So the City Board tied 4-4 on the six month pause back on Oct 20 (one person sat out) and it just died. The 18 month version did the exact same thing in August. Two tries, same split, and Google still has its $1 billion plan sitting out at the Port. Nobody's moved an inch.
I'm honestly not even sure where I land. The water and power bill questions seem fair to me, nobody's given a straight answer on what this does to rates, and I've heard enough people complain about noise from these things in other towns to be a little nervous. But the jobs argument gets thrown around like it settles everything and I never see real numbers. How many permanent jobs does a building full of servers actually make? Construction crews come and go, I mean the ones that stay.
Then there's the city saying a pause could get us sued, which, ok, maybe. But that sounds like "we can't do anything ever" to me.
I'll admit I'm biased toward anything that brings real local jobs, I just want to know what we're actually getting. If a company can drop a billion dollars here I'd like to see some of it show up for things like the rec fields and youth leagues, because I spend half my life at those and the lights still go out on us.
Anyway. Anyone been to the meetings or know someone who works down at the Port? Curious what the folks who actually live near it think, not just the people yelling on Reddit.