Latest / Taking Initiative / Spotlight: Conserve Ohio sets new signature goal & attends weekly commissioners meeting
Transcript
- Speaker 2: just came out of the Adams County Board of Commissioners meeting. What did you learn today? ⁓ OBP: (Off camera) Tell about signature gathering. Here we are a couple weeks the July 1st deadline, we're hearing that the new goal is 2027. Talk to me about why decision was made about to go to a commissioners meeting, right? Is that what it is? Commissioner's meeting. Okay. ⁓ Give me a history of these meetings because they're really what brought Conserve Ohio ⁓ campaign. ⁓ So just just walk me through ⁓ what's happened so and you're expecting today. ⁓ Speaker 2: When I heard they were having a thing down there, I thought it was gonna be like a pros and con meeting. And it turned out to be just a joke. happy little gathering for the data center people. Speaker 1: I learned that there isn't gonna be anyone that is an elected official that is going to stand up for us. ⁓ they just repeatedly say it's out of their hands, we're unzoned. And when we bring up that they were able to completely say no to solar farms, they say that came from the state. ⁓ really upsetting to ⁓ OBP: heard everything I knew. There's dirt moving. ⁓ Deals are in the wor well, they say deals are in the works, but Deals are in the works ⁓ and ⁓ I don't know. I don't know. I just want to ⁓ continue getting these signatures and get her done. Because we are sitting at about ⁓ 75,000 signatures right now, so gonna keep pushing through. Till next year, we realize that summer months are the best months to the signatures. we have been coming to the commissioners meeting since February 9th was our first one. ⁓ We found out about the proposal in Adams County on February 5th. Speaker 2: Now, one thing I'd like to know is when did you guys have negotiations with them? OBP: And week after week our commissioners keep saying that they don't know anything that and then about a month and a half ago, they said that they had one conversation with Amazon, but they promised that they would not sign any tax abatements until after they gave the public a meeting. Well last Thursday, Amazon came to Manchester High School and it was a science fair. It really didn't help any of us with any of our questions. Signatures. Winter's gonna die out, so we wanna everybody is still fully on board out there hitting them summertime events. We need more people in the metro areas to gather the most signatures. So hitting the events in Columbus, Cincinnati, and Cleveland is the goal. Toledo I guess as well. If we can't stop this one we can stop future ones from coming all around Ohio and that's why we're gonna continue our efforts. ⁓ Speaker 1: that after all of these months of us coming and voicing our concerns, that they never they never went to the state house themselves. ⁓ We as have gone ⁓ to the ⁓ But the that are supposed to represent us are just trying to lead us. They're not going to the state. And saying, hey, my ⁓ constituents ⁓ upset these data centers. What can we do to give them a voice ⁓ back in community? ⁓ And ⁓ always OBP: So putting ⁓ the ⁓ data center here will have what of an impact on the rest of the ⁓ Huge impact because ⁓ it is disappointing in a way, but at least that we could still have it on the ballot so that another thirteen hundred megawatt facility can't come into Adams County or any other counties dealing with ⁓ the data that they're dealing with right now. We are one of the top poverty stricken counties in all of Ohio. And it's right here amongst Manchester, which is one of the ⁓ it's like the poorest part of Adams County. And jobs are not guaranteed to us. The training ⁓ not there for us ⁓ the guarantees ⁓ ⁓ center jobs or construction are not there. ⁓ they've already begun construction and clearing land Speaker 7: may have a starting date but I haven't negotiated that's a lie Speaker 2: He's negotiated with you guys. Well that's not lying. Speaker 6: Say negotiation. OBP: and this is the first commissioners meeting since that meeting. I don't know if they consider that their public meeting, ⁓ they will now maybe sign some tax abatements. I'm not really sure. Okay, what are you hoping happens today? I'm hoping that the people that went to the Amazon meeting show up today and let the commissioners know that we are not happy with answers. Speaker 1: little depressed after these meetings because I just hope each week that they will be willing to listen to us to instead of saying it's out of their hands say I'm gonna try and find a way to help you. OBP: ⁓ And we've seen them moving land around surveying. ⁓ And then they say it's not sold. They can't do anything. Speaker 1: ⁓ Speaker 7: Negotiation. I am not negotiating any we haven't even hired our lawyer to begin negotiating. They don't even own the property yet. Speaker 1: But they've already broke ground They've got roped off as far as I know, right? But they've already got roped off. Speaker 7: Do not own the property yet. I don't know what they're doing. Construction said they were September. They he wanted to go ahead and start, he had permission from the landowner ⁓ to go ahead and start doing some dirt work. ⁓ I asked him not to. So I can't s mean I can't ⁓ make him do ⁓ anything Speaker 3: And the gravel roads have already gone in. Speaker 6: I don't know if it's a done deal, but the only that we can control is the abatements. And we have not talked to anybody. We've said that for five months. Speaker 1: Well, better yet, the question being what is your abatements going to do? You think you can control these people? That's a joke. They don't need your tax abatement. They're using this tax abatement to get their foot in the door to start this project. And you guys are falling it. Absolutely. ⁓ But I've heard out of your own mouth that that's the only way we control we can control them. You can't control these people. Speaker 7: They can start with no taxes. Speaker 1: There is no way. They don't care about your tax abatement These are multi-billion dollar companies. You think the $18 million is going to make a difference? Speaker 6: mean. Speaker 3: the statutory agent Carrie Tillman works for a company called Active Infrastructure. Active Infrastructure's been actively working at Buck Canyon ⁓ since ⁓ I don't know ⁓ in all the water putting in all the infrastructure, because that's what the name of the company is, Active Infrastructure that she works for, and her name's all over the public records. ⁓ So ⁓ basically they're just it, put doing all the groundwork, in all the infrastructure, so then Amazon, after you guys make your deal, ⁓ can go ahead and just plug and play because everything's already in place. And those buildings don't take long to construct at all. So all the hard work is really honestly being done because all we're doing is putting up a shell then for an empty building for data center chips to go into. So there's nothing hard about building four walls and a roof. You know what I mean? And then rolling in on carts, carts of data center chips by different companies, then we don't get any money back from any of those companies that are storing all their data. inside our county. And it's not just Amazon. Amazon's gonna house lots of whoever's data they're storing. You know what I mean? So and we get nothing back from any of this. Any of this. We get everything taken from us and nothing given back to us. No roads, no decommissioning plans, we get at least get some kind of EMS fire hazard? We're getting no protections in place. We're gonna Speaker 7: negotiate or not because if we don't negotiate we can't stop them. You can no we cannot. Speaker 1: We don't want ⁓ here at all. Is no zoning in place? Is there zoning? Why do you think they're here? Why do you think they're coming to Adams County, Ohio? the rural counties, why is that? they're messing with Because there's laxed zoning. Or no zoning. Speaker 2: sign. Speaker 1: We want the truth. We want the truth. Speaker 2: What economic development is that data center gonna do for us? don't see no money coming. ⁓ Speaker 1: I guess what we're saying as a as a community group is we see you guys as our voice, doing absolutely nothing to do your best to try to stop what the people of this county do. Speaker 2: Not want Speaker 7: You are not the only voice. Speaker 2: No. Speaker 3: No, there's lots of voices. And actually, we had when we did the initiative for the constitutional amendment, when we had to get that constitutional amendment, we needed a thousand signatures. Adams County got eight hundred and sixty-five of those signatures, six hundred and sixty-five of those signatures cleared. Our eight percent is five hundred and seventy-one signatures. So at that point, eight percent of your county did speak up on our board of elections public record on April 2nd when it went through to the initiative and we were in Columbus. Like, so there's no denying the fact. That eight percent of this county does not want this. So I'm real tired of everybody saying that it's just us because it's not. And I don't see any of your "for" people coming to these meetings, ever, not once. ⁓ are they at? Speaker 4: There's been a lot of people who have lost time with their family, time at their work, almost lost their jobs trying to get clarity and and find peace for our community, find a middle ground, ask for a moratorium. Why can't there be a countywide moratorium again? Speaker 5: you Speaker 4: No zoning. So you you can't say, Hey, let's do a temporary moratorium till we figure this out. But you can say it's ⁓ it's almost a done deal or it's a done deal and you can say, ⁓ What about you? What about the zoning for solar? Didn't you do zoning for solar? ⁓ Speaker 6: That came down from ⁓ a house bill They gave the county commissioners the power ⁓ ⁓ it. ⁓ us county commissioners, we gave it up to the townships. ⁓ had the power to do that and we honored what the township said. ⁓ Speaker 1: Well how is that possible? Because that's private property too. the people of the county stopped it Speaker 7: Because there's an Ohio Revised Code that said we could. We can only ⁓ we only have power to ⁓ on things the the power is given to us by law. If there's no law on it, then we can't act. no law for us to be able to do a moratorium because no zoning.