Lacy Lakeview leaders are offering a seat at the table to Ross and other communities near the Infrakey data center site through a special district.
Lacy Lakeview’s data center proposal has yet to capture the hearts and minds of rural neighbors around the 520-acre project site, but the city has a plan to win them over.
Mayor Chuck Wilson says the city is exploring a “special purpose district” that could give communities such as Ross and Chalk Bluff a seat at the table in tax and infrastructure decisions for the $10 billion project.
Special purpose districts are taxing authorities set up to fund specific infrastructure projects as well as necessary services, such as fire departments or water works.
“If Ross is going to get it in the shorts, this will allow us to make the deal work for them,” Wilson said on a call last week. However, he reiterated that much like the data center itself, conversations about the district remain conceptual and largely informal.
Special purpose districts can also be used to exert some local control over aspects of the Infrakey project, including setbacks, noise levels and the location of public utilities, Lacy Lakeview City Manager Calvin Hodde told The Waco Bridge earlier this month.
Hodde said the concept was in part a response to the intense opposition the data center proposal has generated among residents in the Ross and Chalk Bluff areas.
Opponents have criticized the project as a land and cash grab by a larger neighbor.
As opponents see it, Lacy Lakeview is seeking to annex Infrakey’s property near Ross into its city limits to reap the property tax revenue, while shifting the impacts on air, water and noise onto another city’s residents.
Sharing a windfall
The special purpose district appears to be an attempt by Lacy Lakeview to accommodate those concerns directly.
“I think if everyone’s benefiting from the data center in a positive manner, I think it could be a game-changer for us up here,” Hodde said.
Such districts are typically run by a board of directors representing the taxing entities relevant to a property — McLennan County, Lacy Lakeview, McLennan Community College and Connally ISD in this case.
The board can also be appointed by a county’s commissioner court.
Wilson said he hopes to give Ross two seats on the board, even though Ross is not a taxing entity. That would mean that residents can weigh in on infrastructure spending and noise abatements, for example.
Longtime Ross Mayor Jim Jaska told the Bridge in a recent interview that he was aware of the special purpose district idea but is concerned it would levy property taxes on the residents of Ross who currently pay none.
“It would put a tax on the people that are inside the district,” Jaska said, and the “district would have to pay all of their bills before any of that tax money ever came back to the cities or the entities within that district.”
Wilson said he envisions structuring the district to avoid taxing residential property owners.
“By giving Ross a seat, we’re giving them a say in how the special purpose investments are made, … where to where run pipes, what diameter pipes, what they do and don’t want,” Wilson said.
Keeping Ross rural
Jaska said he has another concern a special purpose district would not solve.
Ross was incorporated in 1974 as a city for a counterintuitive reason, he said: to maintain the area’s rural, agricultural character and more specifically, to keep Ross from being absorbed into Waco.
Through the years, the handful of ordinances passed by the tiny community have revolved around preventing intensive development, not accelerating it.
“We’ve had to put in a subdivision ordinance to keep people from coming out and buying a block of land and splitting it up into half-acre blocks and just jacking in a bunch of houses,” Jaska said, contrasting that philosophy with the one he saw represented by the special purpose district.
Sara Mynarcik, a Ross resident and organizer for the local data center opposition, said the offer of a special purpose district is evidence that opponents are making their voice heard.
Still, she said, a district was secondary to the fundamental question of community character.
“We don’t want an AI data center located in a rural residential area,” Mynarcik said. “We don’t want a city such as Lacy Lakeview taking a narrow path to this 520 acres to create their own little spot that they can claim.”
Both Hodde and Wilson said annexation of the site by Lacy Lakeview would be the best outcome for Ross residents and suggested that Waco could move forward with the project if Lacy Lakeview didn’t, leaving Ross with a data center and no seat at the table.
Waco not included
Waco Mayor Jim Holmes said the city has had no discussions about taking over the development from Lacy Lakeview.
Holmes added that he has not been approached by Lacy Lakeview regarding a special purpose district, “but it sounds like a noble concept.”
McLennan County Judge Scott Felton told the Bridge on Monday that while the county was aware of discussions around the special purpose district, county commissioners have not engaged with it in detail and are still unsure of what role they would play in its governance this early on.
The emerging conversation over the district echoes a growing push in other Texas communities to embed public benefits into data center developments amid a national backlash against the industry.
Cities across the country have experimented with energy and water reporting requirements, tax abatements tied to community benefits agreements and specialized zoning rules, according to the National League of Cities.
