What a Doozy
On Tuesday afternoons, following a BOCC meeting the week prior, I sit an wait for the BOCC agenda to drop. I always like to see what is going to be talked about at the next meeting and bring it to the attention of the public who may not see it otherwise.
Well what dropped yesterday is a doozy. This could be a very interesting commission meeting.
The biggest item of the day, in my opinion, is Commissioner Davis bringing a motion to rescind the Betz Farm cancellation vote from a couple of weeks ago.
I question the ability to do this... I do not want to tip my hand too much yet, but that will be a topic for another day as I do a bit more research. Something had to have happened between the cancellation and last Friday when the agenda items are due from commissioners, but I do not know what. This agenda item alludes to costs they did not know about, so I will dive into this to see if I can figure it out and report back here.
Today, we are doing to talk about another big item... a moratorium on Data Centers being brought by Commissioner Diana Finegan.
From my understanding, reading the agenda item, her feeling is that the county needs more time to look at the Land Development Code changes for Data Centers. There is a hearing on May 21st at the PDC regarding that LDC change.
Not only is the county looking at creating some type of guidelines, the state is also looking at some options. It seems the feeling here is to tap the brakes a bit and slow down the train. Give staff a year to put something together that will protect the natural resources of the county, should a data center eventually come here.
However, that brings me to my main point. We have to keep the focus on why this is an issue today.
Deltona wants to expand the Holder Industrial Park to include more acreage for heavy industrial uses.. They also want to do a Comp Plan amendment that will add data centers as an allowable use in Industrial zoned parcels, as well as others.
Two separate applications.
The focus for this application should not be a data center. It should be on the re-zoning of the residential land to IND because that is what the application is for... Not a data center. Far too often on social media I see people sharing "No Data Center" posts, signs, flyers and other things. I kind of cringe when I see that discussion because the vote is not about a data center, yet everyone keeps saying it is.
If people want to oppose the data center for this location, make sure they show up and state they oppose the zoning to IND and not mention the data center as the data center is not a guaranteed thing. Deltona can decide to change their plans, get it re-zoned and then decide later on to no longer have a data center there. "Thanks for the rezoning" and away they go.
That is the problem with doing a rezoning like this. We do not have a site plan. We have no idea what is really going to go in there. They claim its a in part a data center project, but can be literally anything allowed under IND zoning.
To me, that is a huge risk. The county/citizens need to see what is going to be in there and where it will all be, but again, no site plan, so no clue and nothing that ties them to any sort of use.
Cases like these should be denied. Bring back a specific plan and we can go from there.
One thing I want to address.. Social media is in an uproar about this project. They claim the reason for the moratorium is so they can push back the decision until after the election. The problem with that is I think that will already be the case.
The PDC hearing for this is in mid June. It then goes to the BOCC, which may not be able to hear it before the election anyway. Not sure a moratorium like this is a political move to avoid a tough vote before an election, when that vote likely does not happen before then anyway.
I hope everyone has a great day!