What I Wanted to Say

Peculiar Board of Aldermen
October 7, 2024

Mr. Mayor, Members of the Board and City Staff,
Thank you for allowing me to speak to you all this evening.  I would like to use this time to discuss what has happened to our community over the last few months, the damage that it has caused and ideas on how we can all move forward together toward a better future for all of us.
I would like to start by accurately describing our community.  We all are members of a shared community that is much larger than just what lies inside city limits.  Decisions that are made by this board have lasting effects on people well outside of just the city limits.  Our community consists of the city of Peculiar, the city of Raymore and the residents of unincorporated north Cass County.  What makes this our shared community is the school district.  All of our children go to school together and have for quite some time. 
Now that I have described what I believe to be our greater community, I would like to talk about the different political entities within this.  For starters, we have this board, the Raymore City Council, the County Commissioners, the school board, South Metro and West Peculiar fire districts.  These groups all have competing interests but make decisions that affect all of us and because of this, they all have a responsibility to not only their smaller political subdivisions but the greatest good of the community.  
All of this leads me to what has gone on over the last year or so.  Over a year ago, big tech came to Peculiar.  The city was approached by a developer with one goal.  That goal was to make as much money as possible for themselves and their client.  A client that was never disclosed.  This developer did not have the best interest of the community at heart.  I am also greatly disappointed in not only this company but their parent company. They are a KC area company.  This company used predatory business tactics, obscured and hid the truth.  This is the same story that has been played out in small towns across the country.  What do they look for?  Power, water, fiber, loose zoning regulations and cities in financial need.  Why are they looking for these things?  To make money.  Big Tech is a multi-trillion-dollar industry.  In fact, Alphabet aka Google is worth over 2 trillion while Amazon sits at just over 1.9 trillion and Meta sits at a meager 1.5 trillion. They can afford to build all of these things away from people with their own power sources but that would lower their profits. Profit margins are all they care about.  
This company did not act alone, however, and one need not look too hard to find that the KCDAC has in fact been laying the groundwork for years.  If you go back and look over the Board of Aldermen minutes of this city you can find evidence going back to at least 2018 where the KCDAC was working with this city to change tax policy. In fact, recommending the term 'tax incentive' be used instead of 'abatements.' You can change happy to glad, but it means the same thing.  In this case, publicly funding multi trillion-dollar companies.  Keep in mind of who is on the KCDAC.  This council exists to promote and help big business. 
Once this predatory developer came to town, what happened next?  The community was divided.  Again, this is happening across the country with this industry as they do not care about the wake of destruction, or the collateral damage caused to communities. They only care about profit.  We witnessed some of that division at the last board meeting.  Mr. Mayor, I promise you that there are far more than 20 people against this project and they are not getting all of their information on Facebook.  My wife and I have done a great deal of research.  My wife has spoken to several people who live near data centers.  One of whom is a county commissioner in Northern Virginia who regrets his decision to allow data centers to take over his community.  
So, where are we now?  Now we have a divided community and public trust between the people and city is broken.  Except for the Aldermen, people do not trust this city.  Trust is a funny thing as it is hard to earn yet easy to break.  Once trust is broken it is even harder to regain.  In this case the question must be asked can the trust be regained?  If so, how do we do it?
I for one believe that public trust can be regained but it comes at a cost.  Mr. Mayor, for you to regain any semblance of public trust you must first acknowledge your part in all of this.  This evening you did take a step in that direction when you apologized for your behavior at the last Board of Aldermen meeting.  This is only a start, however, as when the city needed to hear from you, it heard silence.  You made no public statements, that I am aware of, from June 17, 2024 until your outburst at the last board meeting.  You then followed that up with your Facebook post where you gaslit everyone who is against this deal.  Given the fact that you have sat up there on multiple occasions and tried to hold others accountable for what they have posted on Facebook, when you did not agree or said they weren’t true, you should have ensured your statement was indeed factual.  An excellent rebuttal of your post can be found at peacefulpeculiar.org. To sum it all up, our concerns were never addressed by the developer or city.  No one from the city or developer ever tried to sit down with us and address our concerns.  This goes for the people of Northpointe, along 203rd Street and Grand Oaks Farms.  The developer did host a bait and switch meeting where we were supposed to be able to speak to independent third party experts but actually got sticky notes to write our questions on for them to take back and discuss before deciding what they would answer. Another point about the meeting, all of the third-party experts were either Diode employees or contractors who had signed NDA’s in hopes of landing a job and therefor couldn’t answer any of our questions or concerns.  At this meeting, Brad Hardin the CEO of Diode, even stated that he had wanted to notify more than the minimum required by statue at the beginning of the project, but was told not to by the city.  So, Mr. Mayor, if you want the people to ever trust you again, you must be honest with us.  City staff, you also have a great deal of work to do if you want the people to trust you.  Removing items from the agenda is not the answer.  From where I sit it has appeared that the staff has an agenda and will do whatever it takes to get their desired result.  This has included not doing any independent research and just taking the developers talking points as fact, trying to delay moving forward with items to allow for an application so the developer would be grandfathered, taking items completely off meeting agendas to prevent public comment, failures to give proper notice, and in my opinion questionable legal advice.  In fact, it has been contradictory depending on which lawyer shows up.  
How do we heal?  First, I want to thank the Aldermen.  You gentlemen have taken a lot of public heat.  Some of it from me but I want to thank you for the tireless and thankless work you put in for the betterment of this city and our community.  Thankfully, you have heard the will of the people and have taken a stand for what is right and in the best interest of the community.  You gentlemen have stood up to those who would bully you and pushed back against the staff when they have not followed your direction.  It is because of you, the Aldermen, that this issue will finally be back in front of the planning and zoning commission, and we will get a public hearing on removing 'data enters' from the code book before coming back to this board for final action.  That is just the first step toward healing.  The cities codes need to be thoroughly reviewed, and proper setbacks and buffers need to be emplaced to prevent this from happening again when the next predatory developer comes to town.  Those of us who have researched this topic would more than be willing to sit down and share the wealth of information that we have gathered and help find solutions.  You need only ask.  I have also heard from multiple business owners who feel disenfranchised because it appears the city does not care about them simply because they do not live within city limits despite the tax revenue the city gains from them, they do not feel as though they are represented.
For many of us, this was simply the spark that lit the fire.  This is not just a Peculiar issue, it's also a national issue. We will continue this fight to the state level demanding they enact statewide legislation to protect the people.
There are some "good" things this has brought about. New friendships have been made. We may not agree on all things but we all do share the common goal of helping Peculiar reach its full potential.  
Respectfully,
Scott C. Howe