EDITORIAL: In defense of rural land

In the wake of the gigantic annexation of land for what is billed as the largest data center complex in the world, residents of the Town of Port Washington and Town of Belgium are asking their elected representatives to take steps to protect their towns’ farmland from further seizure by the City of Port Washington.

Good luck with that.

In Wisconsin, towns are essentially defenseless against land annexation by municipalities. State statutes put limits on what  towns can do to challenge annexations, while offering mere guidelines for municipalities to follow in annexing land that are a low bar easily stepped over.

Annexation is how municipalities grow. At rare times, if a border agreement is in place, towns may realize some modest benefits. But generally in annexations, cities and villages are winners and towns are losers. Municipalities gain new development and increased tax base. Towns lose land and the valuation that supports their property taxes.

Ozaukee County has recorded some notable annexations. In 1957, the City of Mequon annexed the entire Town of Mequon. Though not exactly an annexation, that was the effect of a decision made by town residents in a referendum to incorporate the town as a city. It is interesting that the decision was driven by the need to protect town land from annexation by adjacent municipalities, chiefly the City of Milwaukee.

Decades later in the center of the county, a 70-acre expanse of farm fields in the Town of Grafton was annexed to the Village of Grafton to become the home of the sprawling retail extravaganza Grafton Commons. 

Port Washington’s data center annexation is in a different realm, an extreme place where conventional standards don’t apply. At roughly 2,000 acres when all of the land now earmarked for annexation is added to the city, it will be equal to almost half of the current area of the entire City of Port Washington. It is an annexation made not to bring commercial development, housing subdivisions or an industrial park to the city, but to accommodate a single land user.

The land transfer stands apart from usual city growth initiatives also in that it is controversial. Indications are that a significant percentage of the local population worries that data centers of this incredible size, found to be environmental nuisances in other parts of the country, will degrade the character and quality of living in this scenic area beside Lake Michigan.

Financially, it is a big win for the city with the revenue that will be harvested from the huge increase in taxable valuation. That benefit, of course, accrues to the City of Port Washington, not the town. The Town of Port Washington is an across-the-board loser in the deal. It loses valuable farmland and the tax revenue from residential properties swept up in the data center land acquisition and is left with an enormous industrial operation, loud and brightly lit, in its once green countryside and years of the annoyance of one of the state’s largest ongoing construction projects.

Is it any wonder that Town of Port residents, along with those of the Town of Belgium, which borders the north side of the data center campus, fear further land losses due to possible data center expansion?

There is no reason to think the data center complex will not expand. Before bulldozers have scrapped away the first swath of topsoil, the project has inflated from a single mere billion-dollar data center using a gigawatt of electricity to something that, according to Port Washington Mayor Ted Neitzke, will hold the world title for data center mass, worth billions, consuming 3.5 gigawatts of power. 

There is also no reason to believe the city’s elected officials would not be delighted to annex more land for data expansion. The mayor and Common Council members have been all in on a mega data center from day one, and when plans for it grew to astonishing dimensions showed no interest in limiting the size of the data center complex by using their power to reduce the size of annexation. Nor was there more than passing acknowledgement of community concerns about negative aspects of the development.

Such unwavering unanimity—seven aldermen and the mayor speaking in perfect cadence without so much as a questioning or cautionary word about what is likely the most consequential city government decision in Port history—is an unsettling rarity in city politics.

In the towns, Belgium Chairman Tom Winker and Zoning Administrator Charlie Parks have expressed the hope that their town’s participation in the Farmland Preservation Program will offer some protection. 

Port Town Chairman Mike Didier noted at last week’s Town Board meeting that his town’s agriculture zoning, which was adopted years ago to limit development by prohibiting lots smaller than 35 acres, may actually have left the town more vulnerable by making it easier for data center land buyers waving payments of $42,000 an acre to acquire large tracts. “That’s why we lost 2,000 acres of farmland,” he said.

The best hope for the towns may be that before further annexations are considered the make-up of the city government will change, perhaps with elected representatives who question the wisdom of claiming more of the countryside for data center-related growth and may even voice a doubt that annexing 2,000 acres of land for the world’s biggest data center was the right thing to do.