Planning & Zoning Commission - Regular Meeting

Amy, can we get a quick mic check on you?

Yes. Hello?

Okay. We've got you. Thank you.

Alright. I call this regular meeting of planning zoning commission to order on Wednesday, 01/13/2026 at 6PM. May we have roll call, please?

Sure can. William Magnum? Here. Michelle Brillison? Here. David Case? Here. Clivendia? Here. Mariah Dunn? Here. Amy Meeks? Here. Here. We have a quorum.

I had on my schedule today that this would be over by eight, but it looks like we're gonna hear much longer than that. So I wanna ask everybody to please silence their cell phones. The commission may only discuss items posted on tonight's agenda. All their inquiries be forwarded to staff. The commission will strive to ensure that meetings are conducted in a courteous manner in an atmosphere free of intimidation, defamation, personal insults, profanity, or threats of violence. This now brings us a citizen comment period. We have John Mayberry, Michael Whelan, David Swank, Jose Lozano. If you please make your way to the podium. Yes, sir. We have three minutes.

Good evening, chair and commissioners. John Mayberry, the applicant for the data center project at 904 Francis Harris Lane. I want to speak specifically about jobs, what kind of jobs this project creates, who fills them, and why their impact extends well beyond the construction site. This project is expected to generate approximately 1,200 skilled construction jobs over several years. These are not temporary one off positions.

This is sustained phase construction requiring electricians, linemen, HVAC technicians, control specialists, concrete crews, project managers over an extended build period. At full build out, permanent on-site staff is estimated at 50 jobs whose roles span highly skilled technical positions, such as critical systems technicians and network operations, as well as many more security maintenance and facilities operations workers that would be employed contractually. But the most important point is who does this work. Data center construction and operations rely heavily on licensed skilled trades, particularly electrical workers. These projects are designed to be staffed locally because local labor reduces risk, improves response times and builds long term operational knowledge.

That means real opportunities for local electricians, apprentices, and technicians to work on some of the most complex electrical infrastructure in the state. This kind of project is career defining, working on high voltage substations, redundant power systems and mission critical infrastructure, accelerates experience requirements and opens the door to master electrician licensure, supervisory roles and long term advancement. These are resume building projects that raise earning potential for decades, not just for the duration of construction. Beyond direct jobs, there is a significant layer of ancillary and supplier employment. Data centers depend on local vendors for materials, logistics, equipment servicing, security services, landscaping and ongoing maintenance.

These dollars circulate locally, supporting small businesses and regional suppliers year after year. Finally, there is the opportunity this creates for education pipelines. Projects like this open the door for partnerships with the school district in Texas State. From internships and technical training to applied engineering, IT, facilities management and energy systems coursework. Data centers increasingly serve as real world laboratories for power management, cooling systems and digital infrastructure, exactly the kind of disciplines that Texas State teaches. Data center infrastructure doesn't just support servers. It enables advanced manufacturing, life sciences, financial services, logistics technology and software companies that require reliable power and connectivity.

For a city like San Marcos, that infrastructure raises the floor for economic development and opens the door for business development within the city and region. I expect we will

be hearing a lot more tonight from local voices who this work matters to very much. Thank you.

Thank you, mister Mayberry. Michael Whelan.

Thank you. Michael Whelan, one hundred Congress, Austin, Texas. At past meetings, we spent a lot of time walking through technical details, and we're always available to do that again. But tonight, I want to focus on one main point. We showed up, we listened, and we put real enforceable commitments into this project, not just promises. In your backup, you'll see a restrictive covenant that reflects direct feedback from planning and zoning, city council, staff, and residents. That covenant runs with the land, meeting meaning it's binding not just on the current owner, but on any future owner or operator. And those commitments are meaningful. It cuts the approved water usage for this property in half. It requires storm water performance 10% better than code.

It limits impervious cover below that of what LI zoning would otherwise allow. It sets a flat 75 decibel noise limit at all times, which is better than code. And it commits the project to pursuing LEED certification, which we have already registered for. So these are not minimum standards. They are above code protections that are written directly into a legally binding document. Now I want to address an enforcement because that's where some concerns were raised last time here. As a city city attorney can confirm, this covenant is enforce enforceable by injunctive relief. That means violations are not handled through warning letters or fines. They are addressed through immediate court ordered compliance. Operationally, that is the strongest enforcement tool available.

For a data center, an injunction could mean forced equipment changes, suspension of operations, or shutdown of certain systems. That kind of uncertainty is unacceptable in this industry. These facilities serve hospitals, utilities, public safety systems, and enterprise networks. So compliance with the RC is not optional. It is mandatory.

Compliance is engineered into the design and operation of the facility from day one. And importantly, this level of enforceability only exists because this project is inside the city limits, subject to this covenant and city authority, not out in the a ETJ where none of these protections would apply. This project won't stress city emergency services, park systems, or street maintenance. It's not in the flood plain or in a residential area. Instead, it will generate long term revenue services while operating under tighter restrictions than city code requires.

So when we talk about accountability, this is not about trust. It's about the law and operational reality. We've done the work. We've put in real commitments. These commitments are on paper, and we're asking for your support for a project that is both highly regulated and highly beneficial to the city. Thank you. And obviously, we're all here to answer more questions.

Thank you. Yes, sir. We have Yes. 3

David Swank, Dallas, Texas. My background is primarily in the electric utility industry for the last thirty five years. Served as engineering operations as well as CEO for many of those years as well, multiple utilities. I want to address electricity use directly because a lot of what's been said about data centers and the grid doesn't reflect how the Texas electric system actually works. First and most importantly, this project will not increase electric rates for residents.

Data centers are classified as high load factor customers, meaning they use power steadily in sharp peaks. In Texas, grid stress and price volatility are driven by peak demand scarcity, not by steady predictable usage. In fact, predictable demand improves forecasting, improves dispatch efficiency and supports long term planning. From a utility standpoint, that kind of load is easier, not harder to serve. Second, this project does not reduce power availability for residents or businesses.

In Texas, large new loads are required to fund the infrastructure needed to serve them. That typically includes new or expanded substations, redundant high voltage feeds, relay protection coordinated with ERCOT and transmission upgrades. All that infrastructure is paid for by the developer, not by ratepayers, and it becomes part of the broader electric system that future growth can rely on. In other words, growth pays for growth. That's how the Texas grid is designed to work.

As someone with more than thirty five years in energy utility, like I say this clearly, a well planned data center builds out a tremendous amount of high capacity, high quality infrastructure that both the utility and the community benefit from long after construction is complete. It also provides stable, reliable demand, which is incredibly important for long term system planning and rate stability. And it's important to be precise about responsibility here. Interconnection approval, system planning and reliability standards are governed by ERCOT, the Public Utility Commission and the electric provider, not by the developer. This project only moves forward after those entities confirm that adequate capacity exists or is being built to serve it safely and reliably.

So the conclusion is straightforward and supported by how the grid is actually structured. This project does not burden the electric system. It strengthens it by funding infrastructure, improving predictability and expanding long term capacity, all at private expense.

Thank you for your time. Thank you, sir.

Hello. My name is Jose Lozano, and I'm here I live here in the city Marcos. I know there's a lot of big arguments which what's better if it's the single family development or the data center. And what I do wanna point out is that this property is located at a unique area where both resources needed, which is water and power, are available. This property is also located right at the edge of the city limits.

The water provider is CCSUD, crystal clear, not the city of San Marcos, which mean that if an opportunity arises, a data center could be built right next door using the exact same resources, and the city would receive zero benefit out of it. The county has fewer regulations when it comes to building permits. The city, on the other hand, reviews projects in much more greater detail starting from the building permit from stormwater and anything related to environmental. I have read the restricted covenant, and it includes the following requirements plus whatever the city requires already. They put restrictions on water, which is great.

They also put storm water, 10% more retention than what the city requires to make sure that there's no flooding with the property neighbors. They're also requiring, TCQ rules to be treated at 80% total suspended solids, which is not required in this area, and it's not required by the county either. And it's also pursuing lead certification and their compliance with the noise level ordinance from the city. So from my perspective, this approach offers the best of both worlds. The developers are going above and beyond by adding restrictions through these covenants to address any environmental concerns while at the same time, the city gains a significant expansion of its tax base.

That's it. Thank you, guys.

Thank you, mister Lozano. Going forward, if we miss anybody, we will bring the names up at the end, so I don't wanna think anybody's gonna be overlooked if you're not here at this moment. We will keep going in order. We have Jennifer Lindsey, Cares Blackstone, Patrick Blackstone, and Mike Martin.

Chairman, I may just real quick ask everyone online, if you're not speaking or haven't been called on, if you can please mute your mics and cut your video until we call on you. Appreciate that. Thank you.

And we have three minutes and the time starts when you start speaking and say your name.

Jennifer Lindsey, 312 Valley Acres Drive, New Braunfels, Hays County. Good evening. I'm here to speak out against agenda items four and five and to persuade members to vote no on these items. On 10/15/2024, the San Marcos City Council adopted a comprehensive plan that established the goals and vision for the future of San Marcos. Over the next twenty to thirty years, this document required years of diligent thought by experts and community members to develop.

A guiding principle set forth in the comprehensive plan labeled strategic and complementary states, San Marcos strives to ensure the development adds to the greater whole of the community and that the long impacts of development are considered in short term decision making. I do not see how PNZ members can reconcile this principle with documented reports showing the devastating impacts to people, water, and power grid resources by data centers. Centers. The existing preferred scenario conservation cluster identifies areas where development would be discouraged over the life of the comprehensive plan, and what development that does occur within the conservation reservation areas should be low impact to the natural environment by using a variety of development techniques and strategies. Again, I do not see how PNC members can reconcile these statements with these two proposed PSAs when they run completely contrary to each other.

Highlander LLC received accommodation for the 136 acres with a PSA already. This acreage was changed from conservation cluster to CD 2.5 to build single family homes on. Not being happy with that business decision does not mean San Marcos city staff, council members, PNZ members, or community members must bear the burden of correcting it for him. Concern over people living next to a power plant is understandable, but if people choose to buy homes there, they make a choice based on knowing there is a power plant there, a decision some current residents were never fortunate to be granted as we already lived out there before the power plant. If you yell yes for these agenda items four and five, you will be creating a hub of heavy industry, a domino effect.

It's your job to implement the comprehensive plan and to adhere to its guiding principles. Even the twenty twenty five strategic plan states, implement the comprehensive plan. Engage residents. Protect neighborhoods' natural, cultural, and historic resources. Residents have been engaged in saying no to this development and the requested PSAs. Vote no for your community and your city. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Lindsey.

Hello.

Wait. Please.

Okay. I

can do it all night long. So I ask that you please be respectful out there, keep the clapping to a minimum, and please allow the people up here to speak. You have me three minutes, and please state your name.

Hi. My name is Karis Blackstone. I have been a Hays County resident my entire life, and and I am completely against the Cloud First AI data center being built in San Marcos. I'm very concerned about the noise and air pollution this data center will bring as well as the extensive water usage needed for cooling the servers. I'm very concerned that these issues, along with the many others that come with this data center will harm the city of San Marcos and other cities. I understand that in many aspects, the construction of this data center, things have already begun and hands have been tied, but I hope that this zoning change will be denied and the land being developed now can remain a conservation land to help preserve as much of the San Marcos I've grown up in. Thank you.

Thank you, miss Blackstone.

Hello. I'm Mike Martin. I want to first thank you guys for all all that you do up here from San Marcos. It's not an easy, not easy thing to do. But I have a speech problem, so I'm gonna let Hayek read my report for you opposition to this.

Thank you, mister Martin. If we have Patrick Blackstone. Sir, if you please come forward.

I'm reading on Mr. Martin's behalf.

Goodness, I apologize. I am so sorry.

It's Okay. Good evening. I've lived in and around San Marcos since I came to college here in 1965 and taught school for fifty years, thirty five plus in San Marcos. It is my hometown. I am one of the neighbors of the proposed data center, and it is my home of twenty five years.

I want to go on the record that I am truly against the proposed data center for obvious reasons. The environmental effect of it would be devastating, devastating to my place, my home, and all of the neighbors around it. The environmental effects of an astronomically large plant would be catastrophic to the environment and the people living anywhere near it by caused by the heat it would create, the stress it would put on our water supply, the aquifer, and the stress it would put on our electrical power. I can't understand why the city would approve and annex a plant that basically does not benefit the community and that the neighbors disapprove of.

Thank you. Ken, I apologize for that. Sir, if you just state your name, you got three minutes.

Good evening. My name is Patrick Blackstone. I've been a San Marcos resident for eleven years, and I would like to say that I am not in favor of the construction of the AI Identisator data center in San Marcos. Thank you for your time.

Thank you, mister Blackstone. If we could have Tory Martin, Lydia Rodriguez, Luke Kraft, and Hyatt Quurunful, q u r u n f u l. I apologize.

Torrey Martin, 1301 York Creek Road, New Braunfels, Texas, Hays County. Once again, I am here to speak against the data center on tonight's agenda. The zoning conservation cluster states, development that does occur within conservation and reserve areas should be low impact to the natural environment. Buckle up because I'm gonna talk fast because I have a lot to say as the immediate neighbor. I am very educated in what it is like to live in this neighborhood.

I can tell you we already experience regular brownouts, and our water is shut off monthly for hours at a time from 18 wheelers driving down our roads, breaking our pipes, resulting in receiving boil water notices to have to wait for the bacteria to leave our lines before we can resume our water consumption. This being said, Francis Harris Road is not structurally sound to stand the estimated three to five years of weighted construction equipment on this road, resulting in more of the town's tox dollars to constantly fixing the road. We are scared to not have water. Five metal three story structures that will be radiating heat, our electricity bills will go up. Our units are gonna be working harder and less efficiently than before because of the brownouts and costing us more money.

I hate to think of what this will do to our livestock, which my neighbors and I all depend on financially. We are already seeing mysterious deaths in horses, sterile cattle in horses, not breeding, not producing calves or foals near data centers. And when they breed, will they be developing properly in the womb? Horses can hear a heartbeat from four feet away. So, yes, their behavior would change from hearing an industrial site being developed feet away from them, and we'll hear the frequencies we cannot daily.

Will they become dangerous to ride when I use them for jobs because of this? And obviously, complete neglect to the wildlife that doesn't have much rural and less. Let's talk about flooding. It's not in the floodplain, but everything below that hilltop is, And it all already drains down on us on your Creek Road, which is all in the floodplain. But you cover that hilltop with 70% concrete, it's really gonna come down into our homes and into our ponds that our livestocks are drink out of and that I swim in.

Our wildlife will the wildlife will be transporting from whatever is in their attention ponds to ours, and that's just some of the way these forever chemicals are gonna get into our property, in our wells, in our water, in us, and in our livestock and spread. It will not be confined to their 200 acres. It will bleed all over impacting the neighbors. We have heard many times in this room that conservation cluster is just a placeholder. My neighbors and I are not a placeholder. These are our homes, our ranches, and our livelihood, and most have been there for generations. We are not a placeholder for you to play with. We are agricultural, and we are raising your cattle that you depend on. You depend on clean water and clean food. You cannot depend on a data center. Thank you.

Thank you, miss Martin.

Luke Kraft, 306 Credit Avenue, San Marcos, Texas. I'd like to highlight some concerns raised in the previous meeting, mainly the costs associated with this project. I'll be reading from some statistics sourced from the National Telecommunication and Information Administration, the Alliance for Affordable Energy, and the International Energy Agency. According to the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, the need for data centers is expected to increase by 9% each year until at least 2030. By 2035, data centers US electricity demand is expected to double compared to today.

In Louisiana, currently, the Alliance for Affordable Energy is challenging Metta's Louisiana data center, along with Energy Louisiana's bid to build three new gas power plants to support it. At the previous meeting, an issue was raised on how code would be enforced if Mayberry and Co. Sought to expand or broke their promise. I think many people here are scared. I think people are feel fearful of change, especially such rapid change.

According to the International Energy Agency, The US accounted for the largest share of global data center electricity consumption in 2024 at 45%. People in favor of this data center have argued that Mayberry offers a better solution than those in Louisiana, in Tennessee, in Virginia, and across the country. But to those who say there won't be more after Mayberry, there will be. This is a watershed moment for San Marcos because if one day the center is built, there will be more, especially when our state and federal government offer incredible tax cuts for data center of which the cost falls on the taxpayers. I'm urging this committee to reconsider. There is much more value in this land. Thank you.

Thank you, mister Craft.

Hi, Akronful. 1604, Old Ranch Road 12. For months, we have been coming to advocate for our town and quality of life. Since our calls have been falling on mostly willfully deaf ears, I come to you with your own handbook of values to point out the many reasons a vote against a data center is a vote in favor of the existing strategic plan you all released in 2025. There are five goals of the strategic plan.

I will address each goal and the related outcome to make my points. Quality of life and sense of place, outcome a. Out the gate, outcome a of our first goal is negated by our ongoing discussion entertaining this proposal. To amend the comprehensive plan and the outline it provided within a year and a half of its 10 tenure shows a blatant lack of commitment to this goal by the staff, management, and the majority of the council of the city. Outcome b is to engage residents.

We have been engaged in promoting our own sense of belonging while being misled by city staff and other members of council that this proposal would bring us benefits. A continued relationship with a party who continues to ignore and minimize feedback, input, and engagement is not a healthy one. Are you truly following the strategic plan? Two, economic vitality. Outcome a states it'll utilize the city's comprehensive plan and other master plans as guiding principles.

Is this really what's taking place when you're so quick to consider making exceptions for one special interest? Is this truly your intention when you're not asking the hard questions, advocating for your constituents, ensuring their future quality of life, and only basing your hope on thin promises of potential financial gain while not taking into account the devastating financial, ecological, and infrastructural consequences of this decision. This will further drive the wedge of financial disparity in our town. Are you truly honoring the strategic plan? Three, public safety, core services, and fiscal excellence to collaborate, to prioritize, and enhance public safety.

This experience isn't building trust with our city. If anything, this prolonged and drawn out experience has lessened trust in our community. Staff has not only accommodated, but at times seem to support the changing narrative and goals of this ill defined data center. While hundreds of citizens have repeatedly continued to come out, express themselves with facts, and back up to support their arguments, most of you all have sat up there willfully ignorant and unwilling to change your thinking or truly think for yourselves. PJM Interconnection, the largest US grid operator that serves over 65,000,000 people across 13 states, projects that it will be a full six gigawatts short of its reliability requirements in 2027 due to the increased demand of data centers.

Just last week, the Austin American Statesman reported that a new analysis written by the office's city manager found that data centers have the potential to overwhelm the city system given they need more power than can possibly deliver be delivered with current infrastructure. Are you taking the strategic plan into account? Four, mobility and connectivity. Outcome c. Have you seen how many trucks it takes to build a new data center? Do you think our small town and country roads can take the wear and tear that a project of this magnitude would require? There's more. Listen to us, please.

Thank you. Lydia? Lydia? Yes. Yes, ma'am. Can you please just state your name? We got three minutes.

Lydia Rodriguez. Good evening. My name is Lydia Rodriguez, a third generation ranch owner. And I'm here to speak in opposition to the proposed data center on Francis Harris. San Marcos is a community defined by its neighborhoods, its natural resources, and its responsibility to future generations. And this proposal threatens all three of them. First off, water. Central Texas is facing an increasing water drought risk and a water insecurity. Approving a project that adds major industrial water bans is reckless. These data centers consume millions of gallons of water.

Once water is gone or degraded, we can't get it back. Second, there is the issue of land use and compatibility. Francis Harris Lane is not an industrial corridor. It is surrounded by homes, families, and rural character that people moved here to preserve. A data center brings massive buildings, constant mechanical noise, substations, backup generators, heavy truck traffic, and around the clock operations.

Residents will deal with noise from cooling systems, generators, increased traffic on roads not designed for it, and the visual blight of warehouse scale buildings. Property values and the peaceful enjoyment of homes are at risk. Also, Also, a private corporation can benefit while offering very few permanent jobs in return, which leads to my next point. The economic argument does not hold up. Data centers employ very few people and long term strain on public resources.

San Marcos should prioritize development that provides real jobs, support local families, and align with our comprehensive plan, not projects that extract value while giving little back. Finally, this is this is about who we are as a city. San Marcos has long prided itself on environmental stewardship, thoughtful growth, and a community engagement. Approving this data center on Francis Harris Lane would contradict those values. Growth is inevitable, but how and where we grow is a choice.

I urge you to listen to the residents who live here, who drink the water, who raise their families here, and who live with consequences long after developers move on. I'm asking to please deny this proposal and protect the characters, resources, and future of San Marcos. Thank you for your time.

Thank you, miss Rodriguez. We now have Charles Sechting, Jeremy Hendrix, Kaden Kennedy, Jimmy Nabil, and Cole Taylor.

Tell me when to start.

Sir, after you say your name, you have three minutes. Thank you.

Charles Sechting, s o e c h t I n g. I live at 107 Oakshadow, which is just adjoining the ETJ in San Marcos. But I've been here seventy five years, so other than Mike Martin, I may be the oldest person here. I have been here long enough to know that things are going to change. There's nothing we can do to stop that. But what we have now is and you've all asked to be on this commission. Nobody put a gun to your head and said you've got to be on it. You chose to be on it, and you have to make hard decisions. And one of the decisions we have to decide is whether San Marcos is going to continue to exist. Because anybody that says we're not short of water, anybody that says we're not in dire danger of not having water is not dealing with reality.

I remember when the Blanco River several years ago had seven or eight feet of it. It may have three inches right now. I remember when Jacob's well flowed. It no longer flows. I took my swimming lessons at age six at at City Park, and that water is down considerably. What I'm asking you to do as the commissioners is you're gonna have to make some hard decisions. It comes with that. I was a state Democratic Party chairman. I had to make hard decisions, and sometimes I didn't like it. But in this case, there is no reason to approve something.

My family moved out there. Secting Road is about two miles from this venue in the 1850s. So I know a little bit about this area. Still go out there, and some of my relatives steal little signs off the roads from time to time. But it's a beautiful place that does not need to be disturbed. San Marcos, we don't have the water. We don't have the water. We'd sit there and say we have the water, say we wish we had the water. We're two forty miles from the Chihuahuan Desert. We're a semi arid place to start with.

At some point in time, the commission has to just say and you're gonna be able to vote against this just based upon the rules and the way the rules are to be applied. But I'm just asking you to think about when you get up and look at your children or your grandchildren, are you gonna leave them a a place that looks like the Sahara Sahara Desert? Are you gonna leave them something good, decent, like we had at one point? Maybe we'll get back someday when we stopped taking advantage of these natural springs we have, which are here to give us life, here to give us water, here to give us the life that we enjoy, not help some big. And I'm sorry, Mr.

May be a very nice man. I don't know him from Adam. But at the end of the day, at the end of the day, what he's wanting to do for Hays County and San Marcos is not good for anybody but Mr. Mayberry and his investors and shareholders. That's all I have, but I ask you to vote your conscience and do the right thing by the citizens of San Marcos who count on you to do the right things. Thank you.

Thank you, sir. Okay. I was gonna wait until after your citizen comment for this remark that I'm about to make. We are now gonna implement a three strike rule. We do need everybody out there to be courteous. Please be respectful of people who are speaking. Please ask you to please control your claps. Please. Control your applause is probably the more appropriate way to say that. Jeremy Hendrix, Caden Kennedy, Jimmy Neville, Cole Taylor.

And sir, if you please state your name, and you have three minutes.

Jeremy Hendrix. Thank you very much. Good evening, mayor, council members. My name is Jeremy Hendrix, I'm here on behalf of the Laborers International Union of North America, representing the skilled construction workers who build, maintain, and really keep Central Texas moving. I live in Austin.

I'm proudly cover all of Texas for La Luna, and I'm here tonight to respectfully ask for your vote in favor of items four and five. I'm supporting these items of this project because it represents real opportunities for working people in San Marcos, not just for short term jobs, but long term careers. These are the kind of jobs that allow families to put down roots, to plan for the future, and stay part of this community that they help build. Lionel members know what good jobs look like. They mean family supporting wages, they mean health insurance, and real dignity that comes with steady work, apprenticeship, and training.

That opens the doors for local workers to create true career paths in the trades. These are not temporary jobs. They're opportunities to build a real life for workers. And when workers earn good wages, we know the whole community benefits. They support local businesses, strengthen neighborhoods, and help keep San Marcos a place where families can work, can live, can thrive, and can raise their children and keep their children living here for generations to come.

Items four and five are a chance to bring these opportunities to more people in this community, a chance to invest in the workers that live here and the workers that will live here and in future generations, and in families and in the long term strength of this community. So I respectfully ask all of you to please vote in favor items four and five tonight because this project will be good for this community and good for workers. Thank you for your time and consideration.

Thank you, sir. Oh, Young has just come up.

Jim Neville. Good evening, and thank you commissioners for the opportunity to speak tonight. As I said, my name is Jim Neville, and I'm here with fellow members of the Laborers International Union of North America. We represent local ten ninety five covering San Marcos and thousands of hardworking men and women across the state of Texas. Of I wanna be very clear. We are here in support of rezoning the land on Francis Harris Lane for this new data center project. Projects like this bring real value. Tax revenue that strengthens cities, opportunities for local businesses, and most importantly, good jobs that build real careers. And not just any jobs. This developer has made a written commitment to work with union labor on this project.

That means the highest safety standards, the most skilled workforce in the industry, fair wages, health insurance, and a path for workers to support their families and retire with dignity. I know this personally. I came up through the laborers apprenticeship program. I worked on projects just like this one for nine years to provide for my family before being trusted into a leadership role. And before that, my father fed our family for thirty years and is now drawing a retirement due to projects just like this.

These are the kind of jobs to put food on tables, to give kids stability, that turn hard work into a future. We've already begun working with the developer and we've also reached out to city officials to start building real partnerships with San Marcos. Our goal is simple, to connect local residents to these careers. From experienced tradespeople in this community to young men and women graduating from local schools who are looking for real opportunities. We have hundreds of members building data centers across Texas and thousands across the country.

And everywhere this model is used, with strong safety standards and union labor, communities and families benefit. San Marcos deserves the same opportunity because the reality is this: If projects like this aren't welcomed, they don't just disappear. They go somewhere else. And with them goes the jobs, the training opportunities, and the chance for local hardworking families to build a stable future. So tonight, we respectfully ask you, support rezoning this property, continue the conversation, and allow the project to move forward in a way that benefits this community.

San Marcos has a real opportunity here to invest in its people, to strengthen its workforce, and to create lasting economic stability for families. We ask that you make the most of it. Thank you.

Thank you.

Cole Taylor. I work for the Labors Union, and I support this data center project because it would create good paying jobs. And also through our apprenticeship program, we look forward to working with the community, bringing in and recruit and train local workers for long term careers, and I hope to support the project. Thank you.

Thank you, sir. Now Emmanuel Godu, Randy Harris, Michael Hernandez and Bobby Levinsky. In any such order, can just come to the podium and state your name, and we'll start your three minutes.

Yeah, we got it. I'm jumping on the line. Manning, I think, is coming in. Randall Harris with the Laborers International Union of North America, and I'm here to strongly support this project. I all of you to strongly support this project.

I understand and some other folks have said, you've got some tough decisions to make. This is there's a lot of passion on both sides of this. However, what these kinds of opportunities do are not just one off opportunities. These are literally generational changing opportunities for communities. For the next twenty, thirty, forty, fifty years, workers and residents of this community will have an opportunity to get into a skilled trade, to develop a career, to buy a home, to stay here, to build a family, to volunteer at the schools, to give back, to be a part of this community every single day.

And there's a lot of folks out there. I recognize that, that what I'm saying here, especially for that large group out there, not the most popular thing in the world. But again, these tough decisions, this is a community of over looks like over 90,000. I guess the question for this body here is, you going to be swayed by this vocal minority or the silent majority? Over 90,000 residents of this community, and there's a few 100 out there. We represent 5,000 workers in the state of Texas, over 500 in and around San Marcos in this part of the state of Texas. I would encourage you strongly to support this project, to go out, do the right thing, support families, support training, support good careers. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good evening. Evening. My name is Manuel Goodoy, and I'm a member of a Labors Union Local ten ninety five. I'm here tonight in support of this data center project. I've built an entire career on projects just like this. Union construction work is how I provide for my family. It's how I was able to buy a home here. It's how I've stayed it's how I've stayed work stayed at work. I get health insurance and a future I can plan around. These are long term careers.

They give people stability. They give family security. Knowing that this developer has committed in writing to work with the union labor matters a lot to people like me because it means work will be safe, professional, and done right, and that local workers will have a real opportunity. Please support this rezoning. Allow this project forward. Thank you very much.

Thank you, sir.

Michael Hernandez. Chandler, Arizona Tucson, Arizona Lewiston, Maine St. Joseph, Indiana Cascade Locks, Oregon Warrington, Texas I'm sorry, Warrington, Virginia College Station, Texas. You know what all of these have in common? They're all part of a growing list of cities that have voted to keep data centers out of their communities.

All of these have had committees and city councils actively listening to their constituents and ensuring that all of their concerns are being heard. Here we are in the same position that we were in last March, voicing our opposition to allowing a data center to be built within the city limits of San Marcos and next to our neighbors who rely on their land and their property for their livelihood and for their survival. Are you listening to us? Can you hear us? Since last year, we've learned very little about the proposed data center going in off of Francis Harris Lane.

And ultimately, this is because the developer has been under an NDA all of this time. Once he did get permission to disclose his buyer, we held a town hall that provided us with zero answers and that buyer got spooked and went back into hiding. The lack of transparency throughout it all has been appalling. How can anyone even consider approval without any knowledge of what they're approving and to who? I will tell you what we have learned.

We have learned from the city utilities director, Tyler, I can't pronounce his last name so I'm not going to butcher it, that this proposed data center will use roughly two and a half times the amount of power the entire city of San Marcos uses per day on peak power usage days. Imagine that. One cluster of five buildings using the same power as two and a half cities of 70,000 people. We know that heavy usage raises bills even though experts say it won't. We've learned that with power comes water usage, an average of about 12,000 gallons per megawatt used.

That is in addition to whatever number of gallons they're going to tell us this month that they'll use in their closed loop system, which has not been approved by Crystal Clear. In addition, we learned from the North American Electric Reliability Corporation in their yearly assessment published in November 2025, you can Google it, that Texas and the ERCOT grid are labeled as an elevated risk. In layman's terms, it means that the grid is more susceptible to failure even more so than the winter storm of twenty twenty one due to the rising amount of data centers being built in the state of Texas. Tonight, you're gonna hear a lot of information from a lot of citizens, citizens who have come out to every monthly meeting PNC and City Council since last March. Unlike all the laborers coming out of the woodwork for the first time, no offense.

I hope you are listening to us. We are the ones that are doing the research and putting in the work to provide you with an influx of information. You keep asking the developer for answers, but they're not the data center. They're giving you the same answers you got last year, worded differently. They just see the color of money. Tory, Abigail, Jennifer, Mary, and all of the other concerned neighbors and citizens see the different type of green, the green of their land, their homes, and their lives. You were on the right side of history ten months ago. Please stay that way so we can add San Marcos to the list of communities exercising their voice. Thanks.

Thank you, Mr. Hernandez.

My name is Bobby Levinsky. 248 Camaro Way, San Marcos, Texas. I have twenty years of experience in land use policy, and I have and I've been an attorney in that space for the last ten years. I object to the consideration of PSA twenty five thirteen and cease and zoning case twenty five thirteen tonight on the grounds that they have not complied with the waiting period of the code. Less than six months ago, the cases that you are scheduled to hear tonight were denied by the city council.

Both the preferred scenario amendment and the zoning change are the exact same cases. Neither of them should be on your agenda tonight without a request to waive the waiting periods. Section two two point three point four point one a requires a six month waiting period from the date of denial from any development application that was denied. Section two point five point one point two point f requires a one year waiting period for a zoning change that was either this is really important denied or withdrawn of this from the withdrawal of the same request to change by the applicant after the city council meeting at which the change is to be considered has been called to order. That meeting was called to order.

The zoning case should not be on your agenda tonight. With respect to the PSA, both the applicant and the staff memo indicate that because the rezoning case was not approved due to a failure to achieve a supermajority vote, the application was not technically denied. That interpretation is very inconsistent with basic statutory construction. In the absence of a statutory definition, courts use the words common ordinary meaning, meaning you just look at the dictionary. Mary Webster's dictionary defines denied as refused to grant.

That occurred. This is consistent with the American Heritage Dictionary as well, to decline, to grant, or allow. Refuse. There should be no dispute that the outcome of both of those items was refused and and declined to be granted by the city council. That's the entire reason the applicant resubmitted these requests. The applicant and staff seem to be under the impression that the city codes requires an affirmative vote to deny an application. However, that is not how the code is constructed. The code requires an affirmative vote of a super majority of the council when the planning commission has recommended denial. The public hearing was held on the PSA, and following the public hearing, the city council refused or declined to approve the request. It was therefore denied.

The applicant's probably aware of this weakness of the argument, which is why they argue that it wasn't denied per se. It just didn't become effective. That just doesn't that's an absurd result that the courts would not accept. And I really would encourage this commission to use your authority to decide that that is a ground for denial for both of these requests because it does not comply with the waiting period. It is within your authority to approve the waiver of those. And they have not requested that waiver. That's not posted on your agenda. I think it's within your right to to grant it to to withdraw it based off of the just the waiting period. Thank you.

Thank you, mister Levinsky. We now have Maxfield Baker, Amy Camp, Saunders Drucker, Chad Bartling, Rocco Moses. And you may come up in any order. And please state your name, and we have three minutes. Yes, sir. Oh,

wasn't ready. No. I guess so. Okay. Yeah. I'm Maxfield Baker. I sat in this seat, and I also sat on city council. And so it's hard to know what to say when people are a lot more eloquent than you and have, like, science and research and, you know, all that good stuff. I know some of you all voted against us before. Really hope that you do it again. You're worried about legal consequences, then just stay quiet and vote no. You have that right. We see people do it all the time. Not justify a single reason why they vote, they just vote the right way. Also, if you're worried about legal repercussions, the city's got you covered.

Right? That's what we pay into these, like, administrative things for. It's not lost on me that this process took a long time. And in between the last time and this time, it's very likely that some of you have been lobbied by mister Mayberry. Some of you have tried to lobby our community members through text messages, direct communications to tell us to back off, get a better understanding of it. Meet me in private. Let's let's see if I can get you to understand what I'm saying. Right? And that's that's kinda dirty. That's not great.

We don't have a lobbying ordinance that stops that from happening. So I would ask you to ask each other because, obviously, you don't have to answer to us, but you would hope that you would respect your colleagues and answer them. Have you all been lobbied? Has city staff been lobbied by mister Mayberry, by these union folks out there? The injunction is kind of a a miss you know, miss misplaced thing.

It it's just the cost of doing business for them to stop. And this, you know, isn't gonna be a silver bullet for our budget. The reason our budget is in dire straits is because we continue to let global extractive capitalists, blah blah blah, take money from our community and leave us on a pile of nothing except promises that we don't even know that they'll keep, especially with a state and federal government that is willing to put their boot on us at any point. We saw that when governor Abbott Abbott threatened our ceasefire resolution, something that had no legal base to to do. But there there's no doubt in my mind that they're watching us at that level and that they might too try to come after these restrictive covenants they're promising you, yada yada.

You know, behind closed doors, it's also pretty clear that staff has been putting their own boot on your neck, reminding you, quote unquote, what your jobs are. You don't have to listen to them. Some of them don't want want this because they think it's gonna make their job easier. Some of them want it as a resume builder. I'm gonna end. I know I have just a little bit left. It's nice that city council has, like, the actual bar so you can see it. But everybody out there cheering and applauding. It's great. Snaps are better because you're eating into our own speaking time.

It just, you know, we're as a community trying to get up here and talk. So love all the support, definitely on your side, but just from a a flow, we'll get through more of us if we all just kind of snap our fingers or do something, you know, the little jazz hands. All all that's great. And, you know, again, it's not lost on us that we've been doing open records requests. Right? So if you all don't wanna be honest with your colleagues about the communications between you and outside agencies, expect an open records request. Thank you.

Thank you, sir. Yeah. See? That's good. Please state your name in three minutes, sir.

Hi. Saunders Drucker. I'm a resident here in San Marcos. Thank you for letting me come and speak today. I'd also like to address that if they have not already been allowed to, there's a bunch of people who showed up at 05:00 expecting to be able to sign up to speak. They should be able to speak once all the people who'd sign up earlier can. Next, I'd like to say we've been in this for a year, okay? It's been back and forth. I've not prepared anything to talk today because I'm kind of tired of doing that. And I understand that a lot of their claims might make this proposal sound really good if the entire world was contained within this room, but it's not.

If you go outside of this room, you'll see a few different things. One of them is that there are two different types of data center news headlines, headlines, either about towns fighting them, fighting tooth and nail to keep them out of their jurisdiction, them or towns that have been destroyed by them and are now dealing with those negative repercussions. If you go outside of this room, you will find not a bunch of residential homes out there at 90904 Francis Harris, you'll find some undeveloped ranch land. And that's what it is now acting as a buffer between existing residences and the industrial area of the power plant. That power plant was put there against those people's wish to meet a demand.

This data center is now coming to try and parasite, barnacle off of that area to grow the industrial zoning in that part of town. They've argued quite a few times before that it's unethical to have these multi family homes right next to an industrial area. And then their argument is to expand the industrial area to be next to existing single family homes. They are furthering the problem and claiming to solve it. Next, you have a unenforceable restrictive covenant.

You have a restrictive covenant that they are already planning to break. I say that because I have right here a whole bunch of environmental violations from the state of Virginia against Cyrus One, the company that backed out of their thing but is probably still behind it, in which they repeatedly violate air and environmental assessments, not by going crazy over their limits or anything, but by building generators that they weren't permitted for before they had permits for them. Going a little bit above, squeezing these regulations and factoring the fines and all of the things that you're going to do to them into their construction costs. They have already accounted for whatever we're going to do whenever they violate their own covenants. There's evidence of them doing it for the past fourteen years in Virginia and New Jersey.

It's likely that the company's gonna do the same thing here. Secondly, any jobs in San Marcos should be union jobs. I understand there's a bunch of union guys here, but honestly, construction jobs are not in short supply. Thank you.

Thank you, sir.

Rocco

Moses. Gentleman earlier said watershed moment. I think that that is very apropos. I think that these facilities, whenever you pull the lens up a little bit, represent something that's happening across the country. This is not isolated, and there is no way these gentlemen they all speak in favor of it. The only people that speak in favor of these have fiscal interest directly in them. And there's a playbook. Because if you lens back a little bit and you look at how municipalities are worked over by people like this and you're looking at me, but it's a real thing. They follow a playbook. They initiate projects.

Then the communities come out and they say, please don't do this. And then there's a stall process, and they wear people down. And once they're once they're embedded and they can draw resources and create noise problems and create air pollution problems and create drainage problems and all of these myriad of issues that come with these facilities, they're they're there. The electrical gentleman said, oh, the the city can enforce these things. The city can't do anything once they're there because they're already embedded.

They're parasitic by nature. That is what these facilities are. And as far as the union people, there's lots of other jobs. And the reality is that it it also plays to the example of that the only people that support these projects have direct and personal fiscal interest in them. And so I share the the the emotions of everybody here, but it really is a watershed moment.

Because these facilities, the first one represents a huge marker because then it opens up floodgates. And it drains the resource that we it's it's a, you know, it's something to get very emotional about. The the water table as it is, the process that these people can say that even suggesting usage rates at this scale is not absolutely detrimental in the scale of a water table. It's laughable. It's criminal in reality.

But if you watch the track across the country of what these facilities do to the water table and the health of the people that live around them, it's tragic. It's tragic. So thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Moses.

Good evening, ladies

and gentlemen of the council, fellow citizens of San Marcos. My name is Chad Bartling. A son of this great city. I can't imagine the the weight that you all have on your shoulders to make this decision tonight. I wanna say quickly I respect the opposition and all their positions. They're well researched. I wanna speak from a single perspective, and that's from a tradesman's perspective. I've lived and worked in this community for forty six years. I was a San Marcus Rattler class of 1998. For the bulk of their careers, my mom and dad both worked at Century Tel or San Marcus Telephone, later became CenturyTel and Century Link.

My in laws owned a restaurant in this town for many years. And this city and this community has been a blessing and a joy to me, and that's why I chose to base my electrical contracting company here back when we opened in 2013. So to speak, my boots have been in this dirt for most of my life. As I said, I wanna speak from a tradesman's perspective. And while it's true today, I I own a company of 70 plus employees.

It's based here in San Marcos. I started out in the field putting my work boots on every day, putting on a tool belt, fabricating things. And I'm proud to say and be able to drive around our city and see many of the buildings and the businesses that I helped construct. Projects of this size, type, and scope cannot be understated in their value to the tradesmen and tradeswomen of our city and our county. Projects like this data center, with its size and expected duration and phasing, will provide not only a long runway of job opportunity for those already in the trades, but it will also open the door for solid growth and opportunity for young men and women who are exploring opportunities in the trades the first time, which by the way we're in dire shortage of.

The truth is this, and this has been mentioned before, this project will be built. Now depending on the outcome of tonight's vote, it may or may not be built here. But rest assured, it will likely be constructed somewhere. When it does, it will require a massive amount of labor resources in order to be able to execute. I speak from experience.

Again, we are an electrical contractor. We do have an opportunity as a city to support our tradesmen and women with this vote with well paying, dependable, safe, and most importantly, local work opportunities. In addition, what an opportunity we have to support other small businesses as they support this labor force with ancillary services and goods during the construction of this project. So I asked the city and the ladies and gentlemen of the Planning and Signing Commission to consider joining me in support of this initiative and to approve the project in San Marcos. Thank you all.

Thank you, sir. I apologize about what I'm about to do here. Avitus Senor Jaboskin. Brett Harris, Aaron Brown. If you all please come to the podium.

Public hearing.

Hello. To your credit, you got closer than most. I appreciate that. Alright. Hello. Good evening. Thank you all for your time. Here we are again. My name is Avedi Semerjebashian. I'm a native of Central Texas, graduate of Texas State, and I've had a long and dedicated career working in habitat conservation and ecology with much of it spent in and around San Marcos and Central Texas Hill Country.

This unique sensitive part of the world means a lot to me, it obviously means a lot to you all as well as as public servants and stewards. That common shared love of our community and environment is why surely we must all agree once again that rezoning of residential land to facilitate construction of the Mayberry data center represents a serious misuse of land entrusted to all of us as residents and stewards, which we've already agreed upon. Fundamentally, this project, the notion of further scoring the land to develop it beyond residential is a blow to public trust and a gross misallocation of fuel, land, energy, and water. At the most basic level, this seems to be a balance of costs. Costs we can afford and costs we can't.

With our proposed 75 megawatt power usage for each of its buildings, representing nearly two times the amount of energy needed to power this entire city, the very notion of another consumptive demand be offset by your constituents and residents as is the case with similar projects around The US, it's tantamount to little more than financial exploitation. It's provided estimated tax revenue to pad the bottom line of tech companies' blood pocketbook. The fact that this rezoning is up for debate again is a glaring evidence that the opinions of the public might matter less than the whims of the highest bidder. In short, another example of questionable profits over real people. And as much as I love to sing the praises of ERCOT and its glowing track record of efficiency and accountability, the facts remain that once more, increasing energy demand of a grid, which still imperfectly makes half its power from natural gas, is one more crack in a critical piece of infrastructure that has already failed Texans and this community multiple times and will continue to do so at our greatest times of need.

It's no secret then that the energy needs of this data center may take precedence over our own while we continue to offset the cost after having our own community's voice be underlined by those with the deepest pockets. As citizens, the fact that we are having this conversation again to prevent the abuse of our water, land, and infrastructure due to short term thinking that only serves to benefit those with plenty at the top, and our own expense is beyond reproach. While they dangle the promise of temporary construction support jobs in our faces with little regard to the future of water and power in Central Texas, they pick our pockets and energy clean and leave us to foot the cost and cover their mess when inevitably this whole prod this whole project sucks us dry. We said no once, and last I checked, that's a complete sentence. The construction of this money pit shouldn't be our burden as previously agreed upon.

Thank you

for your time.

Thank you, sir.

Hi, guys. Brett Harris. I'm part of the small crowd that's outside that y'all can't see that wraps around the building that they mentioned about earlier. I'm a local guy. I've been here fourteen years. My family lineage goes back to Edward Dobie, part of Wimberley. I'm here because I'm concerned about what's going on here. There's some things that other people have brought up. And obviously, if you live here, you understand that we had a snowpocalypse, power outages. We have Mhmm.

Drought and issues that we've had where we've had to restrict our water use. I asked you guys just I thank you guys also for listening to me stand here and babble to you guys, but these are all heartfelt concerns that we're all saying from our own experience living here. This is the community we care about, we love. There are a couple of things that were not discussed, and these are some things that are off the top of the cuff of my head that I wanted to bring up to your attention. If we have a data center here that we are gonna be possibly building here if it is approved for you guys, which I'm hoping that you would not.

But with the data center here, it opens up a real big potential for espionage to be focused on our community. One of the first things that people attack are data centers and our electrical source. If we have electricity that's generated to be able to support this kind of need, and if we don't, what are they going to do to correct that? We give them tax incentives and tax breaks to basically have an abatement of taxes to fund the infrastructure to be built. But we don't necessarily get a payback for that because we're paying from it from our own taxes because the tax abatements that they don't pay.

I may be totally wrong about that, but that's as far as I understand is how it works. If we have a lack of power supply to be able to provide them, What may happen also eventually is what other communities are seeing there in some of the petrochemical industry. There are things called PMSs, which is a portable modular, it's a, sorry, I probably throw a big shot there. It's a, it's basically a small modular reactor, PMR, Portable Modular Reactor. And these are small electrical sources because we know that our electrical systems are so unadaptable to provide power.

So other corporations are actually looking at doing this to have reliable power. The other thing that I'm looking at is that we have technology that's being developed right now that's actually antiquating what we're even thinking about implementing for this data center. We may not actually need to have something to scale, scope, and size and use as much water because of technology that is advancing all the time. We're in a tug of war match for things that basically might be antiquated by the time they're completed. And jobs? Yeah. We might have some jobs to build to build these things. And if you're a union member, that's cool. You got a job. But the rest of us students and people that are lay people that are coming out of high school or whatever else in this community, thanks, guys. Appreciate it.

Thank you, sir.

How are you all doing today? I'm back. Aaron Brown. I am a local San Marcos resident since thousand and fifteen, technically. I actually was not prepared to speak to you tonight, but I'm gonna speak to you because I've been against the status center from the start. We've already voted this down once. Right? We've already forced it into a super majority up at city council once. Why we're even back here? That's rules.

Now where do we go from here? The only cause the only course you have from here is the same course you had ten months ago. Bring it back up to city council with the super majority vote, and let city council say yes or no. Here's the points that everybody keeps bringing up. I'm talking about jobs. Right now, we're talking about short term jobs. We're talking about building jobs. Yes. It is going to help these these men and women exponentially grow themselves throughout the coming years. Is that going to keep sustainable jobs in San Marcos?

We don't know because we still have not gotten a decent figure on 50 or a 100 jobs or 200 jobs as far as I know. I'm I'm coming back to this after a couple of months off. So when we talk about jobs, are we really creating jobs? Maybe. Are we creating the high paying jobs that are needed in this town? Maybe. When it comes down to it, it is up to y'all to decide whether we're going to look at the finances of this versus what the city is telling you because this is the city out here. Yes. It is a lot of young folks. I I agree. It is a lot of young folks, and I normally don't stand on the same side as many of the people out here, but I am right now because I believe that this data center is wrong for San Marcos.

Thank you, sir. Real quick, we'll go. Caden Kennedy, I might have missed you. Caden Kennedy, if you want to come to the podium. Okay. We'll switch over to everybody that's online right now, and we'll come back, and we'll let other people speak in the chambers.

Chair, just may note that the one person we had signed up online doesn't appear to be on right now. Those that are online now are signed up for the actual the other items coming up related to the data center when we go to the public hearing portions.

Thank you. Anybody else in the chamber wish to speak? Ma'am, would you like to speak?

Yes, I would like to speak. I thought I might have been the one who signed up online. Well,

you're here now, so we'll just take your name, and you've got three minutes. Yes, ma'am.

My name is Tina Fleming. I'm a San Marcos resident. Last month, a letter was sent to Congress calling for a full nationwide moratorium on the approval and construction of data centers. The petition was signed by more than two thirty national, state, and local organizations from across the country and called for a full nationwide moratorium on the approval and construction of new data centers. The massive harms from AI data centers include enormous electricity consumption, unsustainable water consumption, and acceleration of climate change due to their reliance on fossil fuels, skyrocketing electricity costs, and extensive job losses.

That's actually the ambition of artificial intelligence is through efficiency to replace and to get rid of jobs and therefore increase their profits. In Texas, the signatories include, among others, climate conversation, Brazoria County, and Texas physicians for social responsibility. It is frustrating to see the relentless push the city is making towards pursuing this type of industry. It feels as if the city is not only indifferent to the voice of her citizens, but also detached from the entire socioeconomic and environmental reality our world is facing. The presentations made by city staff have gleefully talked about negligible concessions concessions restrictive covenants that do not address the core issues.

The the water consumption that is referred to is only on-site. It's ignoring the the water energy nexus, and most of the water consumption is through energy production or fracking to obtain the fossil fuels. People I I appreciate that people have a right to earn a living and the construction people that are here today, but mister Mayberry does not have any say over whether we use local construction or not. He's a real estate developer. The whoever is running the whoever in charge of building a data center is not here today.

So we do not know. Also, data centers are moving towards modular construction, some of them. That word modular is being thrown a lot around a lot. I heard it was being used in terms of electricity generation. There are also SMR, small modular reactors, which are pop up nuclear reactors that are being pursued. They're being perfected right now. And a lot of data centers, they cannot meet their energy needs even through fossil fuels, are planning ongoing nuclear. Thank you.

Thank you, ma'am.

I signed up to speak during public comment, but my name hasn't been called.

I apologize.

It's Okay. It's It's Okay. Abigail Lindsay, 308 Valley Acres Drive, New Braunfels, Texas. That is in Hays County. I live about a mile as the crow flies from the site. I was not paid to be here. It's become harder and harder to come up and say the same things about agenda items four and five. I feel at this point, if you are not committed to voting against these items, nothing will persuade you. Last year, eight of you voted against the preferred scenario amendment and zoning change for September. I will hope you will do the same tonight.

The newest version of the San Marcos comprehensive plan was adopted in October 2024. The preferred scenario amendment and zoning request by Highlander began in November 2024, one month after the release of the comprehensive plan. Your job is to guide growth based on principles set forth in the comprehensive plan, which is ensuring the conservation cluster category includes areas that should be held off on developing. Highlander received accommodation for a 136 acres by PSA from conservation cluster to CD two point two two point five to build single family homes. Not being happy with that business decision does not mean a year later, our city staff, city council members, PNZ members, the community have to bear the burden of correcting it for him.

Concern over people living next to a power plant is understandable. But if people chose to buy homes there, they are making a choice based on all available information. Current residents never had that option. We were already living there before the power plant went in. I don't know how we can make it more more obvious that we don't want this request approved. The city has no obligation to make this change. I assure you the money will come from other businesses that will not put such a burden on the residents. There's a new HEB and a Buc ee's coming, which will bring in millions. The city will not see the full tax revenue potentially for at least three years from this project. How do the buildings depreciate?

Also, whoever owns that land will protest those taxes. Cyrus Run and San Antonio protest their taxes every year. The restricted covenants is only as good as it is enforceable, and there is still a lot of questions on how and who will be enforcing it and how much money it will cost the city. With all this information out there and so many of us speaking out against this, against items four and five, please listen and vote against this. One thing I wanna point out is that all of our electricity rates will go up, and that is a fact.

And anyone who says that it won't has been paid to say that or is out and out lying to you. Cloudburst has broken ground, and it's horrible. The security cameras and alarms that go off all the time because of the wildlife walking by, the land clearing has started, and I am sick. It is devastating already what's happening across the road for me. Don't make it 10 times worth 10 times worth allowing another one.

Each and every day, I drive by Cloudburst, and I will be driving by Highlander to drive my son to school. And he's gonna have to go by at least two data centers, maybe three, maybe four. Once was beautiful land is just being destroyed at an alarming rate. Cloudburst has already messed up on their permits. I've already reported them, and yet still nothing's being done. Please don't allow another one to take place. If you don't believe me, please drive out there. You can look and see what they've done already. It's horrible. Alarms go off at two or three in the morning, wake us up inside with the AC on, the windows closed.

They don't care. There's been no communication. It's horrible, and it's only gonna get worse. And there is a rumor that Cloudburst has bought more land, and they plan to expand. Please don't do this. Y'all voted against it once. You can do it again. And once again, I wasn't paid to be here, and the people that are speaking for this, most of them have been paid. Thank you.

Thank you, miss Lindsey. I checked our packet. Your name won't be overlooked again, So thank you very much. Anyone else who wants to come to the podium, you may please just state your name. And we have three minutes.

Appreciate the chance to be heard. My name is Carmen Rumwout, and I live in senior apartments on South Stagecoach Trail. I'm not a wealthy, powerful member of the San Marcos community, but I hope that how these data centers will affect me and others at my level is still of interest. I've heard some of the problems caused by data centers, that they're noisy, they create light pollution, use tremendous amounts of water and electricity, leading to scarcity and higher prices. They're not a real source of long term jobs other than the building part.

And I'm glad that they're willing to use union. But I will focus on what doesn't seem so obvious, other than those. These data centers are apparently driven by the AI bubble, the artificial intelligence push in the financial markets. I personally like the idea of AI. But at this point in its development, it is an amorphous idea with speculative funding.

It's hot. AI stocks have skyrocketed in recent years, a looming bubble that will burst like the .coms of the '90s, if you are around then. My hunch is that builders are starting without complete payment, that owners are in over their head in debt, and that the expected results won't be known for at least another year. They will run out of cash flow and fund it by debt. In capitalism, the stock markets, in speculative investments, are big winners and big losers.

And I don't want San Marcos to be a big loser. I would rather wait a year and see whether the predictions are true. If there can be data centers built that don't suck up the water and increase the price of water and electricity in the surroundings. I think there'll be plenty of money and interest for these investments. But we won't have to gamble with San Marcos, our businesses, the real estate, the protection of our lands and water, and the unimportant people like me who will pay an increase in water and electricity.

I suggest we wait. Just wait a year. By then, you'll have sufficient information on which to make this decision. Thank you.

Thank you, ma'am.

Mary Littlefield Devine. I live at 2545 York Creek Road, New Braunfels, Hays County, and my back gate is at 1470 Francis Harris, very close to the proposed data center. I am here to oppose agenda items four and five. I'm also here to express my concern that mister Mayberry was told that he had to wait to come back for a year, and we're we're back already. And I don't know how to go up the chain of command to find out what it takes to oppose that or why it was allowed.

I do appreciate the idea of in industry hiring union labor. My father was in various unions and the secretary of his union when I was growing up. However, in the state of Texas, the trades are regulated by TDLR. And their landmark, a hallmark slogan is transparency and accountability. And I feel that we're not seeing that here at the meeting.

And the reason that I feel that way is because I came to essentially all of the meetings last year that were related to the data center. And I heard Mr. Mayberry and his paid representatives coming in and making pie in the sky statements that were not evidence based and were not factual, promising technology and industry that doesn't actually yet exist as if they can still yet execute and deliver this in our community with no risk to us. It is nonsense. It's a form of gaslighting.

I feel like we're being gaslit again. It's a manipulative mind control kind of a thing that interferes with our normal thought processes to be told that things can occur in a certain way that's not scientifically possible and that developers don't need to follow the rules and that the local government also doesn't need to follow the rules. I'm concerned also because data centers in and of themselves are associated with an increase in cognitive dissonance, and that's what we have on the rise here at these meetings every time. I urge you to vote against these agenda items, preserve our quality of life and our way of life as farmers and ranchers in that rural corridor conservation community where our livelihoods should not be sacrificed for another person's livelihood. And if mister Mayberry wants to hire the union, I support that.

He could put in his housing development and there would be a lot of jobs. Thank you.

Thank you.

Hello. My name is Sel Vasquez. I'm a graduate of San Marcus High School as well as Texas State University. San Marcus is the only home I've ever known. When my younger brother died, I gathered three vials of water from headwaters and I placed one in his casket. I could never imagine that I would have to place another one in my mother's casket so soon after. I did that as a representation of ever lasting life. Time and time again, I returned to these waters for peace. The current runs through me the way my mother's love once did. It is the only thing that keeps me connected to her.

Well, that and music. She really loved to dance and sing. Her name was Luisa Vasquez. And she showed me how to swim at Lions Club, how to remain fearless against the current. Please save these waters. I want more mothers to be able to teach their children how to swim here like they have for the past over eleven thousand years. Thank you.

Thank you.

Excuse me. Crispy Polanco. I honestly I don't know if I have anything that I could say right now that hasn't already been said tonight. Somebody even already talked about the AI bubble. That might have been the only new thing I had.

Thanks a lot. I guess I'm up here because I just didn't wanna feel left out. But I'm not even really against data centers in general. As a blind person, I use data tools and AI tools that help me get through day to day life all the time. I just think data centers need to be built responsibly and in areas that can sustain them, and this is not one of those areas.

And, honestly, as a socialist in our current system, there's no it's not possible to build them responsibly and sustainably when profit is the pure motive. And somebody mentioned that we're representing a vocal minority. We're the vocal minority of a silenced majority, silenced by jobs that keep them a slave to working hours and wages that they need just to survive because capitalism does not recognize the right to live. And then, yeah, this is just gonna keep being a little bit disjointed. There's the AI bubble where you're not gonna see a lot of revenue from the data center due to tax abatements.

Data centers tend to add only have a life cycle of about ten years, between that, they add a bubble. There's no benefit to this. So to all the tradespeople that are talking about all benefit to everything, like, if you're willing to pay the high cost of the water, the power, and everything else just to enrich yourself, then you don't actually care about this community, point blank. I'm just gonna go ahead and just have a little fun with this, conduct a little experiment, and I hope my friends and neighbors outside don't let me down because this might be embarrassing if it doesn't go my way. But if anybody here wants to see this data center die and die permanently, like it should have died several months ago.

When I ran for city council this last time, made up a wolf character, El Lobo Siego, the blind wolf. Why don't you guys just show a little disrespect for my time and give me a big wolf howl?

I've never got to use that before, and so I'm excited that I was able to. Thank you for the opportunity. If you please state your name your name only, we have three minutes.

Absolutely. My name is Barbara Hinkson. I am a paraprofessional, a special education educator at the Kyle Elementary. I'm a resident of San Marcus. Something that I wanna mention that I haven't heard anybody else mention, something that really upset me when I learned it.

When I was a child, they told us that 3% of the water on Earth was drinkable. Our children today, your children today, are learning that only 2% of it is drinkable, and that is being used currently to handle our data centers. Houston Advanced Research Center shows that existing data centers approximately consume 25,000,000,000 gallons of water. That was the estimate for 2025. We are already on drought watches and do rolling blackouts for energy conservation, and I live right next to the new Buckeys that's being built, actually.

I watched animals who have been forced from their homes die on the busy and dark road of post road on the back where there's no street lights or anything. So I I've seen a lot of the what's happened to our environment when animals are displaced, when we see things being built that don't necessarily need to be built. I asked the question because a lot of people have mentioned the jobs. Is your job worth the soul of our community? And I asked, what is the use of health care to children who are dying of thirst and to doctors who can no longer wash their hands?

Morality begs you to please, hear our please, listen to your citizens, to your children, and say no to the data centers. Thank you.

Thank you.

Evening, mister chairman, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Peter Bain, and although I'm not a resident of the city, I am in the ETJ. I'm in SMC ISD, and I have had the 78666 mark of the beast ZIP code for the last fifty five years. So thank you very much for allowing us free parking and access to our parks most recent. I know that's Parks and Rec, but a lot has changed since I committed to attend then SWT in 1969.

Our small college town's gotten to now a world class university. Traveled all over the world growing up as well as chasing industrial business, and what we're dealing with here is not a first world issue at all. We do live north off of Post Road, so it was a neighbor that spoke. I should see her because we have enough light to light up a lot out in that neighborhood. In 1997, we enjoyed the stars at night till CFAN moved in, so light pollution is a big part of our world these days.

But during that time, we're surrounded by San Marcos. And the most notable change in our neighborhood is the transition from the Blanco River to what now should be more accurately defined as the Blanco Gulch. And so as a correction to barrister Charles Secting, there's not three inches of water there. Charles, there's nothing. After a six inch rain, we barely get any water over the dam at all.

The county water projects like the Alliance Water Treatment of the Carrizo Wilcox Resources desalination projects that are gonna be bringing fresh water up in our lifetimes quite likely are very real. One of the things that I'm very hopeful of though is that we're at the task here of comparing a data center investment with 500 new homes in that same piece of property. Homes that will be consumers of water, of power, of road maintenance, police, and fire costs, and additional light pollution. And so the new Buc ee's, yes, it is a new business, and it will be contributing more to the light pollution as well as the the moon towers or whatever we may call those. But we have there in in our area, Griffith Ford, Red Simon, CFAN, United Technology, over a million square feet of the Amazon warehouse, which is dwarfed by all the rest of the millions of square feet of workers there.

A new CarMax, a steel Hyundai. We also have the proposed Poco Loco that's going on up there. We got a lot going on north of town. So what we have here is the the latest thing which we will enjoy, or I I say that tongue in cheek, is a new Casada tiny homes. Tiny homes, for those that don't know, are mobile homes ain't got no wheels.

But what they do have is another 300 automobiles that'll be on post road, and that's gonna make it more challenging. The growth of our community is because more than just the people that are here love the community. But the growth of the communities needs to be sustained by the investments. And so I would encourage you to invest in those and vote for the four and five. Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you, sir.

Hello. My name is Abby Wetzel. I'm at 1717 Quail Run, San Marcos. This year marks twenty years in San Marcos. I feel like I'm having deja vu.

Here we all are, back at planning and zoning, talking about a matter that has already been debated and the public has overwhelmingly said no to. Should the preferred scenario map be changed from conservation cluster to commercial employment low for the property on Francis Harris Lane, and should the zoning be changed from future development to light industrial. As a citizen that lives five miles away from this property, I say no. The preferred use map was decided on as part of the comprehensive plan only fifteen months ago in October 2024. It took two years of public input to decide upon this plan, which is supposed to be in place for the next ten to twenty years.

We all know that developer, mister Mayberry, plans to build a massive data center on the property and that these data centers guzzle water, use copious amounts of electricity that raise citizens utility bills, and cause greenhouse gas pollution, light pollution, and destroy wildlife habitat. As the data center boom is upon us, citizens around the nation are coming to realize that data centers should not be built near near where people live. I urge you to look in the effect into the effects that are being documented around the nation. Look at Memphis, Tennessee, Newton County, Georgia, Colton County, South Carolina, and Dallas, Texas here in our own home state. Data centers belong in their own zoning category and is not light industrial.

If you take a dive into the effects of data centers on their environment, you will see that they belong in a heavy industrial zone, not near where there are established communities. Please listen to the community and vote against the changes to the preferred use map and zoning. The former former planning and zoning committee and the former city council members have already said no to these changes. I really don't understand why we have to keep fighting so hard for something that benefits a few at the cost of many. And some notes that I took while everyone else has been talking. In terms of the families putting down roots, those roots will need water to grow. We need to protect our water resources. In terms of the new jobs, mister Barry Mayberry said he said 50 jobs. That is not that many jobs. Our water is more important than that.

And please don't listen to the people. Mister Mayberry had to desperately call in for help. Listen to the people that live here. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good evening, mister chairman, commissioners. My name is Mike Camerlander. I'm the president of the Hayes Caldwell Economic Development Partnership, and I'm paid by the city of San Marcos and Hayes County and other municipalities throughout these two counties to be here. When we think about recruiting advanced manufacturing, it's important to recognize the foundational role that data centers play in today's industrial economy. Modern manufacturing is no longer just about assembly lines. It's about automation, robotics, machine learning, and advanced supply chain integration. All these depend on secure, resilient digital infrastructure. Data centers provide three critical functions that directly influence site selection for manufacturers. They create a digital infrastructure backbone. Next generation plants run on data.

From predictive maintenance and AI driven production lines to quality control through real time sensors, These systems require constant power for processing and low latency connections. A strong local data center presence ensures that manufacturers who do create thousands of jobs, good paying jobs, can operate efficiently and scale with confidence. They provide reliability and redundancy. They really do. Everything that was said earlier from an actual expert on power and how that works is right.

They manufacturers evaluate communities about risk. They know they need to know about downtime, and then it won't happen. Data centers bring redundant power systems, robust power fiber connectivity, and built in cybersecurity. They also provide an ecosystem multiplier. While data centers themselves employ highly skilled technicians and engineers, their greater impact comes from enabling the attraction of manufacturing, as I mentioned.

A single advanced manufacturing facility may employ hundreds of thousands of workers. The presence of data centers signals that this community is equipped for Industry four point o, which directly increases our competitiveness in national and global recruitment efforts. In short, data centers are not isolated facilities. They're economic infrastructure. Just as highways and railroads power twentieth century industry, data centers power twenty first century manufacturing. By supporting data center growth, we strengthen our ability to attract next generation employers and create highways jobs. We do not recruit data centers. The partnership does not do that. They are coming here and and because of our infrastructure that exists. No new power plants are being built for this data center.

It'll use existing electrons on the grid. And it will be it'll be built, hopefully here in San Marcos where it can be regulated, watched, and controlled as well as get tax benefits. That is the point of economic development. Thank you.

Thank you, sir.

Hi. My name is Elizabeth Riley. I am a twenty five year resident of San Marcos, and I did not plan to speak tonight. You know, I want to speak, so I'm off the cuff, and you'll excuse me. I want to speak to the gentleman who was before me.

They're coming here to benefit from our infrastructure without paying for it. They want to pollute our community and have a vested monetary interest where the only interest for all of the people who are here speaking and against the status center tonight have the interest of living in this community instead of just making money from it. And I want to say this. I am a mother in this community. I left two of my children at home.

I am missing their bedtime. There is not a small minority who are against this AI data center. There is a small minority of people who can clear their schedules to come to a meeting at 6PM after a full day of work. There is not one single committee member community member that I have spoken to that is interested in this data center whatsoever. And the proposition that they've offered is, let us build it here, and we'll play by the rules.

We'll we'll build it whether you like it or not. And that is not exactly the building blocks for a good economic or community project. And I just cannot believe that we are here again having the same conversation when this committee has spoken, the community has spoken, everybody has spoken. And the only people who seem interested in the comments for the community are the people who directly benefit monetarily from it. They don't care that we're here speaking against it.

They want to develop us against our will. And that is just completely inappropriate. I don't seem be to see my clock, so I just want to say that there are more community members that are against this and are for it. And this is local government. And we should listen to the local people who are speaking up rather than the huge financial people who have a vested interest in it. Thank you.

Thank you.

Hello. My name is Samantha Charbonneau. My voice might be shaky. I'm very

nervous to speak tonight. I am a lifelong resident of Central Texas and a recent graduate University with a degree in international studies with a concentration in Europe. I am reacting specifically to the Construction Labor Union and others in support of the data center who say that if these jobs are such steady, reliable jobs that are similar to the ones that they were able to build their careers on, that they have been able to have in these past decades first of all, where did those jobs go? There's still the university here, anyway. Sorry.

If there are such stable, reliable jobs, where were they ten years ago? We didn't have to have them ten years ago. The demand for the monumental processing of data was not here ten years ago. We didn't have AI companies trying to get into our personal, professional, academic lives. We didn't have social media trying to consume our consumption habits in order to manipulate us, in order to buy more things, in order to do what they want us to do.

All of the issues that we think about, that we talk about now of internet and data and social media and AI ruining the futures of our kids, ruining everything for that. And there are so many ethical, economic, and environmental reasons not to do the data center just physically. But then there is the social aspect of what the data center will do. The only people profiting from this are those at the top that are akin to the robber barons, the railroad barons that complain of children with coal in their lungs in the nineteenth century. It's military men going it's military men sending representatives into the Appalachian Mountains saying, we have stable reliable jobs at a nuclear factory.

We have this factory job for you and you'll be able to have a pension for all of the years of your life completely ignoring the doctors that afterwards wonder why the rates of cancer go up in every person who eats, drinks, breathes anything in the area. And so that's not the question we have to ask now. It is the question of what will we breathe? Where will the food that we eat be grown? What water will grow it? How are we gonna have a future that these jobs will apparently provide for? That is all I have to say. Thank you.

Thank you.

Sorry, I'm a little short. Hi. My name is Adrian Montoya. I'm a resident of San Marcos. I just wanted to illuminate the commission on a few different facts. First of all, KUT reported last year that at the rate we're going, San Marcos will not be able to meet municipal water demands by 2047. That's in two decades. I'm a graduate student at Texas State where I'm studying historical water use, and I'm surrounded constantly by researchers who specialize in water management. And a scary reality that I want to communicate to you from what I hear from my colleagues is that our existing projections that predict water demand are based on old data, which is based on even older projections. So that 02/1947 I mentioned is almost certainly inaccurate, and we actually have fewer years between now and serious water scarcity time.

But I shouldn't need to be a water researcher for you to take what I'm saying seriously. I'm a human made up of roughly 60% water, as are you, as is everyone else here in this building that is sitting on land where water has been disappearing from the ground for the last few decades. Thirteen thousand years, the San Marcos Springs have flowed from the bedrock beneath us. This region holds the title as the oldest continually occupied place in North America because of our springs that have never dried up. We exist in the blink of our springs ancient eyes and as stewards of this stolen indigenous land, we have the power to extinguish that title within this blink.

Is this city going to be the one responsible to do that? I really hope not. And as a side note, though I am always a supporter of union jobs, just because they offer union contract to build the Death Star does not mean we need to build the Death Star. So thank you to those who are standing outside. This is the most packed I've ever seen city hall. Do not give up hope. The data center rebellion is here. It is coming. It's a long fight, we must continue holding the line. I love you, San Marcos. Thank you.

Thank you. Good

evening, commissioners. My name is Matthew Gonzales. I am the business manager of Laborers Local ten ninety five. We cover 93,000 square miles in Central Southwest Texas with San Marcos being in the heart of it. We represent over a thousand members within our jurisdiction. And right here in San Marcos, we have a union signatory contractor that does underground utilities where they employ at least 25 of our members. So we do have a local presence. We have had a local presence. I want to, before I go further, state that I am not paid to be here. I am here not for my own benefit, but for the benefit that our organization offers communities across this country.

Those opportunities result in higher wages and better benefits. As one of my colleagues said earlier, we have a written commitment from the developer that if this moves forward, it will be done union. What that equates to is a starting hourly rate of $25.90 an hour for journeyman laborers on the job. For entry level first period apprentice, that equates to $23.31 an hour. A first period apprentice has little to no experience in construction.

So imagine, you're a fresh graduate from high school or a young adult who has no direction and you choose to pursue construction, that's a great starting rate. By the way, these positions come with employer paid medical insurance that covers the entire family, life insurance, pension for retirement, Department of Labor registered training that that allows them to skill up and develop in progress both personally and professionally. I'm very respectful of the different perspectives that are voiced here tonight, and those who I communicated with in our last visit several months ago. It was an eye opener to see the passion and the dedication that the residents bring here today. But this is an opportunity for you as a commission to vote in favor of extending those opportunities to the men and women who work in construction or will work in construction from this community.

Thank you.

Thank you, sir.

Good evening. My name is Jasmine Castellanos. I'm a new resident of San Marcos. But I grew up swimming in the San Marcos River because I lived in Martindale for a number of years. I have a stepfather who's been a professor at the university for twenty five years. My mom is a small business owner here. They live in San Marcos, and now so do I. They weren't able to make it tonight because they're caring for my grandfather who's recovering from surgery. Otherwise, they'd be here. And I think that a lot of people who are here tonight probably know loved ones and others who would like to be here but can't.

This is not a minority. This this is is a group of people who is able to show up out of a majority, I think, of the residents of this city. I wasn't prepared to speak tonight, especially after all the comments already made. I feel like I don't have a whole lot left to add, so I'm speaking off the cuff. But I'd like to say that I believe that San Marxist is a community that depends on the water resources, not only to live and to sustain our community, but also because that is, like, the lifeblood of our culture.

It's the reason why people move here. It's the reason why people stay here. I gained confidence swimming in the San Marcos River as a young girl, and I hope to continue to call San Marcos and Central Texas home for many, many years. Frankly, our region does not have the water resources to sustain a data center like this and the many more that will follow if we allow this one to proceed to be built. I oppose this, and I urge you to do the same. Thank you so much for your time. And thank you to everyone who has dedicated their entire evenings and probably preparation time and much time over the past year to opposing this data center.

Thank

you. Thank you.

Good evening, City Council. My name is Randy. I'm not a native San Martian, but I am a native Texan. I grew up here coming to the different rivers in Central Texas from here in San Marcos, New Braunfels, Rio River, etcetera. And since I've moved out here, I've noticed a difference in the low how low the water in the river has gone.

Last time I came up to speak to you guys about that, I talked about how when I go the notice of when I go tubing is that the rocks will, in the Lions Club area, have hit my butt. And then I've gotten bruises on my butt. So it's really annoying, especially after a day of tubing and drinking, to get up just to walk so I can get into some water to where I can continue to float down. But I'm just here with the majority of the people that are out here in opposition of these data centers being built. Because as everybody else has stated, it's doing no service.

Service. It's doing harm. And for as long as I am going to be a Texas resident, I'm here to fight to keep Texas beautiful, to keep our waters, to keep our land, and all that beautiful. While job opportunities sound like a good thing, I would like to see that instead of something like this data center being built, that if the city of San Marcos and the residents here, if we can come up with job opportunities that are more of a solution to protect our environment and protect our waters. And I would like to see San Marcos be a leading city to do something like that.

That's all I wanted to say to you guys. Thank you so much for giving me the time to speak up.

Thank you very much.

I'm just going to have a timer so I know what's going on with the time. Thank you for your patience. My name is I go by Ariel. My name is Shelby, though. I've been living in Central Texas my whole life.

I have family from Austin all the way to San Antonio. And something we all share is our water comes from the aquifer. Each one of these springs is fed by this aquifer. And I ask if you have already closed your hearts and ears because there's so many different passionate views. Open them once more to the pain that all of our of all of our relatives are experiencing, those out on that land already who are seeing the harm, those crying here for the water, the mothers who want their daughters and sons to touch this water.

You and I don't have to be scientists to know that we we will die without clean water. Not only the water, but the air. Not only the air, but the invisible magnetic things that are going through this room, each other right now that we know cause cancer, cause disease, cause harm. And so I'm asking you, please, say no to this data center. Give more jobs to your communities through more sustainable practices.

Y'all make so much money through all the people that come here every year to float on this water and look at it and take pictures of the beauty of San Marcos. Do not be part of the legacy that spoils it. That water has been prayed over for thousands and thousands of years, my ancestor, Edward Burleson, wherever he was in his space, he was part of that dam. That before that was Ocarina Dam, that was Edward Burleson Dam. And while he made harm on the native communities, he that dam kept that water, and we have the only sacred wild rice in Texas.

Only in clean waters can this grow. There have been this what this this good medicine in all of these waters. And so we need each other as cities to gather and protect our water, our energy, and give real true jobs to our unions. Why aren't we making more money and being able to live? Why do we have to fight for a 100 people to make that money when there's thousands of people are gonna lose out on water, on their life, on their peace?

That's not worth it. That will never be worth it. Thank you. Thank you for hearing me. Thank you for letting it touch your heart and just know money will never feed us. When money is gone, we will be here, the water will be here, our ancestors will be here. And we all came from ancestors who care about the earth, who know that God made not only us, but each green thing, each living being that is relying on this water. There are better ways. There are more ways that we can come together, make great money, and not be a harm to each other. Thank you.

Thank you.

Hi. Good evening. Thank you

for the opportunity to speak. My name is Doctor. Kristen Hook, and I am a scientist. I have a PhD in animal behavior, and I'm actually running for Congress in our district in the 21st Congressional District Of Texas. But most importantly, I'm a new resident of San Marcos. And the scientific evidence of data centers is clear. They pollute our water. They pollute our air. They are a public health nuisance. They lead to sound that is a nuisance for residents.

And in terms of the public health costs, which are estimated across the country to be in the range of 6,000,000,000 to $9,000,000,000 in public health costs, I ask you and this body, what about those one in five Texans who don't have access to health care? What are those Texans going to do? What are those San Marcos residents going to do? We also know that these data centers, as so many others have spoken before me and pointed out, are water guzzlers. And I actually looked at the data earlier from the water sources that we have.

By my estimates, it looks like we're looking at competing for 20% to 30% of the water in San Marcos with these AI centers. Residents shouldn't have to compete with AI computing centers for water. This is a very precious resource that we need to protect. And as to the issue with jobs, we know that AI data centers don't create jobs. They destroy them.

AI is going to take and replace millions and millions and millions of jobs in our country. And this data center is going to help do that. So I ask this body, who do you work for? Is it the billionaires who are going to benefit from these systems, or is it the residents that are going to be harmed by them? Thank you.

Thank you.

Hi. My name is Jacob Allen. I'm gonna make this short. I wasn't prepared to speak today, but I wanted my voice to be heard. There are just a few things I wanted to reiterate. One, I'm not paid to be here. I showed up on my own free will. Two, there are a lot of people outside that are on my side, and we're all in this together. And the people that didn't show up couldn't show up for other reasons such as work, or they were unaware that it was happening tonight. The big thing that I wanna say is that I've been an avid outdoorsman my entire life.

I love the outdoors. I love nature. I love this state. And I just wanna see I wanna see my children and my children's children continue to love and respect that space the way that I have. So I I beg y'all, please make the right choice, and please make decisions that are going to benefit us in the long run rather than than just a few people in the short term. Thank you.

Thank you.

Hi. I'm Amber Craveld. I've lived in San Marcos for eleven years. I own a home here. I have three children in the schools here. I pay taxes here. I've shopped small businesses here. I work at a small business here. And so I'm very invested in this community. And one of the things that makes this community worth being invested in is that we have a commitment to green spaces and to the environment. I'm also a biologist. I care very deeply about San Marcos and its green spaces. And you have a choice represent your constituents or to represent those people who don't live here.

Thank you.

Hi there. My name is Sarah Wingfield. I wasn't prepared to speak today, but I scribbled a few things down. I'd like to support all of the folks that have come before me that are also fellow San Martians that feel the same way that I do. But first and foremost, I'd like to speak to you briefly as a former Bostonite, born and raised.

I was disappointed to see how my city, my beautiful, weird city was taken over by technology. I watched that beautiful community lose its wonderful weirdness. And as a transplant, the soul of this city is the minimal tech, the beautiful spaces, and the care for the community members. As a transplant, I found the soul here that is now missing in my hometown. It's carried by the water.

It's carried by the people. The people have spoken. And not just with feeling, but with data and research to support their claims. As a new community member in love with this town, I may not know much about water but I am employed by the water and my colleagues are water and ecology experts. I like to think in my role that I help them speak for the water the way the Lorax speaks for trees.

The data centers are not ready for San Marcos. They're not efficient enough resources to keep this town as beautiful as it is. The community members have spoken, and at this point, I do believe that it is a little bit wasteful to continually come back to this topic. I thank you for your time and for listening to each and every one of us.

Thank you.

Hi, good evening. My name is Amy Oliveri. I am a resident of San Marcos. And I've loved San Marcos since I first moved here for my undergrad in 2016. I'm a natural resource specialist by trade and a grad student at Texas State now. I I'm so sorry. I grew up playing outside, and I really cherish the outdoors. My whole career has been connecting people with the outdoors. And growing up, my mother was very Catholic. And there's one thing that's really ingrained in me, and that's to love thy neighbor.

Water is life, and this community is the most important thing that we have. We all know that this is not environmentally sustainable, and this data center is not in our best interest. I plead with you to listen to your community here, and please love thy neighbor and say no to this data center. Center.

Thank you.

Hello, everyone. I'm Ben Aguayo. I've lived in San Marcos for most of my life and graduated from San Marcos High School. I currently go to UT Austin for mechanical engineering. And as someone who grew up low income and had a father who was a union member and has family that mostly worked in construction, I understand the union members saying that they want to have this project so that they can have jobs and have benefits.

But I want them to understand that a lot of there's a lot of stuff that the blue collar folk don't tend to see, which is that AI is a speculative bubble with a lot of essential funding. As in if you just look at the .com bubble, nothing that they're saying is actually promise. Those benefits, those higher wages are just a carry on a stick that are leading you off a cliff. So I kind of want to plead to the union members to reconsider their position and think, hey, am I actually going to benefit from this? Or am I just a pawn in someone's get rich quick scheme? So I just kind of want to leave that out there.

Thank you very much. My

name is CJ Satina. I've been a resident of San Marcos since 2019 when I transferred to Texas State. And I graduated back in 2022 because I fell in love with community of San Marcos, and community is what we're seeing outside. We're seeing so many new faces. I'm always here at city councils heckling about whatever hot button issue is going on, but the fact that we have so many new faces speaks to democracy.

And it's kind of ignorant, in my opinion, that we're wanting to listen to the voice of a minority of folks that don't even live here. As a union member, I understand the needs and struggles of why we have so many labor people here. I'm a union member that's opposed to data centers because, I mean, as the guy in front of me spoke about, I mean, at what cost? We know AI is gonna come for so many jobs. As somebody that was struggling to find a job earlier this year, AI is the enemy.

I mean, we have, I mean, new a new HB coming, a new Buc ee's. I mean, that's, I think, enough. But the fact that we are wanting to listen to 1% of folks at what cost, at the cost of the environment, the air we breathe, the water we drink, that and even the health of people. The fact that they want to they chose San Marcos and they want to build this on the historic East Side, which is mostly brown folks, that speaks to environmental racism, and we need to call that out. And the fact that they chose San Marcos really speaks to who they are.

Thank you.

Yep. Good afternoon, all. My name is Joshua Hill. I'm a San Marcos resident. Pretty much born and raised here. I lived here for the last twenty five years. I'm gonna throw out a couple of numbers. 09/1996, that's the number of days that the crystal clear special utility district has been in stage three drought restrictions. Another number for y'all, 30,000,000. It's the number of gallons that this data center would use over those nine hundred and ninety six days.

It's not worth it. As someone who works in tech, I've spent the last twelve years in and out of data centers, you know, things ranging from tier one all the up to tier four that leverage, you know, some of the best tech that's out there, things like waterless cooling as well as a 100% renewable energy sources for some of the data centers. These people out here, these people in here, and y'all are up here. Y'all are here because y'all think that this is a special city, that we, as the residents of this town, deserve the best. I'd ask you all to ask mister Mabry if this data center is gonna be up to those standards, if it's gonna be waterless cooling, if it's gonna be a 100% renewable energy.

And when he tells you no because it's not possible, it's because it's not profitable. And I ask that y'all tell him to send his bags packing, and maybe he can drop off that union guy up in Austin on his way home. Thank you all. Have a good day.

Thank you, sir.

Hello. My name is Manuel Olaudah Granados, and I oppose any data center or any rezoning for data centers. We do not have the water for this data center. We're as the previous, San Marcos citizen said, we're in a drought three, restriction or policy for San Marcos. If you go to 5 Mile Dam, you see it's completely dry. You go to Canyon Lake. These are areas, like, right next to San Marcos. This area from San Antonio to Austin is projected to grow by 3,000,000 people by 2050. There are gonna be construction jobs. I support union workers, but there are gonna be construction jobs around here.

This city is not only the people of San Marcos, but also the river. The river is a fragile ecosystem, and any AI data center, whether directly or indirectly, will affect it. Please protect our river and our people. Thank you. Thank you. Hello. My name is Marco Pena. I live in San Marcos. I oppose the data center as I believe we shouldn't destroy and hurt our community to line the pockets of a few businessmen and shareholders. These people don't live here. They don't care what will happen about how they'll drain our water, increase our utility bills. I urge you to put community over profits.

Thank you.

Hello. My name is Athena. I am a resident of San Marcos. I have lived here for about seven years. I graduated from Texas State in environmental studies, geography, resources, and minor in horticulture. So there is not anywhere on earth I would have rather studied the environment. It is just the most perfect place on earth I could have possibly imagined or wished for to be here, and that's why I'm still here. So I'm here to strongly oppose the reintroduction of data centers to our area once again. I've come to realize that even if the data center used a couple gallons of our precious water a year, we still wouldn't want it here because of the risk. It honestly sounds crazy.

Even to continue to even let us have these discussions is insulting when the decision should be obvious. I believe in November this past fall, we were around 11 or 12 inches underneath our annual rainfall rate. For some reason, crystal clear says that we're in stage three, but I'm pretty sure we should be in stage four. The other day, I was in the river and I broke down crying because I looked at my weight. I looked.

I was like, woah, wait, hold on. The river is at my waist right now at Girl Scout, which is next to Rio Vista Vista. And about four years ago, I have a picture in my phone where it was up to, let's say, my rib cage, like the top of my rib cage. So, that's about a foot of water. So, I really can't imagine about four years another foot of water disappearing from the river. We don't have anything to share. We don't have the water. We don't have the resources. And I'm not really sure what time is, so I'm just going to babble for a bit. But with this being said, let's see what was it like.

Oh, I was a sophomore in college. We had the freeze, so the entire grid shut down. So the idea that a data center would come here for our infrastructure is entirely unfathomable as well because it literally failed. So, don't know what sort of stance that's really perpetuated on. Also, the fact that the wild rice is here, I mean I feel like that should be a infringement on the Endangered Species Act in general.

I've always wondered how this was even possible at a federal level but then, you know, we know what's going on. But, how is this how is it possible that we're able to bypass such a beautiful biodiverse place that is seriously like at risk right now like a terrifyingly low levels? How we could even fathom bringing something that would hurt it. It's honestly beyond me, including the fact that we have proposition a, which we just passed. So and as far as construction goes, I'm sure that we're gonna be bringing in some income by destroying that, the earth that we're destroying with all of the Highway 32 packaged highway lanes as well.

So, it's an absolutely horrible idea and I really hope that you guys oppose it. I would love to see this place continue to flourish the way that I knew it and I came here to know it because this isn't sustainable. It's it's it's it's a lie. It's all a lie. It's not sustainable. Anyone saying that this is sustainable is wrong. Thank you.

Thank you.

Hey, I'm Sam. I live six minutes down the street. It took one point eight billion years for the ground we were on to form in the way that we see it. And every morning I go out for a walk, I think, wow,

this is so beautiful.

And I hope everyone does as well. Let's see. For two hundred thousand years, humans have Homo sapiens sapiens, that's everyone. Everyone. We've been burying our loved ones in places that we think are beautiful.

And 10,000,000,000 people have died and been buried in places that hopefully were beautiful. And here, for eleven thousand years, people have been living here right here because they think it's beautiful and they want their loved ones to be born and die here. In a hundred years, everyone, all of y'all, everyone that's listening to me is gonna be dead as well in the ground. And I wanna be buried somewhere beautiful. I don't know if I'll be buried here.

But I hope when you see this place and if you if you love it, that you hope that you'll be buried somewhere that is not dry and poison and somewhere that's beautiful and lush. Thank you.

Hello. My name is Jordan Moser. And happy New Year. And glad to be back repeating the same exact conversation that we did last year. I guess 2025 was so great, we just wanted to repeat it again. But you know, I heard that the word of the year for 2025 was slop. So here's to slop. I love all of the intelligent people who've come up here and spoken against this this plan, this incessant insistence on infinite growth on a finite planet. I'm on a campaign to spread more new vocab words. How about AI psychosis?

Look it up. But, you know, I I would love to see twenty twenty six have a new word. Okay. Let me introduce you to a new concept. It might be new to you, but it's a very old term.

And it existed all over Turtle Island before colonization and it's Wendigo. As a concept, the Wendigo can apply to any person, idea, or movement infected by a corrosive drive towards self aggrandizing greed and excessive consumption, traits that slowly, that sow disharmony and destruction if left unchecked. It is easy to see American colonialism and manifest destiny as the cannibal monster that it is. Wendigos are agents of social cannibalism who know no provincial or national borders. All human cultures have been visited by shape shifting Wendigos.

Nation national identity is irrelevant to this borderless horror. Today, we learned that grok is going to be used by the US military, the same LLM that is doing very heinous ethical violations of our young people and causing lots of suicides because of sexual exploitation. The creators of this technology are either quitting and sounding the alarm or making sociopathic comments in public about making fortunes off of the end of the world. Look it up. These AI CEOs are enabled by megamomaniacal billionaires to further their their Wendy go campaign of disaster capitalism at the expense of all life on Earth.

We are told about the endless inevitable march of technology forward, but I really, really implore you from the bottom of my heart, each one of you, really explore in your heart and think in your mind, your intelligent mind, who benefits from this. Please, please oppose the rezoning. And let's just end this conversation because it's going to continue, but it doesn't have to be in San Marcos.

Thank you.

Hi.

My name is Haddon Stauffer. I'm an environmental science student at Texas A. The Edwards Aquifer, as it is, is already being over pumped,

and I think we're in

a pretty bad drought right now. There are a lot of environmentally sensitive sort of recharge zones all over San Marcos, and I think more construction would just be a bad thing. Thank you.

Thank you.

I'm Declan Stevenson. I'm a chemistry and biology student at Texas State. And I heard someone else say earlier that this was minority, but I had to wait fifteen minutes before I was even able to get in here. People are spilling out the doors. There's just so many people here that oppose this.

I came here with more talking points. I've heard them all said. I think that shows how many people are here talking about this. I also heard someone else say that John Mayberry said that this was gonna create 50 jobs, but that's not true. He said he said twelve fifty until a council member pressed him on that, and he was like, well, 1,200 construction jobs, only 50, like, highest estimate permanent jobs. So I think if he was deliberately misleading on that, I'm sure there's other things he's deliberately misleading about. I think, again, my voice is super shaky. Like, I gotta really care about something to voluntarily public speak. But, yeah, that's about that's about all I got.

Thank you.

My name is Brooke Schumacher. I live on Bishop Street. I've been a resident here since 2022. I oppose the building of a data data center in city limits not only now, but always. I am a Texas state geography major.

I am educated about the realities of water scarcity. I am a civil servant for this city. I plan and hopefully will continue residency here beyond my school career depending on how things look. I grew up in Houston, and I grew up passing miles and miles of refineries all the time, seeing what technological innovation can look like. When I came here, I fell in love with the accessibility of the natural beauty of the environment and advocacy of the people to protect that environment.

I understand there are complexities and logistics and livelihoods to consider. I, as a civil servant, have seen it firsthand. Consider, please, what kind of city are we building? Keep San Marcos beautiful. I just want to point out that Exxon executives knew for a very long time what was wrong with continuing to push for petroleum to be used.

What is wrong that we already don't know about still? We know so many bad things about AI and data centers already, and there is definitely more that we do not know about that is being hidden from the public and will continue to be hidden from the public until terrible things happen. I started watching fallout recently. In the future, post nuclear war, their money is backed by water. I want to say, when our spring has run dry, we will not be able to drink money.

Every circle I run-in, multiple circles around the city, finds this consideration appalling and does not support it. We are not a vocal minority. I also think that's a really ambitious plaque back there. There are a lot of spaces for future people. And if we are considering a data center to be built here, I highly doubt we will be able to fill all of them in the future. Yeah. The AI bubble is definitely going to collapse sometime soon. Yeah. That's it. Thank you.

Thank you. Sir, just one moment, please, if I could. Sam, I could ask a legal question. Am I able to take a recess right now or do we need to make sure we finish this agenda item?

You may take a recess.

Okay, let's take a ten minute recess. Fifteen. There we go. 08:44. If I could ask everybody to please calm down outside. We do have an announcement that we need to make in the interest of time. And so I'd ask anybody in line if you are gonna speak on the topic, please speak on something that hasn't been spoke of already. We are gonna get to a point where we could possibly be entertaining a recess to postpone this to the following day. That is something we do not want to entertain. So I ask that you please, if you're in line, please just be responsible with your time. And you're more than welcome to speak. Just please be responsible. Let's try not to duplicate the comments that have been made already. So sir, if you please just state your name. You have three minutes.

Hi. My name is Joe Winter.

I'm a

Texas State student in San Marcos residence. I'm here opposing data centers for San Marcos. One of the things I wanted to touch on that I don't believe was touched on previously is while I cannot speak directly for some of the first speakers that we had here talking about their experience living across from these sites, as somebody who recreates regular regularly near River Ridge Parkway near Epic Piping, I can completely understand why there's no residential construction going on in that area. So I implore you guys that to put a site similar to that in both pollution creation, not necessarily water consumption, but necessarily sound creation next to these residential sites is a terrible idea. Beyond that, I see that I mean, the very epitome of sustainability that I believe that we should represent as responsible leaders in our community is something that does not represent this this project.

And so I think that's something that while we've had a clear history of ten thousand years of occupation in this area, in this wonderful oasis that is near hill country in the Chihuahuan Desert border, I believe that we should try and further that to another ten thousand years if possible. So thank you all for your time.

Thank you. Hold up. Is that loud? Okay. I had to ask. Please, sir, your name in three minutes.

Yeah. My name is Joseph Morse. I've lived in San Marcos since 1997. I went to San Marcos High School. I got a business degree from Texas State University. I paid for my business degree by working working on home renovation job sites, by working in mechanic shops, and by working in factories. And having worked in factories, I think it's important that we think about how much if the goal is to create jobs, how much natural and public resources are we using per job created? Right? So this area has a manufacturing base. We've got CFAN, Epic Piping, Thermon.

We've got quite a few factories in this area that are creating a lot of jobs, but they're not using as much resources per jobs created. If our goal is to save water and also create jobs, I think there's better decision making to make both than to add these data centers into our industrial landscape. And then another thing to think about, I think one thing that is pretty obvious to me is that these data centers aren't going to create long term construction work. We've got people talking about how they work construction industry, and this will help them out. However, I don't think there's going to be fifty years of construction jobs generated by these data centers.

I think it's a short term benefit for the people who are seeking employment. And I think that there's other ways where we can create economic value without using as much resources, and then hopefully benefit every goal here.

Thank you. You can do that. Yes.

All right.

My name's Amanda. My family's been in San Marcos since the '70s. And I'm a nat or I graduated, but I had a natural resources degree. I am against this abhorrent data center because when our Earth is inhabitable because of over consumption and greed, nobody will need jobs because we all will be dead. I understand that there's been some repetition, but repetition comes when people don't feel like they're being listened to.

So I would think about that. I believe in conservation over corporate greed. This land was set for conservation. It's such a slap in the face to anybody who is still caring when everything seems like it's falling apart. You know, we look to our local governments to maybe have a little less corruption. And if this goes the way I fear it does, then we can't. You know, I wanted to address the comments about our being disrespectful for clapping after a citizen speaks. What I find disrespectful is the condescending, dis dismissive, willfully ignorant retic rhetoric to line one's pockets with blood money. Be respectful of our planet. Be respectful of our residents.

Be respectful of your own comprehensive plan. That's a no brainer to me. If you wanna talk about jobs, we should talk about jobs. What is y'all's job? It's to help the citizens of the city. Right? Not line your pockets with more money. Do you wanna be known as the council that ended the health of our city? Think about that.

Thank you.

Good evening, honorable committee members. My name is Amber Lunsford. I live here in San Marcos at 1312 Baylor Avenue. I'm here tonight representing my family, my two children, and my husband who grew up here in San Marcos. And we firmly oppose any decision to promote or allow a new data center to be developed here in San Marcos indefinitely.

We all know by now that data centers put a huge strain on our energy grid and our water resources, and a community impact newspaper actually just published last year that we're already on track to run out of water within thirty years, you know, within our lifetime, within the lifetime of our children. And so you have an extreme burden of choice here and a huge responsibility to to be the ones that have a say in that and how our water will be maintained or lost. And so when it comes to big corporations and big money coming in here saying that you can trust them because they have the contracts and the resources, Well, look at Wimberly and Jacob's well, where they lost millions in revenue in the past year due to Jacob's well-being closed. Meanwhile, Aqua Texas is having no accountability because they have the money to not be accountable. And so they said they would take a certain amount of water.

They took millions of gallons more, and we all see that who live here. We see how the Blanco is dry and how Jacob's well is closed. And as people who live here, we know our wealth comes from the river. Know, sadly, we have to say it like that. But our livelihood and our love for this land comes from the river.

And so the choices that we make day to day make a big difference. When Blanco community decided to put their waste water in the water and then there was disgusting algal bloom and all the nasty things, that was their choice they made, and thank God they eventually, you know, decided to undo that. But this is a very serious decision, and it may seem like, oh, it's worth it in the short run for the money. Look what happened to those communities. They actually lost tons in other ways.

And so if we really want to preserve the wealth for our children to come, we need to prioritize the water first and foremost. And opposing data centers is the bare minimum. We need to do much more. That statistic by Community Impact Newspaper didn't even include adding in data centers. And so even if we oppose data centers, we need to be doing more. We need to be educating the community. We need to be doing things systemically with how we treat the landscape, planting native plants, preserving the water we already have, and being a lot smarter with how we're developing. And so I hope you guys can make the right choice for all of our future generations, all of the people that will come after us here. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good evening, Planning and Zoning Commission. My name's Noah Brock and I live in the San Marcos ETJ. It's been a while since I've been here and I hope you're all doing pretty well. I'm here to point out some potential misleading information that's in the presentation that you're gonna see later. On slide 22, there's a comparison of LUEs, which are living unit equivalents, between a data center development and a residential development.

It appears the goal of this slide is to point out that a data center will use less water than houses built on the same land. While that may be true, a data center will take 235 living unit equivalents of water from San Marcos. Excuse me. LUEs are not actually supporting living units when they're at a data center. If the property were developed for residential, the five fifty seven or eight nineteen LUEs would be supporting living units.

And just in case you haven't figured this out yet, living units equal people. A vote for a preferred scenario map amendment here would mean less water for residents Marcos. In the PSA application, terminology is used to make it sound like light industrial zoning would be better than CD 2.5 because the property next door is heavy industrial. If this does become industrial, all of that all that will do is move that industrial closer to the existing residents that are already in that area. Just because heavy industrial is next door does not mean more industrial is needed.

That mindset leads to widespread industrial development clusters throughout the city. It just keeps expanding and expanding. The majority of the neighboring property is unzoned ETJ, not industrial. Industrial. Conservation cluster and commercial employment low were both of the preferred scenario designations when the smart terminal became a thing. Now we have over 700 acres of heavy industrial with a promise from this city to make it over 2,000. Don't do the same thing here. Vote no on this preferred scenario map amendment and the associated zoning. Thank you.

Thank you.

Hello, Planning and Zoning Commission. My name's Annie Donovan. I'm here to ask you to vote no on agenda items four and five. The community is out here now to tell you that we don't want this. Don't throw away all the hard work that the comprehensive plan oversight committee worked on. Additionally, since I've been here, I've heard many union workers tonight discuss how the construction of the single data center will give them jobs. One thing I wanted to ask is what's going to happen to all of those jobs once the data center is built? The construction jobs are temporary. The negative effects of a data center are permanent. Thank you.

Thank you.

Hello. My name is Riley Laporte. Thank you in advance for hearing me out if any of my words resonate with you. I'm a small business owner in New Braunfels. My home is Quail Run Drive, San Marcos. I try to think of any pros about having a data center, but all I worry is the horrendous causes and effects. We live in a world where people prioritize convenience rather than community. Part of my livelihood is having a thriving business. More importantly, the pleasure of being rich in life in terms of working with my animals around this beautiful space. I wonder how my big animals, like my horse, is going to feel comfortable.

I've read data centers vibrate the earth surrounding the areas affecting homes and livestock. I fear of personal relocation and moving everything I built to have a comfortable environment. Things are happening in breakneck speed already. I don't know if this next part is allowed, but on behalf of my partner who is on call and cannot be here, alignment in the San Marcos Maxwell area reaching to Austin. I actually talked him into moving into this area, and we both now wanna leave depending on cause and effect, whether it's he would get more money and all.

We've both already dreadly thought of the relocation, but are still crossing our fingers, hanging on hope we can build to live richly again with our space and animals if San Marcos decides to drop such a strong moral that brings and keeps people here. This decision really chooses where we build our home and family. Again, that sounds like a sob a personal sob story, but my heart needs San Marcos to continue to have safe moral, and I am against the data centers. Thank you.

Thank you.

Hello, my name is Corinne Loperfido, a San Marcos resident. And I would like to speak against the proposed data center. I know you guys have heard all about how much water data centers use and how few jobs they provide after construction and how the immediate neighbors are strongly against the project. And you asked for some new information. So today I want to talk to you about a different and even more disturbing element that AI is adding to

the

situation. Trigger warning for the audience, I'm going to be talking about some intense subjects. As of current day, Grok, the AI owned by Musk is making it available to the public to create deep fake nudes and undress anyone of any age. And I'm gonna say that again so you can think about the implications of that. Of any age and showing them nude or in revealing a bikini with the click of a button, Imagine you here on the city council vote against the interest of your constituents and allow this to pass.

Imagine an image circulating of you all sitting in these chambers completely undressed and photorealistic. Now to be clear, I've never used AI, chat, GPTX, or any of these so called technologies and wouldn't do something like that. But I do know that women and young girls are committing suicide in increasing numbers because non consensual images are being created by men and boys, mind you, using our precious drinking water and electricity to power these AI data centers to be able to make these images and share them. This is the intersection of environmental rape and the continued disrespect of women's bodies now via AI generated public humiliation rituals leading people to death. In addition to those horrors, more and more stories are coming out about people who are going into chat GPT induced psychosis and killing themselves or members of their families or their partners.

AI isn't just funny pictures and viral videos. It's robbing us of jobs, culture, creativity, privacy, problem solving skills, friends, critical thinking, water, the list goes on. So what world are you voting for? For a few thousand dollars in the city budget? In all seriousness, what is the point of life when the river is dry and the bees have all died? There's no planet b, So let's vote down this bogus plan by another desperate white man looking to make a dime off stolen land. What I want you to consider when you cast your vote against this proposition is that you are voting for humanity. You are voting for community, human and nonhuman. And this is literally life or death. Thank you.

That's what I had to say. And earlier, because I haven't used up all my time, I went to Pi Society on the way here to Fuel Up before this talk. And there was a kids coloring page and it is AI generated and the employees were complaining about it and I was loudly complaining about it. And there's a little thing that you know they obviously typed in, this and that. It says t e a t rental, teat rental. So you wanna explain to your kids what a t is and you can't hire someone to spell out tube correctly? Thank you.

Thank you.

Annette Devers, San Marcos resident. I am praying and asking you all to do what's right for the San Marcos residents and vote no again to this application to rezone near residents and wildlife and farms. I was surprised after your last vote this was on again. I hope you all have gone deeper into researching AI data centers as did our beloved Jim Graber. He spent a lot of extra time researching and found out how it takes electricity of 80,000 homes for one data center.

I watched a video of a family living near a data center they built near their home. Their electric bill went from 200 a month to 400. If you vote yes, then your vote will, no question, will cause extreme undue stress on thousands of San Marcos families already stressed from rising prices. Data centers should be building their own electric sources. You've heard over and over about the water loss that will happen.

And you know we are still in drought condition. All the wildlife, ranchers, goat farm, beekeepers, and people will, I stress, will be negatively affected. Your jobs are very important because your vote can end up affecting thousands of residents. I ask you to drop into your hearts and search for your vote. Hearing from all of us that are counting on you to vote for the people, the families, wildlife.

Not for a corporate entity that has proven no interest respecting families, wildlife, our beautiful river. Otherwise, they would not be trying to build in this farm area. If they cared about towns and citizens, they would build far away from families, wildlife, and farms. But no, they are back. Please open your eyes and hearts and vote no. Your no vote to rezone this family area is very important and does have great weight on the outcome. Along with a no vote for approval of this project, please motion and approve as majority denial for once and for all. And thank you for voting no and for the citizens. Thank you.

Good evening. My name is Jerry. I've been a proud local ten ninety five member for almost ten years now. Choosing to join the union is one of the best decisions I've

ever made.

Over the years, I've come to truly appreciate not just the work we do, but the people we do it with. What we do matters. Our work has helped strengthen our communities and support the people who we depend on it who depend on it. Knowing that our efforts make a real difference is something I take a lot of pride in. And in return, the union has done great things for me as well, giving me opportunities, stability, and a sense of belonging.

I've enjoyed every chapter of the journey so far, and I look forward to continuing it. I plan to stay with the local ten ninety five until the day I retire, and I'm thankful to be part of something that truly stands for its members. With that said, I ask you to support the data center project because of the opportunities it will provide and create here in San Marcos. Thank you with respect.

Good evening, commissioners. My name is Ronan Conroy. I'm here to support the data center zoning request because it creates real career opportunities and helps working families in San Marcos. Thank you for your time.

Evening. My name is Moira. I live here. All I can hear of the proposed benefits of this project is jobs. I'm a musician and an artist.

I work in the creative sector and I've been watching a lot of creative jobs disappear to AI, which is a great concern of mine. My best friend is a teacher as well and she's up to her neck in assignments that are clearly made using AI. And I can imagine in the university as well, it's been a large frustration to both the teachers and the students who are having difficulty clarifying whether or not their work is AI or just proper punctuation. And when it comes to opportunities, I think that we as a city have a golden opportunity to honor the character of this town, which is a river town, and set an example to the nation and to the world by standing up for the springs and the aquifer that are the reason that this town exists in the face of a new industry which we don't fully yet understand the implications of. And the implications that we found so far don't seem to be very healthy for the population.

I hope that you will take the opportunity to stand with your citizens, the overwhelming majority of whom I don't believe would be working to build this project or working at it. And don't make your decision based on money but on the representation of your citizens. Thank you for

your time.

Thank you.

I can't drive with this.

Hi. My name is Blake Cohen. I'm a San Marcos resident. A lot has been said here tonight. I'm not gonna I'm not gonna redo what they've already said. I I'll just point out the Houston Advanced Research Council says that for every megawatt hour of energy produced, 793 gallons will actually be needed to produce that energy. This puts the data center according to the specifications that they have brought. That means that it will use up to over 798,000 gallons of water per hour. But, really, this is this is more of a question of who are you listening to. Are you listening to the money, or are you listening to the people?

And I think that that's an important I think that y'all should sit with that. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good evening. My name is James Fussey. I live in the city of Kirby. I'm here to urge this council and this wisdom to approve this project for I feel that this project will promote prosperity and progress in the for the citizens of San Marcos. In closing, would just like to say that this union provides skilled labor with very, very, very good benefits in pension and health and welfare. In closing, again, would just like to say I support this project. Thank you.

Thank you.

Hi, my name is Jennifer Corboy. Thank you for the opportunity to speak. I am a Texas resident. This project represents a real and timely opportunity for working families, particularly women in the trades. These jobs provide benefits.

And I've seen firsthand how initiatives like this do more than create jobs. They create stability, career pathways, and long term economic mobility. When women are given access to quality work, training, and supportive job sites, the impact extends far beyond the individual. Families gain financial security, workplace become stronger, and communities benefit from skilled and committed workforce. Supporting this project is an investment in people and long term results. I strongly encourage the board to support this project and the opportunity it provides for workers, families, and the future of this community. Thank you.

Thank you.

Hello. My name is Zoe Schwartz. I've lived here my whole life, and I oppose the data center. Folks have done a beautiful job touching on perhaps the more noble reasons to oppose it. But, like, if we're considering profits, I just wanted to say that, like, it doesn't have to be a choice between creating jobs and what the people want just because you can have both. Like, our entire tourism industry is the river. People don't come here to see a data center. So they come here for the river. And if we don't have the river, people aren't coming. So I just think, like, what what will create more local jobs?

One data center or the entire tourism industry of the city. Thank you so much for your time.

Thank you.

Hello, my name is Keira Utter. I live at 121 Craddock Avenue here in San Marcos, Texas. And I was also here a little less than a year ago speaking out against this proposition. It's a little bit disappointing that I do have to be back. But I can't say much that hasn't already been said, but I would like to highlight the difference between those who are for and against, more specifically, who live here who are speaking against this, and those who don't who are speaking for this.

Workers and working class people should not be pitted against each other, but that is clearly what is being what is happening here. But it is not them or even us who is winning. This is a top versus bottom problem. Who is actually winning with this data center? Not the citizens, not the workers, but it is in fact that top class of money, of people who are making the most money in the world.

And it's definitely not the people who live here. A vote for this data center is a vote against the city and its citizens. I know you all are probably falling asleep up there, but I implore you all to listen to your people and be an accurate reflection of our citizens, of the people who actually live here. And this conversation does extend beyond the people. It is for the wildlife and the ecosystems and the natural river that has attracted people for thousands of years and will hopefully be able to continue garnering beautiful crowds to give them a chance to experience this beautiful wildlife that myself and so many people have that urge people to speak out against it.

It's a very strong feelings that we're all feeling, so please vote no for this data center, and I hope I don't have to be back here. Thank you.

Thank you.

I'm Brandon Blocker. I live here in San Marcos on 233 Fairfax. I work in New Braunfels, Texas. And I just wanna reiterate that the water problem with the data center is pretty unique because unlike farming or something where water goes back to the community, data centers, it uses up the water, and then it evaporates. And then they pollute the water, and it doesn't go back to the river at any point in time.

So when you take it away, it doesn't necessarily get recycled or anything like that. When it evaporates, it moves farther down. And when you're using water day in, day out, it's going to cause a problem. And we'd like to use that for better infrastructure that's going to be like something agriculture related. And that's all I have to say.

Thank you.

Good evening. Good evening. My name is Frank, and I live in New Braunfels, just twenty five minutes down the 35 on a good day. If I've I've been a a member of the Launa family for just over twelve years, and during that, my family has grown into five. I'm here this evening to share the importance and what or or the importance, and I wanna show my support for the data center zoning request.

This project creates construction careers, not just temporary jobs, as so many people have said so far. The phase or the the phrase union standards means training, apprenticeships, huge families supporting wages, and benefits. Benefits. These are crucial so local workers can build long term futures, strong jobs, and if the the strong jobs lead to safer worksites, skilled labor, and stronger communities. In short, union work builds America, and we will build San Marcos.

I support this project and I ask you to do the same. Thank you for your time and consideration. Have a wonderful night.

Thank you.

My name is Lazarus Vazquez. And as you've heard from the majority of this room, I'm vehemently against these AI data centers. What could I say that hasn't already been said tonight? How these data centers guzzle our water, disturb us with egregious noise, and pollute the nature San Marcos prides itself with, all for the sake of feeding us misinformation cobbled together by a machine. If not things more sinister, I refrain to mention in this building.

But you all should know what I'm talking about. How they promise unsustainable jobs that will fizzle away as quickly as our water level. How the heads of these data centers have no care, no love for San Marcos nor its people, only the money and resources they can take from us. You've heard these things, hopefully know these things. I hold the respect to know our city council is aware of the people you represent, of the crowd behind me and further outside. You know what we want. We're telling you what we want directly. We don't want these data centers. We want our town and our dignity as Sam Martians to be respected. First, it comes into our town. Next, it comes out of our taps. Thank you for your time.

Thank you.

Good evening, everyone. My name is Jessica Moreno, and I am here to represent myself and my husband who could not be here tonight. We are residents of this community. We also work here, and we're homeowners in this community as of 2022. I had prepared to share all kinds of reasons that have already been shared tonight about why my husband and I oppose the the zoning the zoning changes for this data center project.

But again, I wanna save the time for others and get us all back home tonight. And so I'm deciding to share some things kinda off the cuff. I think the first thing I wanted to share is that we have extended family in El Paso, Texas who've been impacted, and their water crisis there has already been exacerbated by the metadata centers. And so we're seeing this, and we've heard from many people already about what these environmental impacts will be. And I wanna share some additional some additional cooperation with something Corinne said earlier today.

I am a domestic and sexual violence advocate as well, and I can attest to everything that has been shared by Corinne's testimony today and all of the things and damages we're seeing to our young people in particular with regard to AI and all of the things that folks are able to do now. But I also want to share something because I have a deep relationship and connection to construction workers and I wanna share stories from that perspective as we're hearing from all of the labor union folks here tonight. My father, my grandfather, they built helped built this state And I I deeply respect the work that our labor folks are doing for us to keep to keep our cities running. A couple years ago, Elon Musk came into the Austin community to build things for for Tesla and build a big empire here in Texas. One of the young people that I love and care about here in San Marcos was a welder and went on to work for the Tesla company.

And it worked out really well for many years for him. But just like we're hearing tonight, those jobs aren't gonna last. And what happened to this young man is he was laid off after about two to three years of making really good money. And guess what? He's back here now. So I I admire and love that you all are unionized, but I also wanna say that that does not make long term jobs here in San Marcos. Okay? It just doesn't. And what we'll see is similar to every other developer who who sells us these lies and sells us these intentions for our communities. But the reality is once they get what they need from us, those promises are not going to be kept.

And these promises are not going to be upheld. And so we've seen that happen with other projects in our state. We are gonna see that happen here if you all allow this zoning change to continue. You've heard from us time and time again, we do not want this here. We do not want this in our sacred community and to impact our sacred waters. Please, please hear our cries and please, please know that this is not what we want.

Thank you.

Hi. My name is Laura Day. I grew up in the Dallas area and got out of there as quickly as I could. At 18, I came to equate my home state with a culture that was, above all, fiercely disrespectful of the environment. I sent my childhood in and out of emergency rooms because I had bad asthma, asthma bad enough that as a young child, it threatened my life, asthma that note how it was exacerbated, if not caused, by the fact that my childhood home sat under the flight paths of DFW Airport.

I respect the union folks here trying to support their family, but I would encourage them to do a little research into what this center would mean for c o two emissions. And if it's really worth it, to take a paycheck that in the long run makes it harder for your kids to breathe. I fell back in love with my home state in part because I found in South Texas a culture that respected the land in a way North Texas has failed to do so. Y'all have something special down here, and I hope you continue to respect it.

Thank you.

Hi, my name is Brenda Hagner. I moved to San Marcos, actually, just in September. My decision to move here was based on your decision in March to retire from teaching after thirty seven years and to move to San Marcos. It's something that I've been wanting to do since I was 17 years old. I moved here for many reasons, the river being one of the greatest reasons, and the natural resources.

And also, the people in the community are very friendly and supportive. And I feel at home here. I'm very happy here. What I'm not happy to hear is that you want to go in, not y'all, but big companies go in. I lived in Katy. I saw the industry come in. You lost your lights. You didn't get to see the stars at night. I moved here for peace and quiet, and also for the structure that you do have a lot of infrastructure already here, medical infrastructure that can support families. And I just pray and hope that you vote against this. It's just not right for San Marcos. Thank you.

Thank you.

How y'all doing? My name is Justin James Bridges. First of all, I do have to express my disappointment at the fact that we're even having this conversation because of one man making a bad investment and his greed trying to push to recover the funds from that bad investment. You made a bad investment. Stop trying to destroy our city. Stop trying to destroy the environment. This is ridiculous, you know. And I it it hurts me to see these union members out here, you know, I support unions. I've stood on picket lines with unions in multiple states. I've stood by them trying to help with higher wages with them.

I've stood by them on many times they've called and asked for support. I've stood out with unions. I'm disgusted that they're looking to destroy our city. Most of those union members, I don't even know if any of them live here in this city. So that money is just going be going out of town, more money just getting sucked out of San Marcos plus our resources being taken away from us. This is absurd. This is absurd. The fact that you're even considering this and have brought this forward, y'all should be y'all really that's a disgrace on this city. Y'all should be disappointed in yourselves. I'm disappointed in this. Like, this is really absurd to me that we're still having this conversation. This city has spoken. The community has spoken. We don't want this. It doesn't belong in San Marcos.

I have friends that live all over this country. I have friends that are fleeing other cities that put data centers there because now they have rolling brownouts and their water doesn't run all the time. It destroys communities. San Marcos is one of the longest consecutively inhabited places in North America. Why would you want to destroy that? Why do you want that to be your legacy? Make the right decision. You have the power to make the right decision here. Do the right thing. Don't let greed control what's going on here. Listen to the people. Thank you.

Thank you.

Hi. My name is Georgia Parker. I've been a citizen of San Marcos for twenty six years. I almost didn't come up and speak because it was hard for me to imagine how, I don't know, that y'all would even consider approving this change in zoning. But just in case you are, I would hope that this would be an easy decision considering we've all gone through this process already and we've all made our voices heard.

And I think you have an opportunity with your vote change zoning, whether or not to change the zoning, inspire hope across the state of Texas, across the country, and across the world, and make San Marcos a place that is known for what it is, a place that has a strong sense of community, that gives a shit, and that cares more about each other than billionaires. Thank you.

Thank you.

Hi. My name is Albert Lanham. Thirty year member of the Laborers International Union North America. I'm here representing the folks of Local ten ninety five. I just want to say that, you know, I've heard a lot of people get up here today and, you know, say they've got this college degree or that college degree. What a project like this does is it offers an opportunity for high school graduates and folks coming from other areas to build a career in skilled trades. So if you were to pass this project and have it move forward, I think it would give a lot of folks opportunities to build a career and sustainable life here in the San Marcos area. Thank you.

Thank you.

Hi there. I'm Jess Bowers. I'm a resident of the city. I, like many people, moved here for the college. I started going to college. But then I stayed here because I fell in love with the city, and I'd really like to die here. There was a gentleman earlier who said that he'd lived here for seventy five years. I'd like that to be me one day. So I'm gonna be here for a while, and I oppose the building of a data AI center here. I'm a resident. I don't want it for the reasons already enumerated by my neighbors. All of the arguments against, I haven't had a heard a single word that I disagree with. I agree with all of my neighbors that are against it. All of their words are mine. What they've said, that's what I think too.

So if this comes back to this council, I I'll show up again. If I live here for seventy years, I'm gonna be showing up in front of this council. So I'll remember the things that this council decides, and I'll tell you about it. And so yep. Pretty short. You've already heard it all, so I'll go. But that's my thoughts. I'm against it. Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Hi. My name is Katie Nichols.

I'm a resident of San Marcus. I'm here to ask you all to vote against any planning and zoning changes that would allow the data center to be built here. I do understand that two of the largest revenue sources for the city are charges for electricity and water. And while the data center being built here may increase those revenues for our city, I think it would come at a large cost for our city. I understand that there has been a lot of concerns raised about, you know, the increase in electricity bills and how that does get pushed on to residences and small business owners in the area.

And I do believe that those increases could cause future residents and future small business owners owners to exist here, which would lead to lost tax revenue for the city and would impact our long term growth. I do believe that that outweighs the, you know, the positives of the temporary labor construction jobs that are going to be available and then the small amount of permanent jobs that the data center does offer.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Good evening. My name is Sam Benavides. I didn't plan on speaking this evening. I just came from a three hour long board meeting, and my brain is really fried. But after listening to a shocking amount of people speak in favor of this, I felt called to come and voice my concerns about the status center and go on the record.

So some quick thoughts I jotted down. I serve on the neighborhood commission, so I've heard this presentation. And I had the opportunity to ask some questions of the developers, and I was deeply unimpressed and concerned with their responses. First of all, they didn't wanna answer any questions about the water usage. They actively discouraged questions about that, kind of preempting questions that they thought would come up, but not letting us ask quest or not welcoming questions about water usage. I had a question about I heard that it becomes so contaminated that it has to be shut down. I wanted to ask about that. I wasn't able to. I hope that you all are able to ask that tonight. I also wanna say to all the workers depending on this project for work, I want you to have secure jobs.

I want you to make a living wage. I want you to have steady income that allows you to support your family and meet your meet your needs. I want that for everyone, and I hate that it's being framed as coming at the cost of destroying our planet and destroying our water supply. I know that each of you have seen that KUT article about the dire state of our water supply, and it breaks my heart that we're in a position where we have to choose between our environment and the economic stability of our neighbors. It shouldn't be this way. May we dream of a world and work towards a world where we don't need to pick between stable jobs and the health of our environment, and may each of you be leaders in that fight tonight. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good evening. My name is Patricia Harrington. I'm a resident of San Marcos. One thing that I haven't heard addressed very much is the impact that this will have on the very lives of the people that are living close by, but how it might affect all of San Marcos. I haven't heard anything at all about what possible levels of radiation would be released through the data centers, and how that how the frequencies that will be emitted will affect not only the comfort of humans, but will affect their physical body.

There are more and more people who are becoming sensitive to environmental issues. I would think that this would not be something to just look at loosely, but maybe to delve into a little bit on what the impact would be on human life, on plants, and on animal life. We know that it's not safe to live near next to electrical plants because of the release of the emissions from that. Many people are affected adversely from that. So I just ask that you would think about that and maybe consider that in your vote, and I encourage you to vote against the data centers. Thank you for your time.

Thank you.

Hello. My name is Daniel Gammes Gomez. I'm a resident of San Marcos. I am tired of this talk of improving our city when all evidence seems to point to a commitment to its destruction. We know the data centers will extract far too much water.

We know it will raise the strain on our power grid. We know it won't bring enough jobs to justify changing the zoning in the first place. We know that they make the surrounding areas they inhabit borderline unlivable. Yet, we stand here today at this precipice distracted by passing clouds when we should be considering treacherous drop to the dry, unforgiving earth below. The land we stand ready to betray will not be kind to our selfish machinations.

These plans are not limited to San Marcos, but are actually part of a nationwide effort to push the big investments behind AI and its data centers onto an unwilling populace. And as a natural result of that, we are a part of a nationwide resistance here tonight to being killed slowly. The water will drown us in its absence. The animals will return to eat us when we found we cannot eat or grow our crops, and land will erode under the shaky foundations we're building upon and swallow us whole. But if the earth's lack of forgiveness is something you are willing to ignore, I hope you are prepared for us to never forgive or forget the mistake you could make tonight.

I have stood before city council who, much like this commission, stood post to betray the wishes of hundreds of people who voiced their wishes. And when they did, people stood by and did nothing. We must hold this commission accountable. If you vote in favor of the data center tonight, we will not sit idle. Your names and faces will be remembered and your careers will not. In case the mass support present here tonight didn't make it explicitly clear, almost no one wants to see these parasites extract what makes this place worth living in. I say almost because we know certain commissioners think the city an inevitable destination for these data centers. This is false. We know this is false because we're seeing data centers fail to be built nationwide. Why?

Because people know they are not necessary for our survival and thus are resisted just as it's being done tonight. They are an elaborate ruse meant to fool us into letting developers erase us from afar for their personal enrichment. But we are not fooled. We see what the developers are doing. There are two sides here tonight, the side of the living and the side of the damned. You know what to do. Thank you. Thank you.

Hi. I'm Sai Friedy. I did not plan. I did not write anything. This is kind of beyond the point of sharing facts, but I am still alarmed that people who are in positions of decision making authority and people who have lived in this town for a really long time and who are very smart and well informed still don't understand basic facts about the harms of data centers.

I did a radio interview today with Diane Wassenek. And she was shocked by some of the stuff that we mentioned on air today. But a few facts and sorry if this is kind of hodgepodge. I'm still very anxious about public speaking. We use more water to generate electricity than we use to irrigate crops in this country.

And the grid of Texas is set to double because of data center demand. Utility rates around data centers have gone up by 250% in some places. And also, y'all are going to see a presentation that really likens this project to existing data centers. It's really important for us to understand that the scale of AI data centers are unlike I've said this before, it startles people when I say this. But I know that Mayberry has taken counsel, encouraged touring of existing data centers in the Austin and San Antonio areas.

I think they're gonna show an image of a data center in San Antonio. That's a 10 megawatt data center. And this data center is a three seventy five megawatt data center. That's five times San Marcos' average. People have said this tonight.

It's two and a half times what we use at the hottest day of summer, but it's five times what we use on an average day. So the grid overhaul that will be required for these large loads not only will it make blackouts more likely, it's also going to increase utility rates for regular people. It's been mentioned tonight also that, yeah. It startles me. This 2,047 number that's been thrown around, it's actually far worse than that because that number doesn't account for data centers.

That number doesn't account for climate change. I met with Joe Pantalian within the last week and it seems like policymakers here are just kind of resigned to our drinking our wastewater before too long. And that I think most of us are pretty appalled by, especially given that we're inviting industry into this community that plans to poison that water proprietary cocktails where we won't actually even know what's in it. And PFAS we know cannot be removed by municipal wastewater treatment plants. But I guess two closing points.

One, I think everyone here is ultimately on the same side. I think this is those who Thank

you. We will now close the assessment comment period. If our colleagues do not mind, I would like to move item number six before item number four and five. So moving CC twenty five thirteen essentially before the data center. Does anybody have any issues with that?

Okay. Brings us to our consent agenda.

I'll make a motion to approve the consent agenda.

Motion to approve by commissioner Spill, seconded by commissioner Meeks.

Commentary. Is that no longer good?

Mean, I've been

here before.

Do you have someone online? Yes.

I'm online waiting to speak.

Was he here for assistant comment?

Other people that are here that are waiting to speak as well.

Well, you know, let's back on up. Why don't you speak? Need your name. You get three minutes, sir. Sir?

Do

we have anybody on the line who wishes to speak?

There we

go. My name is Don Ewell. I live at 524 West Hopkins Street, and I'm new new to San Marcos here. Love the community. Voting for this seems to be going against the San Marcos comprehensive plan.

Seems that the decision was made, and then we're backtracking on it. We have a developer who spends his days and nights committed to this. We're just local citizens coming in and wanting to have a voice in this. Sometimes it's thought that no never means no for developers, but yes is forever. I don't think we need to vote yes is forever on this.

There are other ways in which data centers get water, one in which a technology that is being used is using brine. There's plenty of brine out in West Texas. Sure, the oil companies would be happy to share with them. Might start with cities such as McKamey, Rankin, Big Lake. They welcome a data center out there and the infrastructure and all the growth and development because, certainly, they need jobs more than we do here. Appreciate what the union members have to say. I was in union out in West Texas. I worked at a cement plant. Great. Loved my time there.

But

the idea that we have 25 union workers here in San Marcos and thinking that this is going to create more jobs for people here, once the building's built, those jobs vanish and you go elsewhere. And that's just the way it is. You move on. If you're not willing to move on, well, then you're gonna have to find someplace else to work. I just share here that a data center that was opened up in the Dallas and Oregon, you can go online and get this information from datacenters.com.

And they talk here that they invested 1,800,000,000.0 in the Dallas and established a long term commitment to the region and state. Now a fully operational site, we've created over 200 total jobs, and we work hard to support the communities in which our employees live and work. Since 2009, Google has awarded over, listen, 14,000,000 in grants to nonprofits and organizations based in Oregon. 14,000,000 for the whole state, and they invested 1,800,000.0 in the 800,000,000.0 in the data center. Don't get it.

I'm pro union, like union jobs, but I don't think it should come at the cost of destroying the very livelihood of the community. The community is centered around the river, tourism, the quality of life. That's too high a price to pay. And this commitment to create jobs, people can commit to do anything, but that's not a contract. People back out of commitments. Happens all the time. We built Interstate 30 here, and they say, oh, yeah. We're gonna create all kinds of jobs. They're gonna be twenty four hours because they're gonna have people that have to man these booths when people get off.

Sir, I'm sorry. I'm gonna have to stop you right there. That's our three minute time.

Alright. Thank you.

Thank you. Do we have anybody else online that wishes to speak?

I would love to. My video's been disabled on y'all side, which is okay.

That's okay. We just need your name, you have three minutes.

Okay. Elizabeth Emerson. I live at 503 Harvey Street, and I'm here to ask you to please vote against agenda items four and five. I think changing the zoning designation for the Mayberry property would go against or I'm sorry. It's currently designated as a conservation cluster in San Marcos' comprehensive plan and preferred scenario map that took over two years to come together.

And finally, after extensive communicating and workshopping, it came to fruition in just October 2024. It is designed to guide development for the next ten to twenty years, and changing it after just fifteen months would undermine the community's trust in long term planning in our city. According to the City of San Marcos, a planning and zoning committee's member, their job is to uphold the comprehensive plan established by the city. Regardless of what may or may not be developed on the property, it's irresponsible and undermining for the zoning change request to be allowed in my opinion. It is my hope that the simple reminder is enough evidence for each of you to vote against this out of town developer's request.

Request. It undermines our city, its residents, its trust, not to mention months of coordination and planning between our citizens, public servants and elected officials. Thank you.

Thank you. Does that wrap up online? Alright. Let's repeat the consent agenda.

I'll make a motion to approve the consent agenda.

I'll second.

Motion approved by Commissioner Spillow. Give it to Commissioner Meeks for a second. Any further discussion on this item? Seeing none, roll call vote, please.

Sure. Michelle Rollison. Aye. David Case.

Aye.

Luca Castillo. Aye. Murat Dunn.

Aye.

Amy Meeks.

Aye.

Griffin Spell. Aye. Rodney Van Niederkerke. Aye. William Agnew. Aye. The motion to approve carries.

All right. Brings us to presentation item number two.

Receive a staff presentation on the Vision SMTX comprehensive plan implementation report.

You're good to go.

Good evening, commissioners. Andrea Andrea Villalobos with planning. So this evening, I'll be presenting a brief overview of the comprehensive plan implementation report and really progress we've made on that plan recently. The Vision SMTX comprehensive plan was adopted in October 2024. It was a multiyear engagement process, which included, 31 member steering committee, 23 subcommittee meetings, and over, 8,000 comments.

The comp plan establishes the vision and goals for San Marcos and policy direction for the next twenty years, and it's really intended to be flexible, adaptable, and really guide how our community grows over time, but it's really a high level document really meant to guide decision makers. The comp plan is an umbrella document that integrates high level direction into various implementation tools, such as master plans, like the transportation master plan, new development, city streets and infrastructure, small area plans, which we have many going on now, and then also just the council's annual strategic plan as well. The plan includes seven topics shown across, the screen here, which have a total of 23 goals, a 130 actions, and 59 objectives. So lots going on in that plan. The implementation of the plan is guided by a council appointed comprehensive plan oversight committee whose charge is to review the plan actions and discuss priority actions for consideration by staff and city council.

Other key steps in implementation include a staff review of all of the actions on the progress and updates on those actions and consideration of actions into our annual work plans. An annual presentation to the planning and zoning commission and city council, planning and zoning commission is happening this evening. And then lastly, key priorities identified by the comprehensive plan oversight committee to be considered by council into their strategic plan that occurs and is worked on every January. So there are a variety of methods to implement those 130 actions over the next twenty years, including regulatory initiatives like updating the development code, infrastructure projects like adding bike lanes to some more city streets, and then creating resources like a small business guide as well. The annual implementation report is in your packet and provides a status update from staff on all 130 different actions, including the lead department, progress status, updates or comments on the progresses made, and then also metrics as staff begins to explore how do we keep track of kind of progress over time.

So the comprehensive plan oversight committee identified eight top priorities for 2026, which are provided in a committee recommendation resolution, which is in your packet. And you'll see mister Robert Eby over here at the podium. He is the chair of our comprehensive plan oversight committee, and he's actually gonna present the next couple of slides on the committee's behalf and just kinda give a quick highlight of the implementation progress. So I'll hand it over to you.

Thank you very much. As Andrea said, I'm Robert Eby, and I have the distinct honor of being the current chair of the comprehensive plan oversight committee. As already mentioned, our job is to uphold and advance the actions that are stated in our prestigious comprehensive plan. The first priority the committee prioritized was transportation1.1 to update the 2018 transportation master plan to be consistent with the preferred scenario map and address current current transportation issues. As part of the TMP update, the committee also recommended that t r 2.2 and t r 3.8 be prioritized for discussion within the TMP update process.

This includes evaluating the need for a city staff position to manage transportation demand management programs and to ensure the safe crossing options under I 35 corridor and other major roads that connect neighborhoods and residents. A few key considerations from the committee on this t o 1.1 is that we wanted to stress the importance of the transportation policy on both existing and future residents as well as the importance of transit to be connected to regional transit partners. We also want to stress the importance of evaluating pedestrian and bike crossings for safety improvements at key intersections and longer blocks. The details of these can be found on the resolution. The current status of these items, is that city staff is actually kicking off a transportation master plan update process, and the transit master plan is also currently being updated.

Under land use, the next priority we identified is to create a tool to analyze the fiscal sustainability of new development proposals, which I think would be a relatively useful tool discussion. If we had this tool, which I will emphasize does not exist, I am sorry. The committee is interested in exploring budgetary impacts of development on infrastructure, utility capacity, and rates, and the environmental costs of development. The committee discussed the importance of this tool to evaluate the cost benefit of development proposals with regards to the city's fiscal health to inform city decisions. Decisions.

Education on long term fiscal sustainability and return on investment will be an important component of implementation. Implementation of this item will require a consultant to support the development of the tool and to assist with education and be a collaborative effort with multiple departments. Housing and neighborhoods 4.3 discusses coordinating land use and transportation planning with proposed development to ensure safe and convenient connections to multimodal infrastructure networks from residential neighborhoods. A key factor of safe and convenient connections is proximity to goods and services. The committee stresses the importance of multimodal connectivity to neighborhood centers and chain and changes to the development code, transportation master plan, and the transit master plan.

All three of these plans are currently in progress. The next priority is h n or housing and neighborhoods 1.1 to update review and adopt a housing action plan. The committee stresses the importance of adopting a plan to address housing affordability challenges and emphasizes the topic of availability of diverse and adaptable housing, aging in place, and empowering incremental development as part of these discussions. Staff city staff are currently reviewing and updating data in the draft strategic housing action plan that was developed in 2019. The updated plan will include new data and opportunities for a public input.

ECD or economic development 2.1 discusses protecting and promoting land uses that support targeted industries, support diversification of the city's tax base, and enhance economic development by using tools such as intentional infrastructure planning, recruitment, and the use of the land entitlement process. Implementation should include a balance of both retention of small business and talent alongside the attraction of new business. Implementation is being explored through a future update to the economic development policy, and city staff are exploring a method to track private investments and physical impacts to the city. And I will put a side note. The, there is currently an economic development director position that's, being filled.

And the final, priority that we wish to emphasize for the next year is environmental 3.4. ENV 3.4 encourages developers to implement green building practices and conservation style development. The committee supports cluster style development types that preserve, enhance, or augment the green belt network. We also discussed regulatory incentives that may be needed for the implementation of a green building policy and that city capital projects should also implement green building and sustainable site standards as a model and as a leader of this green building policy. Implementation is being reviewed as part of the planning area district and the development code update and is also addressed in the draft historic preservation plan.

And that's the priorities that we identified for this upcoming year. Thank you.

Thanks, Robert. So this presentation is also going to be provided to city council on January 20 and will serve as a resource for city council during their visioning process. Implementation worksheet is also on the city website and it's in your packet if you want to kind of look at some of those items as well and then we'll be coming to you every single year. I mean this concludes our presentation I'm just informational and so no action is needed this time. Thank you.

Does the commission any questions? Does the commission have any questions for staff at this time? All right. Seeing none, we'll move on to public hearing, item number three.

CUP twenty five sixty eight, Stoner's Pizza Joint, hold a public hearing and consider a request by Toby Toby Lee May on behalf of Stoner's Pizza Joint for renewal of a conditional use permit to allow on premise consumption of beer and wine located at 748 North LBJ Street 102.

We'll open public hearing.

Good evening, commissioners. Caitlin Buck with planning and development services. The subject property is approximately one third of an acre and is located on the Southeast Corner Of Forest Drive and North LBJ Drive. The subject business is an existing restaurant. The subject property is owned community commercial. The current CP expires on January 14. No changes have been made to the site plan or floor plan. Staff recommends approval with the following conditions. The permit shall be valid for three years provided standards are met. No outdoor amplified music shall be permitted after 10PM, and the permit shall be located in the same area and manner as the certificate of occupancy. These conditions are unchanged from previous approvals. That concludes my presentation.

Thank you. Would the applicant like to speak in favor of your permit at this time? So you may come to the podium. That is okay. Anyone else in the chamber's wish to speak? Anybody online wish to speak? All right. We'll close the public hearing.

Mister chair, I'll make a motion to recommend approval of CUP twenty five sixty eight with staff recommendations.

I'll second.

Alright. Motion to approve by commissioner Spells, seconded by commissioner Brillison with staff recommendations. Any further discussion on this item? Seeing none, roll call vote, please. Sure.

David Case. Aye. Lupe Castilla.

Aye.

Mariah Dunn. Aye. Amy Meeks.

Aye.