Setting the Record Straight
August 1, 2026 — Protect Grove City
For those who missed it, the first Moratorium Task Force meeting was Wednesday night. It got interesting, and we heard a few things we think the public should know about, so here’s our take.
A quick note on sourcing: there’s no official recording or minutes from this task force meeting yet. We’re working from notes taken by attendees, so what follows is our best-faith summary of the substance of these claims, not verbatim quotes. If anyone who was in the room thinks we’ve mischaracterized what was said, tell us at info@protectgrovecity.org. If we can corroborate it, we’ll correct it publicly.
The numbers are basically right. New Albany really does have around 40 operational data centers, with more on the way. We said from the start that we’d have real conversations, and real conversations start with real numbers.
New Albany spent 25 years deliberately building a dedicated business park for this: roads, power, water and sewer, all put in ahead of demand, far from neighborhoods. Grove City has a future land use map (GroveCity2050) with areas colored in for industrial growth, and an aging 1960s AEP substation off Beatty Road that a developer has taken an interest in. A plan on paper and a substation getting a rebuild aren’t 25 years of purpose-built infrastructure. The real question shouldn’t be how New Albany got its data centers. Maybe we should ask what having them has cost the people who live there?
Jobs. A Meta data center in New Albany created about 98 jobs, while the city and state gave up $189.6 million in taxes to get it: roughly $1.9 million in forgone tax revenue per job. That’s from an investigation using the companies’ own disclosures. Data centers are largely automated. Even the biggest ones typically run fewer than 150 permanent employees, some as few as 25, and researchers who study these deals say 80% of the jobs they do create are construction jobs that disappear in under a year, long before the 15-to-30-year tax break expires.
PILOT payments. In exchange for the abatement, companies make “payments in lieu of taxes.” Meta paid New Albany $21.8 million through 2022, about one-ninth of the $189.6 million the city gave up to get it. New Albany also collects a special property assessment on data centers that reportedly brought in $10 million one year, funding a police station expansion and a park. That’s the strongest piece of the economic case, but it still doesn’t erase a $190 million hole. Ouch…
Water. Google’s New Albany facility alone uses more than 405 million gallons a year. The average Ohioan uses about 60 gallons a day at home, roughly 22,000 gallons a year, so one data center building uses as much water annually as about 18,000 Ohio residents: nearly half of Grove City’s entire population of 42,000, from a single facility. Some of the largest data centers nationally use up to 5 million gallons a day, more than Grove City’s whole population would use in a day. And now the Ohio EPA is also considering rules that would let data centers discharge untreated wastewater and stormwater straight into rivers and streams, but we’ll save that for another post.
Electric bills. Ohio’s residential electricity rates have risen 175% since 2005, and data center growth is a documented driver. One analysis projects Ohio families could pay $70 more a month by 2028. That’s every ratepayer on the shared grid, including me and you!
Nuclear reactors. This is the part most people haven’t heard yet. To power its New Albany AI supercluster, Meta has signed deals for up to 6.6 gigawatts of nuclear power: restarting and upgrading existing plants and funding brand-new reactors, including a 1.2-gigawatt campus AEP-adjacent developers are building in Pike County. It’s some of the largest energy infrastructure ever built in Ohio, assembled because data centers are pulling more power than the existing grid was meant to supply, and of course ratepayers typically end up covering a share of what it costs to build.
That’s the actual, documented cost of “thriving.” The task force chair put it well when this comparison came up: we’re not New Albany, and it’s not right for every situation. We agree. The question was never whether data centers worked out for New Albany. It’s whether Grove City residents are willing to accept the same bill, a fraction of the jobs promised plus the taxes, water, electric rates, and now reactors that come with it, for a project next to their own homes.
That’s the question the Community Consent Amendment lets you answer, instead of leaving it to a task force and a council vote.
Here are the sources we used (we love to show our receipts):
We’ve heard this one from a member of the city’s new data center task force, and if a task force member believes it, others have probably heard it too.
It’s just not what the amendment does. I’m not sure where it came from, but it’s a complete fabrication. We specifically designed it to sit in front of the entire existing process and not interfere with it at all.
Read the CCA and try to find the part where council loses a power. It isn’t there. After the CCA passes, your council member still does every single thing they do today. They still write and enforce zoning. They still negotiate with developers. They still hold public hearings. They still vote on annexations and rezonings. They can still vote no on any project they think is wrong for Grove City. Every bit of that authority stays exactly where it’s always been.
What the amendment adds is one thing: when a project is a truly massive Heavy Industrial Development (50+ acres, 20+ megawatts, 500,000+ gallons of water a day) the voters weigh in first, before any rezoning, before any annexation, before a single permit.
A yes vote doesn’t build anything. It just unlocks the door. After voters say yes, the project goes through the exact same process it would today: council’s zoning, council’s hearings, council’s negotiations, council’s vote. Your council member’s job doesn’t shrink by one inch. The referendum is the key to the door, not ownership of the house.
Flip it around and the CCA doesn’t take a right away from you; it gives you one you don’t currently have. Today, if the city approves a 310-acre data center next to your neighborhood, your say is waiting a few years and hoping the next election fixes it, after the concrete is poured. Under the CCA, you get a vote before anyone even gets to ask council for a permit.
Your council member represents you. That doesn’t change. What changes is that on the handful of decisions big enough to reshape this town for generations, you get to speak for yourself first.
Don’t take our word for it. The full amendment is in plain English, right here: https://protectgrovecity.org/cca-amendment/. If anyone can point to the line where a council member loses a right, send it to us at info@protectgrovecity.org. We’ll address it publicly. That’s a standing offer.
At its first meeting, the data center task force asked a reasonable question: what happened with the first data center proposal that came to Grove City?
Here’s what they were told by city staff: it barely got started, only pre-annexation, no plan in place, no presentation, land never even discussed, dropped practically from the beginning.
Grove City’s own council record says otherwise.
Ordinance C-25-23: “Authorize the City Administrator to Execute a Pre-Annexation Agreement with Smart Citizens, LLC, and the Heirs of Marilyn W. Trapp, et al., for approximately 89.3± acres located south of Rensch Road.” That’s the same ground under discussion today. It wasn’t a first reading; it was a second reading and public hearing, on July 17, 2023, meaning it had already been before council once before that, on top of caucus discussions.
It’s true this land was never annexed in that meeting. All five council members voted no that night. But “pre-annexation” is doing a lot of work in the “didn’t get its feet wet” claim, because here’s what was actually attached to that agreement:
Kyle Rauch, who works for the city administration, not council, was at that meeting, at the podium, walking council through the zoning classification, the setbacks, and the traffic comparison in detail. That’s not “we don’t really know much about it.” Those are detailed, technical, on-the-record answers, in front of the very council that voted the agreement down that night.
All five council members present, Ted Berry, Roby Schottke, Mark Sigrist, Randy Holt, and Christine Houk, voted no on July 17, 2023. That part of “it didn’t go anywhere” is accurate. But a detailed site plan, an engineered traffic study, a negotiated tax abatement with real numbers attached, a public hearing with residents raising specific objections, and a unanimous recorded council vote is not “no plan,” “no presentation,” and “land never even discussed.” It’s a fully vetted proposal that Grove City residents and their council looked at closely and turned down.
Worth noting who was in that room: before the vote, Randy Holt scolded the public for choosing housing over the data center, telling residents that if Grove City didn’t annex and develop the land itself, they’d get “much worse partners” through Jackson Township development instead. That’s the same Randy Holt who, at the task force’s first meeting on Wednesday, got visibly worked up defending New Albany and Hilliard’s data centers and pushing back on the idea that Grove City shouldn’t necessarily follow their example. Doesn’t quite sound like the kind of guy who’s really weighing the facts now does it…
Maybe it was a bad memory. Maybe “didn’t get its feet wet” was about a different stage of the process than this one. Look at the documents and decide for yourself: Ordinance C-25-23 is a public record, dated July 17, 2023, and here’s the video of the meeting (and that scolding I mentioned above is quickly after the 1 hour mark):
https://grovecityohio.new.swagit.com/videos/267109
The task force members asked how we got to this point. That was their very first substantive question, and the answer they got doesn’t match the city’s own paper trail. These are volunteers trying to make an informed recommendation for our community. They deserve the truth, the whole timeline, on day one, not revisionist history where the inconvenient parts didn’t happen.
So, task force members, if any of you are reading this: welcome. We’re glad you’re serving. The full record is here whenever you want it: the ordinances, the minutes, the meeting videos, all of it, unclipped. No homework assignments required.
And to everyone else: this is what the Community Consent Amendment is for. When the official version of events can drift this far from the official records, maybe the people should get to check the math themselves.
