UD/TDC Update: City Of Newark's Next Mayor Will Be The Swing Vote On Actions Concerning The Power Plant

It is REALLY going to be important to get to know the seven candidates' positions on issues at the November 14th debate. The new mayor of my town will be the swing vote on decisions about the power plant. And here's why......

What hasn't been reported about Monday night's Council meeting was that Council took a vote coming out of Executive Session. They took the audience by surprise going right into a motion immediately after we all said the pledge to the flag. The motion was (paraphrasing here) to continue to moniter the Data Centers "situation". The vote was a 3 to 3 tie so it failed to carry.

What I'll call Newark's Morning Rotary Club contingent (two made early endorsements for Rotary gal, Polly Sierer): Jerry Clifton, District 1, Luke Chapman, District 5 and Stu Markham, District 6 all voted in favor of the motion. The motion didn't carry because Mark Morehead, District 1, Marge Hadden, District 4 and Doug Tuttle, District 3 voted against it. 

And I do presume that these representatives of the neighborhoods likely impacted the most by this power plant proposal (Districts 1, 3 and 4) were, in fact, voting for a more active approach to the "situation" than just monitoring it. 

Time will tell. 

What the vote also tells me is that the new mayor will be the swing vote in this body. If Morehead should win the mayoral vote then we'll be waiting another several months before another special election changes the mix.

By the way, the candidates should have all filed their thirty day campaign finance reports: Amy Roe, Check; Rebecca Powers, Nothing filed, Don DelCollo, Nothing Filed;  Robyn Harland, Nothing filed; Matthew Vento, Nothing filed, Polly Sierer, Nothing filed. What the heck??? Sierer has had signs up everywhere for weeks and Harland's had a few. DelCollo told me he is waiting to put his up after mischief night. If you have signs then you have spent money and you should have filed a campaign report as the law demands. 

Update: A friend writes ~

The 30 day reports for Sierer and Powers are both up. I went to the page for candidate committee search and entered the last name and 2013 for the year and they popped up. Polly has taken $600 from a union PAC and has few donors but high amounts. Powers has many donors but small amounts. Interestingly, she has spent way more than Polly, who seems to be sitting on her cash. I leave it to you to know anything about who might be giving to them. 

Incredibly, the Delaware Department of Elections' revamped website has made the search for candidates etc. much, much harder
- you have to know the exact name of a Candidate, a PAC, a Political Committee or a Contributor to look for them in the system. 

The old system had easy access to alphabetical listings. Now, if you look hard enough, you will find a list of PACs on a PDF because a few of us complained in the last election cycle. But there is no way to easily search PACs, or anything else, through the system. http://elections.delaware.gov/information/campaignfinance/pdfs/PAC%20List.pdf

Update II: Ok, I typed in Sierer and 2013 and selected special election 30 day report and nothing came up. I removed the selections for special election and 30 day report and found the campaign finance filing. I will try that search technique and see what else I find. Department of Elections has some 'splainin' to do!

Update III: A very nice gentleman at the Dover office explained that the state doesn't have a category for our November 26, 2013 special election. The special election type on the state website is reserved for state-level elections only. Municipal and school board special elections don't fit into that category according to the rule. I asked that the Department make some changes so that it's clear to everyone how to get filing information for all elections.

Update IV: Polly Sierer doesn't seem to have properly disclosed expenditures for her signs. She shows a mere hundred or so spent in that advertisement category when the actual figure for purchasing signs has to be closer to $5 - $6 hundred as shown on the Roe and Powers reports. And I am going out on a limb here to predict that Sierer is pro-power plant based on her union PAC contribution.

Update V: I am following up on this information a friend shared yesterday ~

Morehead, Harland and Vento all filed with the DOE that they will be spending under $2000 and are not required to file those reports.

 (Doug Rainey image)

Meanwhile, (DE Business Daily) Doug Rainey reports his typical stuff ~ Newark Council gets another earful on Data Centers project

Newark Council gets another earful on Data Centers project - See more at: http://delawarebusinessdaily.com/2013/10/26424/#sthash.GOjBi70J.dpuf

And (News Journal) Melissa Nann Burke gets a story in ~ Data Center Again Dogs Newark's Council

With some comments ~

Carol Robbins October 29, 2013 Reply

I was at that meeting, and every meeting since this all came out. Your reporter is quite biased as are all the leftists newsies in this state that cater to Jack Markell. Markell has shown the utmost disrespect to the people of Newark who oppose having their air polluted by this power plant. The UDE’s own professors of mechanical engineering are showing up at these meetings and expressing their concerns. It is the city of Newark and their City Manager who are responsible for this mess. If the people had been informaed in 2011, when this first came up and the Data Centers had heeded the recommendation of DNREC in very large letters that transparency with the community is a must for this type of project, we recommended that you inform the community as soon as possible. And yet, our governor, who was elected by the people, not the out of state owners of the Data Centers, LLC says “It goes like this, you don’t have to run everything by the people” – what a asinine statement to the people who pay your salary!

- See more at: http://delawarebusinessdaily.com/2013/10/26424/#comment-117778Data Center again dogs Newark’s council

NEWARK — Residents took turns at the podium during Monday’s City Council meeting, debating the local economic impact of the proposed data cen­ter and 248-megawatt power-generating facility at the old Chrysler site.

Homeowners such as Katie Gifford of the De­von Binns community complained about calls and visits to their homes last week from data-cen­ter advocates and out-of­state union members tout­ing “inflated” numbers on jobs the project would cre­ate and other “misinfor­mation,” she said.

“Given that interests outside of the city – includ­ing state- level politicians – are so concerned with painting residents as ill-in­formed and anti-jobs, I give you this: The unem­ployment rate in the city of Newark is a compara­tively healthy 6.7 percent – slightly lower than Dela­ware’s overall rate; sig­nificantly lower than Do­ver’s 9 percent; or Wil­mington and Philadelphia, both over 10 percent,” Gif­ford said.

“That suggests we have been more friend than foe to Delaware’s jobs num­bers.”

The Data Centers LLC wants to construct a 900,000-square-foot com­plex called the Wolf Tech­nology Center on 43 acres of the property, now the Science, Technology & Ad­vanced Learning (STAR) Campus of the University of Delaware. The company has not yet obtained environmen­tal permits or finalized fi­nancing for the $1-billion project. Union leaders and others say Delaware can’t afford to say no to the cen­ter’s 290 full-time and 50 part-time jobs. “Everyone calls this a gigantic power plant. I submit that you go to Ed­gemoor or to Delta, Pa., and see what a gigantic power plant is,” said Har­ry Gravell of Lewes, presi­dent of the Delaware Building and Construction Trades Council. “This is really small. If the build­ing trades build it, it would probably be the smallest one we’ve ever built.”

Resident Ken Grant, who created an online pet­ition supporting TDC, said people should understand its need for self-genera­tion of power, especially a year after Superstorm Sandy knocked out por­tions of the grid for weeks. “The power generation part is something that makes sense,” Grant said.

The city dismissed con­cerns about whether its 15- year electric contract with UD would permit the school to buy electricity from TDC, rather than from Newark.

In a statement, staff said, even if UD exercised the clause, it would “not have any significant or material financial conse­quences to the city.”

TDC left a handout at the meeting with respons­es to questions, such as the routes of natural-gas lines feeding the Chrysler site. The company says it will release the proposed routes in February or March after it concludes negotiations with Eastern Shore on the pipeline de­sign and engineering.

TDC also said it’s in dis­cussions with Bloom Ener­gy on how its “Bloom Box” technology might be in­corporated into the data center’s final design.W

• Two months after telling the Newark Planning Commission (Sept. 2011) that the STAR campus zoning accessory power generation would amount to one MW, UD officials were meeting with DNREC staff for review of a full-fledged power plant (190MW) at the site. Those plans were NEVER conveyed to the City Council when the zoning was approved in March 2012. The size of the plant has grown to 280MW. The City has a LOT to do to make this right to the residents whose home values will plummet and quality of life disappear should this power plant move forward.

  
  
• The issue is not the Data Center. The problem is the Power Plant. And if the plan doesn't work for TDC without the Power Plant, then take they can take it and their Investors somewhere else.

  
  
• (a resident of Hockessin) Many people find it easy to be anti-anything new or different to what they are culture accustomed, There is substantial distance between the proposed natural gas fired electric generation site and residential structures and the spent natural gas is relatively environmental friendly. The doom and gloom anti position of this worthy investment in collective self is a familiar farce Attempt to exploit fear through ignorance. The electric generation, jobs and collective quality of life up-grade should not be hindered by ignorance.
  

  
  

  • Maybe YOUR house is not within any distance but I dare you to go to Devon or the Binns and say that! How dare anyone who is not facing this accuse people of doom and gloom when it is OUR property values that are already dropping with local realtors showing up at meetings stating that people will not look at homes near the affected area. And the darn thing is not even in the final stage!

The candidates are: Donald DelCollo Jr., Robyn Harland, current City Councilman Mark Morehead, Rebecca Powers, Amy Roe, Polly Sierer and Matthew Vento. - See more at: http://www.wdde.org/52135-newark-mayor-special-election#sthash.BJvEw32l.dpuf Senator Venables writes ~ Delaware Voice: Find a path forward, then work together

And Senator Venables writes ~ Delaware Voice: Find a path forward, then work together

Delawareans at every level and point of view must start a discussion about what we need to do to create the kind of economic future we all want, which can only be achieved through extensive cooperation. We need to recognize promising opportunities, such as the data center at UD’s STAR campus, when they come our way, rather than decrying their lack of perfection. The best way to help those who have been sidelined by economic challenges is to be open to new ideas and allow those ideas to be realized into economic success.

With a comment rescue ~

Unfortunately for Senator Venables, his ignorance of data centers and supporting infrastructure needs underscores the reasoning for a more thoughtful analysis of the project itself. Senator Venables is making the often made mistake of assuming that the community wants nothing built on the STAR campus as the sole reason the project is being fought against by the community. Not so...the community loves the data center concept that mirrors JP Morgan Chase's Bear data center facility. The truth is Gene Kern's vision is a utility first and foremost, a data center second. It isn't meant to start a new industry in Delaware. It isn't designed to be the first of many businesses to come to Delaware to launch multiple data center projects. It isn't the Financial Services Act Venables smartly refers to from the late 70's. Therein lies the Senator's key problem - this Governor and Administration has failed to lead to bring in a new kind of industry here to Delaware similar to the financial services act that brought multiple banks out of Manhattan to Delaware or the development of a pharmaceuticals corridor that then Governor Carper was trying to create with Dupont Pharma and AZN and co. What Venables doesn't understand is that the power plant is the profit motive here, not so much the data center. Dr. Kempton already destroyed the captive power argument made by Gene Kern - clearly demonstrating that with multiple lines of power from the grid, the data center would achieve comparable up time as a captive power source. The reason the investors at Lexden Capital are considering an investment in this facility is completely tied to the utility aspect of the power generation, not the unique space saving/100% up time process argued by Kern. Without the revenues generated from the power plant the project becomes just another data center and Kern can't sell it. Kern may have a vision to execute these in a cookie cutter approach, getting a royalty payment to his personal entity for the "patented" process he and his team are putting together....Kern has no real cash on his own to execute this vision, but is instead relying on project capital (not investment capital into his firm, but a traditional utility project capital approach) to prove his concept. Unfortunately for Kern, the large data aggregators like Facebook, Ebay, Apple, Google, etc have all done data centers built on a framework of renewable power with backup generation from traditional fossil power. The too big to fail banks have already built data centers without the utility requirements Kern envisions. Kern tries to make an argument that he is using brownfields and is considering the environment for these projects. The problem, Gene, is that you want to introduce industrial scale power plants into areas tied to communities that don't desire them. If you really want transparency for the project Gene, then provide the State and the community with the sales pitch you gave Lexden Capital absent the deal numbers to protect confidentiality. Let the State and community see just how you pitched it. My guess was that the economic weight of your argument fell on the power purchase agreement moreso than your modular cloud pricing for data pods.

~*~