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And a data centre brings absolutely no economic benefit whatsoever to its local community, unlike something like an auto plant that creates entirely new support

And a data centre brings absolutely no economic benefit whatsoever to its local community, unlike something like an auto plant that creates entirely new supporting industries to support it and its employees.

cheriot 6mo ago
Property taxes come to mind.
- xphos 6mo ago
  Local municipalities collect this and often get tricked into not collecting it via agreements to host it in or near their town for multiple year agreements. Also the assessed value of the property may not come anywhere near the costs of increased electricity demand, water usage and noise pollution problems. For locals Their is typically high paying jobs in factories but these places dont employ a large staff beyond construction. It a tough spaces.
  - toast0 6mo ago
    Property tax is often assessed on capital equipment owned by a business as well as real estate. So while the real estate may be of limited value, the hosted machines could drive significant tax revenue as AI machines are spendy. You're right though, that municipalities often waive taxes to woo big projects.
    - bigfatkitten 6mo ago
      Outside of colo facilities in metro areas, minimising property tax is always a key consideration in choosing a location.
    - xphos 6mo ago
      Yeah but i think server farms are tricky to access because they have accountants to argue about depreciating CPUs, second hand CPU deppreication is enormous so its possible to wiggle the numbers down. Not to zero but the challenge is that you have to recoup not just hthe land value but the value related all the infrastructure and resource drain this type of business does which is very non-trivial
mediaman 6mo ago
Loudoun County in Virginia generates $1 billion in property tax revenues from data centers. It funds half of all of their expenditures. Can you imagine having half of your total municipal government budget being paid for by data centers? Their citizens pay much lower property tax rates, and get much better schooling and police. Henrico County (also VA) took $60 million in unexpected new revenues from data centers and created an affordable housing trust that is subsidizing low-cost housing. Although these counties are figuring it out, it's an incredible failure in imagination for many of these liberals in other states to look at an immense source of new funding that could support schools, housing and health and just spurn it because they heard from a friend of a friend that they consume a lot of water based on a discredited book with elementary math errors.
- bombcar 6mo ago
  Hopefully they don't end up with a "Digital Detroit" when datacenters start closing. Though even if the AI market collapses, the capital spent means they'd probably keep operating; paying for 30 employees is much different than paying for 3,000 at a factory. But the datacenter might be owned by the creditors at that time.
- no_wizard 6mo ago
  They’re an anomaly that benefits from a number of factors like being close to the government for contracting, early data centers built there and they tended to congregate and dumb luck. They’re an outlier and don’t really prove much of anything. Oregon has lots and lots of data centers and not much to show for it on any front, other than higher electric prices for consumers
  - mediaman 6mo ago
    Oregon gave a lot of time-limited property tax breaks. They also don't have a sales tax. So I would agree that giving away the #1 way that data centers contribute to the government isn't optimal, though you could argue it's a long-term play. As the tax break terms expire, Oregon will get $450 million in annual property taxes from the data centers, or about 1.4% of the state budget.
andsoitis 6mo ago
> data centre brings absolutely no economic benefit whatsoever to its local community Following that logic, are you suggesting that data centers should not be built at all?
- bigfatkitten 6mo ago
  I’m saying that communities are absolutely within their right to oppose developments that make their homes and their lives worse for no benefit.

cheriot 6mo ago

Property taxes come to mind.

xphos 6mo ago
Local municipalities collect this and often get tricked into not collecting it via agreements to host it in or near their town for multiple year agreements. Also the assessed value of the property may not come anywhere near the costs of increased electricity demand, water usage and noise pollution problems. For locals Their is typically high paying jobs in factories but these places dont employ a large staff beyond construction. It a tough spaces.
- toast0 6mo ago
  Property tax is often assessed on capital equipment owned by a business as well as real estate. So while the real estate may be of limited value, the hosted machines could drive significant tax revenue as AI machines are spendy. You're right though, that municipalities often waive taxes to woo big projects.
  - bigfatkitten 6mo ago
    Outside of colo facilities in metro areas, minimising property tax is always a key consideration in choosing a location.
  - xphos 6mo ago
    Yeah but i think server farms are tricky to access because they have accountants to argue about depreciating CPUs, second hand CPU deppreication is enormous so its possible to wiggle the numbers down. Not to zero but the challenge is that you have to recoup not just hthe land value but the value related all the infrastructure and resource drain this type of business does which is very non-trivial

mediaman 6mo ago

Loudoun County in Virginia generates $1 billion in property tax revenues from data centers. It funds half of all of their expenditures. Can you imagine having half of your total municipal government budget being paid for by data centers? Their citizens pay much lower property tax rates, and get much better schooling and police. Henrico County (also VA) took $60 million in unexpected new revenues from data centers and created an affordable housing trust that is subsidizing low-cost housing. Although these counties are figuring it out, it's an incredible failure in imagination for many of these liberals in other states to look at an immense source of new funding that could support schools, housing and health and just spurn it because they heard from a friend of a friend that they consume a lot of water based on a discredited book with elementary math errors.

bombcar 6mo ago
Hopefully they don't end up with a "Digital Detroit" when datacenters start closing. Though even if the AI market collapses, the capital spent means they'd probably keep operating; paying for 30 employees is much different than paying for 3,000 at a factory. But the datacenter might be owned by the creditors at that time.
no_wizard 6mo ago
They’re an anomaly that benefits from a number of factors like being close to the government for contracting, early data centers built there and they tended to congregate and dumb luck. They’re an outlier and don’t really prove much of anything. Oregon has lots and lots of data centers and not much to show for it on any front, other than higher electric prices for consumers
- mediaman 6mo ago
  Oregon gave a lot of time-limited property tax breaks. They also don't have a sales tax. So I would agree that giving away the #1 way that data centers contribute to the government isn't optimal, though you could argue it's a long-term play. As the tax break terms expire, Oregon will get $450 million in annual property taxes from the data centers, or about 1.4% of the state budget.

andsoitis 6mo ago

> data centre brings absolutely no economic benefit whatsoever to its local community Following that logic, are you suggesting that data centers should not be built at all?

bigfatkitten 6mo ago
I’m saying that communities are absolutely within their right to oppose developments that make their homes and their lives worse for no benefit.