitely not going to be repetitive from what you heard. Sitting here thinking about it, with the FPL, as Petro had mentioned, you know, about their wiggle room. But look at the hurricane, what happened. They came through and charged all of us almost double our electric bill to fix their light poles and all the damage that was caused just from that. Because that multi-billion dollar company lost a little bit of profit. Now they're going to have to build on this. Who are they going to charge? They're going to charge all of us. The jobs that this data center is going to create, the construction jobs, I'm sorry, but it's not going to be Joe Rose Plumbing down the street doing these jobs. It's going to come from out of state. It's not going to be locals doing these jobs. None of us are going to be able to bid on those contracts. And the water, they're going to run the pipe. They say they paid for the pipe. What's that going to do to everybody that's on the wells when they run that pipe? Is that going to lower that cost for us to hook up to that pipe then? Since they're paying a big portion of it, I think maybe that would lower the cost for us residents that have to pay for that hookup charge and everything else, because I'm assuming it costs to run that pipe all the way down anyway. Something to think about. What about security? All these people are talking about these data centers that hold all this information. That's something that somebody's going to want to attack at some point. I don't know. It's not a conspiracy theory. I'm just saying that it's something that somebody's going to want to blow up or do something to at some point. That's everybody's information. Maybe they'll hack it or just try and get rid of it because that'll completely put us in a crutch when we lose all that information. So why wouldn't a terrorist or somebody who's just gone crazy want to attack you? Is that something that we need to worry about? It's a little North Port. Why not handle that kind of situation? And just a side note, hear about all this evaporating water. I don't know about y'all, but I'm human enough. And I know it's probably not going to make a difference. We have enough evaporation, but that's just another side note. I'd make a joke out of it. But that's all I had to say. Just things to think about. I appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you, sir.

Met Padani. Norfolk should welcome data centers and recognize them as an opportunity to attract billions of dollars in private investments that can broaden commercial tax bases. The fiscal opportunity is substantial. Using current Northport and Sarasota County tax rates, a $1 billion data center could generate roughly $13 million annually in local property taxes in its early years, including about $3.4 million directly to Northport. That is nearly 9% of the city's current property tax revenue from a single project. Notably, unlike residential development, data centers concentrate enormous taxable investment on relatively small sites while adding little extra demand for schools, parks, and other public services, That does not mean approving them anywhere or at any cost. Data centers should be located far away from residential neighborhoods in appropriate industrial areas. They should provide dedicated or off-grid power where necessary, avoiding competing with residents for water and pay for infrastructure upgrades Their projects require, done correctly, data centers can provide huge fiscal benefits without sacrificing residents' quality of life. For example, in Lubbock County, Virginia, data centers occupy only about 4% of its commercial partials, yet currently generate about 38% of the county's general fund revenue, according to the county public documents. Clearly, this type of development deserves serious consideration in Northport, particularly as Amendment 3 aims to remove a significant portion of the property tax base. Data centers could not only fill that gap, but leave us in a much better position moving forward, giving the city the ability to expand services and reduce tax burdens on residents even further. Any moratorium should be extremely brief with the goal of setting the standards outlined above. Angela. I'm asking the city commission to slow down this process and not allow tonight's workshop to become a one sided discussion focused primarily on how to accommodate data centers. What is missing is just as important as what is being presented. Residents need meaningful information about the potential environmental impacts, enormous electrical demands, water consumption, infrastructure requirements, noise traffic, and the proximity of the proposed site to schools and neighborhoods. The proposed site is within approximately one and a half miles of a middle school and is too close to establish residential neighborhoods. That location deserves much greater scrutiny before the city considers moving forward. During the moratorium, the city should strengthen its ordinances so that data centers cannot simply obtain exemptions, variances, deferred impact fees, tax incentives, utility concessions, or expedited treatment that could shift costs and risks onto taxpayers. Before any decision is made, I ask the city to require independent studies of water resources, electrical demand, environmental impacts, noise, traffic, emergency response and infrastructure cost, enforceable operating limits, ongoing monitoring, and meaningful penalties if approved conditions are exceeded. The developer to pay for all infrastructure upgrades and mitigation directly associated with the project. A complete transparent public cost-benefit analysis including the number and quality of permanent local jobs actually expected. To North Port residents, a balanced process needs to be established, not a workshop focused primarily on making a data center possible. We deserve to... No full environmental financial infrastructure and quality of life costs before our city makes a decision that could affect our community for decades. Please put residents or schools, neighborhoods, water resources, environment and quality of life first. Jeffrey wash commissioners and planning staff, please enter the statement into the official quasi judicial record. I urge the commission to build a record of competent substantial evidence. CSE to deny the seven building data center master plan proposed for activity center six, AC six, utilizing Florida land use case law and North course charter mandates under board of county commissioners of River County versus Snyder. This commission has the ultimate authority to deny this application if it threatens public health, safety, and fiscal concurrency. I urge a denial based on these non-arbitrary criteria, charter debt prohibitions. The project requires massive water expansions to the eastern Yorkshire area. Our city charter bans municipal debt or revenue bonds without a voter referendum. Because residents will not authorize debt, the project fails concurrency unless the developer pays 100% upfront out-of-pocket. Technical utility failures. I ask the commission to formally adopt the technical testimonies presented by FPL and the Peace River Water Authority regarding localized grid stability and per drawdown. If there are Per data shows this draws strength, strength and stability or depletes our water supply. It constitutes the CSE required to deny the plan. Zoning non-compliance. AC6 was designated in 2002 for light industrial and commercial workspace to drive global employment. An automated windowless AI server warehouse employing minimal permanent staff fails the definition, creating a clear zoning mismatch. Residential plats. The developer's footprint covers legacy platted residential lots. Under Snyder, the developer possesses no vested rights to build a heavy utility footprint over residential plots, and this commission holds full legislative discretion to deny the zoning reclassification required to combine them. Please finalize the 18-month retroactive moratorium, City of Miami Beach versus Tatami Lounge, and use the expert findings to build a bulletproof record of noncompliance. Greg Zielbauer. In addition to the large volume of water the facility may require, I am concerned about the significant amount of wastewater it could generate and how the wastewater will be managed and treated. Plans reference a 16-inch force main capable of conveying between approximately 1.8 and 7.2 million gallons per day with an estimated average flow of roughly 4.5. However, the plans do not appear to identify where this force main will connect to the city's existing wastewater infrastructure. Based on available information, the wastewater treatment plant currently processes approximately 2.1 mgd and has a maximum treatment capacity of approximately 7.6 mgd. If the projected wastewater flows from the data center approach the volumes identified in the plans, the additional load could place considerable stress on an aging treatment system and potentially challenge its available capacity. To better understand the project's impact, I would appreciate clarification on the following. Where will the proposed force main connect to the existing wastewater system? Has a capacity analysis been completed to determine whether the current wastewater treatment plant can accommodate the additional flow generated by the data center? Can the existing treatment processes effectively handle the specific characteristics of wastewater expected from data center operations? Will the city or state require additional monitoring, reporting, or environmental oversight to ensure ongoing compliance and protection of public resources? Does the city anticipate the need to expand the existing facility or construct a new plant to support future demands associated with this? Project. Wastewater improvements can require substantial financial investment and several years to plan, permit, and construct. Given the potential scale of this project, understanding the city's long-term strategy for wastewater capacity and treatment is critical to evaluating its overall impact on the community. KG. Tonight we are hearing a lot of technical data about megawatts and millions of gallons of water, but as a citizen I want to look past the engineering diagrams and ask a fundamental question about the vision for our city. What exactly does Commission hope to accomplish by bringing a massive data center hub into Northport? While the promise of a massive commercial tax windfall is highly attractive on paper, we must look at what we are sacrificing to get it. I ask the commission to openly address these points tonight. The reality of job creation. Data centers are notoriously job poor. Developments once construction concludes. A massive 896,000 square foot compound will take up hundreds of acres of our land, but may only yield a few dozen permanent on-site security and tech maintenance jobs. If this project isn't creating a robust local workforce for Northport residents, is the property tax revenue alone worth the permanent alteration of our city's landscape? The risk of shifting the tax burden. The primary argument for this project is that corporate tax dollars will help fund our city service and offset residential infrastructure costs. However, if our local electric grid and water supplies require tens of millions of dollars in immediate upgrades just to support the 50 megawatt facility, won't that tax revenue simply be swallowed up, maintaining the data center's own massive infrastructure footprint? How does that tangibly improve the daily lives or lives of ordinary homeowners? Defining Northport's identity, our city has thrived by offering a distinct, community-focused, and natural environment for families and retirees. Introducing a sprawling, windowless, high-utility, industrial tech compound fundamentally alters who we are. It's the short-term financial incentive of Northport Holdings 300, aligning with the long-term master plan that residents actually want, or are we selling our community's identity to the highest corporate bidder. Good evening, Commissioners and Representatives from Florida Power and Light. I am a Northport resident living 2.5 miles from the proposed Yorkshire and Oleander technology site. I'm deeply concerned about the macro level strain and 50 megawatt data center cluster we'll place on our local electric grid. To ensure our community's energy security and financial stability, I asked FPL to directly address the following four questions during tonight's presentation. Ratepayer protection. What explicit legally binding guarantee can FPL provide to ensure that the massive cost of upgrading substations, transformers, and high-voltage grid infrastructure for this 50 megawatt load will be paid for entirely by the developer rather than being passed down to North Fork's residential ratepayers through future rate hikes? Transmission line routing. If this project requires the installation of a new high-voltage transmission line, and localized substations will FPL commit tonight to routing them strictly through existing commercial and industrial corridors, completely bypassing established residential neighborhoods, grid reliability, and peak demand? How will FPL guarantee grid stability for ordinary homeowners during peak summer cooling months Will the constant intensive draw of this facility increase the risk of brownouts or localized bridge strain for surrounding residential districts? Clean energy offsets. Given that a 50 megawatt draw is equivalent to the power consumption of every existing home in Northport combined, does FPL plan to require or build dedicated solar or clean energy infrastructure to offset this carbon footprint, or will it rely entirely on our existing regional power mix? Thank you. Isabel Canado. Good evening, Mayor, Commissioners, and panel experts. My questions focus specifically on the environmental and structural impacts of continuous industrial noise on our local wildlife. Go for tortoises. A threatened species protected under Florida Administrative Code Rule 6830-27.003 are highly sensitive to low-frequency vibrations and subterranean noise, which can disrupt their nesting behaviors, compromise burrow stability, and drive them or 350-plus commensal species out of their shelters. Because data centers operate 24-7, they generate chronic low-frequency acoustic footprints. What baseline ambient noise and semastic vibration studies have been or will be conducted for this project? Can a new ordinance require the applicant to submit an independent Acoustic and vibrational environmental impact studies showing that operational vibrations will not penetrate neighboring soils at levels that disrupt subterranean wildlife. And what specific engineering thresholds will North Port require the developer to maintain to prevent continuous operational vibrations from disrupting good for tortoises colonies adjacent to the site? A data center operates in perpetuity, but the biological tolerance of a threatened species does not. The good for tortoise and its hundreds of... commensal species are vital to the health of our local ecosystems, and they rely completely on the decisions made in this room. We can have both economic development and robust wildlife protection, but only if we ask the hard engineering questions before the first shovel hits the ground. I ask that you protect our local environment by requiring a comprehensive acoustic and vibrational environmental impact study. Let us ensure that future of technology in our city does not mean the silence of our natural habitats. Thank you for your time. And that's all.

All right. It's 10 p.m. and I adjourn this meeting.

Thank you for joining me today on the job here with our utilities department at Lift Station 113. Now, I want to say two things we learned today. One, water.