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Monday night's council meeting was moved from City Hall to the Woodman's Sports & Convention Center to accommodate an anticipated overflow crowd.

The council’s vote to approve a letter of intent with Viridian Acquisitions was 5-2, with Josh Erdman and Heather Miller dissenting.

Erdman said he felt the council was being asked to make a vote from a place of "desperation" rather than having a thoughtful "deliberate" plan of action.

Miller said she voted “no” based on not knowing what risks the data center could pose to public health. She said the city hadn’t gathered enough information about long-term and short-term effects of living around a data center.

Council Members Richard Neeno, Aaron Burdick, Larry Squire, Michael Cass and Paul Williams all said the letter of intent gives the city 120 days to conduct more research and find the answers to health, water usage and other questions that the public has raised.

Much of Monday night’s public comment centered on a lack of information, skepticism about data center developers taking advantage of communities, and concerns over environmental and health impacts.

Of the 40 people who spoke, only 11 supported moving forward with the letter of intent, most of them members of the Forward Janesville board or local union workers.

Sam Nemetz, an organizer for the Party for Socialism and Liberation and a Janesville resident, warned about potential hidden fees and inflated promises tied to data centers.

The Party of Socialism and Liberation is circulating a petition to stop the data center from moving forward. Under state statute, if submitted to the city, it  would require the council to either reject the data center or send the decision to a referendum. The group would need to collect 4,000 signatures in order to submit the petition to the city.

“The facts are so contested and the impacts are so permanent that the people must have the final say,” Niemitz said. 

Max Ryan of Ryan Incorporated, a local contractor, supported the letter of intent, saying it gives the city an opportunity to conduct due diligence. He warned that rejecting the proposal could send the project elsewhere in the region.

“If we close the door on them, they’re not going to go away,” Ryan said. “They are going to go somewhere else out of town like Beloit, Evansville or Afton, and they are going to pay $30 million to build a bunch of power lines that connect to our grid. In that scenario, they’re still in our grid, but we have zero influence over the project.”

Representatives of Viridian Acquisitions said the site is currently capped to an industrial standard and would remain so unless excavation or redevelopment required additional cleanup, which would be done under the supervision of the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources.

“We’ll work with the DNR to develop a plan to manage soils and make sure human safety is protected,” a company representative said. “We’ve never walked away from a project because of regulatory challenges.”

Council member Heather Miller questioned potential long-term effects on residents near the site, including stray voltage, noise, and light pollution.

“My biggest concern at this point is public health,” Miller said. “We need to know what these long-term and short-term effects are. I’m not convinced that we’re in the right place to do this yet without that information.”

Miller said the city has not yet heard from public health experts and warned that risks could emerge after construction begins.

Council members and residents also raised concerns about the impact of a large-scale data center, which is expected to require about 800 megawatts of power from local utilities. 

Viridian representatives said its experience with two existing data center projects would guide planning but acknowledged that many details, including energy capacity, remain uncertain.

“The data center industry is evolving quickly,” a representative said. “States and utilities are now preparing infrastructure in ways they didn’t five years ago. But ultimately, rates and power supply are governed by state energy commissions, not us.”

Council member Josh Erdman, who voted against proceeding with the letter of intent, said the city’s position feels rushed and reactionary.

“Instead of making the decision from a deliberate place, we’re coming at this from a place of desperation,” he said. “It would have been nice to have a plan in place before this opportunity appeared.”

He added that when the city purchased the former GM property, officials knew cleanup could cost up to $35 million and might take years. “We knew that was a risk,” Erdman said. “But nothing was done to produce a deliberate plan for the site.”

Other council members said the letter of intent simply opens the door for further investigation and public input, not final approval.

“We’ve been burned twice before, by GM and by other developers,” council member Michael Cass said. “We need to see this through carefully and get answers before we commit. But we have to start somewhere.”

Council President Aaron Burdick agreed.

“We have to do our due diligence,” Burdick said. “It’s not going to be a perfect deal; they never are. But we have to weigh what’s best for the whole city. Sometimes that means taking a risk to maintain our viability and future.”

“This is not the finish line,” Burdick added. “It’s the beginning of a process to see whether this project is right for Janesville.”