After Three Years Clarksville Deserves Real Answers
Three years ago, The Graphic started covering the proposed data center project in Clarksville. Since then, we have filed Freedom of Information Act requests, reviewed permit filings, attended public meetings, and reported on utility agreements, zoning ordinances, environmental permits, and infrastructure discussions. Despite being met with resistance, we’ve done our part.
Now it’s time for Clarksville and Johnson County officials to do theirs, and show up.
Let me be clear about something before I go further: I am not opposed to this project. I went to Pryor, Okla., last December to see Google’s data center, one of the largest in the world, and came away genuinely encouraged by what large-scale data centers can do for a community. Jobs, school funding, long-term economic stability. Those are real benefits, and Clarksville could use them.
But encouragement and blind trust are two different things.
Throughout this process, Mayor David Rieder has repeatedly assured residents that city officials have done their “due diligence” and there is no reason for concern. I’ve heard versions of that assurance more times than I can count. Assurances, though, are not answers. And after three years, residents still don’t have clear answers to the questions this project demands. For instance: How much water will the facility use? How will wastewater be managed? What is the full planned scale of the development? How many permanent jobs will actually be created, and at what wages? And who, exactly, is going to be occupying this facility?
These are not “gotcha” questions. They are the basic things any community ought to know about a project of this magnitude before it gets built next to a hospital, long-term care facilities and residential areas.
On Monday, July 13, at 7:30 p.m., following the Clarksville City Council meeting, residents will have a chance to start getting those answers. A group of local citizens, organized in part through a civic workshop held in Clarksville on May 28, has arranged a public information meeting. Citizens will be able to submit questions ahead of time via email, and public officials will receive them in advance, so they have time to prepare real responses. The organizers are personally inviting the Clarksville City Council members, Mayor Rieder, and other relevant officials, such as Rep. Aaron Pilkington, to attend.
I want to be precise: it’s that group organizing the meeting, not The Graphic. But I’ll say plainly what I think: Officials should have had a called meeting like this already, and every official who is invited should be in that room.
Not because this meeting is a formality. Because it’s a test.
Who shows up? Who answers questions directly and who deflects? Who treats residents respectfully and as partners in a decision that will shape Johnson County for the next 50 years, and who treats them as an inconvenience or with disrespect? Those answers will tell us more about the leadership of this community than any reassurance ever could. In an election year, residents tend to remember.
The communities that get the best outcomes from projects like this are the ones where local leaders held the line, asked hard questions, got answers in writing, and kept the public informed every step of the way. That’s what we saw in Pryor. It took them nearly two decades to build that relationship with their data center operator. We don’t have two decades to figure out that we got it wrong.
July 13 is an opportunity. A real public forum, not a two-minute comment period tacked onto a Council agenda, but a dedicated space where residents can ask questions and get answers, is what responsible governance looks like when you’re about to change the face of a city.
Our local leaders have a chance to show this community what they’re made of.
Will they take it?
See the City Council story on page 1 of the June 10 issue of The Graphic for more information about the July 13 public meeting.
Read this story and others in the June 10 issue of The Graphic, available online and at businesses throughout Franklin and Johnson counties. Subscribe or donate here to support more hometown journalism.
