Today (Aug. 6) was the last day we had to collect the 971 verified signatures from Middleton township voters that are needed to place a referendum on the ballot so the people could decide whether to let Meta rezone yet another 13 parcels from agricultural to light industrial. We might have succeeded in gathering the signatures needed within the 30-day timeframe for the referendum if Ohio’s captured legislature would not have catered to industry once again to raise the percentage of qualified voters for a township zoning referendum from 15% to 35% of the township registered voters, making it much more difficult for the people to have a say.
It is obviously stacked against us by our “representatives” in Columbus to give people a voice in challenging industries that will run roughshod over them. Never forget that Meta was secretly advanced for years, hiding behind non-disclosure agreements, until it was too late. Then, to add insult to injury, we found out about the fast-tracked Title V Apollo fracked-gas power plant that will be a major polluter in the area. Apollo received even more tax breaks and did not even need zoning because of the Ohio legislature catering to industry once a gain.
We appreciate Middleton Township Trustee Petrea’s vote against the recent rezoning. Had Trustee Moulton or Trustee Vetter joined her to vote against the rezoning, we would not have had to gather signatures for a referendum. Now there is even more rezoning that will be heard by the Middleton Township Zoning Commission on Aug. 12. We hope the Zoning Commission will vote against allowing the rezoning as they did before, and that one other trustee will join Trustee Petrea to scale back Meta.
With Meta already violating previous promises, and with their duplicity to secretly bring in a huge polluting gas plant, are our local officials still going to rubber stamp everything Meta wants at our expense? With all the tax breaks given Meta and the gas plant, are we going to settle for the little appeasement money they decide to give while they profit much more from the tax breaks?
What about the Wood County commissioners and the Planning Commission? What are t hey going to do to protect us from Meta’s land grab, diesel pollution, and Apollo? We asked the commissioners to make a resolution against more hyperscale data centers to be built in Wood County, and they have not even done that.
Just this week, Athens County commissioners voted to install a moratorium against large data centers in that county. There is so much more our local officials could do to protect the people rather than giving AI hyperscalers everything they want, especially with New Albany Company potentially looking to build another data center in Perrysburg Township. Would that include another polluting gas plant as well? If so, there is nothing we could do to stop it thanks to Ohio’s legislative compromise!
There is plenty more that our local officials could have done to represent the best interests of their constituents and not the industry. There was not event a Joint Economic Development District formed before Meta began construction, so we lost out on a huge revenue stream of income tax from mostly out-of-town construction workers. Meta would have to agree to the JEDD that Middleton Township and Bowling Green have been working on for months, but will they? Why wasn’t a JEDD negotiated at the very outset, especially because it is obvious there are not enough local workers to construct such a huge project?
We can already see that we have lost prime farmland, adjacent property value, and overall tax revenue and stand to lose a lot of water and our air quality because of Meta and Apollo. How much more will our local officials cause us to lose by giving Meta all it wants at our expense?
We need residents to continue to stand up against Meta since our local officials are not! We need to elect more local representatives like Trustee Petrea and give all those who have signed non-disclosure agreements and who continue to cater to Meta a boot out of office as soon as their terms are up, if not before.
Leatra Harper
Bowling Green
