Serving Lucas, Ottawa, Sandusky and Wood Counties
Village officials in Genoa are exploring potential business development opportunities on State Route 163, west of the old Bergman Field site, which they say could potentially lead to data center inquiries.
In a letter sent to village residents recently, village officials annexed that land and zoned it M-4 Industrial Manufacturing Development District with the goal of getting Genoa “in the conversation for a share of the robust economic development we see in neighboring counties.”
Those officials feel Genoa presents a unique situation in comparison to common complaints about data centers, such as water shortages or electric rate increases, among other concerns.
“The key takeaway is, unlike some of these other communities, which are looking at just the property taxes as being game changing, we're a public power provider, and if you build one of these things and they have to buy power through you and you're keeping that piece of the pie local … I didn't believe the number at first,” Genoa village administrator Thomas Bergman said.
In the letter, Bergman said a hypothetical 500-megawatt end user data center was studied, and he said the potential revenue for the village would be “staggering.”
One source of electric revenue would be the kilowatt-hour tax, which was adopted by Ohio in 2001 and charged to electric distribution companies for power delivered to customers. It is shown as a line item on monthly electric bills. Ohio allows municipal electric systems, which Genoa has, to retain the kilowatt-hour tax collected from customers within their municipal boundaries.
Although Bergman was hesitant to list potential revenue numbers in the letter, it stated that a 500-megawatt data center could pay upwards of $15 million annually alone to Genoa. The money could be deposited in the town’s general fund and be used for any municipal purpose, such as police, parks, streets or sidewalks.
Another additional source of potential revenue with a 500-megawatt data center would be the estimated margin the town could make from selling power, which would be in the neighborhood of $20 million annually. In comparison, Genoa currently sells residents around $1.5 million worth of electricity annually.
“Frankly, I didn't know the numbers that I had to put in the letter until last month,” Bergman said. “People told me that you could collect quite a bit of money in kilowatt-hour tax and electric margin, but it wasn't until I called up a consultant and I said, so what numbers are we looking at? I was like $35 million? I about fell over. That also means it doesn't have to be a 500-megawatt center. We only studied that because that's what our friends in Oregon are looking at. Even if it's 200 megawatts, if it’s a fraction of that, it is a game changing amount of revenue for this town.”
At the same time, Bergman stressed that no offer has been made, and Genoa mayor Brent Huston said the goal is to find the right balance.
“We are looking to bring in a business,” Huston said. “There's no doubt about that. Could it be a data center? Could it be something else? The thing for the village is we need some economic development like our neighboring communities.”
Huston stressed that other local communities have key sources of revenue, such as First Solar, or the new automotive plant coming to Rossford, for example. Genoa needs some type of similar business at least, he said.
“Our citizens are of great concern to us,” he said. “We want to make sure that they're taken care of, but sometimes we also need some money to pay for things. We have to find that balance of what works to take care of our residents and move the village forward in updating our infrastructure and paying our bills and making sure that we're a community that's thriving into the future. That's the balance that we have to find.”
One of those financial concerns, Bergman said, is the town’s bridges that need considerable work. Currently, he said they are fortunate to have two of those bridges in the works to get replaced through funding from ODOT.
However, it doesn’t end there.
“There's two other bridges that are getting to be on the special ODOT list, where they might potentially have to shut them down here in the near future,” Bergman said. “I have no conceivable way to pay for them because a bridge is $1 million apiece. We have a water system in this town. We didn't even know how old it was, and I'm a history nerd, so I got on my Newspapers.com subscription, and it turns out it was 1930. The whole thing is built through bedrock, or a good portion of it is, and it's $2 million a mile (to replace that). I have no conceivable way to pay for that.”
With the debate over this annexed site heating up, and upon receipt of the letter, approximately 25-30 town residents attended the latest village council meeting on June 1.
Bergman said he thought it was the most polite and respectful large meeting he’s ever witnessed.
“You could tell in the room, what I liked about it is everyone was respectful, and my takeaway from it was there was a great deal of trust there, even from people that were concerned,” Bergman said. “There was, ‘Hey we voted for you guys, you’re longtime Genoa families that want to live here the rest of your lives. Don't screw this up. Make sure your research is correct.’ There were a few people there who were fundamentally opposed to data centers, and let's look into that. Why is that? I don't expect to convince 100 percent of people.
“They have many of the concerns that you hear on social media. I'm not quick to judge and say they are wrong to have these concerns. In fact, I think the village shares many of those concerns. This letter was an effort to be as transparent as possible because I think we are witnessing what's going on in other communities and a lot of the accusations, for better or worse out there, and we don't want any part of that. We thought, ‘Hey let's get this letter out and say we expect this conversation to come to us and let's start having this crucial public conversation.’
Bergman said it was the first of multiple town hall meetings that will happen to get the facts out there.
“We started this process three years ago, and it was frankly a coincidence that as we were looking into what this site could be, that all the numbers kept coming back that we could compete in the data center space right at the same time the demand for data centers is going through the roof and right at the same time social media is being overflowed with information where some of it is very true and very concerning, and some of it is not so true,” Bergman said. “The letter was an effort to get ahead and clarify particularly from the utility standpoint what something like this could mean.
“The less time we spend talking about how this is going to raise everyone's electric rates when we're pretty sure that's not true because the village happens to own its own peaker plant, which has shielded us so far, and the less time we spend talking about some of these issues that we feel are solved, the more time we can spend talking about issues that we do find concerning, which are light pollution and noise pollution.”
Bergman said one of the things that a lot of people say on social media is that data centers go after these small towns because they’ll take advantage of them just because they’re a small town.
“We’re not going to do that,” he said. “We want to be prepared. It starts with public conversation and getting facts right. No one has proposed a data center. We’re putting this out there ahead of time. We felt if the first time someone heard a data center could be looking at Genoa was literally when they come knocking on our door, that that wouldn't be right.”
With the state of Ohio currently pausing the sales tax breaks on data centers, Bergman questions whether the entire industry will shy away from Ohio.
“Then it's a non-issue, and we have to go find something else because the reality is we're poor,” Bergman said. “I don't shy away from stating that fact. The school district ranks somewhere in the bottom, right around the bottom third of the state, in value per pupil.
“When a levy goes on, you'll have the public conversation about seniors who can't afford to stay in their homes. Those aren't fun conversations either. I've been in the hallway as people are coming in struggling to pay their utility bill. Those aren't fun things to witness. I personally feel if we have an opportunity here, the motivation is to put in an enormous amount of leg work and talk to experts to see if can we solve these concerns.
“That doesn't mean the concerns are illegitimate. It means, are they solvable? Because if we didn't put in the legwork to ask if they were solvable and they could have been solved, that's not very good. That wouldn't be a great outcome. But we have to find facts.
“I have a sister who lives in Hilliard, and I go down to visit Hilliard, and they have a data center right across the street from $800,000 and $600,000 homes. That's a setback that we wouldn't want to see. But I'm just saying, how does it work in Hilliard but not here? How does it work in other parts of the world? Then you hear horror stories about particularly the crypto ones that are air-cooled.
“None of that will be coming here. We're positive of that.”
Another key talking point revolves around the fact that Genoa currently has one of the highest water rates in the area because it lacks a large water customer, particularly since the closure of Guardian Industries in 2019. Bergman’s letter said the town’s largest customer is currently the Ohio Turnpike plazas, and that the current customer base is essentially residential and light commercial.
“A large water user would result in one or both of the following outcomes: additional revenue being dedicated to the replacement of our aging waterlines (more than half of the village is still connected to waterlines from the early 1930s) or rate decreases,” the letter said. “I think a data center would pay for both outcomes.”
If Genoa brings in a data center and brings in upwards of $35 million per year, and with lowered water rates because of a large water user providing additional revenue, what exactly would that mean? The letter hypothesized a potential rebate of residential electric bills right back to the residents, among other things.
“A lot of people might assume that when they read those numbers that their local government is just going to take any deal as long as those numbers bear out because they're money hungry,” Bergman said. “That is certainly not the case. Those numbers are motivation to put in the legwork to ask these concerns.
“What's real, what isn't? And can they be solved? But if they can't be solved to something that's palatable to the community, we have no interest in that. Last weekend was the Genoa Homecoming Festival. I just spent every morning at 8 a.m. picking up trash in the park. We do that as volunteers because we love this town.
“We're not going to do anything that's going to hurt this town. But we're going to put in the effort and the legwork to ask, for any opportunity, can this work here because if it's not a data center, it's got to be something else. Our schools in our village are not overflowing with money. That is an understatement.”
Bergman said he also sees what’s going on in other local communities.
“These towns wouldn’t exist if there wasn’t an economy here from the 19th century or the 20th century,” he said. “Our historic industry is the limestone quarry. That's frankly why the town exists. Well, the limestone quarry, wouldn't you know, is closing down this fall and ending a 170-year run of industrial limestone production, so what's our economy going to be?
“Our friends in Oak Harbor have a nuclear power plant that caused a lot of fear at first but then turned out to maybe not be so validated. Our friends in Elmore have the beryllium site. Our friends in Lake Township have multiple First Solar factories, and the list goes on and on and on.
“I can't name an industry that is on a large enough scale to help pay for some of this heavy lifting. We have some industry here, but it's residential and small commercial. We are very motivated to find that user, if it's palatable to the community, and if it's the right end user. We're not making the first deal that comes along. We're making the first right deal that comes along.”
To view the full letter sent to residents, visit GenoaOhio.org and select “Letter to Residents” in the blue text toward the top of the page.
