(PENSACOLA) --- FloridaWest Economic Development Alliance (EDA) posted their board meeting three days before the public forum.
The group behind the proposed data center will hold a board of directors meeting Thursday morning, leaving little time for the public to attend, given the notice published Monday. The meeting will be on Thursday, June 18, at 8:30 a.m. at 418 W Garden St.
State law requires “reasonable notice” of public meetings, and while it doesn’t specify a number of days, the whole point is to give the public a real chance to show up.
A Monday post for a Thursday morning meeting fails that test.
The EDA, which uses county sales tax to recruit projects like data centers and uses more power than the City of Pensacola, equaling up to 1.5 million gallons of water a day, must do better than giving residents only three days to attend a meeting.
(Photo credit: Escambia County website)
This isn’t the only time the board couldn’t get it together.
In May, the Pensacola-Escambia Promotion & Development Commission (PEDC), the group that funnels Local Option Sales Tax to FloridaWest, canceled its meeting for lack of quorum.
Not enough members showed up to do business, and the public who did show up was sent home.
Now PEDC members, including District 1 Commissioner Steve Stroberger, will hear from residents at a town hall tonight at 5 p.m. at 6425 Mobile Highway.
People who organized a strategic meeting on Monday, ahead of the commission meeting, plan to ask Stroberger to propose an outright ban on data centers at the county commission meeting on Wednesday.
(Photo credit: Escambia County Facebook page)
The most disturbing of all is FloridaWest's Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDA) during recruitment. NDAs keep power loads, water demands, and tax breaks secret until deals are done. That’s not how Escambia County got Navy Federal Credit Union and its thousands of jobs.
That project was debated in public with no NDA, which is what needs to be done with data centers.
Data centers aren’t small projects. For example, a 50-megawatt site needs Florida Power & Light (FPL) for power and the Emerald Coast Utilities Authority (ECUA) for water. Both have had seats on the FloridaWest board, meaning both would profit from the deal and yet both sit behind closed doors while NDAs are signed.
FloridaWest’s own 2023-2028 plan lists information technology, cybersecurity and artificial intelligence as target industries, with the Bluffs site in Cantonment averaging a 900-megawatt FPL substation and ECUA water lines.
The pieces are there; the only thing missing is public consent.
(Photo credit: June 11 data center protest)
Three days’ notice after a canceled meeting in May looks like a pattern. It’s hard to attend a meeting you don’t know about, and it’s harder to speak when the board can’t make a quorum.
Residents aren’t asking for a pause, especially when last-minute posts and empty board seats keep the public in the dark.
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