Board of Supervisors - Regular Meeting

Good morning, everybody. We'll call this meeting to order. We've got the approval of the agenda.

I'll make a motion to approve the agenda.

I'll second. All those in favor? Aye. Minutes of the May 19th and 21st board meetings.

I'll make a motion to approve.

I'll second. All those in favor? Aye. All right. Public hearing regarding the 25-2045 Waffle County Comprehensive Plan. It's quite thick, lots of colors.

I'll make a motion to open the public hearing.

I'll second.

All those in favor? Aye. I have no written comments.

I don't either.

I know MSA is here to present.

Miranda, are you on?

To work?

Working.

Oh, we went too fast for him? It's state equipment. Then pay the cable bill.

No pressure, Andy.

Yeah.

Sure. I thought I had it by display.

So I'll let you know.

Oh, no. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you.

All right. Laura, your mic is pushed on the right.

The red light comes on there.

There you go. It's on.

Good morning. My name is Jenna. I'm with MSA Professional Services.

Hi, I'm Sarah Runkle. I'm a project manager with MSA Professional Services, and we're here to present the comprehensive plan to you. I'll let Jenna go through the highlights, and then if you have any questions, we're here to answer those.

All right, so just a general overview about what is a comprehensive plan. It's a general plan that typically lasts 20 or so years about the future of a municipality, in this case, Wapello County. It established a shared vision for the community and providing a framework for growth, development, and overall changes, as well as some general goals with numerous aspects, which we'll discuss later. And another component of this is after the comprehensive plan, typically a community has a zoning ordinance that is the regulatory document in which implements the comprehensive plan and guides land use. The benefits of comprehensive planning generally are that, again, it guides growth, informs decisions, promotes sustainability, enhances quality of life, protects resources, encourages economic development, and ensures consistency as a county would review it annually, ideally, and when making land use decisions, make sure you have the overall vision of the comprehensive plan in mind. All right, so Planning 101, Chapter 335 of Iowa Code grants counties the authority to establish zoning regulations for unincorporated areas. And it is the general purpose of zoning to promote public health, welfare, and safety. And according to the comprehensive plan before adopting zoning ordinances, counties must develop a comprehensive plan that provides a framework for those decisions. And there's also the section of Iowa code that has Iowa smart planning principles, which there's, I think, 12 elements here that are just kind of a guidance of what a community should have in their comprehensive plan. And you can read through those Iowa code section 18 . All right, so in general, this is kind of a summarized timeline. So with this project, we had four elements, which were engagement and visioning, existing conditions analysis, plan development. And then after that, we are also working toward the zoning and subdivision ordinance update recommendations. We kicked this off back in January of last year. So we've been working on this for over a year and a half. We've had numerous public meetings, stakeholder committee meetings, let's see, stakeholder interviews, plenty of community engagement tools or activities. And so we met with the Zoning Commission back on May 11th for the public hearing and recommendation. And then we're here today with the Board of Supervisors to review and adopt the comprehensive plan with resolution, by resolution. All right. So community engagement summary, as mentioned before, we did a community survey, which was open. We actually opened it from May 2025 and closed it this January. It included some general questions to get to know the participants, how long they've lived here, and aspects of the county they appreciate, things they would like to change. And then we also did a SWOT analysis in there, which identifies strengths, opportunities, weaknesses, and threats. We had about 45 responses. We promoted that through a flyer around the town. I think shared it with all the cities within the county as well to help them promote it and on the website. We also had a project website, which I forgot to put that in this PowerPoint, but it's mentioned in the plan. Another aspect was the crowdsource map, which we opened on the same timeframe. And in general, I kind of summarize the crowdsource map summary as well as the mapping activities we did into one in the plan. But ideally, we wanted people to identify areas primed for growth, potential nodes for commercial or industrial or residential developments, areas of the county that we should preserve with natural resources, farmland, and just the general protection of rural character. and really anything else that people wanted to know. Stakeholder interviews. So we had, gosh, I don't know, like 10 people on our stakeholder, or sorry, steering committee, which included members of the county as well as representatives from the city of Ottumwa, and I believe some regional representatives as well. And we had four meetings throughout the course of the year or so with, you know, with each one, we focused on something different. So we did introductions and kind of the visioning of the document in the first meeting, and then dove into the community engagement and land use mapping ideas and plan outline. Then we reviewed the existing conditions and all the data and the implementation matrix, which will have the goals, action items. And then we met March 3rd about, you know, just the final plan edits. And then, as mentioned earlier, we have several mapping exercises, which entail existing and future land use desired development patterns, as well as the SWOT analysis, which kind of summarizes people's perspectives on whether there's opportunities for something and external threats, which kind of go hand in hand, straits and opportunities, weaknesses and threats. And then also stakeholder interviews. We reached out to numerous stakeholders and we actually ended up conducting only around six with one-on-one anonymous online interviews. And we, like the steering committee, tried to make sure we reached out to as many people as possible within the cities, the educational institutions and other organizations. And then in terms of public workshops, we met first with the public on May 13th and we had around 15 attendees. And then we had our second public meeting around March 3rd and had probably around the same number of attendees, but showcasing here just the draft plan and some highlights of the future land use map and implementation matrix. So general table of contents, this is kind of a typical comprehensive plan outline where we profile, which is the history and background, existing conditions, and then projections in which we look at, you know, the, what is it? Atom laws, the cap, Why can't I think of the word? Not capital.

County seat.

And so we made sure to look at future population projections for Ottumwa and the county as a whole and kind of what trade-offs have occurred in the past and could potentially occur in the future. And then with the community engagement, as discussed earlier, you can read more about it in the plan, just some of the general findings from each tool. And then the main elements which align with the Iowa code are these several chapters, which is county character, community facilities and services, agricultural and natural resources, parks and recreation slash conservation, sustainability and resiliency, land use and growth management, economic development, housing, transportation, and intergovernmental collaboration. And then kind of the, Something that communities use more on a day-to-day or annual basis is the implementation matrix, which includes the goals, action items, timeline, partners to implement those action items and other things. And then we also have appendices, which contains some of the full other details that one might want to read at the back of the plan. Going into the future land use map, We divided it into several future land use categories, which are just kind of a guiding, you know, it's not permanent like a zoning map, it just shows what the potential desired future land use of certain areas in the county may be. In terms of those categories, we had, let me see, I think we had nine. starting with the agricultural preservation in natural areas. We also did an agricultural residential transition area, kind of in between the two of the ag preservation. And then we also did a low density residential estates, which is like a kind of the outskirts of the city, a low density, large estate, detached family, a single family subdivision development. We also did the high density planned residential, which I know this looks like a really detailed description, but essentially it matches up with the zoning map of the areas where Watlow County incorporates or enforces zoning for the incorporated cities within the county. So it won't necessarily be high density as you'd think of in a city, but just more dense town-like development. And then parks, recreation, conservation, public and institutional, commercial industrial flex, giving a little bit of flexibility there, and then the heavy industrial. All right. Excuse me. Going into the implementation matrix, we had a timeline in there with the action items. So just to provide an overview, each element of the matrix or yeah, each element of the comprehensive plan is divided into goals, strategies, and action items. And you can read more about it in the plan, but it looks like this for each element of the plan. And we identify the short-term, long-term, or ongoing timeline for it, as well as partners, funding opportunities kind of in the full matrix itself. That's just a little bit of overview of what each section will entail. but I know this is just kind of a brief overview of the plan and we can also pull up the actual document itself if there are any questions or comments, but we know that we didn't have much time to present and we don't want to go through every page of the plan. So that was just a brief overview. And if anyone has any questions, Sarah and I are here and here's some of our other colleagues who helped roll the plans. Thank you.

I wanted to thank the steering committee and all the stakeholders interviews that we had. That was very helpful to help guide our plan. As you remember, our last comprehensive plan was done in 1991. So it was very old. So adopting this new comprehensive plan will kind of guide us for the next 20 years and what we want to see with Buffalo County. Sorry. As I said, we met on May 11th with the zoning commission, and they are recommending approval for the comprehensive plan.

And we have to start preparing for the next one with the videos, right?

Yes. I would not want it to be lapsed like it was this time.

Every 20 years it's supposed to be redone?

Yes, yes.

And Miranda, could I ask you at the zoning meeting that approved this, was there discussion and can you give us any highlights of that discussion?

Like I said, a couple of the members that were on our zoning commission were also on the steering committee.

So that was very helpful for, I know Walene, she served on both of our committees and she was able to

talk to the commission and update them of some of the concerns that we worked through with the other steering committee members. And it was nice to be able to do that. And like I said, we've not, I wish we could have had more public engagement, getting people to come, but I was very thankful for the members that did show up from the public.

Thank you. Any other discussion? I would like to make a few comments about it before we proceed. Any kind of plan like this is kind of interesting because it never can match perfectly with like my goals or what I would like to see. But I think overall that the plan is very appropriate for where we're at. And I like to comment that it's a dynamic plan, meaning that it can be adjusted as we move forward. And yet there's a need for a plan today to move forward. So I like that balance and that approach that we can change as we move along. In the plan, it requires some things of the Board of Supervisors. And I like that. I don't mind that. I hope we can deliver on that. And I would like to remind us as a Board of Supervisors that we should be held accountable to the plan that we commit to. So that is part of it. I also would want to mention that a plan like this and the zoning that results needs to be, in my opinion, always in balance with property rights. And I think that's a fundamental concept of our country and of a democracy, a free enterprise system. And so I'm always sensitive to make sure that it aligns with that position of freedom of property owners to do what they want to with their property. But I feel like we've achieved a balance in this situation. So thank you.

Anybody else?

No verbal comments? Motion to close public hearing.

Make it.

I'll second. Those in favor? Aye. Approve resolution number 21-2026. I'm going to make a motion to approve. And I'll second. Those in favor? Aye. Thank you, ladies.

Thank you, ladies.

Thank you. Public hearing regarding the final plat for Riedel Acres subdivision. Motion to open the public hearing. I'll move to open the public hearing.

I'll second.

Those in favor? Aye. Written or verbal comments?

We're no written or verbal comments for this. This is a one lot subdivision out on Brooklyn Road. Shane Rube, this piece of property is split by the road and he is selling east of the road to Mr. Riedel. It's approximately 8.4 acres of ground and Mr. Riedel owns just to the north of that. And Shane Rube plans on keeping the rest of the ground, which is west of California. Okay.

Any comment from anybody here? Motion to close public hearing?

I'll make it.

Second. Opposed in favor? Aye. Approve resolution 22-2026. I'll move to approve the resolution.

I'll second.

Opposed in favor? Aye. 28E agreement with the City of Elton for patrol services.

I'll make a motion to approve.

I'll second. All those in favor? Aye. 28E agreement with the City of Kirkville for patrol services.

I'll make a motion to approve.

I'll second. All those in favor? Aye. 28E agreement with the City of Blakesburg for patrol services.

I'll make a motion to approve.

I'll second. All those in favor? Aye. Audit agreement with Anderson, Larkin & Company, PC for fiscal year 25-26. Are they attached to you for any experts?

Yes, and I do have a list. So maybe we can sit down sometime and go through this list prior to the audit being done.

Yep, he said we can just schedule it with him and just show him what else we want to do.

Yep.

And that resolves the issues that you had with the audit earlier? Yep. I'll make a motion to approve the audit agreement.

You'll second it? Second. All those in favor? Aye. ISAC HIPAA program renewal?

I'll make a motion to approve.

I'll second. Those in favor? Aye. 63 South PP, back a license. I'll make a motion to approve the license.

I'll second.

All in favor? Aye. Eldon, Uptown, Downtown, tax abated property request at 411 West Elm Street in Coble. Come on up in there. Yes, yep, so just tap the on-off button there on the mics and state your names and we'll let you present here. That one on, one off. Nope, yeah, that was off yet. One more. Chad probably a good way. He's preferable. Thanks, Chad. All right.

I'm Jeffrey. I'm the tracer of Eldon Uptown Downtown.

And I'm Joan Miller and I'm just a member of the committee.

And we are here to- Can you pull that a little closer to you there? All right, thank you. We are here to request the 20, 25, 26 taxes on properties that we own be evaded.

That's part of the revitalization projects for Elgin, right? Yes. And what's the, what do you plan with the building?

Well, just to restore the building. It's unusable right now.

Unusable.

And we, you know, whatever we can find that will fit the building.

Yeah, I had this checked out. The taxes are all up to date currently. Taxes are due on the property for this year. Keep it in mind if you rent this out or do anything in the future, they may have to collect taxes on it then.

Yeah, we know. We're aware of that.

Okay. Some people aren't going to make sure you go ahead and do it. Any other questions on the property?

Well, we just received a notice that the taxes are past due.

Past due, yes.

You got something, Travis? So I did speak with them. They stopped in the office before they came up. They did turn in a tax exemption form for us to look at for next year. The two properties, one or two that they have currently that are exempted, we discussed, and they're being rented out so they know that those are going to be probably coming off of exemption next year and be taxable.

So they... They're very aware of how that kind of works and have been very open with us about what they're doing with them.

So I would say for this property, with it being unusable and them restoring it, I'm probably going to allow the exemption while they're doing that. And then once they get to the point that they can rent it out, it will be pulled from the property. So can we discuss that?

Thank you. You have anything else to add?

No, I don't.

Okay. All right. We have a motion for tax abatement on the property.

I'll make a motion to do the tax abatement.

I'll second it.

All those in favor? Aye. Thank you, ladies.

Thank you.

What's up there? Resonation letter of Carrie Nicely from the Gothic House. to be effective June 30th.

So that in the conservation board, so.

I want to make a motion to accept the resignation letter, but I want to make a comment too with that motion. I was a little disappointed that this took place like it did. On the other hand, I'm very pleased with the material that she developed for us to move forward and the work of the Conservation Board on that behalf too to move forward. So my motion though is to accept the resignation.

I'll second that resignation letter. With that being said, the budget she submitted with this letter is not going to work.

The budget's already been approved.

Sorry, she took money from the supplemental funding to the general basic. The bottom line is still the same.

Yeah, the bottom line is still the same. It can't transfer from one fund to the other. Okay. We have a motion and a second to accept the resignation letter. And we'll just have to go over the budget later with Rick.

Yeah, that is correct. It does not include that budget discussion, so it's fine. Correct.

All those in favor of the resignation? Aye. Renewable energy ordinance for wind, solar, and battery. We've had this on the agenda a few times. We need to get it to a public hearing so we can have public input on it. I will motion to get that going to set first public hearing date in two weeks.

And I will not second the motion. My issue is still as it has been in the past that the statement has been made that we will not have wind turbines in Walpole County. And yet this ordinance allows at least 14 wind turbines if you do the math based upon what's in the ordinance. And the ordinance does not allow basically any solar or any battery storage. And so that whole ordinance is unacceptable in my opinion as it stands. We need to work on the ordinance before we can take it to a public hearing.

Well, we're never going to have 85 wind turbines like you want. We're not going to have 15,000 acres of solar.

I wish you would stop saying that because I have never said that that is what I want.

I believe you turned in a paper and I got it right here.

I did not say that's what I want. I said that is the maximum allowable.

You go out in public and tell people I want to win when I'm the only one that's been opposed to it. You've been forced the whole time. Says here you wanted 50 the very first presentation. Now you want 85.

Is that your paper? You misunderstand that entirely. I do not say what I want. I said what I would allow in the ordinance. I know you've had many private meetings. Stop accusing me of that. It's not true. It's never been true.

We have a motion with no second. We don't have that. We're going to have to have a moratorium until we can come to resolution because You wanted to have meetings, and not once have you contacted them with any meeting, so. I set up several meetings.

Last time I requested a work session, and you ignored that statement. We have a member in the audience that would like to speak. I'm sure we got a few that want to speak, so.

Anybody like to come up and voice their opinion? Go right ahead. State your name. And then you go forth.

Good morning. Mark Rowe, Executive Director of Greater External Partners in Progress. I didn't realize I was walking into this type of meeting. So I thought the meeting started off really well today with the vote for the comprehensive plan. One of the components of that plan was to encourage economic development and what is on the agenda today for this ordinance, I fear, is getting us off to a rocky start on that economic development moving forward. And the reason that I say that is because Greater Atomo Partners in Progress and as Board of Directors, I think it was late last year, sent a letter to the Board of Supervisors in support of the Clean Energy Ordinance as it stood at the time. And I'm concerned because it seems as though there's been one component to that that has been added in very short order, which is data storage. And that is largely a problem in Wapello County. And I understand that this is a problem in other counties within the state of Iowa. And it has been something that has been a concern in some counties that it has been Some counties it has been accepted and the variables behind the acceptance and defeat of those ordinances have been varied across the state of Iowa for whatever reason, be it water, be it electrical grid infrastructure, whatever the case may be. However, the problem that I see here in Wapolo County is largely economic development. The state and local partners have been left out of the conversation as it relates to data centers and the infrastructure behind any decision to bring data centers into Wapolo County. I want to be really clear, however, there is no... for data centers in Wapello County. However, again, going back to the beginning of this meeting, when we were talking about the comprehensive planning, it would be a shame to not do our due diligence on the front end for those conversations and then put Wapello County behind four, five, even 10 years, not only on the advent of data centers in Wapello County, but moreover, the electrical grid, the natural gas grid that's coming into Wapello County as a result from the benefits of a data center. To give you an example of what our electrical grid looks like in Atoma right now, arguably one of the heaviest use cases for electrical grid is the business park out toward the north side of town. As it stands currently, there's less than one megawatt available electric for any new business to come in there. Anybody who knows electric knows that's almost nothing as it pertains to that. And Alliant Energy can't build speculative power. So what that means is Unless there's a user that comes in that has the money to pay for that electrical grid, we won't get a high electric user in this area. And that's going to cost millions of dollars. There's no illusion that it won't. Even though ITC is building a 345 kilovolt line less than three miles away from it, there's still a heavy cost to bear to get it that three miles from that line to the industrial park. So it's going to take somebody with deep pockets to be able to build that grid if we want to do it before 2029, 2030. So my concern here is, again, we are talking about a moratorium on on something that wasn't even part of the conversation even two weeks ago, at least to the best of my knowledge with conversations that I've had with each one of these supervisors. So I'm a little bit concerned that this has been added to the conversation without any conversation with the Economic Development Office, without conversations with our utility partners, with Alliant Energy, who as recently as 8 p.m. last night assured me that if we as a community want to have a conversation, they're willing to come down and have that conversation with us as to what the future of electricity looks like. And we haven't had the state partners, be it our legislators or economic development offices at the table, to have a conversation about what the future electrical natural gas grid looks like here. So I think that If we want to have the conversation, let's do that. But placing a moratorium on it, I think, is very dangerous territory for us to go down because it's going to force people to walk away from Wapolo County. And we have been working for over a year and a half at this point, as all of you are well aware. And we have had those state and local partners walk away from us, come back to the table, walk away from us, come back to the table. They are at the table right now. and they're having conversations with us probably to a deeper extent than they've ever had with us before. And I fear that if a moratorium is placed on data centers, it's gonna have far broader implications than just data centers. So I would encourage you to really think hard about the word moratorium and data centers, because that's going to affect literally the rest of the comprehensive plan that you guys voted on today. And it will, just by virtue of what it's going to do to the electrical and natural gas grids of Wapolo County, it's going to negatively affect the rest of the comprehensive planning as it stands.

Are you suggesting that it might be wise for us to have a meeting with a client so that that is communicated more directly?

I would highly encourage that.

No, I would be willing to engage in that for sure.

I got told you Mike. Yeah, thank you, Mike. Anybody else?

Yeah, I want to see one of those court here. I've been following this for ever since it became an issue and I think it's time to make a decision. I agree with Mister well that we should not have more for him. I think there's no individual since my interest in solar and it's gone ahead and it's all for my own personal property and feel like I'm kind of in limbo, because I don't know if there's any requirements or rules and regulations that I'm either in compliance or not in compliance with. I think the original ordinance that I read done by MSA was very adequate and gave us a good starting point. I think the thing that I liked about it was that you did have the option as Board of Supervisors to make amendments or adjustments to it if we got into it and found something that we didn't expect.

I think if we're looking... Can you speak up? I can't hear you in the back. Sorry.

I think it's time to make a decision and it's something that's going to be here for the future. And if we want to be progressive and encourage industrial development as well as economic development, we're going to have to have the alternative energy ordinance in place. Otherwise people won't even look at Wapato County. So I would encourage you to... as board of supervisors, get your act together, make a decision one way or the other and get it off the table. It's been over a year. I've gone to most of the meetings that have been held publicly. And I think the overwhelming sentiment that I pick up is it's very positive. Whenever you make public policy, you're never going to get a policy that's perfect and everybody's going to get everything they want. So come up with the best that we can at the time, build into it the ability to adjust it or change it as we get some experience. But let's move forward. Let's not go backwards. Thank you.

Thank you.

Anybody else? Well, we're closed. Tom, I hope you can see that. Here's the emails we've received. Five to one ratio against. Do not want.

or for solar?

For wind and solar. Nobody's voting on battery. Nobody knows what battery is. Data centers only come about because of what's going on in Jefferson County. Miranda talked to me about that. We don't have to include data centers on it because I know we've talked about it several times looking to get one here in the tunnel. It just takes a lot more power than we got.

So I had a question about that, Darren. I was going to bring that up kind of to piggyback off what Mark had said. You know, with what is happening in Jefferson County, they're having joint meetings with the city and their county board of supervisors. I don't know if anything is imminent as far as them building anything, but when you look at it from this county's perspective, is that something that this county needs to start doing? You know, kind of preemptively having these discussions jointly with you know, with the city of Ottumwa or with the, you know, the smaller communities in the county, as well as the supervisors to kind of map out what that might look like. Because, you know, obviously these data centers are pretty controversial in the fact that you've seen what they've done to water. They use a lot of, you know, high rate of electricity that's been mentioned. Do those conversations need to happen now, do you think, with this county before, like Mark said, you get way too far down the line.

Yeah, I think that's the only reason the moratorium was listed is to give us an opportunity to have those discussions. We haven't had a group discussion with it at all. I know it's just been one-on-one, basically.

So how long would a moratorium be? Six months? A year?

Typically a year, but I believe you can open any time. Miranda's still here.

I mean, you can set a moratorium, but you can always... Resend that if you complete the project ahead of time. I know I'm speaking correctly. I know we've done that in other projects. So even though it is set for a year and you get it done in three months, that is something that the Board of Supervisors can then resend that moratorium. They're able to complete it ahead of time.

Just gives us an opportunity with no pressure to get done.

So is there a general feeling one way or the other on a data center being here, or does there need to be more exploration and see what the positives and negatives are?

I think there's going to be a lot more exploration, because I don't think we really even touched on it.

Yes, it does, Mark.

So to answer that question, yes, there has been interest in Wabolo County for data centers for more than a year now. And the reason for that is multiple. Number one, we have arguably one of the best feeder programs for virtually every occupation with inside of a data center, arguably in the Midwest region with Indian Hills Community College. We have the network administrators, we have the programmers, we have Anything computer tech related we have coming out of Indian Hills. We also have an aviation technology program out at Indian Hills, which strikingly enough are the exact people that they hire for the cooling systems at data centers. So we have the feeder program that keeps those people here locally instead of transporting them to some other major city within the country. So that's one component. One of the other advantages that Wapello County has over most of the areas that are complaining about data centers is the water usage. And Ottumwa is very fortunate in comparison to a lot of areas in Iowa. And this is from Tim Albert. This isn't from me. So feel free to verify. We're one of the few communities in the state of Iowa that can actually handle the water capacity of a data center. So water where it might be an issue in some place like Palo Alto or Cedar Rapids, it's not an issue in Ottumwa. So we have a lot of the things that are necessary for a data center. However, again, I would stress these data centers, especially the big five, they're making decisions right now. And that's the way they move. They move very quickly. They find an area that they wanna be in and they make decisions and they start working with utility partners to bring in the electrical grid to make it happen. And that's really important because when they're paying for that electrical grid, that means that doesn't transcend to the ultimate consumer, and they don't have to pay the cost of that grid upgrade. They get all of the benefits of the grid upgrade, but they don't pay any of the cost for it. And because of the way we're situated in the state of Iowa, The ultimate rate per consumer for electrical would actually go down if we had one of those data centers here because that infrastructure would be upgraded and paid for by somebody that's not the end user. So there's really no downside to a data center here. Again, there's nobody at the table right now that have been in the past and Because we didn't have people at the table at the right times, we lost those data centers. We've had two of them at the table, and they both walked away because the right people weren't at the table. Now we have the right people at the table. But what the fear is, if there's a moratorium, it doesn't matter that it's one month or one year or two years. It doesn't matter. If they come and look at an area and go, oh, there's a moratorium there, they're just walking away. They're not going to have a conversation of how quick can you guys get this moratorium lifted. They're going to say, you have a moratorium, we're out.

Mark, can you address the issue of how many jobs would be created with the data center?

It truly depends on the size of the data center. Are we talking about 500 employees? Absolutely not. Anybody who would tell you that would be lying to you. You're probably looking somewhere in the neighborhood of 50 to 200 jobs, depending on the size of the facility. What is important to note, though, is looking at these data centers, most of them haven't asked a single thing from local municipalities, most of them. They're just going in and doing the upgrades themselves that they need to have done. That's number one. Number two, that those jobs that are coming in, they're not $20 an hour jobs. They're $150,000 a year jobs. So while that number isn't high, of jobs, the number or the quality of those jobs is high. And again, we're losing right now all of those people that could potentially be coming to those. We're losing them to other communities. And that doesn't even count the three to five years worth of construction jobs that are generally very high paying that currently we're losing jobs. Talking to IBEW, for example, we're losing a lot of those electricians to go and work for three to five years at other plants like at Palo Alto, Cedar Rapids, Chicago. They're going there because they can make a ton of money there. We're losing all of the skilled trades to other areas. And this is something that we can keep at home.

I would sure like to continue to pursue this. And if we need to do a joint meeting with city of Ottumwa, that would be excellent. Andy?

Yeah. So the data center discussions in my wheelhouse and as an instructor meeting, I know about the jobs and stuff that are employed. Is that better? That's better. So anyway, with the jobs, so data centers typically employ like the ones around in the Wayne area they'll employ roughly around 25 to 35 maybe 40 people so that's they work on a very skeleton crew and the higher salary people are the ones that are just the managers and you're looking at three two to three individuals that will have those types of pay I can tell you from experience of placing students in those data centers they make around 40 to 48

or four years.

So you're not going to play a large base of that. With regard to the data centers also, those companies will contract with Alliant or whoever's going to bring the power in to set up their own electrical substation. If you look at those data centers, they have their own entire electrical substation built on their grounds. So that's something that they do on their own connection with that. There's still need to be some sort of power to deliver that, but they have their own substations at their disposal for that sort of stuff. One question I would have with the wind energy or whatever ordinances, with those things that are proposed, how much of that energy does Walpole County use? just a question on that.

It's just infrastructure. The one we looked at in Grandin Center, it burned down. Right, Miranda? The data center we looked at in Grandin County, that Quonset hut. Yeah, the pit point. They were hooked directly up to the substation right next to it. I know they use more power. They said that in the whole city of Granny Center. So they do use a ton of power. I don't know how much water they use. I don't know how that would affect Cargill either because they drain a lot of water up there too.

I would take a position that I would not be in favor of a moratorium on any of these topics at this point. I would still like to move forward with a ordinance energy.

We just had that opportunity.

So we have not developed the ordinance that can move forward to the public hearing. You and I can do that in a work session. We can schedule that.

As you name one time you've given anything. I've changed all kinds of stuff. You? Nothing. We need to schedule a work session. And when you scheduled them, you sat there and did nothing. You said, I just want to go with it as is. That's the problem is you don't want to do anything. Stop it. I'm not going to stop it because I'm tired of being quiet.

Mind if I have a second, Darren?

You can have a second. Yes, fire away. I never know you to be quiet. Can you help me?

You're on.

You're on. All right. Thank you very much. You know, Don Phillips, Wampum County Sheriff, you know, I've said through these things, listened to you guys have discussions about this. And I just want to speak to you as a department head and what's going on in the Sheriff's Office. Some people may not realize this, but we're looking to expand the jail. Last summer, we had 57 inmates farmed out to other counties at expense to Watlow County of almost 700,000. We're looking to expand the jail. I don't know if it'll be on the ballot come this November, but it's something that we're looking at. And we haven't come up with the money to employ people in there and still provide a service to the residents of Wapeau County. And I guess I'd ask for the three of you or the two of you, whoever it is, to sit down have a conversation about this and figure this out. You know, if you have to have somebody come in and mediate it and have a conversation, just let me know when it is. I'll come in and sit down with you two of you. Cause I understand, I guess, uh, Ms. Kennedy is not participating in this, but I think, uh, whether it's wind or solar or data centers or whatever the case might be, I think, uh, I think this county needs to take a hard look at this and give us some heavy consideration because I don't think it's going to be hard, you know, to come up as, as you guys all know, whether the taxes that, uh, the tax bill has been passed or I don't know if she signed it yet, but she signed it. So, um, I just, I just, uh, I'm just astonished that we're sitting here arguing before the public and not figuring this out. You know, instead of, you know, I guess I look at it, Mr. Zip was asking to sit down and have a conversation. Let's sit down and do it. Come on, folks. This is a serious issue that's before us because, you know, we're going to have to employ some people in a new jail. It don't do us any good to build it if we can't employ people in there. And we, you know, We all sat there and went through the budgets this year, and we know how difficult it was to come up with one. And you guys all know, as well as I do, it's going to be even harder next year. Yeah. This money may not be on the books five to ten years from now, but, you know, this isn't something that's going to get easier for us, and it certainly isn't getting easier today with what we listen to and argue about where it's going. You know, as part of the steering committee with MSA and sit there doing, I think I only met two of the four meetings, but there's people that put an effort into it to try and come up with this plan and move forward with Buffalo County. And I think we're not moving forward when this isn't going anywhere. So this is my two cents.

Thank you. Anybody else?

I hope that doesn't add 10 pounds. You know, they say it can't guarantee it.

You're on. Oh, now you're off. Am I on? Yep.

Okay. My name is Denise Spring, and I have a few questions. What do they do with the blades when they wear out?

Pile them up.

Where were they piled them up at?

Depends on what the ordinance says.

So have you ever looked at Sweetwater, Texas? They have this in Sweetwater, Texas, and they're known as the blade capital of the world because they came and decided it was okay to put these in. And when they went bad, they piled them all up and they're a nightmare. And you have a lot of people down there that aren't happy. So is that going to happen in Wapolo County? And the question is, how much is Wapolo County going to get? How much energy are we going to get?

Energy, none.

None, okay. So where is this all going to go to?

Wait a second. The energy does not matter where it goes, whether it stays or goes. What matters is the energy produced in Wappalo County generates revenue for Wappalo County, for the landowners that have the turbines, and for the county in tax revenue.

Okay, what about beautifying? You want the Clean Air Act. The beautifying of our farms. You know, when they're gone, and they will be gone in 10 years or 15 years, we're going to look at them.

From a property rights standpoint, you do not own the view over your neighbor's property.

I own the view on my property. That's correct. And if it's on my property, I will be seeing that.

The wind turbine will not be on your property unless you want it to be on your property.

Okay. Well, maybe look up Sweetwater Road. Thank you.

Thank you. Anybody else?

Alright. We'll move on to.

Going nice over. There you go. This is really. And how much tax revenue does the county actually get off of these things? Do they get it, like, they start buildings to run away and get tax revenue from it? Or is it going to take eight years after these things are done? And I agree with Don, despite my name being deceived on this deal, one way or another, but it's me too. I don't think Thank you.

Anybody else? We'll move on to Don, then. Personnel request for payroll approval, new hire?

Just a vacancy that we're filling.

In jail?

Yes.

I'll make a motion to approve.

I'll second. Those in favor? Aye. Any other business before the board?

I certainly would be interested in taking up Don's offer to do the discussion. I'm not sure Don should be the one that does the meeting, but he offered.

I would like to agree to that. Don would be fine, mediator. I've seen mediator.

And I think the value of that is that we could move a little bit forward just by discussing it. I think that's the idea. I'm not sure we're going to solve it in a meeting, but why not attempt to work together as a community?

That was the whole point of my comment. Let's figure it out and move on.

Now Travis has a comment.

I think Travis would be very good at it.

Well, okay. Thanks, Don. I'm just going to say with what Don said, if you guys do have a work session, you want to sit down and talk about things, I'm willing to come to that if I have information that the two of you need to make some headway on a decision. I don't think anybody... I don't think any of us that work for the County would be unwilling to be there to give that information out. Um, if it's going to be helpful, uh, as far as his questions, I don't remember your name. I'm sorry. Um, and I, I've, I've talked about this before on the tax side of it. Um, they're assessed at 30% of acquisition costs. So that is a number that the wind turbine. They give us their number of acquisition costs. It's assessed at 30% of that. The assessment does not start until they are turned on. So there there's no, um, assessment towards that as they're being built. Once they're turned on, it's a seven year roll on. So it's 0% that first year, then five, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, until you get to that 30% of acquisition costs. With the new tax law that was signed, it's not easy to explain and I don't know that I necessarily have all the answers, but the way that it seems to me that it's gonna be the general fund for the board of supervisors and the city budgets is going to be capped at a 2% growth plus new construction. So new construction is something that I define in my job, but it appears that the new law has left wind or left solar wind and maybe even data centers and then anything urban rebate related off of new construction. So I don't know how that's going to work. Um, we would define that as new construction when we put it on, but it's, it's, um, it's under that umbrella that that value is not taxable. So I don't know how we add that shoe. I don't know how that's all going to work in the end. if any of that's gonna be able to be realized in an increase in budget, right? That the money would be there as a whole, but the budget may not be able to increase enough to hold that, I guess. But that's all stuff that we're waiting for the state to define how that's all gonna work. So would they help? Absolutely, they would help in the end, where does that money allowed to go as far as growth? I have no idea. Okay. Um, if you have questions about that stuff, you're more than welcome to stop in the office. I can talk to you about it. Um, instead of doing it here, it's hard to explain when you're not involved in it all the time. Um, But back to my point, if you guys want to have a conversation, if you think you need information from me that's going to help you move forward with anything, I'm more than happy to come and sit with Don and whoever else you feel like needs to be there to make progress. And yeah, that's my stance on it, I guess.

Thank you. And I want to remind everybody, too, that Darren and I cannot talk about this privately. We have to do it in an open meeting according to Iowa code. And so that's fine, but we need to do it that way. And my proposal might be, okay, let's schedule something right now, or perhaps put it on the agenda for next time to schedule a time to meet. Those two options would be fine with me.

I think Darren suggested that you set a meeting for a few weeks.

Yeah, for the ordinance.

Well, discussion.

They would have to be listed as an open work session.

What Darren suggested was a public hearing.

I'm not... You guys have to get together.

Yes, that's true. Exactly.

He's offered to do that. I don't see what the problem is.

He offered the public hearing.

Let's just set a meeting. Let's set it right now. I'm here. You guys are here. Let's go. Let's set it.

I would agree with that. I got no problem with that.

I've got my schedules.

That's easy.

That's wonderful.

Let's see.

Let's see then. That'll work.

All right. We've got a meeting at 930.

We're here. Cool.

It's the campus for the election at 930.

Well, we can do the open meeting afterwards, 10 o'clock.

Yeah, we can do both because the canvas usually just takes 20 minutes or 15 minutes. So that'd be appropriate.

Sounds good. Is this open to the public?

Yes. Open meeting, yep.

And I think we could have a guideline that we just... Don't have public discussion, but I'm okay with public discussion. Yeah, we'll just hold off public input till the end.

We can do that. Yeah.

Can you clarify exactly the date and time of this meeting that's open?

A week from today at 10 o'clock. Yeah, June 9th.

Just right here, right here.

Yep.

I'll have to make sure that's open.

We'll have to make sure this room is open. One second. Yeah. Yeah. probably do better if we just plan on using the waffle building for both because we never know what court scheduled there's something else done yeah i sent you uh three an email from uh

We're meeting on the 29th. One of you that could attend this meeting with the DOT and I've said it to city administrators as well as city engineer to reference, you know, if we move forward with the jail expansion, we would see about obtaining the property across the street from the law center for visitor parking at the law center. So there's a meeting on the 29th at 10 o'clock and I've asked one of you to be a part of it. So...

I thought we already had that property.

No, that's the one on Main Street. This would be across Second Street to the north. It's along the street there that comes down from Walgreens. That piece of property there.

Oh, the undeveloped side? Yes.

We're looking at a section in the DOTC and if they can just deed it over to us or lease it to us. They just want to have a conversation. because I think the reason the city was asked to participate is there's a drainage portion that comes down that drains right there, so we just want to make sure everybody's on the same page and Greg's okay with it.

Yep, that's no problem.

So I just want to, if you can let me know, I'll send out the invite. I think that a county engineer had sent me an email and said he needed to do it by Zoom, but he'd be available to do so. We're probably still I'll send that out to whichever one of you.

I can do it if you want me to.

That's fine with me. I'll get that sent out. Thanks.

Nothing else? Motion to adjourn.

I'll make a motion to adjourn.

I'll second. All those in favor? Aye.