League of Women Voters event focuses on fight against data centers

Data centers took center stage in Kent July 6 as Jessica Winchell, the moving force behind the now 2,600-member Portage Residents for Responsible Development, spoke at a Monday forum sponsored by the League of Women Voters of Kent.

Before zeroing in on a not-yet-officially proposed data center campus the Geis Companies and Bitdeer Technologies Group are proposing to build on just over 150 acres Geis owns at its Shalersville Township Turnpike Commerce Center, Winchell shared four lessons she’s learned about forming and participating in a successful grassroots organization.

• Instead of telling people what they should think, Winchell said it’s best to communicate one’s own beliefs. Combat the lack of transparency endemic in big tech companies with the exact opposite: be ready to present facts, figures and studies.
  
  
• Ask for help clearly and often. Delegating tasks translates to efficiency, and everyone grows while doing it, she said.
  
  
• Use all tools at your disposal. In an unfair fight, it’s no sin to use every available weapon. “A tool or technology is a morally neutral thing. We have the tools of AI and social media and we’re going to use them to fight the good fight and make judicious decisions,” she said.
  
  
• Finally, “beware of the tone police,” Winchell said, referring to people who focus on how the message is delivered instead of on the content.

She said she’s been told not to be so rude, that Portage Residents for Responsible Development can’t be taken seriously if it uses social media, that real leaders wouldn’t have such an attitude, that she is overreacting and that “the snark is a real turn off.”

No to all of it, Winchell insisted. Would-be activists can and must take up space.

“When a lot of little voices join together, they can become very big, big enough to drown out the big tech boys,” she said.

Ohio, Winchell said, is attractive to data center developers for a number of reasons. The state has water and a favorable climate. They tend to look for economically depressed areas, which disproportionately includes rural communities and those where people of color may live.

She said there are more than 200 large data centers in Ohio, driven by an AI and surveillance-boom “gold rush mentality.” The Canton news source The Canton Repository tallied 210 data centers statewide as of June 27. Winchell referred attendees to the website brockovichdatacenter.com, which cites three “community reported” data centers in Portage County and another proposed.

Then, on to Shalersville, where Bitdeer is proposing to build a data center campus housed in 14 buildings on land Geis owns near the township’s Ohio Turnpike interchange.

Correctly identifying Bitdeer as one of the world’s largest crypto miners, Winchell questioned how the proposed Shalersville facility would actually be used. Company reps have said it would be used for AI, but she points out the lack of institutional transparency. There is no way to know if the data would be used for government or military purposes or even to create and distribute porn, she said.

Winchell also referenced, but did not elaborate on, potential environmental concerns associated with data centers.

Bitdeer, she said, seems to be trying to sway the community and trustees with increased property valuation figures, which translate to increased property tax revenue.

During a June 16 community meeting at the Shalersville Town Hall, Bitdeer representatives stated those increased revenues would amount to $3.77 million more annually for the Crestwood Local Schools, $808,800 more annually for the Mantua-Shalersville Fire Department and $449,123 more annually for Shalersville Township.

Winchell has questions.

First, there is a serious movement in the state legislature to abolish property taxes, she said. Second, she said Bitdeer officials could not tell her how they’d arrived at the property tax figures they’d hyped "because the guy who came up with them is dead now.”

Cue crowd laughter.

Winchell also questioned Bitdeer’s claim that the proposed campus would provide 200 jobs. It’s the same number multiple data center developers use for many of their proposals, no matter the size, she said. Her guess is that most of the jobs will be upfront, temporary construction jobs, with a few left over for people tasked with “babysitting the servers.”

The few high-paying jobs would likely be remote, with the people drawing those paychecks sitting in faraway offices, she said.

She credited Shalersville trustees for not giving up without a fight. Up against a deep-pocket mega-corporation, the trustees are working with the county prosecutor’s office and their own privately hired law firm to craft some kind of regulatory zoning code that would likely stand up in court.

They’ve also created a citizen’s advisory committee to help them with research related to data centers and develop a path forward. She volunteered, as did Shalersville resident Jim Elsey, a nuclear mechanical engineer with 55 years of experience.

In a separate interview, he told The Portager that his decades of involvement with the construction of large power plants, refineries, steel mills and chemical processing plants opened his eyes to the impact they have on the communities in which they are sited.

Geis and Bitdeer may have the best intentions, “but when it comes down to actually building it, when it comes to crunch time, when they start hitting deadlines, that’s where all that stuff goes away. They’ll start taking short cuts. I don’t trust them,” he said.

A constitutional amendment?

Portage Residents for Responsible Development is also supporting Ohio Residents for Responsible Development in its petition drive aimed at getting a proposed constitutional amendment on the ballot.

Knowing that Gov. Mike DeWine and state legislators favor large facilities, the proposed amendment would ban data centers that would, even at peak load, pull more than 25 megawatts per month from the energy grid.

Bitdeer reps have stated that the Shalersville facility would draw 750 megawatts.

So far, Winchell said, the petition drive is 25% of the way to its 413,000 signature goal. In a separate interview, Portage County Board of Elections Deputy Director Theresa Nielsen explained what happens next:

Before the issue could appear on the ballot, the county board of elections offices would have to verify each signature. Each office would report back to the Ohio secretary of state.

Should that office conclude that there are enough valid signatures, it would put the issue on the ballot and the ballot board, which is part of the same secretary of state’s office, would make the final decision as to the actual language voters would see.

Winchell said Ohio Residents for Responsible Development’s goal is to have the issue placed on the November 2027 ballot.

A previous effort to place the issue on the November 2026 ballot failed when the groups only had about three months to collect sufficient signatures. By the state’s July 1 deadline, they had only collected about 100,000 unverified signatures which still count for the current petition drive, Winchell said.