A letter to the Englewood REVIEW editor
By Robin Williams, Retired biology and environmental science teacher, and Candidate for Sarasota Charter Review Board, District 4.
A former Sarasota City Planning Board member recently commented that “developer money and influence had corrupted our development process” and that city staffers were putting “their fingers on the scale” in favor of developers. He concluded the system “is rigged against you and me—and in favor of the developers.”
Unfortunately, that same pattern is being played out in municipalities like North Port with the proposed hyper-scale data center. In that case, the consequences can be more profound and dire.
Alaina Ray, North Port’s Director of Development Services, is likely the “fingers on the scale” employee there. Before assuming this position in December 2021, Ray was Director of Planning and Zoning in Loudoun County, Virginia, or “Data Center Alley.” She worked with the local government and Planning Commission managing development project applications, and data center construction surged. Loudon County now has 233 data centers covering 56.5 million square feet, more than any other location in the entire world, with more data centers in the pipeline!
Within eleven months of Ray becoming North Port’s Director of Development Services, on November 14, 2022, 73 North Port properties were purchased by North Port Holdings 300 LLC, and 13 more were purchased by sister company North Port Equities, LLC.
While North Port Holdings is the data center applicant, the real power is the tech company operator hidden by non-disclosure agreements.
As the New York Times reported, major operators include “Meta, Google, OpenAI, Microsoft and others,” and they “are shoveling tens of billions of dollars into developing A.I. models,” and “building data centers.”…“ Silicon Valley corporations and investors, emboldened by President Trump’s embrace of the technology… have pledged up to $200 million to two new Super PACs that are aimed at forcing out politicians whom they see as insufficiently supportive of the push into artificial intelligence.”
Super PAC Leading the Future, backed by tech bros Marc Andreesen, Benjamin Horowitz, and OpenAI guy Greg Brockman, has already raised over $140 million nationally. It pledged $5 million and is funding TV ads through American Mission Florida to promote gubernatorial candidate Byron Donalds.
Donalds also received a million dollars from Florida Power & Light (NextEra Energy), $500,000 from Duke Energy, and $275,000 from TECO Holdings to line up his support for nuclear power plant construction.
Campaign contributions from AI and data center interests have exceeded $30 million in Florida, with money also from Anthropic’s PAC Public First Action. Much of that is being used to fund legislative seats so that “pay-to-play” legislators will pass bills during the 2027 and 2028 legislative sessions, enabling data center and nuclear plant construction statewide.
Since July 11, when Hugging Face first recognized unauthorized activity by rogue AI agents, even the creators realized that this technology can pose an existential threat to humanity. Expecting companies that profit astronomically off AI to somehow be trusted to police themselves is sheer insanity – it’s the fox guarding the henhouse, but carrying potentially global catastrophic consequences. Further AI experimentation needs to be immediately ceased unless and until there is absolute proof that AI agents can never act independently of human control, and AI technology must be rigorously regulated by independent agencies.
Hyper-scale data centers, even without the evolution of AI technology, come with incalculable environmental costs. Florida is the number-one state for sinkholes. We have a high water table and limestone geology. Limestone is porous and soaks up pollutants. Acidic chemical contamination will literally dissolve the rock under us. Data centers utilize millions of gallons of potable fresh water, already in short supply in parts of Florida. With rising sea levels due to climate change, it will only get worse. Data centers in Florida should be a nonstarter given our environmental conditions. We’re the Suncoast, but instead of expanding solar energy, Byron Donalds and his friend Donald Trump want nuclear plants.
In Pennsylvania, Trump is paving the way for the recommissioning of the infamous Three Mile Island nuclear plant. Reactor 2 was the scene of the partial nuclear meltdown 47 years ago in the worst commercial nuclear accident in the United States. Reactor 1 was finally decommissioned on September 20, 2019. Trump got the US Department of Energy to issue a $1 billion federal loan to lower the financing costs for Constellation Energy, working with Microsoft, to recommission the plant to supply energy for AI data centers. We should be working to decommission all nuclear fission plants, not resurrect them.
Spent nuclear fuel rods are highly radioactive and, for approximately 10 years, must be kept in pools of water. Cesium-137 and Strontium-90 give off significant heat and radiation for about 100 – 300 years. It can take anywhere from 1000 – 10,000 years for spent fuel rods to decay to the level of naturally occurring uranium, but some of the radioactive isotopes can remain hazardous for longer than the human species has existed! This is a burden we should not be placing on humanity for thousands of generations. It’s immoral as well as insane. Besides the potential biological cost, the thought of having to split atoms just to create heat energy to boil water to make steam to turn a turbine to generate electricity is, to put it mildly, overkill. There are a lot simpler, safer, and cheaper ways to make steam, including using renewable energy. Here on the Suncoast, it’s long overdue that we start prioritizing and mandating solar energy.
If you don’t want data centers and nuclear plants destroying Sarasota and the state of Florida, it’s time to vote out those who accept millions from those business interests. Sarasota’s County Commission should also use Section 7.1A.iii of our Charter to pass an ordinance halting any data center (for a defined time period, as proposed by Andrea Doria Kale, running for Sarasota Charter Review Board, District 5) or nuclear power plant construction anywhere in the county. This would go to our electorate within 60 days of filing with the Supervisor of Elections, and if passed, would become part of our charter. It wouldn’t have to wait two years until the next general election in 2028, when it’ll be too late. It’s time we use our charter for its original purpose – to empower Sarasota residents to have home rule that protects us and our environment.
The current charter is a far cry from earlier versions, which afforded more power to local government and residents. Existing amendments and recent state preemption laws have resulted in diminished home rule and restricted our electorate’s ability to do anything about it.
Rather than making it a more flexible “living” document that can be amended to address the many challenges and shifting needs of our county, there have been changes that stifle community input and prevent further changes. Amendment 7.1A requires 10% of Sarasota voters to sign a petition to get a referendum on the ballot, up from an already difficult 5% and in a restricted time period. It should have been lowered, not doubled.
It also says that “Any proposed amendment shall not conflict with the Florida Constitution, general law or the Charter. (Amended 11/8/2022.) ”That amendment should be repealed or revised. It declares that any change must comply with Florida law and the current charter. How can you have a change to the charter without “conflicting with” the existing charter? How can you provide true home rule when you can’t do anything that might vary from state rules?
Article I POWERS AND SCOPE OF COUNTY GOVERNMENT Section 1.1 of Sarasota’s first charter states: “Intent of the Voters. The people of Sarasota County, Florida, in order to dispense with the involvement of the state legislature in local matters, and in order to empower the people of this County to make changes in their own government, do hereby avail themselves of the opportunity afforded by the Florida Constitution to adopt a Home Rule Charter.”
Historically, a state can provide more protection than the federal government, not less. The point of home rule is to provide more protection than the state, not less. Our original charter let residents make government changes they thought were important.
State laws passed in recent years preempt local control. One new law, for example, prevents local governments from regulating the types of power plants utility companies can operate. That could result in real harm to the health of our residents and the environment. This needs to change if we want a charter with real authority.
I will work to get Amendment 7.1 A repealed to make ballot initiatives more attainable by:
Cutting the number of petition signatures required to get a referendum on the ballot and lengthening the time needed to collect them by volunteers.
The County needs to enforce amendments 3.9 Siesta Key Beach Road as Public Right of Way and 3.10 Preserve County-Owned Parks, Preserves, Beach and Water Access and Waterfront Vistas.
These amendments, which protect public access to our beaches and bodies of water and prevent our public parks and preserves from being sold off, had overwhelming support: 3.9 with 65% voter approval, and 3.10 was passed by 72.7% of voters.
I will propose charter amendments to:
Guarantee Sarasota Memorial Hospital remains a public hospital with dedicated county funding and ensure our residents have access to affordable health care.
Ensure all our students have the right to an excellent, fully funded public education and give parents the right to access affordable, quality child care.
Utilize renewable energy: phase out fossil fuel plants and phase in solar energy.
Make Sarasota affordable by restricting percentage increases for homeowner insurance and rental lease renewals.
Prohibit variances and zoning changes that harm the environment and only benefit developers, not the public.
We currently have 10 Charter Review Board members from one party, 3 of whom were initially appointed by DeSantis, and a current candidate who’s a DeSantis-appointed trustee at the State College of Florida, Manatee-Sarasota. If we want home rule, we need members who aren’t attached at the hip to the governor.
Please vote for Jim Tate, Charter Review, District 3, Robin Williams, Charter Review, District 4, and Andrea Doria Kale, Charter Review, District 5. A few independent voices will be helpful.
All our county commissioners are from one party and have capitulated to developer interests time and time again. Please vote for Julie London, District 4, who will be a watchdog for the people of Sarasota.
For more information about Robin Williams go to charterreview4srq.org.
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