In 1999, a farmer donated his land for a children’s playground. Now the city council has sold them for millions for a data center

There are times when a good deed turns against you. Or against an entire town. In 1999, a Texan farmer named Charles Bland decided it was time to give something back to his town, a small town called Taylor. It occurred to him to donate about 35 hectares of his land to the city of 15,000 inhabitants with one condition: The city council had to use those lands to create a public park.

To formalize the transaction, the city paid a symbolic amount of $10 to the farmer. 27 years later, the accounts come out in favor of the city council: it has sold part of the property not to create the promised park, but for a data center from the Blueprint company.

The operation? one of 10 million dollars. And the neighbors were quick to light the torches.

An offer that could not be refused

This story is one of the most bizarre that we have seen in this matter of relationship between cities and data centers. The middle 404 has echoed the situation and the anger that is being aroused by both Bland’s initial objective and the fate of the land and, above all, the vague explanations of the city council is logical.

The farmer initially donated his land to the Texas Parks Foundation, a nonprofit organization, with the goal of holding it in trust for future use exclusively as a playground. This is what appears in the documents and in the land deed, but there is a problem: in the following years, the property changed hands.

The Parks Foundation gave it to a different nonprofit called the Williamson County Parks Foundation in 2003, but a month later, it gave it to the city itself. In 2008, the land changed hands again after a $15,000 sale to the Taylor Economic Development Corporation (TEDC).

According to your page government, it is a non-profit corporation funded by the City of Taylor and, although it is a separate entity, it is the city council that appoints the five members of a Board that change terms every three years.

Is this important? Well yes, since as 404 points out, it was this TEDC that, last year, sold part of the plot to Blueprinta company that plans to build a data center next to the town for those aforementioned 10 million euros. For a non-profit, the business has been successful.

When they found out about both the sale and the plans to build a data center, the neighbors took to the streets to protest. Not only was the intention of that farmer who gave his land to the city with the sole interest of children having a place to play being violated, but an installation was going to be built that heats the air and that increase the electricity bill for the neighbors.

Because of this, the TEDC has published a document in which he explains what is going to be done and what the city is going to get out of all this. They state that Blueprint’s data center will be used “for a wide variety of purposes including data storage, website hosting and artificial intelligence processing” in a facility that will have a total investment of 1,000 million dollars both to construct the main buildings as well as an electricity substation, backup generators and a closed-loop heat cooling system.

In a very brief way, The document addresses the complaints and concerns of neighbors referring to a report that ensures that the facilities will comply with everything necessary in terms of emissions and impact on air quality, noise pollution, light pollution, fire risk and water consumption.

Always, of course, stating that the risk and consumption is minimal and that everything will go in the best possible way. Yes, the project will be connected to the electrical network for power supply.

They expose that there is no way to go back and that, basically, that is what it is.

Doesn’t anyone think about the children? The City Council does

There will be no park, but it will be a great benefit for the city. As we see in Straight to the Palatethe facility will not occupy the 35 hectares donated by the family, but 21 hectares. The other 14 continue to belong to the city and the intention is to build a barrier to limit the impact that this data center may have on the neighbors.

In addition, and as detailed in the aforementioned document, “the City expects to receive up to 30 million in total additional income that can be used to reduce property taxes and invest in streets, sidewalks, parks and other services”.

With more conditionals on the list, they say that “the school district projects up to $20 million that could be used to improve facilities, increase teacher salaries and provide a better education for our students.”

The truth is that the justification could well come from an episode of ‘The Simpsons’, but if we pay attention to that phrase that points out that, no matter what happens, the decision is irrevocable, the options for the neighbors do not seem very hopeful.

The United States is currently experiencing two speeds in this artificial intelligence infrastructure. On the one hand, Big Tech raising monumental data centers. On the other hand, the people and political parties (both Republican and Democrat) that are rising in some states against these facilities.

Studies are already appearing that leave aside tabout water consumption (minor one that was talked about a few months ago) as energy consumption (this one is tremendous) to point to the havoc on the environment what these “giant computers” cause.

But hey, in the end Taylor won’t have a new park, but he will have a few million that could be used to make a park next to a giant radiator.

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