Special City Council meeting 4-22-26

[0:00:00] Okay, everyone. We're going to call this meeting in order. This is going to follow the same guidelines as a city council meeting. It is a city council meeting. So, we're going to call it together at It's roughly 5:30 5:32 on um April 22nd. I want to go over some of the ground rules first. As everybody knows, we're going to conduct this and we've had great meetings before with lots of questions, but we do have um marshals and PD here. And if somebody gets um out of order, we will probably give one warning, if not ask them to leave immediately. Um I don't anticipate to be that a problem. It's never been a problem in 9 years. Uh number two, I think we set this for 300 people tonight and it looks like it's going to be full. And the order of the presentation tonight will be Aaron Vannoy will get up and talk about some zoning. He's going to have roughly 30-something slides that I think covers We're having an argument within staff. We think it's going to cover nearly 80% of the questions that come out as far as guidelines and I would suc- say protection and what we want to see that protects the neighborhood. Um after that, I will get up and do a discussion with two gentlemen here from Emergent Skybox. After that concludes, we will move into um public comment, which will be handled the exact same way as we do it at council. You'll be allowed 3 minutes to talk at public comment. There'll be no rebuttal from council. And at the end of that, I will I will say uh couple of the people here from Skybox and Emergent have said, "When the meeting's over, we're not in any hurry to run away. If somebody has some questions, it won't be done from the stage, but they're they're not going to run out and and hide if somebody has something they want to ask." So, it just depends how deep and how long public comment goes. If somebody wants that opportunity, keep that in mind. Um another thing I want to point out and in the If you haven't seen this already,

[0:02:03] there's been a petition submitted for my recall as mayor. I just think everybody needs to know that one up front. Um anyway, that one's out there. I think I got notified of it yesterday at 5:00. So, that's out. But, with that, I want to go ahead and bring up Aaron Vannoy. And Aaron heads up our planning and development services, the whole thing that we're going to talk about. And y'all have seen Aaron lots of times. So, let's give Aaron a hand and turn it over to him. >> [applause] >> Good evening everyone. Thank you, Mayor City Council. Um we're going to go over the zoning items that we've come up for um what some people call protections, restrictions, regulations, but items within our zoning ordinance that we're proposing to City Council to adopt as our ordinances for data centers within the city limits. So, in our current process and our current ordinance, we do not have any restrictions for data centers. We heard from the citizens that they would like to have some say in what goes on. So, in the zoning ordinance, the process to do that is through a conditional use. That's what the process we've come up with. We do conditional uses for lots of different things from short-term rentals to household living in commercial places and things like that. So, we are proposing to our city council conditional use process that would allow data centers in the light manufacturing and the heavy manufacturing areas. And I've got a couple of slides to show you where the majority of those are within our city. They would follow section 208 of our current zoning ordinance, which is the section for conditional uses on how someone would apply, the process for review, and the process for planning commission to go through. That is a public meeting. That does get public notice for those items. And that means the public can come and comment on those items at at the the planning

[0:04:06] commission. The planning commission has the option to approve or deny. If they approve, we have some regulations, design guidelines that we have within our zoning ordinance that we're going to ask to adopt that they would need to follow. If they get denied, it could be appealed to City Council and then City Council gets to make that decision. There is also processes that through the conditional uses that other folks can appeal that process and take it to City Council for an ultimate vote. So, here we have some maps. On these maps, if you look at the blue and the light blue areas, those are the light manufacturing and the heavy manufacturing areas. This is kind of the northeast portion of town where 67 uh comes in and 277 comes in and joins in right there. Goes by Howard College. Splits off to 306 that goes to the south to 87 and then splits also here and comes along as Houston Heart Freeway. One of the things that I want y'all to notice is that along our railroad, you can see lots of properties are usually zoned light manufacturing and heavy manufacturing along our railroads as well as our major transportation areas cuz that's where things are produced, they're shipped out or shipped in. Uh and so that's usually where light manufacturing, heavy manufacturing are. You see the greens and the yellows, those areas. Oranges are residential. And then when you get to the pinks and the reds, those are commercial or heavy commercial areas. Here's kind of the north section. Again, you have Bryant that comes in here. So, a major corridor comes in through here. Comes in. There are There are some areas. There's, you know, our steel works that happen right in this area that are along the uh spur line and the railroad. And of course, down here just north of downtown, you can start seeing the area that's uh is along the railroad and the highway that has some manufacturing areas. If you look south of downtown, again, you see that rail line that kind of goes

[0:06:09] right through the middle. Lots of areas of of manufacturing around there. And then of course, as our evolution of our city has grown and we gained uh Goodfellow Air Force Base in this area below and a major thoroughfare with Chadbourne coming out this way, again, areas of manufacturing um start to grow. And then our far south part of town where Christoval Road and the interchanges there before 277 heads south, you can see some more light manufacturing. So, those blue areas are the areas that a data center as a primary land use could apply for a conditional use asking the city, "Can we put a data center there?" They have to ask. All the other colors that are there, they are not allowed by right. That would be our proposal to City Council. Also with our proposal, with our definitions, we are asking that there would be no cryptocurrency mining allowed with a data center use. We would allow accessory uses cuz we have data centers in town right now that are lots of facilities use them from our hospitals, offices, campuses. There are data centers in town. Data centers have been around for 40-plus years. Um and been around in San Angelo for that long. But, we're talking about very large primary land uses that's just a data center. Those are the ones that we would choose to regulate or have rules for in our community. We have some rules for generator yards, you know, the equipment, the fuel tanks, the associated equipment. >> [snorts] >> And also, what does it mean to have a private utility? If they needed secondary power, we would have rules on on how they would be able to accomplish that private utility that's not a public utility that's owned by a political subdivision like the city water department. That's a political subdivision. This would be where they would be able to own their own types of utilities on their properties. When it comes to the conditional use

[0:08:12] application process, we've gone through and we've looked at ordinances from all over the country, from Virginia to many cities within the state of Texas. Uh there's about five ordinances in the state of Texas that deal with data centers. And we tried to pull the things that what we heard from citizens, from consultants, from other city folks that we've talked to around the state, what is it that concerns your citizen and concerns you that we need some kind of protection for? So, when they submit this conditional use, they have to give these plans to the city to put in the packet so that planning commissioners and the public can see those things. It comes with what we call normally call a site plan, but it's something that has the building location with all the setbacks. Ground-mounted equipment, so those generators and fuel tanks, where are they going to be located on site? Parking, driveways, that traffic circulation in and around the facility. If there's needed to be sidewalks or pedestrian routes, where are those going to be? A traffic impact analysis both during construction and after they get operating. We know that data centers, large data centers, they operate different once they're under when they're under construction and then once they turn over to operation, they operate slightly different. Fencing, landscaping, screening, how are we doing those protections of vision, heat, noise, those types of things. And fencing, landscaping, screening are part of those. Lights and photometric items. If they have large lights that are high up above, how does that light spill off of their property? A sound study. Um and we'll get more into that in in-depth in just a little bit. Building elevations and materials and signage. So, there's a lot of things that they have to turn in to us for an application before they can actually get going with any kind of development process. So, here's some of the more specifics. So, within our ordinance, we talk about a building height maximum height of 75 ft.

[0:10:16] If it's greater than 50 ft, every story they go above or if then they have to go 10 ft back from the property line. So, the standard setback is 50 ft from the property line. But, again, they have a maximum height of 75 ft. So, they could be even a little bit further back if they chose to go to that maximum height. If you have accessory structures like generators and things like that or maybe an office building, whatever it may be, then they they can be as close as 30 ft to the property line depending on what type of equipment it is. If it's a noise-making equipment like a generator, we may have some things to to ask them to say, "Hey, we want to move that to a different location." Setbacks between different land uses and zoning. It was very clear that through our planning commission and citizens that that we wanted to protect our neighborhoods inside and outside of the city limits. So, we had proposed some different distances. This is a compromise that we had come up to. 200 ft setback from any property line that's adjacent to a residential use or a residence of any kind. So, even if it's farmland and there's a farmhouse out there, they've got to be 200 ft on their side of the property before they can build any kind of structure. So, that's a 200 ft buffer around a property. So, if you look at this site here and for scale, this is a very large site. You that um property line on the right, that's over 7,000 linear feet. The property line along this is Highway 67 is the gray line. Along Highway 67, that's over 5,200 linear feet. So, a very large large site, 350 plus acres. You can just see it's lot easier up here where there's not the the background information, but that's 200 ft buffer between that red

[0:12:20] property line and where they could start building a structure if these rules are implemented through our city council. You can see that goes all the way on this perimeter of this as if this was all residential around them. So, that's how that would work for there. On a commercial property, we would lower that down to 50 ft if it's commercial or industrial because those are very similar uses that they could be closer together. There's also buffers created by streets, driveways, and parking as well as landscaping. So, again, the commercial setback is 50 ft. Ground-mounted equipment that's adjacent to residential property, we're asking for that same 200 ft. So, you've got 200 ft of buffering between there. If there's another say there's a local street, we're asking that there's at least a 25 ft landscape buffer in there before they start having things that are part of their property going on. If it's an arterial or collector, that's a classification of roads. So, Highway 67 is an arterial. They would have to be at least 40 ft back with a 40 ft landscape area. And then if they just have pavement on the side of the rear yards, it would be 15 ft back from the property line. Here's just another sample site. This is off of FM 380. Um we envision this one just just because we know the zoning right here is light manufacturing. This is also light manufacturing. This is in the ETJ, which means it's outside the city limits. And so, we did a 50 ft buffer, a 50 ft buffer, a 50 ft buffer, and then a 200 ft buffer. And that would be their area in which they could build something. So, that's again, looking at large sites, how do these sites get constructed? What are those buffers and things like that? So, we try to do just a sample one. Ag-

[0:14:23] Again, you see that building in the middle. You see a parking lot. You see a roadway. You see the setbacks. Now, envision all of this area that would have some kind of required landscaping, whether that's trees, shrubs, or natural habitat that we have in West Texas that sometimes can be even more dense than just trees and shrubs as you go along. But, that again is to help mitigate some of those issues that could be presented from heat, noise, sight, sound, all of those types of things. Landscaping became very important to us as we were looking at this and and people think landscaping of just as aesthetics. How does it look? While there is something about how do we protect one of our major corridors? If it's on 67, how does that look for people coming to San Angelo? We also know that there's lots of other benefits to landscaping from erosion control, storm water runoff, to cooling islands in big parking lots and along large buildings, um to breaking up the sight line as you're driving by and you're picking up the landscape instead of a large building. Um we know that through lots of different studies from many many years, it improves air quality, reduces heat, um helps prevent flooding, >> [snorts] >> uh also pre- helps block wind and provide shade, and it's that phytoremediation, which also helps the soil from different toxins. There's a reason why certain plants do very very well with that. And trees function as a sound barrier. So, in one of our examples within our ordinance that we're proposing is a 40 ft landscape buffer. You can see on there there are mature trees, which are the large circles. Then there are smaller trees that are the smaller circles that are shrubs. And 40 ft, you can start getting this kind of clustering of trees. So, there's just not a big long line of trees and you just drive by and you just see tree. You

[0:16:25] start getting a clustering of the of the different trees. If you do a 25 ft separation, they start to spread out a little bit more or they become more linear because the 25 ft and a mature tree, you don't have as much canopy space as you would in other areas. And again, you can see with the medium trees, you can still cluster those. And then on a 15 ft wide buffer, again, it's going to be fairly linear. You're going to have so many trees so many feet apart, and you would probably plant those in to keep that that buffer line through there. So, in town, do we have anything like that? Well, we do out at the Chaparral Park out on 67 already. You can see that these live oaks here, you can see 67 behind them, the new portion that they've built that TxDOT built in the last few years. Still fairly high speeds through there that drops down to 65 mph. These trees are over 50 ft apart, and they're also over right at 40 ft from the paving surface. And you can see that they have this nice linear shape going through there. You're picking those trees up as you're driving through. It's blocking some of the noise and things that would be coming from either the street onto that property or even from the property going off to the street. And you can just see in there they have some clustered small things from yuccas to pampas grass and some other things in there to break up just that linear look of the landscape. This is along one of their side streets, a my minor street, just a regular street, not a highway. Again, those trees are spread out a little bit further. But, looking at our West Tex land West Texas landscape, live oaks do fairly well once they get established. Once they get established, they are a dense cover. They're evergreen, and they help provide protection year round. So, again, not just do we require landscaping, we also gave them the option of creating a natural buffer zone of 40 ft if they didn't want to plant

[0:18:29] trees that we're going to have a 40 ft buffer zone. And so, you go back to that first one that had a very wide um area here where this is a 40 ft buffer zone, but now think of that as all natural habitat with some live oaks that are natural with mesquite trees that might be natural from the other plants and density that you can get with some of those plants in our natural state. Now, if you're planning in a cotton field or a wheat field, you're probably you're going to have to do the landscaping. But, if you're going to a site that's got a mesquite pasture that's got a mature mesquites, this might be an option for them. Other items that we're including into the ordinance is making sure that they have enough parking spaces, but not an overage of parking spaces, not a sea of parking spaces cuz once they get into operation, they're not going to have thousands of employees. They may have a hundred employees or so. It just depends on the data center, the size, and what's going on. But, we don't need all that parking creating storm water runoff once they're done. Uh again, ground-mounted equipment, a generator and things, those must be screened with masonry walls. Rooftop equipment must be visually screened. Um fencing. Fencing is can be masonry, wrought iron, or black PVC coated. And again, it it needs to be along the the street frontage. Could be masonry or wrought iron. Excuse [clears throat] me. If it's not along the frontage, it could go to that PVC coated, depending on how far it is. And you think about the linear distance of 7,000 ft on that first one of those images I showed you. That's a lot of fencing. That's over a mile of fencing to put on one one property side if they chose to. Fencing is going to be up to the discretion of the planning commission. If it's against residential areas, they're going to want an opaque fence potentially. Uh if it's along industrial or other commercial areas, it may not need to be an opaque fence, and they may

[0:20:32] be able to fill in with the landscaping. If they have super parking lots, we're going to ask for landscape islands to create some shade islands. And then any lighting that's on the property is going to be shielded, pointed down downwards. Excuse [clears throat] me. Not to exceed 30 ft in height. And then the the lighting on the building uh is to be not at such a a super height. If you've got a 50-ft building, you don't need to have lights up at 50 ft to shine down on the walkways. You need that lighting to come down so it reduces the light spillover. We've also placed, and it was requested through um I think at one of our educational meetings with city council about requiring the the lumens to be set at a dark sky lumens. And so that's in there as well. Noise. Currently, we're going to request noise to be kind of at two different decibels, a daytime and nighttime. It could be that that's changed to just one decibel across the board. Um but the maximum sound levels that we would request is 60 decibels at daytime. And that's measured at the property line. And I found just the a 60 decibel is roughly equivalent to a normal conversation or typical background noises in an office, a restaurant, or quiet suburban neighborhood. At nighttime, when most of us are probably getting ready to go to bed or in bed, we want it just a little bit quieter. Again, 55 decibels. While that number doesn't look that much, but when you're dealing with decibels, that can be a significant difference. Uh 55 is considered moderate and generally comfortable, similar to a quiet office, a humming refrigerator, or a moderate rainfall. And again, these are measured at the property lines. There was citizen concerns about the low frequency or humming noises, and so we have this proposed in our ordinance that there's some different octave bands

[0:22:37] and frequencies and things like that. Um and a lot of the a lot of the times that we see this, we've never seen this at at data centers, but the research shows that there are sometimes, whether it's a large generator power generator, and the electrical engine has got a certain tune to it, they can come in and retune that engine just a little bit and bring that vibration down. Uh again, these low hums and vibrations on this scale uh would not be able to pass beyond the the property line. And then this is our last slide for our zoning ordinance, and then I'm going to transition into a couple of other things. Zoning is not the best place to regulate water and wastewater. In fact, the state of Texas under code 212 mention doesn't mention water specifically, but it does not say that we can regulate it in zoning. So we have adopted many years ago um utility ordinances, and that's where we're going to regulate water consumption and wastewater discharges. And I'll get to that in just a minute. But we are asking to add into our zoning ordinance to add these two clauses that would say, "Hey, don't forget, you need to follow our utility ordinance as well." Because most development starts with zoning, then site development. They come to our ordinances and say, "All right, what's the zoning?" And they look at this. And they say, "Oh, I need to follow that also." So that's why we're asking for that to be there. So now we're going to transition out of the zoning ordinance into the utility ordinance. So again, the utility ordinance, if you're looking at it, it's chapter 11 in our code of ordinances. Um and we will have all this stuff online for you to look up as well. So in the utility ordinance, we're proposing to add this for purposes of this article, we would use the same data

[0:24:41] center definitions in the zoning ordinance into the utility ordinance. So it's like for like. So there's no confusion. We would also add that all data center facilities shall employ closed-loop cooling systems or similar cooling technology which minimizes water use and eliminates the need for continuous withdrawals from the city's public water supply for heat rejection. So their cooling system has to be something that is closed, has to be something that minimizes the water use so that they're not continually drawing large volumes of water. And then we get even a little more specific. And this is a very heavy slide, but I'm going to read through the whole thing for you. So when it talks about the cooling water allowances, and we're talking about the initial fill. This is exact wording from the ordinance. The initial cooling system fill shall not exceed 15 um not 15 well, 15 gallons per uh square foot of gross building area as defined in the approved building permit for each data center building. Initial fill shall occur within the 12 months of the building receiving a certificate of occupancy. So they have they get a certificate of an occupancy, they can fill it up to 15 gallons per square foot of gross building floor area, and they have 12 months to do that to operate it. If they have a scheduled maintenance refill, they can fill the cooling system the full the full Excuse me. I'm going to take a drink of water for just a second. Sorry about that. So the full cooling system drain and refill not to exceed the initial fill volume may occur for each data center building at intervals no more no more frequent than once every 3 years. Operator shall provide the city

[0:26:43] utilities director with 30 days written notice of when this is going to be scheduled. And the draining shall comply with all TCEQ requirements and other applicable law. The annual makeup water, so on an annual basis, routine cooling system makeup water to replace minor losses from valve packing, gasket weepage, maintenance drains, those type of things shall not exceed 3% of the total installed cooling loop volume per data center building per calendar year. So that is that's the restrictions that we're proposing for what for water usage from the city's water supply. Additional exempt water uses. These would be things that if things if bad things happen, we want them to use water. So fire suppression system fill, we want them to fill that up. During the construction phase, we want them to use water for dust control so that mitigates some issues. Um as well as for concrete curing and hydrostatic testing. So while they're doing their foundations and their tilt walls, that they're able to utilize water for that. Site landscaping, but it's limited to drought-tolerant zeroscaped plantings. That's consistent with the city's uh water conservation plan, and they are required they would be required to use drought-resistant plantings. And they could use reclaimed or recycled water obtained from the city's reclaimed water system when available for any of those purposes. So they might be able to utilize reclaimed water, not just the fresh water. And the last thing that we have for water consumption is if they exceed what happens in that first section. So if you have uh first they have to notify 48 hours of an event to the water utilities director. Why did it happen? What was the cause? What was the volume? What was the duration? How much water are we talking about here that we that's gone that now we have to refill?

[0:28:47] The approval to refill comes down to the city manager or their designee, and they have 5 days to approve or deny. They look at our water situation and say, "All right, what is the best situation for the city of San Angelo at this time? Do we approve them using additional water, or do we deny them using additional water?" There is an emergency exception as if there's imminent risk to facility equipment or personnel, and then they need to document and notify the city within 72 hours of that incident. Um more than likely our some of our city team is going to be responding to those imminent dangers, and so that's probably going to be known and passed on very very quickly. So those are what we're proposing in the water utilities area for the water systems for using water. Now I'm going to go over uh a couple of slides that talk about the wastewater or the sewage that comes from the facility. So currently, in our wastewater or sewage water systems ordinance, there are currently prohibited discharges. And this is kind of the first paragraph that no person may discharge to public sewers any waste which by itself or by interaction with other waste may injure or interfere with wastewater treatment processes or facilities, constitute a hazard to humans or animals, create a hazard in the receiving waters or irrigation acreage of the wastewater treatment plant effluent. So, those are the generic kind of statements of all right, you can't you can't cause us harm by what you put back in our sewer system, what you discharge back out. Also currently prohibited in our discharges and if you go to this, again this is chapter 11, our water utilities or our utilities ordinance, chemical discharges. And there's a long list of chemicals there that are listed that says you cannot discharge these. They have to be at a certain rate or not

[0:30:49] at all. Heavy metals and toxic materials, again at a certain rate or not at all. Garbage, we it surprised me as I was reading through it, you just can't put garbage down the sewer line. Okay, that makes a lot of sense. Radioactive waste, you can't put that in the sewer line either. These are already in our ordinances. High temperature discharges, when you get over 150° F and you start pushing those things down the sewer line, you start having real issues and problems. And then also storm water and other unpolluted drainage going into the sewer system that overloads the sewer system and may cause it to spill out. Those things are already in our utility ordinance today. What we're proposing to add for data center specific, a discharge event means any intentional release of treated cooling fluid to the sanitary sewer system. A planned discharge events means an intentional release associated with a scheduled maintenance loop replacement or repair activity. An emergency discharge event means an unplanned release caused by equipment failure, system rupture, or safety-related incident. Sampling and laboratory verification of treated discharge must be completed prior to the each discharge event. Records of the discharge volumes, analytical results, and discharge dates must be maintained for at least 3 years and provided to the director of water utilities upon request. Planned discharge events required written notification to the water utilities director at least 72 hours prior to discharge so that he can send his teams, let's go check, are they doing everything correct? Are they protecting our system? Are they protecting our citizens? For emergency discharges, events must be reported to the director of water utilities within 4 hours of the occurrence and a written incident report

[0:32:52] must be submitted within 7 days detailing the discharge volume, analytical results, and corrective actions taken. And the director of water utilities retains the authority to establish discharge flow limits and additional operation requirements necessary to protect the city's sanitary sewer infrastructure and ensure compliance with applicable industrial pre-treatment standards. So, we do have a lot of industrial sites around our community and we already have rules for those industrial sites. We're proposing these five things for data center specific. And so, I've gone through a lot of slides and a lot of information. And I know our city council's been listening over here to our right. I'm not sure that there's any questions from city council at this moment today, but if you have any questions, I'd be happy to try to answer them. If not, we'll move to the next item on the agenda. Okay. Well, with that, Mayor, I think we'll move on to the next item on the agenda and let y'all take it from there. Thank you, everyone. >> [applause] >> Or do you have the clicker? Can I use the clicker? You want a clicker? Sure. That's yours. Sorry. That's yours. Thank you. That's yours. Cool. I get the big arrow goes forward. Put them on check. Check, check. Works. Get over here, we can pass it back. Sure. Yeah. So, at this point of the time, or excuse

[0:34:58] me, at this point in time, the thing that I've been excited about for a long time, I guess it's been over a year that we've been working on this project, is to bring these two gentlemen up here to answer your questions. There were some benchmarks and there were some milestones that the city needed to achieve before we got to this process. There were several things that happened up to this date that would have changed had we brought them sooner, wouldn't bring us to the point we are today to ask the questions we want. All right. So, what I'm going to be doing now is we're going to cover some questions that were submitted. Every question that was submitted over the from the I believe it was the 8th through the 17th of April is answered. And we're going to make that website live to you here in a little bit. And And I mean every question. If they did not submit a question, it didn't get answered. So, I don't know they had they had 10 days to submit questions. If you didn't answer one, we'll try to get that addressed in the future. We took the top seven or eight questions and try to build a summary of what those are. And we're going to answer those here tonight. And when we get done, we'll flip on the website and everybody can go find their question. If it's not exactly how you submitted it, please understand we had to summarize it. If there were questions that were I would say something we couldn't give a very factual answer to, a yes-no, we didn't answer those. And I think y'all understand that. Sometimes people put out something that's real open-ended in an attempt to box you in a corner. We don't want to box anybody in a corner. But we wanted to at least answer everything we could. And as always, the entire council and myself are very approachable. Talk with your councilman if there's something you've seen that hadn't gone forward. But right now, I want to introduce to you the two people up here

[0:36:59] on the stage and I'm going to start with CEO Chris Sumpter of Skybox Emergent. And Chris, I would love for you to tell them a little bit about your history and we'll go from there. Again, Chris Sumpter. I've been in the data center industry now for about as long as anybody can be. Um you know, I started in 1996 you know, with small company called Digex. We pioneered managed hosting, which is now basically the the cloud. Um you know, I was in it, you know, basically running sales organizations. Um I was with the company till 2002. Um I started working for another company called Raging Wire, which is now NTT Global. And um then went to work for a company called Digital Realty Trust, which is now I would say probably the, you know, largest global data center company. Um and, you know, 2007 I became founder, co-founder of another company called Vantage Data Centers. Um you know, again, most way through basically these companies running sales organizations. Um Took time out 2012, uh coached football, watched my kids grow up. Uh decided to get back into the industry about a year later. And um helped two other companies in the data center industry get started. Um you know, helped Aligned Data Centers get up and running, EdgeCore as well. Um really got more into the development side of the house. And um 2017, met some other individuals that were more private equity. Um and had my own building that I was developing in in Santa Clara, California. And, you know, at that point in time, brought in some investment from Accel Capital. Um and about a year ago, ended up recapping, you know, out of that company and

[0:39:02] starting Emergent, which, you know, at that point in time, teamed up with Mike. Um started bringing my team back together. And um really started going out and, you know, looking for sites, you know, like the Skybox site here, as well as some of the other projects that we have around the country, Pennsylvania, um that were, you know, really sites that we thought were, you know, good projects to bring to the community and develop for, you know, really what we target as the big five. Um you know, which would be AWS, Google, Microsoft, Meta, companies like that, which are primarily our customer base. Um and, you know, brings us to really today and, you know, what we're doing now. Thank you. I I appreciate you being candid. I I asked him before we came out here. I said, "If you had to rank yourself on on a scale of 1 to 10, how long you've been in the industry with a 10 being the most compared to your peers?" I Both of them said, "We we've been in here 10s. I mean, we have been with the very first ones. Initially, you started before they were called data centers." Um, I think it's great that we're bringing probably the most experienced team in the industry to the city of San Angelo. Now, Les, if you'll hand the mic over to Mike. Um, Mike, we'll let you credential yourself here a little bit. All right. Uh, good evening. I I want to thank everybody for giving us an opportunity to come speak to you first. Um, really do. Um, really do want to be able to answer all your questions and and like, uh, Mary Tom had mentioned, I'm I'm happy to stay behind and answer some questions if you didn't get the answers that you think or you information that that you really needed. So, um, start there. Uh, I've been doing this a long time, too. Almost, uh, 30 years myself. I start I I'm the technical and delivery, um, guy at at, uh, Skybox Amerige. Um, I started out on the electrical and, um, overall design of the buildings approximately 30 years ago. But, for Les, almost 20 years, I've been on the operational side and and the delivery

[0:41:04] side for uh, many companies that, uh, I think you guys all use. Uh, for a long time I was, uh, the technical leader and SVP at Yahoo. Those of you that might still be carrying a Yahoo email address out there. Um, and I I managed that team globally and built their sites, um, all over all over the world. Um, transitioned from there to Google. I ran global data center operations, um, 26 countries and about 6,000 people, um, and and helped start up a lot of sites and, um, partner up with a lot of towns, not just in the US, but all over Europe and Asia as well. The last, um, last 6 years, uh, up until the end of, uh, last year, another, uh, another another company you probably know pretty well. I I led the development, um, and of the infrastructure and the operational, um, teams for ByteDance, which is the parent company for TikTok and CapCut and a bunch of other apps that you probably don't know about. But, um, so, th- this is really, um, something that I've done I've always done. I I've been, um, in charge of managing the teams locally and building the teams locally. Um, I've been responsible for working with the local community, the schools, like, uh, like like we're starting here to create uh, technical programs to put the jobs together and and hire locally. Um, and a and a lot of other thing. We're we're we're not coming in to build something to run away. We're really looking to, uh, to come in here and build something and partner with the community and become part of it. Um, I think, uh, rightfully so, there's some, you know, some hesitation because there's you know, there's there's some factual, uh, um, instances where maybe some of the developers in our industry, um, haven't done it the right way. And I think there's some valid concerns around the water. I think what we're doing is the most responsible way and we can talk about that a little bit more later. Um, and we'll explain it to you so you you understand the difference because, um, I think some of the information you have is valid and it is happening in some places. We're just not going to do that here. Um, so, anyway. No, thank you. I I think what's

[0:43:08] important to gather from the introduction of you two is this is not a B team. This is a very experienced senior team. And for you to come here, we're lucky to have you pick our side. So, with that, we'll go into the first question. We can put put the first slide up. If we can put that up on the screen. Maybe it's going to go up. Brian, is it coming up or do or would I need to press the button? All right. I got it now. I got to remember you have it. Yes. That one's fine. Technology gets me. All right. So, Yeah, if it was connected to a data center, would it work better? Okay. Skybox has been looking at Angelo for over a year. Can you walk us why you looked at San Angelo, how you came to this spot in site selection? And, you know, we kind of sit back and wonder why you got to us. And there's a lot of questions about the substation and where the venue is and location. So, let's start there. Why did you start here? So, you know, when you start looking at site selection for data centers, there's, you know, some real major piece parts that you need to have for a successful project. Land being a very large part of that, right? You need to have, you know, at least for a campus, you know, you need several hundred acres. We also want to make sure that, you know, if you look at areas like, you know, Ashburn, Virginia, we as a company I don't want to build in the middle of what I would consider a population center, right? So, when we start looking for things, I want to build outside away from, you know, neighborhoods, hospitals, schools, things of that nature. So, um, you start taking a look at that. You also start taking a look at major fiber routes, which, you know, there's new

[0:45:11] fiber routes that are being built right alongside that corridor. And then you start taking a look at, you know, the power, you know, hubs as well. So, you know, the Red Creek substation that's out there is a major regional substation and, you know, there's a lot of power that sits on that substation. There's no real upgrades that need to be done. Um, there's a lot of capacity that can be drawn on for the data center. And there's also going to be a lot of the new 765 kV upgrades that are going to be feeding into that from the generation sources that are in West Texas. So, instead of waiting for that to get into, you know, I would say more, you know, central Texas, you know, the Dallas-Fort Worth type areas, which is very congested, you know, we wanted to come this way to get closer to the source. So, that was a big part of the reason why, just from a, you know, a reason why we wanted to pick that specific location. Um, it was just all the piece parts were really perfect for site selection. One thing that amazed me, and this this started under Mayor Gunner, but when you came here, the first thing y'all asked for was to be annexed and inside the city limits. All right. So, I think people don't understand when you get size and you get scale, you also get governance and ethics that come along with that. Maybe elaborate a little bit on why you wanted to be inside the city limits because of all the data centers that have been talked about and noise that's been going, "This is the only one that any type of governance will be on at this point." All right. So, I know everybody was familiar with the event that happened at Dove Creek and there's discussion with other data centers that are outside the city limits and they are moving forward, but understand because of the input that we've done here, this is going to be the only one that has a set of ground rules and parameters to help it develop. And I want to say I want to ask you, why is that important to you? So, you know, every one of the projects

[0:47:13] that that we've been involved in, we've always had our sites annexed in. Um, you know, I've never stayed in the ETJ. There's been, you know, the vast majority of the reason is I think a lot of the developers, at least the ones that you take a look at that are staying out want to stay out of annexation. If you look at them as a company, you look at their projects, most of them are new entrants into the data center ecosystem. Um, they don't really understand that getting involved in the community, you know, being able to to have access to, you know, I don't want to necessarily say, you know, city water, sewer, things like that, but you do need to be able to have certain levels of city resources, you know, paying for them or not, you need to be able to have that. And I just don't think they really understand that. You start paying into the tax basis, it also helps the community, you know, you're also getting emergency services. Our tax dollars go to help the fire department, police department, things of that nature. It goes to the schools. It just all kind of works into the ecosystem. You're not getting that when you're staying in the ETJ. You don't really get the support from the community, either. I think they start learning once they get 1 to 2 years into their developments that they need to come back and start asking for those services and that help. It's a little too late when you get to that point time. It It was a little bit of a question in some of our mind why you why you want to do that because we could have sold you the property, all right, and just run your water pipeline. And then we looked at what we could bill you for, we'd have been millions of dollars in the hole, all right, cuz you don't use that much water, but we would have built you a pipeline. But, the fact that you asked to be annexed in as a start brought a whole different complexion to how we looked at it as a council. It's like, okay, we're going to have input, we're going to have governance, we're going to have somebody wants to be a community partner. And we thought that was great and we appreciate that. Next slide. Got it. Water protection. This is one of the key hot buttons. It's it's been a punch and and Yeah. it's a top priority for our

[0:49:16] residents. We're talking closed loop, we're talking Gen 3, and I just want to say Yeah. we've vetted a lot of this out up front. Had it not been to this, we never would have even opened the discussion over a year ago. But, y'all brought this to us at the forefront. I want you to talk about Gen 1, Gen 2, and water. Yeah, this is this is a this is probably the biggest topic that that we ever that we run into a ever and again like I said a lot of justified feelings around this topic I not everybody's a responsible developer and operator so some of the stories you see online again when you get out into the outside of the city limits and your your restrictions are zero people are sinking wells you know suck the aquifer dries things like that we we just don't believe we we just don't believe in that process right so what you have developed from a a governance and restriction standpoint meets meets our typical design anyway so but to give you just give you kind of an iteration of what the data centers have done 20 years ago and really even up to five years ago we didn't have the technology on the air cooled chiller side to really make them functional and cost effective and the technology has moved mainly because of the people like you that come out and have said we don't want this happening it's very difficult for us to drive the manufacturing companies to create a system that that we're not deploying they're making a lot of money on the old system why innovate it right so it it did I think public outcry helped move that along a lot quicker than we could have as an industry the initial standard design I think a lot of you would be familiar with the gen one cooling was was traditional evaporative cooling with cooling towers and basically what we did was we used an enormous amount of water every day we cycled it through the building we collected the heat through you know from air inside exchange that very much you know like on

[0:51:19] a radiator and then we we pump that loop up to a tower above the building and we would evaporate use evaporation to reject the heat and circle the water back and what happens is we could only run that water through the system you know roughly five or six times as we evaporate it all the dissolved solids and everything else that's in the water becomes concentrated we can't use the water and then we discharge it out and stick it in your sewer system that that was the standard for many years we all knew that that wasn't okay and and I would say even as far back as 20 2007 we started conditioning the water ourselves some places we built evaporative ponds so that we didn't discharge at all but eventually we started to drive the industry to to make that process more effective cuz that's all we could do we looked at using you know outside air economizers at Yahoo we built you can look it up online it's called the Yahoo chicken coop we use 100% outside air very specific environments that where that works you can't do it everywhere so environmentally it was it was difficult to site those but the technology helped us iterate we were still using a lot of water so today I think the best way to describe this closed loop system is the radiator on your car the cooling system on your car you fill it up with coolant it's a closed loop system you shouldn't be adding water to it right I mean anybody here knows that if you're adding water it's probably a problem somewhere that needs to be fixed there's there's a you know there are a lot of a lot of piping and connections and pumps that can possibly leak so we might we might have to add a little bit here and there or for having to do maintenance but once we fill the system it is a closed loop and we we don't lose the water we over a period of time we can we can get some concentration of certain it really depends on on what what the

[0:53:22] water coming in has in it and how how that how how the operation affects it so what we do to if we have to swap the water out or add water we don't discharge into your sewer we have storage tanks on site each building has enough storage to empty into the tank so even even an emergency I know you you guys have put some stuff together on the emergency side of this we're not going to discharge directly into the sewer we we discharge into our own tanks and then we will treat the water so that it it's basically similar to the way that it came in we test the water we provide that testing to the city water department before they allow us to discharge and then we don't just tank and let it go they tell us how much they can handle based on activity in the city and what's going through the sewer treatment plant and we slowly discharge it continuous monitoring of that we will we will commit to make that monitoring available full time so you we'll have it on our website you can see water usage water quality water discharge we are required to put that reporting together and provide it to the city as well and hold that for three years but that's how we treat it so there is no there's no discharge and I think to maybe over simplify it a little bit it's just water and glycol so it's just like radiator fluid in your in your car and some water and that that's what the system runs on chillers are on the roof they're air cooled so they're basically just like the big radiator on the front of your car they're large large fins with surface area that we we run the water through and blow air over and it it dissipates the heat and the cooler water goes back into the building that's basically how it works there's I can't leave a hot topic like that this quick all right I mean we we got to stay in it so we're we're talking about emergency you've already said hey we'll discharge with our own facility um let's look at what you've seen I mean you've

[0:55:23] built data centers for 30 40 years do you think what what has amazed me let me phrase this every time I have talked to you you like just give it to me and I'll design it that way all right there I've had a couple questions like we'll just design that in and it amazes me how open y'all have been to say that's not an issue I I mean water we have had information talk about billions of gallons that were going to be used in four months then it went to millions and then things never once have y'all told us exactly how much water you're going to use or require until you've got your design and you said it's about 15,000 so at this point when you compare the technology of this proposed site versus what's already out there how do we benchmark against that this this is the most advanced as of today um what what I would say even even at ByteDance when I was we were deploying this same technology you know very similar I should say not the same we all have a little bit of our own secret sauce but we were deploying this in a tropical environment so Southeast Asia Indonesia Malaysia um five years ago a closed loop system would have never been able to operate in a high humidity high temperature environment the manufacturers have come a long way and really really provided us the the tools and the equipment to put a system together to be to be honest it does cost more and it's not as it's not as efficient from an electrical use as as as the evaporative cooling is and that's really why a lot of developers are still using the water because they grab the water for pretty cheap and it it brings the the cost down we as an industry use a a metric called PUE it's power utilization effectiveness and that basically so we've always been tracking this well at least for 20 years we've been tracking this basically we look at the amount of power that we use and then the amount of energy that we need to cool off reject the heat is actually the technical term

[0:57:26] we have always tried to bring that PUE down as close to parity as you know we can't get to we can't get to zero but when I started in this 30 years ago we were two to two and a half times so not in the ones like 2.25 2.5 a lot of people in the industry will tell will still tell you today that a 1.5 is a good number we're we're designing at much much lower numbers than that and and that really has been you know because we manage it we and we measure it it does reduce the amount of servers we can run but that's the right way to approach this way we we responsible way to to to build this is is to reduce your energy use and the the water use as well and I appreciate you saying that because it's been it's our most precious resource um there have been companies that have wanted to come to Angelo chemical companies and through the economic development process we did not welcome that because of their water consumption and we we realize that and we appreciate the fact that y'all threw that out up front you've talked about it here's what we do here's how much we use and we'll put our name on the bottom of it and you can hold us accountable for it earlier today you mentioned you're going to have a live website you brought it up there you yep as this develops somewhere within the process the next few years people will be able to go on daily to your website and see the water consumption >> and they can validate our numbers against yours cuz our water numbers are going to be metered by you we're just going to we're just going to give them to you in real time but ultimately you you guys are the ones that have to validate the data same with the discharge you guys are metering and measuring that as well but we're going to we're just going to provide it to you um at will basically well it's you know sometimes you know I would say facts are not popular and it's when you kick it out like this to say this is exactly what we're going to have we appreciate that the transparency is I think the key right if

[0:59:28] >> [laughter] >> it's one thing for us to come up here and tell you what we're going to do but if we don't give you a way to measure and monitor us and and we're not transparent, who are you going to believe? Right? I mean I I don't think the industry has earned the trust yet and we need to do a better job at that and we're we're going to do our best. Well, I was not just me. I I would think the whole room appreciates that and the fact that you're very transparent and up front about what your consumption is going to be. Let me roll to the next slide. Noise mitigation. Um talk about a hum of a data center. Uh you are committed to the 60 decibel level. I I think Patrick we have a um meter over there at the table. We're exceeding 60 right now, but talking at the property lines, that's something that it becomes a hotbed for the surrounding environments. And so we're roughly 4 mi away. Tell me how you stay within those limits. Prove it. Yeah, so once once you've provided a a requirement and the requirements that you've given are are not difficult for us as an industry to meet. There's no reason you guys should hear it. I mean it's just Again, this is this is really if if you've got a responsible developer and operator, it shouldn't be built so that you know it's there. Um I I can tell you and I I have built a lot of hundreds of these sites over almost 30 years and I've only had one site where we had a noise issue. And basically the way this works is we we start with a noise level that we need to meet um and it's it's typically not an issue. I mean we we can usually design within it, but as we start to place the buildings and we orient the buildings so that the equipment is not facing you or facing the road. Um we have to choose mechanical equipment and electrical equipment. All of that equipment has noise ratings that are engineered. It's it's it's in the manufacturer um you know documentation and specification. So we start by putting an assembly of pieces together that meet the minimum requirement. Then we run into the what we would call the the site related um issues and

[1:01:31] and this is why we do a study. So once we have it all put together and engineered to work, I think this is where a lot of people fail is once you apply that to the actual location, things can change. So you don't really know how the noise is going to react to the local environment. You'd be surprised sometimes the amount of moisture in the air um that there's there's some crazy things that we've had to deal with, but we will use a a a company that that we both agree on to do an independent study so that we can model the equipment and model that for the site. Um and then we're we have you you guys have actually created some pretty robust language so that we will be testing for the first year to make sure that everything that we've engineered um will meet the minimum requirements if not better. There's a there's all kinds of tools that we use. The the equipment has sound attenuating uh properties to it. The generators I think a lot of people are uh potentially worried about. Our engines go inside a sound attenuating enclosure and that sound rating is is met before even leaves the footprint of the generator. That's been a hot one. I've several people have brought up well, they're going to cycle those generators and you can time those. There's it's always been a what do you need? Yeah, so the the the generators um they they they don't sound any different than a truck driving by. Um we don't run those generators unless there's a utility outage other than once a month for 30 minutes. It's like having a car in the garage. If you don't run it once a month if these are remember these are emergency backup. So when the power shuts off, we have uh battery systems in the building that bridge the time it takes for the engines to start up and get ready to take the load. We can't have an engine fail. So we we have to test them once a month for 30 minutes and then we shut them down. And that's all so both the noise and the the discharge from those are are regulated by You could stagger those. You could do those anyway when Yeah, so we won't we would never run them outside of the normal

[1:03:33] business hours. So it wouldn't be at night, wouldn't be on weekends. It would be during the middle of the day. We will give you notice. Literally the each building runs for 30 minutes and it shuts down. You likely are never going to notice if they actually run. Right? Well, there's a lot of facilities here in town that have emergency backup generators and the hospitals, there's pharmaceutical companies all odds all of those have it available. I've never heard anybody complain about it just because of the perimeter and the cushion we have. Some of the some of what I heard about the low hum again, you I think you are I think it got covered in the in the zoning. Again, that that is a that's a an assembly and a construction means and method issue typically. None of the equipment that we buy and install is meant to have a low hum. Um it does happen and and I I had >> I wanted to make sure you brought this up cuz you told me you you didn't hear it going out. I did have this happen to me and it was in Ashburn, Virginia which is a very dense very dense data center industry. It's actually it's it's pretty much the the center of the universe for all things in the internet. Um mainly and it started there because the subsea cables leaving the US out is land in that area and that and they wanted access to to the the subsea cable, but we had a we we did have a an air handling unit and I say a, I mean hundreds of them um on the site and it was it was basically five fans on a wall, four in corner, one in the center and for some reason that center fan we could never get it to balance. And it did create a hum and one of the neighbors did bring it up. And we tried for a month or two to fit to to balance them. The only way for us to fix it was to remove that fifth fan. And that those are just things you have to do. You you you don't say you know, deal with it. Um your regulations are great because if there's a complaint, there's a study there's some testing and measurement required.

[1:05:34] If we're over, we have a we have a short amount of time to give you a plan to fix it. So we're if there's an issue, just let us know and we'll we'll take care of it. But there's there's there's a lot there's a lot of measurement and management around it that that's put in place to to make sure that you guys don't have to ever get to a point where you complain. Yeah, that's one of the times I called you I said I'm run across this question and I don't find it anywhere to find an answer and you just said now what you what was funny straight up you said we we had one of these you gave me that exact example and you said you know what? I just engineered it out. I was kind of like well, how did you do it? I just took it out. Oh, okay. I thought that was really great. Um let's go on to the next question. Construction impact. Let's talk about the build, the size, Yeah. the timeline. Um y'all going to share this one back and forth, but this one I want to talk about here in the pre-phase, during the build up and the closure and then compare it to some things you see happening in West Texas that I say have been unfairly compared to ourselves. Yeah, so the scale of these are very different from site to site. The um what I would say is what I think you know, what you're seeing over there in West Texas right now, that's that's the first and only of its kind. I I even as long as I've been doing this, I've never seen anything like it. So it's it's it's difficult to explain that and then explain what we're building. Um We we do have multiple buildings. I I think if you if you look if if you think about it um everybody's looking at this like it's one big data center. The the reality is this is like building a commercial uh industrial park that might have multiple buildings that and and roads um and parking and and that's ultimately what it is. The only difference is it's secure. You can't get in unless you work there because for for a number of reasons. Um so we are building 3 GWs. That that that's three three X plus 300 MWs of onsite energy generation. That's a very

[1:07:37] different project than what we're proposing. This is still a large project in you know if you look at data center development over the last 20 years, but we're going to stage these but we're we're starting with one building and then we will stagger them and build them one building at a time. So we're not talking about thousands of people coming into town for three years. We are talk we are talking about hundreds, you know, six maybe six or 700 people during a peak um and then it goes down. So there should be minimal impact. Look, there's there's no way to say we're not going to we're not going to be renting hotel rooms and renting places and eating in your restaurants and like that is going to happen cuz these guys are going to live here um for you know, three to four years. Um A lot of the people shouldn't be living here. Yeah, but but I think the first thing we try to do is make sure that we're sourcing labor and partnering with the local construction companies and we're going to work we've already started working with with some of them um to minimize that. We don't have a staffing plan yet because we haven't put a schedule together yet because you have We just kind of give you the guidelines today. approved the project yet, but but we but I've built a lot of these and and I can tell you what we're not going to we're not peaking at 1,000 people. So it it's also out on the edge of town, so we're you know, you're not going to see traffic rolling through town. The other thing too is um we try and stagger some of this work on shifts. Uh once the buildings get closed in, we will we we will start you know, changing the shifts so some of the some of the mechanical electrical work can happen um you know, the in in the second and third shift hours. It reduces the number of people on site and I think what a lot of people don't understand is the more people we have on site, the more congested it is, the harder it is for us to build it. The more crowded it is, um our safety goes down, the quality of work goes down. So, we're not we're not we're not in a race. We're looking to, you know, take a logical approach and do this smart.

[1:09:40] And we we've we've done this a lot. We we we know we can do it with minimal impact. It's It's been hard for us to define how that comparison is cuz everybody in here has friends in Abilene and it's just been a moment I said that's not what we're going to see here to some degree. We're going to see some but not at the extent we see it and we all have friends and neighbors that have gone through that experience. I have a friend that's I guess working for Oracle on the project over in Abilene. I think Chris can maybe give a little more insight to the impact on Abilene. It's It's not just one site. Yeah, if you if you take a look at Abilene, you know, like Michael was explaining, it's it's a 3 gigawatt site and there is a significant level of difference, right? They were trying to build that site as fast as they could. You know, it's the first Stargate site. They threw as many bodies at it as they possibly could and the size and scale of it continues to grow. You know, we've only got 350 acres, guys. We can only build so much product on that site. I couldn't throw 6,000 people at it at once if I wanted to. There's just not enough acreage there. But when you start taking a look at that, you know, you've got one, the Stargate site. You've also got another site which is about an hour to the west of Abilene which is another multi-gigawatt site. There's no services out where that site is. So, all of those construction workers and, you know, the people that are working on that project are also living in Abilene. So, they're commuting back and forth. So, you know, all of those services are coming there. And then if you go up to Haskell, there's another multi-gigawatt project which is, you know, know who it is but I can't say. But it is another one of the big five which is another project. Well, if anybody in this room has been to Haskell, it's a very small town. There's not a lot of services in Haskell. All of those people are also living in Abilene. So, you know,

[1:11:45] yes, it is putting a significant strain on the local community in Abilene. We get it. I don't see that level of strain happening on San Angelo. There's not the level of activity happening here. that it's going to happen anytime. And if some of those people should this move forward, if some of those people still want to stay in Abilene and drive back and forth, I don't think anybody in this room would have a problem with that. All right, I'm just saying we we have to be practical about what's going to happen and moving forward and I I appreciate y'alls honesty on that moving forward. What do you think is going to be factual? What is the size of the project? We We I tell you what, we have to go through this presentation. It's public comment. I can't let that happen. But you submitted questions and we'll get to those in a minute and you they actually have that answered and we're going to get to that here in a minute. Job creation beyond the constructs construction phase, what do we see? I mean, a lot of people have said you're going to come here. How many people is it going to bring? What are we going to retain? I look at it and go for the revenue that you're going to bring to the city, it's the least impactful stress on infrastructure I'll ever see. But people here want to know how many people are going to start and let's just maybe skip all the way to the end and say potentially how many jobs are going to be here. But I think people have to realize Goodfellow is going to love to interface. I mean, we can guess. It's It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out who maybe your top three candidates are. And for our university, for our Goodfellow people, for our high school students to then to be able to come through in the next 10, 15 years and say, well, I was at a campus and did an internship for these people just is the coolest thing in the world. This is about some opportunities there. But I want to go back and talk a little bit about the job creation. Yeah, so that it it's it's in a couple of different buckets. There's the first one is is really just the facility teams that have to operate manage the let's call it the building, right?

[1:13:47] Mechanical, electrical, the entire campus. There's There's probably 100 to 150 jobs that are full-time. These are 7 by 24 operational facilities. So, you know, daytime staffing is a little higher. But these these facilities have to have people on site like a hospital kind of. These the the facilities team is what we refer to them are there 7 days a week, 24 hours a day. So, you can imagine one role in the building that has to cover 7 days a week, 24 hours plus holidays takes three people. That one job is a three-person job for just that just that task. So, that and and that's the the numbers around that are pretty pretty well established in industry wide cuz we know what it takes. The IT infrastructure operations inside is vastly different and it could be it could be it could be at least that much and it could be double that. It really depends on what IT equipment gets installed in that building. And that's anywhere from We've again, it's uh >> So, will will you specify that equipment or will your renters? No, we don't we don't specify. Look, the the IT equipment typically refreshes every three to five years. So, day one, they put it in, they run it for three to five years depending on what it is and that at a certain point new technology is has come out and it's it's it the the cost effectiveness of operating the servers that are in there become There's a complicated algorithm that we use based based on power consumption and output of the CPU. Eventually, it just doesn't make sense to keep it. So, we pull it all out and put new and that that's a pretty constant every five year um three to five year depending on what it is. >> So, Donald, with that, the value of the facility would increase every five years, too, right? The value of it based on the interior, the equipment, things like that. >> That refreshes every three to five years. Three to five. Okay. >> Yeah. Yeah, so those jobs those jobs cover, you know, the installation and what we refer to as

[1:15:51] break fix. We You could have a million servers in there. Um Anyone here that has a computer knows you got to do stuff with it pretty regularly. So, it's replacing components, keeping them operating. There's there's a pretty large staff of network technicians. There's a lot of fiber and structured cabling and network equipment that is always being upgraded, moved, added. So, um The There's a lot There's a There's a lot of fixed jobs. But then I think the third bucket is there's a lot of peripheral jobs that get created to support the site and those are those are jobs created in town for services that the entire the entire function needs. So, we have external contractors that that we hire, food service like There's There's a a I can't put a number on that because every every operation slightly different. >> But but we're we're talking about 400 probably permanent on site and, you know, a few hundred external but indirect support to to to the project. It's you can see lots of numbers but the one I see that brings the most consistency to what we're talking about is for every one building you have on a site at a data center, you're probably going to have six or seven businesses that are going come up just a ratio of one to six. If you put in four buildings, we could look at roughly 24 businesses that would come here. These are jobs that left Middle America and are coming back to Middle America. >> That's correct. Yeah. With that, let me move over to the next slide. Here's one that AEP could probably answer this more and and they do answer some questions. But let's talk about grid reliability. Um People talk about brownouts. You're going to be using all of our electricity. What happens when it's 114° in Angelo for 60 days straight? How do you manage that? And what We want to make sure you're not going to Yeah, steal the electricity. Understood. Um I I do think that they answer it pretty technically but I'll give I'll give more of a non-utility layman's uh uh answer. So, before we even get

[1:17:57] final site selection on one of these sites, we have to go to the utility being AEP and then ERCOT and we have to we have to pay them to do a study on the grid to determine whether they can supply this or not. And if they can't, they tell us no. If they can with enough generation but they need additional infrastructure and we're talking about transmission lines, switchyard, substation upgrades, they will come back to us and say we can serve it but there's all of these upgrades that need to be done and then we're responsible to make pay for that. So, the the infrastructure coming to the site and the cost of that never gets passed on to the rate payer. It's it's a direct cost and we not only do we have to pay for the study and the engineering but but we have to put the money up front for those those improvements long before we actually dig and put the shovel in in the dirt. So, and then a lot of people think we go in and negotiate a rate. State of Texas and ERCOT and AEP, we're we're governed by a tariff. We we don't we don't get to negotiate the rate. So, we we pay what the tariff and the the laws say we pay. That's not the same in every state and every municipality. But but here in Texas, we don't we don't get to pick our Well, here in San Angelo, we're we're not we're not choosing what we pay for power. Well, and I think sometimes people don't understand that when the grid gets tight, there's a hierarchy in who gets cut off first and how it works down. The last people to be cut off will be a hospital and nursing home, but there's a hierarchy and you have the ability with generators basically to be an island. Yeah, we do. If there's if there is So, our backup generation is we're from a business perspective in the way that our commitments to the tenants, we have to have enough emergency backup generation on site to run roughly 48 hours on an island, right? So, if there's a if there's an emergency or if there's a a load a load issue like a an overload issue,

[1:20:00] they can ask us to go to generators and run and operate and we can do that. Well, and that's what it comes up a lot. It's a hot button and people like, you're going to take all that. I'm like, no, you can be self-sufficient. You can survive on your own to help us get through those periods whether it be cold or heat. ERCOT is not going to let us impact you. It's pretty it's pretty clear in the way that they operate. That's not that's not how it works. I get it. All right. So, we'll go to the next slide. Here is I think this may be our last slide. Well, a lot of people have talked about well what are you going to give us for this? I mean, you know, what is everybody going to get? Some form of a handout. What makes this go and then we talk about corporate social responsibility. These this isn't anything we can force on you. Every company in the world, every nonprofit, every business commercial, they make their own decisions on what they're going to give to the local community. The the fact that we proposed this question to me to bother me. I had hesitation going, it's not our right to demand that, all right? It's up to you to say what you can and cannot do and it's I'll go back to the first time we sit on the stage and throw I think Chris gave a very good answer at that point. You know, give us some examples of what you've done before. These are not guarantees. These aren't promises, but throw out some examples of what you do for a community. Yeah, I'm going to let Chris take this one, but I I understand what you're saying and I I think the fact that we're wanting to to be annexed into the city means we we want to be part of the community. So, we understand it's not your right, but that's why we're here, right? So, you know, this question really breaks down into two pieces. You know, we're the developer of the project and as the developer, we'll develop the buildings and then we're going to lease these buildings to, you know, again, a Fortune 500 company. So, you know, there's certain things that we will do for the community and then when we have a tenant that comes in, the tenant that leases the campus from us, the tenant will also get ingrained in the community and those tenants

[1:22:02] always come in and will do things for the community above and beyond what we do. So, you know, I can only speak to, you know, the things that we generally do. Now, once the tenant comes in, that'll be a completely different discussion topic. You know, but you will see them get much more ingrained in the community. Now, you know, for us, every community is different. The ask is always a little bit different. The needs are always a little bit different. And we do try to spend time and and you know, we have been having conversations with with Mayor Tom, you know, about, you know, the needs of the community, but some of the things that we've done in different communities are their apprenticeship programs, their sponsoring school programs. You know, we've sponsored, you know, concert in the park series for, you know, 10 years running in other communities. You know, we've you know, the fire trucks for, you know, West Lake Village in in, you know, one of the suburbs of Chicago. I mean, there's just different things that different communities, you know, have needs for. So, I can't put my finger on one specific thing that that we would say, this is what we're going to do for the community. I don't want to say that we're only going to do one thing for the community because that's not really how this works. There's a partnership that we want to have with the community. So, you know, we're open to doing different things. We just need to be able to spend more time with the mayor and come up with what are the things that are going to impact the community the most and those are the things that we're going to focus on. Okay. I I can I can add a little context to from the the tenant side because that I was the tenant for the last probably 18 years and operating, you know, dozens of these sites all over the globe. What I can tell you every one of the hyperscalers or big five or fang there's all kinds of names for them. We all have a dedicated role on the team on a campus like this that is the community manager and the community relation team. They're there for you if you've got questions about what's going

[1:24:04] on the site. If you if you're not happy with something that's going on the site, they they have a full-time team that that is here to to engage, but they but they're also working with you. The needs change and the teams a lot, you know, we're hoping the majority of the people that get hired there are are, you know, people that live here and and I don't think we're going to see commuters coming into San Angelo, but there's a there's a lot of community engagement and and there'll be dedicated people to to do that. Guaranteed that it's too big of a too big of an operation and it it's too risky to have a negative impact. So, it's a it's a pretty big high priority for the operational teams that will that will be on site. The it's It's always an ask. It's never an obligation and, you know, it's it's it's never handout and people do that respectfully to help a community grow. We've seen it in renewables with, you know, wind turbine companies, with solar power companies, but we're starting to talk about the big five and I just have to sit back and think, okay, how cool would it be for students of people here in the next 5-10 years say, they I'll throw out, you know, any one of those big five. Yeah, I did an internship with them. They subsidize this project. ASU would be excited to have this on stream. Goodfellow is very excited about this. There's there's things that move forward that make it applicable for everybody to actually get some benefit out of this. I know I know we've talked about kind of the school boundaries here on the profit. Now, the majority of this lies in the very best school district and due to the Robin Hood law and I all of y'all are familiar with it, all of that money's going to go to very best and then the state's going to take what's, you know, the excess part of that and go on, but I mean, what has amazed me was even in these discussions, y'all were open to if there's ideas to help make this thing blend to help more schools, we will certainly engage in those discussions. Yeah. And nobody else has come to town and ever make that obligation. I mean, the fact that you've

[1:26:06] signed on to do a lot of this certainly validates some of that. So, we appreciate that. Let me see. Okay. So, everyone that sent in a question, this website went live at 5:30 today. Every question that was submitted got summarized and put up here. All right. I I I can't thank staff and council for going through and putting everything and I was like, so you've put all of this up? And they're like, yes, we have. Okay. If you don't find your specific question, it was probably summarized. All right? We only answered those questions that we could give you 100% factual answer. If it was something that involved an opinion or was subjective, it didn't get answered. We're not going to back ourselves into a corner like that. We wouldn't back you into a corner like that, but we wanted to put up everything we could to let you see those answers that you submitted. I've got a mayor statement on the front that talks about my obligation as we go forward, council's obligation and I will say this at this point. I I I don't know how many of y'all got a tax letter the past week? All right. I think two times if y'all have sent me a an invoice about that and I'm like an email about that. I say, I I get it. But I will say this is the door and the path moving forward. This is a door to make your tax city tax rate and county tax rate and school tax rate start with a different number and that number is lower. The city tax rate starts with a seven. Over time, this gives an opportunity one of the few things we talk about because we don't know the full money, but there's franchise fees and there's property tax. There's depending if you hit a certain benchmark, you know, there there may be sales tax or maybe not, but the ability of this to help us is the only amount of money

[1:28:09] that I've seen in the past nine years and probably for the next 10 years in front of us a way to as we say, it's a way to see more people come here. It's a way for to put a splash pad in every park. All right? It's a way to I need two fire stations. I don't know if y'all know what fire stations cost, but they cost $12 million. All right? I need I need 20 more. I need 20 more policemen. All right? We are 20 policemen understaffed right now. So, the revenue of this helps us accomplish those goals. It's not a sales pitch. I just want you to understand this is a door and it's up to y'all and y'all have had lots of input to move forward with it if you think that's a way to move forward or not. With that, we're going to move into public comment. I think we deserve a big round of applause to Mike and >> [applause] >> Chris for what you've done. Gentlemen, thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you, Appreciate it. You're going to take that mic back there? Got you. At this point, as in fashion with all of our city council meetings, we're going to move into public comment. People wishing to speak at the city council meeting must sign in prior to 5:30 p.m. Speakers are limited to 3 minutes. Comments must be relevant to the authority of the city. Please state your name, address, or single-member district before beginning your remarks. Citizens bringing materials for distribution to city council members must during the meeting must bring a minimum of 12 copies. Responses from officials will not be provided during this portion of the meeting. So, Heather, where are you? Heather? How many Let Let me start with this. How many public comments do we have signed up? 30. All right. So, we have 30 comments. Just so you know, they are

[1:30:13] allowed up to 3 minutes each. I will tell you, just because you signed up for it doesn't mean you have to provide it. And if your questions were answered here tonight, I would say that may help you. We'll be here till the very end, us and council will. Other people have time obligations, but with that, Heather, call your first public comment. Tanya Atkins. Tanya, where's the timer going to be, Heather? You've got the timer. I'm not going to sit up here. I'm going to go sit over here at the table, but you are given that and you're on film. Um good evening, Mayor, councilman members, and skybox representatives. My name is Tanya Atkins. I'm a resident of San Angelo, District 2. Owner of a Texas licensed private security company, I got your six. As reported by the San Angelo Standard-Times and the city's public announcement for tonight's meeting, as as we saw, residents have submitted numerous questions in advance, including the direct question, will construction jobs be filled with uh local community companies or out-of-town workers? This question deserves serious attention. When work is awarded to local San Angelo contractors and service providers, every dollar spent typically generates about 1.8 to 2.2 dollars in total economic activity. On a 16 proposed 16 billion-dollar project like the data center, with construction expected to span several years, that would mean roughly 29 to 35 billion dollars in total local economic output for San Angelo over the construction period, including wages for the workers, contracts with uh local suppliers, and spending throughout our own community. San Angelo has been has had seen major projects in recent years that no public records have shown the exact split between local and outside contractor spending. For example, the recent uh Shannon Medical Center West Texas West Tower expansion used an outside prime contractor from Alabama. The 41.6 million-dollar Coliseum renovation bond is that our taxpayers is paying for is also likely to send a large portion of those dollars out of

[1:32:15] town. The data center gives us the opportunity to actually change that pattern and keep far more of the economic benefit here. When a substantial portion of the work instead goes to national regional firms headquartered outside of the Concho Valley, such as Allied Universal, other companies such based in uh Kerrville and Sweetwater, economic leakage can reduce uh can reduce that benefit by 30 to 50% or more. That could cost San Angelo billions of dollars in lost wages, local businesses revenue, and tax collections that never stay here. Council members, this is our community. Why Why would we not do everything possible to keep all of that money, the billions of dollars, circulating here, creating jobs and opportunities for our town, our families, our neighbors, instead of sending them out of town? Security services offer a clear practical opportunity. Large data centers often default to national providers, yet local qualified local firms like mine are fully capable of delivering professional 24-hour site security, access control, traffic management, work zones, in coordination with off-duty peace officers, with faster response, lower travel travel costs, and spending that remains right here in San Angelo. Council members, I respectfully ask that you and the project team give meaningful preference and consideration to all qualified local business and San Angelo businesses and and contractors, not just for security, but for any portion of work that can be effectively performed from within our community. This single decision can help ensure that San Angelo receives the greatest possible economic return from this project and keep as many dollars as possible circulating right here among among our own residents and businesses. Thank you for your time. >> [applause] >> Heather, second. Stephen Marks. Stephen Marks. Let's go to the next one, Heather.

[1:34:19] Catherine Bayer. Catherine? Catherine Bayer. Go to the next one. Adam Jonkey. Adam? The next one. Shannon Carpenter. Shannon? Go to the next one, Heather. Libby Grayfa. Libby's here. Sorry. >> [applause] >> Hello. My name is Libby Grayfa. I am a San Angelo resident. I'm sorry, I don't know the number of my district. Five. But I live in I'm in five. Okay, I'm in five. There we go. I just know who my councilman is. Um you answered most of my questions. I appreciate that. And I will look at the website for a little more clarity of I I think my answers will be there. But the one question I do have is who is going to receive all the data services? I will San Angelo? You're bringing in someone in the big five. Who's going to receive all of that service? Um so, that is That's a question. Um I am going to look for the total amount of gallons you plan to use. You said it's going to take a 12 months, I believe I understood, to fill the quantity you need. Um but I didn't get a number. And I'm sure you know what that is, you just didn't tell us that. Um you did say our utilities will not rise with the use you're going to be using our water and our electricity. I think I understood that. Um that's important to me. Um I'm glad you're here explaining this. I hope more San Angelo residents will

[1:36:23] come. They'll hopefully, if this is going to be online or on television, they'll view it and become informed. >> [clears throat] >> Thank you for your time. >> [applause] >> Heather Wiley. >> [applause] >> Good evening. My name is Heather Wiley. I'm a resident of District 3. On November 19th, 1863, Abraham Lincoln said in his favorite speech, the Gettysburg Address, that this nation was a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. Isn't it amazing that before San Angelo even existed, a man would speak a phrase from one of the most historically significant speeches in American history, and it applies even to you, our elected leaders. You are chosen leaders, elected by the people and for the people, and weirdly, there's nothing in there about represent- representing corporations or data centers. The choice before you is one of humanity, a choice for the people. Set aside your justifications about what this might do for the city budget or property taxes, and consider instead the ways your people have been trying to communicate with you through Facebook posts, the Nextdoor app, yard signs, bumper stickers, petitions, and emails, even if they say the same thing. Our public comments, our presence. Your people are speaking in many different ways. The collective voice is loud. They are telling you, at a minimum, they want a moratorium for a full length of time allowed by the state, and truly, they want no data center at all. Can you hear the people over the noise pollution of the data centers you're trying to bring into our home? Thank you. >> [applause] >> Allie Devereux.

[1:38:28] >> [applause] >> Do I have to tell you my address because I'm You're a county resident. I'm not in a Oh, you're a county resident. specific district. >> County resident. Yeah, county resident. >> [snorts] >> And um I'm just here to reiterate this. Um however you want to spin it, we do not have the water resources for hyperscale data centers in San Angelo. And the people of Texas don't want the 765 kV power lines all over the state that are needed to power them. >> [applause] >> Those lines will stand taller than the Statue of Liberty and that contains a powerful symbology. Power over liberty. I think I speak for the majority of the people in this room when I say we want this city council to engage in projects that empower the people and help make life more livable, not schemes that virtually enslave us and make the cost of living even more unbearable than they already are while the taxpayers and rate payers subsidize billionaires and corporations. We want you to actually take care of the watershed and our resources >> [snorts] >> and not campaign to sell us projects that will threaten those resources and sacrifice everything that we most value here. If you [snorts] really want to create a legacy, stop trying to sell this right now. Start representing the people and listen to their concerns and their knowledge, not with an ear to sway them or prove them wrong, but actually consider that they might have something valid to say that you may have overlooked. One thing you're overlooking is the fact that the city owns thousands of acres of land outside the city limits with miles of frontage on the Concho River and you've never once thought to do one good thing in the interest of protecting this land as a valuable natural resource in

[1:40:31] the recharge and riparian zone of our primary water supply. San Angelo's city council has entertained plans for giant private prison complexes, waste gasification plants where we could burn our trash and invite other communities to come burn their trash, too. The people of San Angelo managed to get the council to come to their senses on those two projects and now we're facing data centers. Can we envision something that would actually protect our water supply with all of these lands that the city owns? Other Texas cities have invested hundreds of millions of dollars raised by either bonds or passed by the people or voter approved 1/8 cent sales tax to protect hundreds of thousands of acres of land in their watersheds. This city already owns thousands of acres of land in our watershed. It's time you start focusing on protecting that and not just exploiting it. And until you start rehabilitating that land, you do not demonstrate any semblance of having stewardship and we can't trust you. Please wrap up your comments. Okay. Thank you. >> [applause] [applause] >> Chetan Gisi. >> [applause] >> Hi. Chetan Gisi, District 5. Um first, I didn't I saw that we weren't going to do a crypt uh crypto mining, but it wasn't defined if we would be uh processing versus just data storage. I understand the resources or demands are different on that. Um first, why do we want these data centers here? Do we have plenty of resources here? No, not that.

[1:42:33] Uh what guarantees do we have that their water and electric bills will not increase like we've seen all across the nation? Will this be How's this going to be the exception to the rule? Is it going to bring a significant number of permanent jobs? I don't know if it's worth the resources that we have that we're exchanging for those. Are we equipped to handle the pollution? There's no wastewater treatment around to treat the chemicals. And I still haven't seen any kind of study on the fine particulate matter that would be produced. Do we have adequate housing or even a police force that's available? We know the answer to that one, too. There are so many unknowns when it comes to long-term health risk and resource risk. It's been decided It hasn't even been decided on the federal level who would be legally liable if there is harm caused by data center's construction of or long-term environmental effects. I'm afraid that even if it gets decided, where will there actually be a company to be held liable? Between all the LLCs and foreign-owned companies, I can't imagine tracking any of them down if there's a pollution leak or when it comes out how harmful these things are to humans and animals. All of those are good reasons not to build a data center, but I feel like it goes so much deeper. This is the equivalent of building our own prison cells, monitoring, flock cameras, social score, restricted travel. Please don't pretend that that's not where this is leading and I'm pretty sure no one wants that. I know investments have been made, but the city council is supposed to represent its constituents, not themselves and not some company from out of town. Why is the city council making decisions based on opinions? For Why is it not making on not making decisions voiced here today and over the months? We vote on school bonds because it it it's an expense to us. This is going to be an expense to us, whether it's through utilities or other. Um if this is good for us, try proving it to us and putting it to a vote for the

[1:44:36] public. Thank you. >> [applause] >> Steve Elanius. >> [applause] >> Steve Elanius, president CEO of the San Angelo Chamber of Commerce, 418 West Avenue B. When we talk about the data centers, one of the most immediate and tangible impacts that it can have is on our hotel occupancy tax rate or the hot tax revenue. During construction phase, which will last anywhere between 36 and 60 months, you're going to bring hundreds of workers to this community, contractors and specialized crews that will be staying in our hotels and pumping money into our local economy. But it doesn't stop during the construction phase. Once the data center is built, there'll be technicians, uh corporate visitors and folks coming to this community because of the data center. Now, here's where it becomes transformational. The increased hotel tax revenue coming in the community is going to allow us to have the resources to promote this community more, to bring more attractions and more events to San Angelo. The visitors that stay overnight means more of that more revenue and more visibility for our community. And then finally, over the 3-5 year window or period of time, with a steady increase in hotel occupancy, it's going to create an opportunity for more hotel development in our community, thus increasing more revenue for the community and giving us more resources to market the community. So, I'm here to say I'm a supporter that I appreciate mayor and city councils for bringing this together and giving us a chance to hear um present the thoughts and what's involved with it and I think you're doing an outstanding job. Thank you. >> [applause] >> Gabe Manchaca.

[1:46:47] Good evening, mayor, council, uh citizens of San Angelo. My name is Gabe Manchaca and I live in single-member district six. I want to begin by acknowledging that citizens who come here with concerns deserve to be heard. I said this back in January during the I think it was the January 13th meeting. And I believe all of your voices have been heard many times. Voices in support of the of this opportunity deserve to be heard as well. And I believe that we may just be the silent majority, the those of us who are in favor of this data center. And that is why I have returned tonight in support of data center development in San Angelo. I believe it is important that we separate legitimate questions from broad assumptions. Not every proposal, not every company, and not every project belongs in the same category because of one meeting, one rumor, or one difficult interaction. That is exactly why due diligence exist. I believe that due diligence is already occurring with the Skybox Box project. I've seen it happen. I've I've seen it being talked about and it's the the same facts that I heard a year ago are being repeated and they're being very consistent from the authorities who are doing and putting this together, both the city as well as Skybox. There are many people involved in getting this right, which includes the council, the city staff, utilities, engineers, community stakeholders, us citizens. Collectively, our job is to examine the facts, infrastructure, water, power, economic value, and whether project a project fits in Angelo long-term. That process should be careful and transparent and I believe it is and I believe that you are

[1:48:50] being transparent. We should also recognize the opportunity before us. It's been said several times this evening. A major development project can create years of construction work for local trades, electric, construction, different trades, contractors, suppliers, and small businesses. Beyond construction, long-term operations can bring technology or technical jobs, high-paying jobs, facility management roles, security maintenance, and additional economic activity that benefit our community long-term. I have heard questions about water, noise, and infrastructure tonight and months leading up to today. Those are all fair questions, but when answers are provided through study agreements and oversight and through events like this, they should be taken seriously and not misconstrued or reported differently in the community or on social media. Thank you. >> [applause] >> Richard Summers >> [applause] >> Got it? Okay. I was kind of stunned to discover that Skybox let a lease on this land instead of going ahead and purchasing it, particularly since they've had an option on the land since just before the mayor was elected. Um that shows me something. That there's a little uncertainty. In fact, San Angelo's entering a period of hyper-scale development with high

[1:50:52] uncertainty, increasing friction, as we can tell, and growing public scrutiny seated by the Skybox project and those to follow. That's not speculation. It's happening right now. It's going to cause things that we're not prepared to deal with. One of the biggest things in my mind, beyond the water, beyond their energy, is we don't have the housing even for 6 to 700 extra people. We have housing problems right now with the citizens that are living here. They need the attention, not a glamorous project. For example, people dealing with housing instability, for which this council has already been imminently warned regarding impacts of the data center coming, that housing arriving eventually doesn't float. Eventually doesn't house somebody tonight. It doesn't house somebody tonight, nor a year from tonight. Eventually doesn't work. For a lot of reasons, and I'm not going to stand up here and list them all because you'll be able to read about them all on public record. >> [snorts] >> I am submitting tonight a formal ethics complaint addressing issues of Cosat data center transparency, communication control, and public access involving most of the upper-level staff and elected officials of this city. That complaint stems from what uncertainty has already occurred with the data center. I proposed a set of ordinances earlier called the City Ordinances. These were designed to keep that from happening. I've received no response on it, but that's all right. By the way, because the city attorney is referenced in these ethics complaints,

[1:52:54] I've also requested an independent review of them when they are complete. Going to do that now. I just want to remind you folks, council and mayor, when your constituents believe they're not being fully informed and not being fairly heard, they will not acquiesce. They will act. Thank you. >> [cheering] [applause] >> Wade Wall >> [applause] >> Hi, I'm Wade Wall. I've been a resident of this city for nearly a decade at this point. There's a couple of things I would like to address that were glossed over in the first part of the presentation. Um Sorry, let me get my notes here. Phytoremediation They they talked about that as a possible way to offset the heavy metal heavy metals that will be leaching into the ground. Phytoremediation has never been used on scale at all. So, you just want to use some untested technology on us to to to offset the the ecological Sorry, I'm not good at public speaking. The ecological ramifications data center. So, without any sort of long-term plan and studies on that, you just want to use that? That's fine. Okay, I'm going to bounce around to something else. You

[1:54:56] said the tenant will be You don't have the exact name of who the tenant's going to be. So, it could be Palantir. It could be, you know, any number of one of these AI companies. Palantir recently made a manifesto that they posted on Twitter talking about their their what they want to use their resources for for the future. Including AI-driven weapons systems that this data center could potentially be used for. I would like to see, you know, a um Sorry, I'm I'm a little frustrated right now at the moment. I would like to see possibly legislation or statutes that would disbar them from using this for that because I would not like our tax dollars being used for killing people. I think a lot of people would like to believe that. Um Sorry, let me get my notes again. Again, not good at public speaking, so sorry. Um Another thing, uh Closed-loop systems are not reliable at this point. There have been multiple studies being shown and I I don't have them right here. Again, phones are 1%, so that that show that they have not been fully uh all the kinks have been worked out of that system yet. Um Also, the the wastewater, what are the consequences for violating the wastewater statutes? If it's a fine, then that's just a fee. You know, it's it's not anything that will uh It's not anything that will be something that can Sorry, again, not good at public speaking. Um It's just I don't know why we're doing this. Why are we doing this? So. >> [applause]

[1:57:03] >> Elizabeth Morales >> [applause] >> Hello, my name is Elizabeth Morales. I live in District 4. I have been a resident here for over 30 years. Um I'm also not very good at public speaking, but I am very frustrated with especially how this meeting has been run this evening. Um Essentially, it was a sales pitch, all of it, and snake oil lies over and over again. Anybody with the internet knows what the numbers are. Um With this, I do also want to say that uh With that 200-ft buffer that everybody's so proud and in awe of, these centers radiate up to 16° of increased temperatures, up to 6 mi, even more, depending on how the weather tends to be that day. Paul Ann and its surrounding areas within Harriet community is going to be up to 130° what in the summertime most of the year. And we're just supposed to deal with that? I don't think so. I'm sorry. Um also, with the higher cost of living and taxes going up, everything going up, utilities going up because they will. The higher cost of living is going to bring more homelessness to all of us, not just those who are kind of on the fence now. A lot of us are going to be dealing with bills, unpaid bills, and worse. I mean, there's going to be a lot more people out on the streets. And when that happens, there's a lot more crime. And our mayor has already stated that the police force is at a lack right now. And so I mean, I don't understand how this could be even brought up for

[1:59:06] consideration. This is a horrible idea. This city, this area of Texas cannot support this type of data center. This is not just a data center, it's a mega data center, and it's not just one building, it's going to be eight, 12, 14. Once that one building first comes, plenty more are already planned behind it. We already know of three coming in our area that we're actively fighting right now. We're going to be surrounded with data centers, each one of them bringing up to 16° of increased temperatures. I mean, it just I can't wrap my brain around it. And I mean, that's all I've got. Thank you. >> [applause] >> Antonio Martinez. >> [applause] >> Uh good evening, Council. I'm Antonio Martinez, a resident of single member district four. Um you've heard me speak a few times. Uh today I am also unscripted. I'm just going to ask some things that are should be obvious, and this is a purely rhetorical question, but um how can we guarantee the ethics of what data would be stored um if this is just leased out to another company, because that's another shell of uh deniability or accountability removed from where it should be. So, I mean, you have Grok owned by Elon Musk submitting CSAM, child sexual abuse material, and uh being shared on his website, being created by AI. We have women with deepfakes being circulated. We don't know where these where this data is stored. We can't guarantee that. That's

[2:01:08] one concern. So, excuse me. >> [clears throat] >> And another concern is that we we talk about bringing in people from outside to work construction jobs, and then they fill up our hotels, and it brings in all this revenue, but it also brings in profit, and that profit is not transferred to working people that have to supply the the the services to these workers, hotel workers, food service workers. These people are out working right now in McDonald's, Walmart. They can't be here. All of us here have the ability to be here. So, this isn't the the end-all, be-all of who has something to say. Those people are also going to suffer from this, too. And and all that money coming in, they don't see the benefits of that. They have to stay and and work the same job that they have, and and hope that they get a magnanimous $1 raise after a year, which is 40 bucks a week. Wow. You know? So, I think there's a lot of questions that need to be really considered uh such as that. Uh these benefits may benefit some people that can reinvest that money into the community, but what does that matter if none of us can spend the money to live in the community? It's ridiculous. Um I think that if we continue in this fashion, where we just gaslight most of the public into saying that this is good for us without being completely transparent through vetted questions and whatnot, it it it it it just erodes trust. It's it's it's not acceptable to me. I wish I had more prepared data sets and everything else, but um normal people are expected to become experts in the face of corporations that have these people to provide them talking points, because we're told that we're being presented with facts today, but those are talking points. These are these are practiced, rehearsed responses. So, we we still don't have the trust that that this is going to go the way that we're being told, and even if it does, it still isn't probably beneficial to the majority of us, the 100,000 somewhat people that live in the area. Uh that's all I have.

[2:03:11] >> [applause] >> Rebecca Ridge. Rebecca Ridge. >> [applause] >> Hi, I'm Rebecca Ridge, and I live in district five. Um >> [sighs and gasps] >> Good evening, city council members. I was born and raised here, as was my mother. My grandfather was the mayor in the '50s. He brought water to San Angelo. He was responsible for building OC Fisher. It used to be called the Bryant Reservoir. I'm sorry. Thanks. Okay. Water is life. Without it, nothing else matters. Data centers threaten that life. They consume enormous amounts of water and energy. If our water is gone or contaminated, no project, no revenue can save us. We cannot trade our future for short-term gains. Do not be blinded by crazy promises of money. State tax abatements for these centers shift the burden to us. The promised revenue means nothing if water is gone or our quality of life is negatively impacted. City services cannot help a community without water. Clean water comes first, always. Just yesterday, there was a fatality in Abilene from one of the data center construction gravel trucks. And another example, Abilene hired 1,200 workers. Guess how many were local? 34. San Angelo deserves smarter solutions. We have bright, creative people. We need to come together to find solutions to help the city with funding needs while

[2:05:15] protecting our resources. For the ordinance, the proposed setbacks are too small. 200 ft in residential areas is not enough. It's tight. 50 ft in the county is worse. Our neighborhoods will bear the risk. Worst case, when things go south, owners behind shell corporations will walk away and leave us with no recompense, no recompense via bankruptcies. Pause any action on data centers for a year. Do not rush us. Let us find options. Make this ordinance stronger. Protect our water. Protect our future. Mr. Mayor, please remember your job is to represent the people, not the data centers. City ca- >> [applause] >> City council members should not sign non-disclosure agreements. You represent us. >> [applause] >> Stop selling our city down the river. I sent aside I sincerely believe this is going to be used for AI data warfare. I mean, for for warfare, period. That's the popular topic now. That's why there's such a press. I think it's Done. Thanks. >> [applause] >> Glenda Bacon. >> [applause] >> I'm Glenda Bacon, and I live out in the county. I don't live in the city. Uh but I did attend the Dove Creek, and uh my heart is for the county because I have people out there with no water, having it hauled in and everything like

[2:07:18] that. Water's always been a problem, not just in the county, but in the San San Angelo area. You see that because you're only limited to two two days to water and and everything. So, it's always been a concern. It's a concern I grew up in Andrews, Texas, West Texas. I think Andrews could do it because they have a lot of water, or they used to have a lot of water. But I want to thank Skybox. Thank you for your presentation, because the presentation out at Dove Creek the other night, they did not know their stuff at all. At all. So, it was a disaster out there. Thank you, city council. Yes, I am married to an elected official, and I understand where you come from. You have hard decisions to make and everything else like that. Um I'm just sharing my heart because I was in Abilene, it's a disaster over there. It's a total disaster. Our son lives over there. People are suffering over there because of the data center. I went out to the data center. It is disaster. The lady was talking about the trucks, the fatalities, and stuff like that. I just would like to see our city council um your city council, because I don't vote for these people, but I know these people, and I respect every one of you, because I know you on a personal basis. But I would like for you to just to take a step back, consider um everything um that you've heard here tonight, there's a lot of pros, there's a lot of cons. Um, I'm afraid you might not be hearing a lot of the cons, but if people don't realize, they put a halt on 50% of these data centers right now. I don't know if y'all have heard that, but 50% of the data centers, which would

[2:09:19] probably include San Angelo, there's a 50% because they cannot get parts. Another thing, our governor has taken a lot of money. 500,000 from black something, Skybox probably knows it, but if you go into our Governor Abbott and look at his financials and all the money he has taken from data centers, it's pathetic. I'm sorry. LET'S >> [applause] >> WE GOT WAIT. All of the cities are being buffaloed by Governor Abbott and I'm sorry, but that's what's happened. There's 444 data centers already in the state of Texas. We don't need any more. >> [applause] [applause] >> Nancy Treadwell. >> [applause] >> Good evening. I'm Nancy Treadwell. I'm in District 6. Remember the chameleon? [clears throat] He was a well-bred chameleon and nothing could be brought against his record. As a chameleon, he had done the things he should have done and left undone the things that should have been left undone. He was a first-class unimpeachable chameleon and nobody had anything on him, but he came to a Scotch plaid and tried to cross it. In order to cross different yarn colors, first one and then another and back to the first or second. He was a brave chameleon and died at the crossroads true to his chameleon instincts. What kind of liar are you? People lie

[2:11:22] because they don't remember clearly what they saw. People lie because they can't help making a story better than it was the way it happened. People tell white lies so as to be decent to others. People lie in a pinch hating to do it, but lying on because it might be worse. And people lie just to be liars for a crooked personal gain. What sort of a liar are you? Which of these liars are you? This was written by Carl Sandburg in the people, yes, 1936, which brings me to my questions. The zoning you're talking about isn't in place. Yet it sounds as if you already have a deal going. In West Texas, a person's word is his bond. And verbal contracts count. So how binding is what you have said tonight? Is it legally binding? In addition, this is going the funds are going into the very best ISD, correct? SAISD will get no funds from the center, so why are you saying it will? And why have you had a sitting back here listening to a back and forth conversation with no facts and not inviting us to join? Thank you. >> [applause] [applause] >> Riley Rodriguez. >> [applause] >> How y'all doing? My name is Riley Rodriguez. I'm actually from Abilene. I am uh, one of the data centers are what actually got me to run for a political office and I've been going around the counties trying to let everybody know exactly what you're going to get to see. Not 6 months down the road, not a couple speculation reports,

[2:13:25] not in 6 years, when they get here. I could give you a big speech, but I'm just going to tell you a small story. This Saturday we had a woman from the BCFS come in and speak to us about some of the issues we're facing in our district. She works with family, she works with people who have struggled with drug addiction, lost their kids. She helps them get back on their feet, get their lives back right, okay? That morning she was late because she had to handle a case in which a single mother who is trying to recover from drug addiction needed to get a hotel room because her rent went up and if she didn't pay it, she was going to be evicted. We have families showing up at our family helping hands centers that haven't been there in decades. It's It's not It's not a a an abstract thought. It's not something that might happen. Oh, maybe it'll happen. It This is what we are seeing in our town. We have 134,000 people. We San Angelo when it comes to that and we don't have the housing. We don't have the housing. Go look on Zillow right now, you can find a wonderful one-bedroom apartment on at the back of somebody's house for 1,000 bucks a month. And you better believe that them bills ain't going to be paid as part of that. That's what's happening in our district. Another thing we're seeing, people are losing their houses. When people get desperate, they start making decisions they otherwise wouldn't make. I volunteer and I help out with Beyond Trafficking. Guess what we're seeing? More trafficking, sex trafficking, labor trafficking. More of it has come to our city and it is because people are getting kicked out of their houses and having to live on the street. There are much more sinister dark things that are afoot than even water and energy, guys. I'm I'm I'm telling you right now. I've been fighting it for 2 years. Our city council cut deals at 8:00 in the morning with 2 hours notice to the community and all signed NDAs. You can't get a word out of them other

[2:15:27] than this is going to be great for us. Let me tell you another thing. They've They've cut that deal in Sweetwater. One of the fellows brought it up a minute ago. That's a great point, man. We're getting ate up with workers right now. We're going to get ate up with workers from Sweetwater. We're getting ate up with workers from Haskell. We're going to get ate up with workers from Albany and guess what? When we run out of hotel rooms, I worked in the oil field, I'll drive 3 hours to make some money. So it doesn't stop, okay? The scale might be fine. Hey, whatever. It's It It is It is widespread and it is an a 90-minute drive. Think about it. >> [applause] [applause] >> Vernon Hegler. >> [applause] >> I'm Vernon Hegler. I live off of Armstrong. Heather heard my I have a proposal. I think the city should send a team of at least three people to go to a facility that operates as the one they've described to verify all the physical operation. I propose panel of at least three people. I would think probably somebody from the water department who has hands-on experience and knows all the paperwork involved that a facility like this would have to turn into the EPA. Then an engineer who doesn't have any ties really to the any of the governments to observe and report on things and then a Joe Blow who has industrial experience and knows about cooling towers and and this sort of thing who can go in is not going to be blown away by something they haven't seen, who can verify, you

[2:17:30] know, with the fellow reading the water reports and so forth. Uh, I understood the gentleman in the dark coat talking about the uh, the different sort of uh, heat exchangers and so forth. I understood what he was talking about. I think there's been so much put it information put out there that nobody knows what to believe to a large extent. I think we send a panel, get some real information from people's neighbors, it'd come back and say, "Well, we went and saw as far as the physical parameters, what they're talking about is on the level. It's not going to affect our water future and so forth." I've lived here for over 40 years. I drive downtown and I see the old signs from when this was the wool capital of the world. Now we just barely have enough to talk about. Uh, I've seen our one various government or another, this city has gotten shortchanged. Uh, do not envy y'all people having to try to deal with making this decision. It's a big decision, but somehow I I've I've seen us turn away projects that would have been good for the city and uh, I think this should be some experts to try to get clear away all the smog and get down to some sort of real information that everybody could uh council could make a judgment on and that the citizens could feel about what happens. Thank you. >> [applause] >> Shelby Storm >> [applause] >> My name is Shelby Sturm. I am a county resident. I own a property in um San

[2:19:38] Angelo. I apologize. I'm not familiar with what district number that is. I'm here today as a farm wife raising a fourth-generation farmer, which is probably the youngest citizen of San Angelo in this room, and I'm proud that he is taking part of this process. We all know that data centers require an immense amount of water for cooling. Water tables will lower regardless of what is promised to us. That will affect irrigation of crops and strain local aquifers. Crops and citizens will also be impacted by what are called heat islands. We are concerned about chemical contamination from the cooling systems. We want concrete assurances, regulations, and independent regular testing, not corporate talking heads, not hopes and prayers, not passing the buck to the next regulatory authority. We have already had breaches of our so-called prohibited wastewater contaminants by Ethicon. We do not want to experience further exposures. Your so-called self-testing and reporting is what I think unacceptable. If the water is so similar to what you're pulling in as what you're putting back into our sewer and wastewater systems, then why don't you keep reusing it? We have already seen >> [applause] >> We've already seen real-time reports of the impacts caused by high power demands and infrastructure of AI data centers driving up electricity rates of surrounding residents and farmers. We oppose new power lines constructed through any farmland. What you intend to bring to our doorstep is noise and light pollution from

[2:21:41] warehouse-style facilities, construction and traffic influx pushed down the throats of a quiet rural area. We have seen dangerous construction traffic already from the solar farm out in Neola. My daughter rides the school bus with some of these semi's and other big vehicles and have had reports of near traffic accidents. We refuse to accept any proposal tied to buy right approval. It is a dangerous precedent to set giving a cart blanche approval for future expansion. We furthermore demand no tax abatement and agreements ever. Corporations must pay their fair share. I've had enough of corporate talk in my life to call bull when I hear it. Well, let me say, keep your greedy and gluttonous AI pods off OUR SAN ANGELO. >> [cheering] [applause] >> DAVID DERUSSO David DeRusso Elena Luna >> [applause] >> Good evening, mayor, council members, and San Angelo residents. My name is Elena, resident of district two. And I'm here tonight to stand before you to respectfully ask for you to reconsider the proposed data center development currently under your consideration. You were not elected to simply approve development. You were elected to protect the city, resources, people, and its future, and that is exactly what is at stake here. Let's speak plainly for a moment. This project asks San Angelo to trade away its water, power, land, and finite local resources for the benefit

[2:23:44] of an industry that will give us very little back. Data centers consume enormous amounts of electricity, water, strain infrastructure, and in return produce minimal permanent jobs, and limited long-term investment. And here, that reality matters more. San Angelo was built on land, agriculture, and our economy depends on ranchers, farmers, and the small businesses that support them. These are not just temporary industries, they are generational, and they all depend on one thing, reliable access to water. Every gallon used to cool a data center is a gallon that cannot sustain livestock, irrigate crops, or support the backbone of this community. This is not just a development decision, it is a resource allocation decision. So, we have to ask, who are we prioritizing? Local producers who sustain our economy and identity, or an outside industry that brings high demand and low long-term and low long-term return? Because once those resources are committed, you cannot easily take them back. The precedent you set here will determine who thrives in San Angelo and who gets pushed out. And too often these projects come with tax abatements and subsidies, meaning the people of the city are being asked to subsidize their own displacement. That is not an economic development, that is a failure of stewardship. This council has a duty to think long-term, what happens during drought, what happens when agriculture is forced to compete with industrial scale consumption, and what happens when the industries that built this region can no longer afford to operate here. Our founders warned us about this. Thomas Jefferson believed that the strength of the nation came from land-based communities rooted in independence and sustainability, not dependence on outside interests. James Madison warned of powerful powerful factions in Federalist 10 pursuing their own gain at the expense of the public good. And George Washington cautioned against the influences that do not share the long-term fate of the people. This warning applies here. A corporation can leave when conditions change, our farmers, ranchers, and families cannot. So, the question is not whether this project is modern, the question is whether it is loyal to this community. And it is loyal to our Is it loyal to our agricultural backbone? Is it loyal to responsibility to responsible water use in a region where water is already scarce? Or is it loyal to the people who live here, not just today, but decades

[2:25:46] from now? If the answer is no, then your responsibility is clear. San Angelo is not for sale at the cost of its own sustainability. Our water is not expendable, and our agricultural foundation is not something to be traded away for short-term promises. I urge you, stand with this community, protect our resources, and reject this proposal. Thank you. >> [cheering] [applause] >> Jamal Shumpert >> [applause] >> Uh Jamal Shumpert, SMD 3. Uh I'm not going to speak a lot about data centers, but it kind of reminds me of when I was studying in school about how they ran highways through certain communities. Now they're they're building data centers in communities like this. I gives me like a a bad feeling that we don't have a chance unless we do something about it, like recall some people, or maybe put in a petition to take some of that sales tax money away out of the ballot to address some of these harms they're not willing to address as a city council. Uh but I'm going to move forward because what I came here for is to advocate for the children and youth. They they've been killing themselves quite often, hurting themselves in San Angelo way more than what I'm used to here. Uh I would like for the city council, since Tom talked about giving them a building for youth to put some money towards paying for these these people, I mean these children whose parents can't afford for them to go to these camps in the summer. So, they can go to these camps in the summer when they're not in school instead of thinking of of bad ways to harm the community. They're going to be at your houses at night or during the day uh causing

[2:27:50] problems, making our police having to answer to these petty things instead of actually addressing with real issues the city have. Uh and another thing I came up here was to thank Mr. Keeley for talking about Carver and wanting to save Carver. That is that is huge. Uh believe it or not quite a few uh black schools got burned just like Mr. Dendals. So, I understand exactly where Mr. Dendals coming from. I understand both sides of it. Uh I I I like for you to keep pushing that, Mr. Keeley. And uh that that's really all I had to say about the data centers, but I I do have a somewhat of a solution. But y'all going to have to ask me. Thank you. >> [applause] >> Edward Zabeky Edward Zabecki Karen McGinnis >> [applause] >> Good evening. My name is Karen McGinnis and um I don't know what district I live in. I just moved. But I am born and raised in San Angelo. Um And Mike and Chris, I want to tell you that um I'm sorry that your industry has such a poor track record and such a lousy reputation. Um you may be the one shining example the white knights within the industry. But you've already told us that you're going to build this and then you're going to lease it to somebody. You don't know who that somebody is and neither do we. You've already told us that uh they'll refresh the equipment every 5 to 6 years, 3 to 6 years.

[2:29:56] So, where does all that old equipment go? I mean, it's not just going to disappear. I have a lot of questions and very few answers. I'm old-fashioned. I still write checks. Yeah, on this move I misplaced my checks. But I found them. I'm wondering if perhaps it's time for us to stop just looking to the end of our nose, our local government, our state government, our national government and start thinking not just what's best for me, but what's best for my grandchild? And more importantly, what about my grandchild's grandchildren? If we could look seven generations down the road, I think we might be making different kinds of decisions. The bottom line is you can put lipstick on a pig. You can wrap that pig in silk and satin and you can even put diamond studs in his ears. But in the end, he's still a pig. >> [applause] >> Karen Best >> [applause] >> Oh, give me a second, Karen. Sorry. It's okay. All right, go. I'm a better writer than a public speaker. So, forgive me. I've heard everybody say what they're going to say, so I'm just going to riff here on what I saw tonight. Okay, first of all, thank you to the city council members who are present and staff and the members of

[2:31:59] Skybox, the the two gentlemen who addressed the group today on community. Gentlemen, when you at Skybox talk about community, you're talking about the big five. You're not talking about any of us. When you talk about the schools, I'm sitting next to school board member. Y'all haven't approached SAISD about anything. The money that are going to very best will almost largely go back to the state of Texas when they collect it. It's not just the overage, okay? But what bothers me most isn't Skybox. You guys are doing a business. I'm in business for myself, too. I get it and that's fine. We're a commodity for you. We are not your community. We're Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. >> [applause] >> We're your community. We're your community. You asked to put your signs in our yards. You came to our Republican Women and Concho Valley Republican Women groups. When you have Glenda Bacon standing up putting the governor in a box, you know things are bad. Okay? But you're our community and the first we get to hear about Skybox with Skybox is up here today as this is upon us, not at some We should have been on the conversation in on the conversation a year ago and on the zoning changes to housing a year ago. A year ago, we should have been included. But tonight, the best optic we have of where this is at is that empty stage right now where you should be sitting answering our questions. Not not huddled in a corner with Skybox saying we will not respond to any questions other [snorts] than the library meeting that Mr. Keeley was brave enough to call and citizens got to be as open and vocal as they wanted to be and God bless you for that. That man spent 2 hours in the street with me last week talking about data centers. That man has represented the city of San

[2:34:04] Angelo better than anyone else around that table. We deserve that kind of We deserve that kind of openness. We deserve that kind of opportunity. I will lose staff in my office when they can't pay rent and I can't charge enough to somebody to come in to raise their pay to keep them because of the housing issues that the gentleman from Abilene brought. That's not conjecture. That's fact because I just had to raise her salary to pay for rents now. Today. Hers went up $300 a month because of taxes and insurance. That's not a future problem. That's a today problem. Thank you. >> [applause] [applause] >> Michelle Derusso And finally, Joseph uh Joe Hyde Um I signed up. I signed up. Oh, Amber, you did. I'm so sorry. Uh Amber Armendariz Yeah. Yeah. >> [applause] >> Good evening, council members and fellow residents. My name is Amber Armendariz and I live in District 6. I'm here to implore you place a definite moratorium on the construction of Skybox data centers in the San Angelo city limits is properties and for you to encourage our fellow neighbors in Tom Green County and surrounding counties to vote against these any such proposal. Yesterday morning, I spoke of Skybox's closed-loop system and how their blowdown process will dump its toxic sludge and dangerous contaminants into our water sources. If you missed it, please go have a listen. Now, I will explain the noise pollution. Have any of you been to one of these

[2:36:05] data centers and heard of what their low hum sounds release is? I assure you it's not a low hum at all. I have firsthand knowledge of what these data center sounds emit. During the time I lived near one of these data centers, I suffered for from daily headaches and extreme discomf- discomfort. And every time I would fly back here for the weekend, my headaches would clear up and instantly felt at ease. I was on all sorts of medication for these chronic problems and couldn't figure out why. After moving back here officially, my chronic headaches no longer exist. I encourage each of you to go to one of these data centers and see what they're really like. Cooling systems and generators create a constant loud hum that can negatively impact the quality of life. Yesterday, Steve Eneliis from our Chamber of Commerce purposely spoke misleading words to paint a picture of what this data center is and I'm here to give you a reality check of truth. And I quote, "A data center is basically the building full of computers that deliver information that we use every day." These data centers are not full of computers. They're full of servers. One rack-mount server is approximately 7 ft high, 2 ft wide, and 4 ft deep and emits a frequency of 60 hertz, which can be felt physically as a vibration and heard as a deep bass tone. On average, a data center will house 100,000 server racks, which is a frequency of 6 million hertz or 6 megahertz. A frequ- high frequency ultrasound. This cannot be heard by humans, but can be cause that can cause a heating, tissue vibration, and potential ca- cavitation in tissues. This is 300 times higher than the limit of human hearing. Combine The combined noise from fans, cooling systems, and servers are con- considered hazardous for long-term exposure. For instance, it causes confusion, nausea, and potential internal injuries. Nearby residents are exposed to infrasound that causes vertigo and nausea. That said, you made a unilateral decision behind closed doors and backdoor deals that affect all of San Angeloans. That will cause

[2:38:09] long-term physical harm. Just as you asked the residents of San Angelo to vote on the expansion of our college system that directly affects our taxes, you are mandated to ask the residents of San Angelo for a vote that would directly affects our water resources and our health. You do not own the land and water here. The people of San Angelo own this land and water. And I reiterate from yesterday, we are the stewards of the land and water and you are voted to represent your community and your community is progressively opposing data centers from being built here. I motion to require all of San Angelo in this place to vote for indefinite moratorium or opposition for the data center and for future data centers as well. Many want it Many we call it It means water is life. I'm a Native American. I have history here. My family's from here. I grew up right down the road. And what you're doing to our land and our water is ridiculous. You should be ASHAMED OF YOURSELVES. >> [cheering] [applause] >> JOE HYDE MY NAME IS JOE HYDE. I run two businesses in town. I have San Angelo Live, which is the news organization, and also have a little bar and a and a hotel called the Arclight. In that Arclight, I got a cook named a TD. And I can't give him enough money right now for him to buy a reliable car to get to work. And when I see things like these data centers, which is a gigantic opportunity for this town, for this city, for this region, to make a lot of money for our kid for all these guys working for us, I don't know why there's so much opposition to it. All it is is a building full of servers. And regardless regardless of what you want to say here, you already have a data center on Johnson Street. One entire floor of the GTE building is a is

[2:40:13] a data center, and it's full of ant meters. It's mining Bitcoin. And while it's mining Bitcoin, none of you got cancer. You have plenty of water. You have no noise. No one complains about noise on Johnson Street. 40,000 square feet of Bitcoin miners. All of you all of you walking out here are nothing but a bunch of low IQ idiots. Yes, weirdos and losers. Nothing like I won't be running >> So, we are finished with public comment. Thank [snorts] goodness. I need a motion to adjourn the meeting. Got a first from Joe. Got a second from Tommy Hebert. All those in favor say I. Any opposed that want to stay? That motion closes to close the meeting 7-0.

Captured 2026-07-26 · source: youtube.com/watch?v=SBJ15vi7uKk