9 ms·

Property Tax revenue, and they are not a drain on services like schools, roads, fire department, police department etc. I'm watching this debate in a town that

Property Tax revenue, and they are not a drain on services like schools, roads, fire department, police department etc. I'm watching this debate in a town that i am from and where I live. Our choices are pretty much be swallowed up by growth from neighboring cities and become a bed room community or solar farms and data centers. The downside with becoming a bedroom community is you risk creating a negative tax base. where the cost of providing services is more than the properties bring with property taxes. I don't know what the right answer is.

JumpCrisscross 1mo ago
Opposition to data centers is like 90% hatred of Silicon Valley and its obstinate elites. One they amplified by trying to build these things sneakily.
- locknitpicker 1mo ago
  > Opposition to data centers is like 90% hatred of Silicon Valley and its obstinate elites. One they amplified by trying to build these things sneakily. This is utter nonsense, and reeks of a desperate and deep denial. I mean, you might as well rationalize your denial by claiming they don't like you because they don't like you. Have you tried actually listening to what critics have to say? Nimby doesn't just pop up out of nowhere at ever spot because someone failed to do PR.
  - JumpCrisscross 1mo ago
    > Have you tried actually listening to what critics have to say? Nimby I wouldn’t dismiss the critics as NIMBY. They are closer to fuck it, nowhere. Some opposition is just anti-AI or misinformed about e.g. water use. But most of them have legitimate complaints about, on one hand, noise and power prices and, on the other hand, the shocking lack of contribution to local employment or taxes from these structures minting—very visibly, they’re not subtle on social media—billionaires at an unprecedented pace. > because someone failed to do PR They should have engaged with the whole community and made the commitments needed to ensure they weren’t jacking up residential power prices and e.g. committing to funding the municipal budget in ways locals would champion.
    - kulahan 1mo ago
      I’ve heard there’s misinformation regarding water use. As far as I’ve heard, these data centers use quite a bit. I imagine they just use them for cooking and spit it back out warmer (though if we’re going to do that, I’d prefer we do it cooling a nuclear power plant, personally…) Is this not accurate? Are there any good resources that aren’t like… these companies being super honest about how super good they are?
      - fragmede 1mo ago
        The reality is that there are two approaches for water: open loop and closed loop, and you can guess correctly at what they mean. The problem is that's subtle and we can't have subtle conversations about things.
        dividedbyzero 1mo ago
        The problem is not that subtle, the only somewhat subtle point is that people don't differentiate between the datacenters of yore that were built sort of well and sustainably and the ones built in the current mad gold rush AI construction frenzy. The former aren't very problematic, often pretty good neighbors even, while the latter are nightmare fuel and will purposely not be built to be quiet and safe and stay within available energy capacity and not deplete struggling water tables, and they have the financial and political clout behind them to get away with pretty much anything. Small wonder no one wants them anywhere near them. Traditional DCs might be able to not be a nuisance despite using evaporative cooling, but no one would build that anywhere where there is a shortage of water, and the amount of heat to be dissipated by such a DC is way smaller. But giving up a local water table might even be seen as an acceptable sacrifice, it's done for agriculture all the time, if only it wasn't done by and for the immense profit of corporations that aim to destroy all entry level jobs and profess to be scared by what havoc their own creation will wreak, all while creating an unprecedented financing bubble. Like, that's not very subtle at all. You can pick out some detail and try to make it about subtleties, but the larger context is very much not about subtleties.
        1mo ago
  - lovich 1mo ago
    Nah, I back the Abundance movement and have voted for building new housing complexes in my town against groups who claimed it would ruin the character of our town to have a 60 acre plot near an old industrial center turned into neighborhoods. Even so, given no other data I would default to no for any data center. Too many of them are doing the “move fast and break things” model while not paying for any of their externalities. If they really want to build in my location they can pay for the extra costs up front instead of claiming that somehow miraculously the economics will work out and they will definitely employ the same amount of people to maintain the building as they did to make the building.
    - trollbridge 1mo ago
      Right. A new DC will just be another brownfield in 20-30 years. We don’t need more of those. New DCs should be built in Quebec next to hydro plants in places absolutely nobody lives. Or next to nuclear power plants.
  - deleted 1mo ago
    [deleted]
  - polski-g 1mo ago
    Because people aren't motivated by facts. They make up lies to justify their opposition: "water usage". But when you disprove that superstition with facts and logic, their opinion on water usage doesn't change. Its like as if you had said nothing at all.
da_chicken 1mo ago
Nobody invests a billion dollars in a facility without first lobbying to get an exemption from property taxes. Most states in the US have passed incentives that include sales and property tax exemptions. They're all drain.
- tptacek 1mo ago
  This is the opposite of the truth. For instance: https://www.wglt.org/local-news/2026-08-04/dekalb-and-aurora-are-flush-with-data-center-cash-they-differ-in-how-to-spend-it https://www.wglt.org/local-news/2026-08-04/dekalb-and-aurora...
  - da_chicken 1mo ago
    No, it's exactly the truth: https://www.ncsl.org/fiscal/subsidizing-servers-how-states-are-competing-to-attract-data-centers https://www.ncsl.org/fiscal/subsidizing-servers-how-states-a... The legislatures are betting that the data centers stick around or bring in jobs. They won't. They think something that expensive must require a ton of jobs to maintain. It doesn't. They need low taxes, cheap land, cheap water, and cheap power.
    - tptacek 1mo ago
      You made a categorical claim. We can't both be right; one of us has to be wrong. So what's false in the report I just linked to?
    - ToValueFunfetti 1mo ago
      I'd think that the claim >Nobody invests a billion dollars in a facility without first lobbying to get an exemption from property taxes. Most states in the US have passed incentives that include sales and property tax exemptions. is not at all supported as "exactly the truth" by a link that lists 11 states with property tax abatements, most of which are not full exemptions. Am I mistaken?
      - da_chicken 1mo ago
altmanaltman 1mo ago
Yeah if you look at it purely from a municipal profit and loss point of view, datacenters are clearly great in that they ideally would pay higher taxes and have less drain than something like a shopping mall. But in this case you also need to consider other points of view to decide what the right answer is, such as the extreme resource extraction datacenters have, pollution issues, and the opportunity cost of using limited land for other purposes. If you're looking purely from a short-term profit and loss analysis and ignore all other factors, datacenters is the right answer by default but you arrive it at it using the wrong method.
- user43928 1mo ago
  I found this article posted yesterday interesting: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49180901 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49180901 I am under the impression that they are building data centers in very rural areas where as you can see there is no issue of limited land. Whether pollution is a significant concern there, I also doubt, unless they construct a coal plant to power it.
- hinkley 1mo ago
  You’ve forgotten sales taxes and income taxes generated by shopping malls, which is a pretty big oversight. The square meters per employee is much lower for retail than for a data center. They’ve gotten quite good at keeping staffing low.
joe_the_user 1mo ago
Data centers have the potential for fire and so local fire departments must spend resources being prepared for such a thing. Edit: water (and sometimes electricity) are local services also and data centers use quite a bit of these.
- AussieWog93 1mo ago
  Not a data centre expert, but don't they quite famously pump CO2 into the server rooms automatically if the fire alarms go off, even if there are people in the room?
  - dividedbyzero 1mo ago
    That's not always a thing and doesn't help with fires in the rest of the complex. Backup generators, fuel depots, power distribution, large-scale cooling infrastructure all pose fire hazards even when facilities are built with actual regulation. The current AI buildout in the US happens pretty much without any meaningful regulation and gives the impression they'd build unshielded nuclear reactors serviced by children while running if they felt they could get it running cheaper and faster.
    - trollbridge 1mo ago
      Yes, that’s exactly my impression. When regulations do exist they use political means to try to evade them for a 1% cost savings.
  - officeplant 1mo ago
    C02 fire suppression is rare in datacenters. That's more of an offshore thing in my experience (I design fire suppression systems for a living, and do life safety systems). Typically server rooms are currently Fluoro-K / Novec123 if they have space constraints on the suppression systems. Those cylinders take up the least space per cubic foot of protected environments. These are less harmful than previous gasses like Halon, but still not good for the environment. If you're lucky we get given ample room for cylinders and can go with Argon suppression systems, but that can take up more than 4 or 5 times the space alone and adds a lot of cost in engineering manifolds, etc. CO2 takes up as much space as Argon systems and will kill someone who doesn't leave the hazard area before release so its generally not used in any datacenter project I've done. Powerplant's at datacenters often use drychem systems instead or foam releasing systems.
ab5tract 1mo ago
Property tax revenue seem highly unlikely when the DC operators have been given enormous tax cuts.
- mlrtime 1mo ago
  A tax cut or PILOT vs vacant land in a small city with a shrinking tax base is still net positive tax increase. If the options are 0 or 50% off some tax rate table, the 50% is still better than nothing.
betaby 1mo ago
> Property Tax revenue Property Tax revenue is surprisingly tiny from data centers in Quebec. Some how DCs have low assessment for the building, like way lower then their resale value even. > they are not a drain on services like schools, roads, fire department, police department etc. Police - definitely not. Roads on other hand, DCs are hauling new equipment / decommissioned equipment daily. I'm in fact in favor of DCs, but tax revenue from them is not impressive at all. At least in Quebec.
- polski-g 1mo ago
  Then change how property is calculated? Virginia taxes business-owned property based on the land and the contents within.
  - betaby 1mo ago
    I have no say in this process. Of course taxes are based on land and building assessed cost. Montreal and suburbs chose to assess condos at a market rate and even higher, while to assess detached house way below the market and assess data centers below the costs it was recently resold.
throw0101d 1mo ago
> The downside with becoming a bedroom community is you risk creating a negative tax base. where the cost of providing services is more than the properties bring with property taxes. E.g.,: * https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020-5-14-americas-growth-ponzi-scheme-md2020 https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020-5-14-americas-growt...
tstrimple 1mo ago
> I don't know what the right answer is. Raise property taxes in the burbs significantly so they can pay for their own infrastructure instead of relying on being subsidized by the poorest people in the area.

JumpCrisscross 1mo ago

Opposition to data centers is like 90% hatred of Silicon Valley and its obstinate elites. One they amplified by trying to build these things sneakily.

locknitpicker 1mo ago
> Opposition to data centers is like 90% hatred of Silicon Valley and its obstinate elites. One they amplified by trying to build these things sneakily. This is utter nonsense, and reeks of a desperate and deep denial. I mean, you might as well rationalize your denial by claiming they don't like you because they don't like you. Have you tried actually listening to what critics have to say? Nimby doesn't just pop up out of nowhere at ever spot because someone failed to do PR.
- JumpCrisscross 1mo ago
  > Have you tried actually listening to what critics have to say? Nimby I wouldn’t dismiss the critics as NIMBY. They are closer to fuck it, nowhere. Some opposition is just anti-AI or misinformed about e.g. water use. But most of them have legitimate complaints about, on one hand, noise and power prices and, on the other hand, the shocking lack of contribution to local employment or taxes from these structures minting—very visibly, they’re not subtle on social media—billionaires at an unprecedented pace. > because someone failed to do PR They should have engaged with the whole community and made the commitments needed to ensure they weren’t jacking up residential power prices and e.g. committing to funding the municipal budget in ways locals would champion.
  - kulahan 1mo ago
    I’ve heard there’s misinformation regarding water use. As far as I’ve heard, these data centers use quite a bit. I imagine they just use them for cooking and spit it back out warmer (though if we’re going to do that, I’d prefer we do it cooling a nuclear power plant, personally…) Is this not accurate? Are there any good resources that aren’t like… these companies being super honest about how super good they are?
    - fragmede 1mo ago
      The reality is that there are two approaches for water: open loop and closed loop, and you can guess correctly at what they mean. The problem is that's subtle and we can't have subtle conversations about things.
      - dividedbyzero 1mo ago
        The problem is not that subtle, the only somewhat subtle point is that people don't differentiate between the datacenters of yore that were built sort of well and sustainably and the ones built in the current mad gold rush AI construction frenzy. The former aren't very problematic, often pretty good neighbors even, while the latter are nightmare fuel and will purposely not be built to be quiet and safe and stay within available energy capacity and not deplete struggling water tables, and they have the financial and political clout behind them to get away with pretty much anything. Small wonder no one wants them anywhere near them. Traditional DCs might be able to not be a nuisance despite using evaporative cooling, but no one would build that anywhere where there is a shortage of water, and the amount of heat to be dissipated by such a DC is way smaller. But giving up a local water table might even be seen as an acceptable sacrifice, it's done for agriculture all the time, if only it wasn't done by and for the immense profit of corporations that aim to destroy all entry level jobs and profess to be scared by what havoc their own creation will wreak, all while creating an unprecedented financing bubble. Like, that's not very subtle at all. You can pick out some detail and try to make it about subtleties, but the larger context is very much not about subtleties.
        1mo ago
- lovich 1mo ago
  Nah, I back the Abundance movement and have voted for building new housing complexes in my town against groups who claimed it would ruin the character of our town to have a 60 acre plot near an old industrial center turned into neighborhoods. Even so, given no other data I would default to no for any data center. Too many of them are doing the “move fast and break things” model while not paying for any of their externalities. If they really want to build in my location they can pay for the extra costs up front instead of claiming that somehow miraculously the economics will work out and they will definitely employ the same amount of people to maintain the building as they did to make the building.
  - trollbridge 1mo ago
    Right. A new DC will just be another brownfield in 20-30 years. We don’t need more of those. New DCs should be built in Quebec next to hydro plants in places absolutely nobody lives. Or next to nuclear power plants.
- deleted 1mo ago
  [deleted]
- polski-g 1mo ago
  Because people aren't motivated by facts. They make up lies to justify their opposition: "water usage". But when you disprove that superstition with facts and logic, their opinion on water usage doesn't change. Its like as if you had said nothing at all.

da_chicken 1mo ago

Nobody invests a billion dollars in a facility without first lobbying to get an exemption from property taxes. Most states in the US have passed incentives that include sales and property tax exemptions. They're all drain.

tptacek 1mo ago
This is the opposite of the truth. For instance: https://www.wglt.org/local-news/2026-08-04/dekalb-and-aurora-are-flush-with-data-center-cash-they-differ-in-how-to-spend-it https://www.wglt.org/local-news/2026-08-04/dekalb-and-aurora...
- da_chicken 1mo ago
  No, it's exactly the truth: https://www.ncsl.org/fiscal/subsidizing-servers-how-states-are-competing-to-attract-data-centers https://www.ncsl.org/fiscal/subsidizing-servers-how-states-a... The legislatures are betting that the data centers stick around or bring in jobs. They won't. They think something that expensive must require a ton of jobs to maintain. It doesn't. They need low taxes, cheap land, cheap water, and cheap power.
  - tptacek 1mo ago
    You made a categorical claim. We can't both be right; one of us has to be wrong. So what's false in the report I just linked to?
  - ToValueFunfetti 1mo ago
    I'd think that the claim >Nobody invests a billion dollars in a facility without first lobbying to get an exemption from property taxes. Most states in the US have passed incentives that include sales and property tax exemptions. is not at all supported as "exactly the truth" by a link that lists 11 states with property tax abatements, most of which are not full exemptions. Am I mistaken?
    - da_chicken 1mo ago

altmanaltman 1mo ago

Yeah if you look at it purely from a municipal profit and loss point of view, datacenters are clearly great in that they ideally would pay higher taxes and have less drain than something like a shopping mall. But in this case you also need to consider other points of view to decide what the right answer is, such as the extreme resource extraction datacenters have, pollution issues, and the opportunity cost of using limited land for other purposes. If you're looking purely from a short-term profit and loss analysis and ignore all other factors, datacenters is the right answer by default but you arrive it at it using the wrong method.

user43928 1mo ago
I found this article posted yesterday interesting: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49180901 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49180901 I am under the impression that they are building data centers in very rural areas where as you can see there is no issue of limited land. Whether pollution is a significant concern there, I also doubt, unless they construct a coal plant to power it.
hinkley 1mo ago
You’ve forgotten sales taxes and income taxes generated by shopping malls, which is a pretty big oversight. The square meters per employee is much lower for retail than for a data center. They’ve gotten quite good at keeping staffing low.

joe_the_user 1mo ago

Data centers have the potential for fire and so local fire departments must spend resources being prepared for such a thing. Edit: water (and sometimes electricity) are local services also and data centers use quite a bit of these.

AussieWog93 1mo ago
Not a data centre expert, but don't they quite famously pump CO2 into the server rooms automatically if the fire alarms go off, even if there are people in the room?
- dividedbyzero 1mo ago
  That's not always a thing and doesn't help with fires in the rest of the complex. Backup generators, fuel depots, power distribution, large-scale cooling infrastructure all pose fire hazards even when facilities are built with actual regulation. The current AI buildout in the US happens pretty much without any meaningful regulation and gives the impression they'd build unshielded nuclear reactors serviced by children while running if they felt they could get it running cheaper and faster.
  - trollbridge 1mo ago
    Yes, that’s exactly my impression. When regulations do exist they use political means to try to evade them for a 1% cost savings.
- officeplant 1mo ago
  C02 fire suppression is rare in datacenters. That's more of an offshore thing in my experience (I design fire suppression systems for a living, and do life safety systems). Typically server rooms are currently Fluoro-K / Novec123 if they have space constraints on the suppression systems. Those cylinders take up the least space per cubic foot of protected environments. These are less harmful than previous gasses like Halon, but still not good for the environment. If you're lucky we get given ample room for cylinders and can go with Argon suppression systems, but that can take up more than 4 or 5 times the space alone and adds a lot of cost in engineering manifolds, etc. CO2 takes up as much space as Argon systems and will kill someone who doesn't leave the hazard area before release so its generally not used in any datacenter project I've done. Powerplant's at datacenters often use drychem systems instead or foam releasing systems.

ab5tract 1mo ago

Property tax revenue seem highly unlikely when the DC operators have been given enormous tax cuts.

mlrtime 1mo ago
A tax cut or PILOT vs vacant land in a small city with a shrinking tax base is still net positive tax increase. If the options are 0 or 50% off some tax rate table, the 50% is still better than nothing.

betaby 1mo ago

> Property Tax revenue Property Tax revenue is surprisingly tiny from data centers in Quebec. Some how DCs have low assessment for the building, like way lower then their resale value even. > they are not a drain on services like schools, roads, fire department, police department etc. Police - definitely not. Roads on other hand, DCs are hauling new equipment / decommissioned equipment daily. I'm in fact in favor of DCs, but tax revenue from them is not impressive at all. At least in Quebec.

polski-g 1mo ago
Then change how property is calculated? Virginia taxes business-owned property based on the land and the contents within.
- betaby 1mo ago
  I have no say in this process. Of course taxes are based on land and building assessed cost. Montreal and suburbs chose to assess condos at a market rate and even higher, while to assess detached house way below the market and assess data centers below the costs it was recently resold.

throw0101d 1mo ago

> The downside with becoming a bedroom community is you risk creating a negative tax base. where the cost of providing services is more than the properties bring with property taxes. E.g.,: * https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020-5-14-americas-growth-ponzi-scheme-md2020 https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020-5-14-americas-growt...

tstrimple 1mo ago

> I don't know what the right answer is. Raise property taxes in the burbs significantly so they can pay for their own infrastructure instead of relying on being subsidized by the poorest people in the area.