One county, one side. We will tell you which.

Expectations

What we can and cannot do for you

• What you can expect

  • A straight answer about who we work for, every time you ask
  • Your question written into a public register, with the answer and the date
  • An honest we do not know yet or that study has not been done instead of an invented number
  • Your objection recorded accurately even when the project does not change because of it
  • Notice of meetings far enough ahead to actually attend
  • Commitments written in specific language with dates and numbers, published where you can check them
  • A route to escalate a complaint that does not dead-end with us

• What you should not expect

  • Us to represent you, or to negotiate on your behalf — we cannot, and anyone telling you otherwise is wrong
  • Us to verify our own client's technical claims; that is for qualified experts and your county's own review
  • Us to control the outcome — we do not decide, and neither does the developer
  • Confidential business information about the project or the company
  • Legal advice of any kind
  • Agreement. We will document your position accurately; we will not pretend to share it

Asking a question

How to raise a question or a concern

• Any way that works for you

  By email, by telephone, on paper by mail, or in person at a meeting. Participation is not conditioned on having internet access, and a question asked on a paper form enters the same register as one sent by email.

• What happens next

  Your question is logged with the date. Where it needs a technical answer it goes to the expert accountable for that subject. The answer and its source are published in the register. If there is no answer yet, the register says that.

• If you are not satisfied

  There is a written escalation route below. A complaint that goes unresolved does not disappear from the record — it stays open, with its age visible.

Access and accommodation

For any engagement we run, we commit to: meeting locations that are physically accessible; materials available in large print on request; a telephone route for anyone who would rather speak than write; paper submission accepted at every stage; and interpretation or translation where there is need in the community, arranged on request in advance.

If something about how a meeting or a document is set up prevents you from taking part, tell us and we will fix it for the next one.

Your privacy

We collect the least we can. To answer a question we need a way to reach you and nothing else. Published registers carry the substance of a question, not the name, address, or contact details of the person who asked it, unless that person asks to be named. We do not sell, rent, or transfer participant information, and we do not use it for anything other than answering and reporting.

Example records

What the public record looks like

These are the formats we use. The content below is illustrative — no real project is described — but the structure is exactly what gets published in an engagement.

Public question-and-answer register

Three of the five rows above are unfinished, referred, or unresolved. That ratio is realistic, and a register that never shows it is not being kept honestly.

Commitments tracker

After an approval, every commitment in the benefits agreement and every zoning condition goes into a public tracker with its source, its due date, its current status, and the evidence behind the status.See the tracker format, which is the same document your county receives.

Meeting notices and summaries

Notices, agendas, and summaries for active engagements are posted here. Nothing appears yet because no engagement is currently at that stage. When one is, notices go up here and through local channels as well — not only online, because not everyone who should hear about a meeting is going to find it on a website.

Escalation and grievance route

1. Raise it with us. Any channel. It is logged with the date and gets a substantive response.
2. If the response is inadequate, say so. The complaint is escalated to a partner of this firm by name, and the escalation is recorded.
3. If it is still unresolved, it is put to the client directly, and the fact that it was and the client's response are both published.
4. It stays open. An unresolved complaint remains in the public record with its age showing until it is resolved or formally closed with a reason.
5. None of this replaces your other routes. Your county commission, planning department, code enforcement, the permitting agency, and any applicable regulator remain available to you, and we will not ask you to come to us first.

Questions worth asking

Ten questions about any proposed data center

These are the questions that decide these projects. We are not answering them here — the answers are specific to a project and have to come from qualified experts and verified documents, not from a website. What follows is what a complete answer includes, so you can tell when you have been given one.

1. Water — how much, from where, and who else uses it

   How much water the facility will use in a year, whether it is drawn from the public system, a well, surface water, or reuse, and what happens in a drought. Cooling design drives this and designs differ enormously, so a figure from another project tells you nothing about this one. Ask for the annual figure, the peak-day figure, the source, and who else draws on that source.

2. Electricity — how much, and who pays for the infrastructure

   The load the facility will draw, when it phases in, what transmission or substation work is required to serve it, and — the part that matters most locally — how the cost of that infrastructure is allocated between the customer and other ratepayers. That allocation is set through utility and regulatory process, not by the county, but you are entitled to know what has been proposed.

3. Backup generators — how many, how often, and what they emit

   The number of generators, the fuel, the permitted hours for testing and for outage operation, the applicable air permit, and what the emissions limits are. Routine testing is the part communities most often are not told about in advance, and it is the part they hear.

4. Noise, light, and what it looks like from your property

   Modeled sound levels at the nearest property lines, at night as well as by day, and against the county's existing ordinance. Lighting design and whether it is shielded. Building height, setbacks, buffer depth, and what species and screening the buffer actually uses. Ask to see the view from a specific address rather than a rendering from the air.

5. Construction traffic

   Peak construction workforce, vehicle counts, haul routes, the hours, how long each phase lasts, and which roads take the load. Construction lasts years on these campuses. Which intersections are studied, and who pays for what the study finds, are fair questions to press.

6. Emergency response

   Fire suppression systems, hazardous materials on site including fuel storage, the response plan, whether the responding department is volunteer or paid, and what training or equipment it would need. Whether the developer is contributing to that capacity is a legitimate question to ask before a vote, not after.

7. Taxes, incentives, and public revenue

   What abatements or exemptions are proposed, their duration, what the phase-in schedule looks like, and what the county and school district actually receive in each year of it. Georgia has a statewide sales-and-use tax exemption available to qualifying high-technology data centers, and local arrangements are negotiated separately. Ask for a year-by-year table, not a total.

8. Jobs — construction and permanent

   Construction employment is large and temporary. Permanent operational employment at a data center is modest relative to the capital invested, and that is a characteristic of the asset class rather than a criticism of any project. Ask for the permanent headcount at full build, the job types, the wage range, and what share is expected to be filled locally.

9. Property values and nearby land

   What the buffer and setback commitments are, what the site plan does at the edges, and what happens to adjacent parcels the developer controls but has not disclosed plans for. Claims about property value effects in either direction should be sourced to a study of comparable facilities, not asserted.

10. Decommissioning and what happens if it closes

    Whether there is a decommissioning obligation, what triggers it, what financial assurance backs it — bond, letter of credit, or nothing — and who holds it. This is the question most often left out of the conversation entirely, and it is the one that determines what your county is left with.

If a project in your county cannot produce sourced answers to these, that is itself information. Ask who prepared each answer and ask to see the study behind it.