Episode Twenty-Four - Council Wrap Up (6/18/26) and Reflections

Council took data centers from a permitted use to a conditional one on the same night a separate rezoning locked one specific property out of ever becoming one. A fire department restructuring got its second presentation without becoming an ordinance. A zoning amendment missed its filing deadline with no documented justification for how it got added anyway, a sitting council member says he hadn't even seen it in time. And a financial case for ending curbside recycling doesn't survive contact with the city's own numbers. Matt walks through what changed, what's still missing, and why residents keep getting left to connect the dots themselves.

Transcript

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Happy Sunday, everybody, and happy Father's Day to all the dads out there. A quick note before we get into it. This episode was already recorded before some new information started circulating publicly today. I'm aware of it and have to perform some due diligence here. Once that's complete, you'll hear more. But for now, let's start with Thursday. Hi, this is Wilmington Weekly with Matt Perke. The workshop opened with Safety Director Nick Evelyn and Fire Chief Mason presenting a draft ordinance to restructure the fire department. This is the second time this presentation has been given. The first was back in April. The pitch is the same. The current ordinance dates back to 2006. It's full of references to volunteers and part-time positions that don't really apply anymore. And the administration wants a structure built for what they're calling a 20-year horizon. Right now, the department is fully staffed at 20. The proposed structure would build toward 30 to 35 over time, including a support staff position that isn't currently needed, but would be on the chart in case it's wanted later. None of the positions are funded. Evelyn was direct about that. If and when staffing needs to grow, the administration will come back to council separately to ask for money. Council President Osborne also asked about the city's contract with Union Township for fire and EMS service. Evelyn said it was just signed and called it a three-year deal. Resolution 2617, the resolution authorizing that agreement was a five-year agreement, July 2026 through June 2031. So I'm not sure where that three-year figure came from. Council also got its first look that evening at both of the zoning items that would come up for public hearing later that night. On the data center conditional use amendment, Early's first question was whether AWS's pending application would be protected. Law Director Cullimore confirmed it would be, the amendment only applies to future applications, not ones already in the pipeline. Early followed up to confirm the change gives council more say over future projects without affecting the one already underway. Snarr then asked why this wasn't getting three readings like most ordinances and said plainly, I didn't see this earlier in the week. From there, the regular meeting opened with two public hearings, and they're worth holding side by side because they relate to the same underlying question, but in opposite ways. The first hearing was on a zoning text amendment to part 11 of the Planning and Zoning Code, the same section that lists data centers as a use category. Here's the concrete change straight from the ordinance text. Under the city's current code, passed last year as O twenty five thirty six, data centers are listed as a permitted use in both light industrial and general industrial zoning districts, meaning that if an applicant meets the baseline requirements, the city has to approve it. Tonight's amendment O twenty six thirty three changes that designation from permitted to conditional in both districts. Conditional means a more individualized review process with public hearings and the ability to attach specific conditions rather than an automatic approval. It's worth noting ordinance 2536 is also one of the ordinances currently being challenged in federal court in Sharp v. City of Wilmington. So tonight's vote changes the same use category that's presently in active litigation. Five people spoke during that hearing. Jessica Sharp, the named plaintiff in that litigation, spoke in support of the change. A local business owner and several residents also spoke, raising concerns ranging from process transparency to specific demands for community benefits agreement tied to the AWS project, water and grid protections, and a request that the conditional use standard be applied retroactively to the AWS site itself. The amendment passed first reading on a voice vote with no audible opposition, with two more readings still to come on July 2nd. I want to walk through something procedural about how this particular ordinance got onto Thursday's agenda. And I'll say up front, I helped write the rule I'm about to read to you back when I was on council. So take that for what it's worth. I know what this rule was meant to do. Council's own rules of counsel, section 111.10, rule 16, lay out exactly two ways a piece of legislation can land on the agenda after it misses the normal deadline. Anything new is supposed to go through the law director and reach the clerk by noon the Monday before a Thursday meeting. If something comes up after that, the council president can add it anyway, but only if, in his judgment, it's urgent or time sensitive, and he has to notify council members and the law director before the meeting. The other path is council itself voting to amend the agenda at the start of the meeting. Here's the timeline. The clerk's notice email went out on Wednesday about 1.15 in the afternoon, with links to both the workshop and regular meeting agendas and legislation. I pulled that agenda at the time I received it. 02633 was not on it. It showed up Thursday morning. As Snar had already told you a few minutes ago, he hadn't seen it himself until that morning either. At the regular meeting, when asked about the single reading, President Osborne said slow and steady wins the race, and was direct that this wasn't an emergency. The agenda was approved as presented with no separate motion to amend it. So a piece of legislation missed the filing deadline by days. The one finding that would justify adding it late under our own rules is an urgency finding, and the council president said on the record that urgency wasn't the reason. Nobody moved to amend the agenda the other way either. And a sitting council member told you himself he hadn't seen it in time to review. I don't know if there's an explanation that resolves this. I'd like to know one way or the other, but on the public record as it stands, I'm having a hard time finding the documented justification for how this got onto the agenda at all. The most likely explanation for the late filing itself is a simple oversight, not anything deliberate, and that's worth saying plainly and clearly. Anytime a position this important changes hands, things can fall through the crack. And I'm referring to the clerk of council turnover that's happened recently. Sometimes those things get noticed and picked up, sometimes they don't. But that doesn't answer the separate question of how this was handled once the oversight was caught. The second hearing was a separate rezoning request for a prairie road property, asking to go from light industrial to general industrial with modifications. This one sits on the opposite side of the same question. The applicant, representing AZEC Group, requested a storage yard expansion, wrote language into the requested zoning that explicitly excludes data centers as a permitted use on that site. Attorney Bess Sedorf walked through the limitation text and setback details on the applicant's behalf. The directly adjacent property owner spoke in opposition, raising concerns about well water, truck traffic, and noise, while noting he struggled with the question himself given his own background in industry. That rezoning passed first reading on a voice vote. Under new business, Schleibaugh pressed Azex representative on that prairie road rezoning, whether the site plan had cleared Planning Commission yet. It hadn't, a hearing is set for July 7th, whether the berm separating the property from neighboring homes could be made taller, and what's been studied on semis getting back up the hill as they leave the site. Knowles also got AZEX rep to reconfirm something said earlier in the process, that if the traffic pattern doesn't work for the city, it doesn't work for ASAC either. Snarr recused himself from that vote, citing a business relationship with a neighbor who had spoken earlier in opposition. A few other items moved with little discussion, third readings on the Rural Transit Grant Agreement and the city's health benefit plan renewal. A first reading on the Transit Civil Rights Compliance Program and a traffic control change at Douglas and South Wall Street, converting an all-way stop to a two-way stop based on a city traffic study. Service Director Crow also explained that a separate multi-use path project on David's Drive will now terminate near Wilmington Christian Academy instead of its original endpoint. After the state required a setback that would have pushed acquisition costs from roughly $240,000 to $450,000 or more and risked the project's grant deadline. Mayor Haley announced that HR Director Jeremy Schaefer is leaving the city around July 5th and asked the public to stay behind the tables and not approach council members, including during breaks, citing what he called dangerous times and enhanced security. A few commitments that didn't show up Thursday are worth tracking. Recycling legislation promised for the first meeting in June missed its third consecutive meeting. Council President Osborne did say it was sitting on Deputy Law Director Horan's desk. The argument for ending the program has been framed entirely in financial terms, but the county's own waste management coordinator sent council a cost analysis on May 20th that reaches the opposite conclusion. Using the city's own 2025 figures, his analysis found that keeping curbside recycling costs the city about $113,000 a year net, while eliminating it would cost about $164,000 a year once the value of preserved landfill airspace is factored in. A difference of roughly $50,000 in recycling's favor. He also flagged a $15,000 discrepancy in how two state grants were recorded in the city's own cost figures. The kind of error that makes the program look more expensive than it actually is. Landfill Superintendent Cody Romar has repeatedly made the case that a full year of curbside recycling only equals about a day's worth of landfill volume by weight. And that's accurate as far as it goes. But it's measuring the wrong thing for a financial argument. Recyclables take up roughly seven times more landfill airspace per ton than regular waste, which is exactly why Wall's analysis values that same tonnage so much higher. Romar's numbers and Wall's numbers aren't actually in conflict. They're answering two different questions, and only one of them, the financial one, is the question the city has been using to justify ending the program. Nobody on council has addressed any of this in either direction in the month since it arrived. So fire department staffing legislation, the actual ordinance rather than tonight's meeting still hasn't appeared, though Evelyn said tonight he expects it within the next meeting or so, depending on council feedback. The CRA and development agreement for the AWS project. The State Mandated Housing Council. Although, I will add I've learned that the council has been created. It just has not received any appointments. So I assume we'll see those in the coming meetings. Along that note, the city still hasn't filed the annual CRA compliance report. It's been required to submit since 2015. Those are things I'll keep my eye on. I want to close with something that's been building for a while now, and tonight gave me the clearest version of it. Take everything from tonight together. A zoning ordinance that missed its filing deadline with no documented justification on the record for how it got at it anyway. A recycling recommendation, backed by real numbers that no one has addressed. A contractor letter from back in May that no one can confirm was ever sent. A fire department restructuring presented as generic data-free future planning with no mention of specific kind of growth the city is actually planning for. Towns with data centers have a documented track record of needing more from their fire departments. Jerome Township, Ohio, outside Columbus, has answered 84 emergency calls across two Amazon data centers since 2021, on top of routine inspections, including one fire that tied up first responders for over 24 hours. That township's fire chief also said the tax abatement on those facilities has diverted roughly two million dollars away from the emergency services that respond to them. Nobody on Thursday's day has connected tonight's staffing conversation to that kind of growth. Look at how differently these two things move Thursday. The moment Early wondered whether his vote might touch the AWS project. He asked a direct question and got a direct answer settled in under a minute. Compare that to recycling. 1,020 residents, just under 20% of the city's customer base, responded to a survey on that program's future. The county's own waste management coordinator sent a formal recommendation to all seven members to maintain the program. Wells has been the one consistent exception here, asking real questions about the program in past meetings and pushing back when the case for ending it didn't add up. But the plan to end the program is still moving forward anyway, and apart from Wells, nobody on the Dais has said a word about the survey or the recommendations in either direction since they arrived. None of these things are connected to each other by anything except this. In each case, the public got a piece of the picture, and nobody on the Dais connected it to the rest. When elected officials don't explain how these pieces fit together, residents are left to connect the dots themselves. I've raised some version of this on April 2nd, on June 4th, multiple times. Perhaps I'm starting to sound like a broken record. Tonight makes the fourth? I don't understand why council is choosing to remain silent on this, and I think it's fair to say I'm not the only one wondering anymore. A pending lawsuit over some of these ordinances doesn't put the city under a gag order. There are specific things that genuinely cannot be discussed while litigation is active. If that's the case, say so. Name what can't be talked about, and then talk about everything else. Right now the silence is doing all the talking, and it's about the only thing anyone in this city can hear. I'm asking counsel to make a different choice. Not because it's easy, but because it's the job. And that was Thursday. I'll be back next time. Thanks for listening to Wilmington Weekly.