Above a chorus of calls from residents to vote down a $4 million settlement agreement tied to Niagara Falls Redevelopment’s plan for a $1.5 billion data center, one question kept coming up over and over and over again during Wednesday’s city council meeting.
“Where’s the mayor?”
Following the meeting in which he and two other council members voted to approve the controversial court-sanctioned deal with NFR, council Chairman Brian Archie noted that Mayor Robert Restaino does not normally attend council meetings.
When asked if he thought Restaino should have been there to hear what residents had to say prior to the council’s settlement vote, Archie said: “Were I him, for something that is at the top of his wish list and is as important as he says this is, yes.”
Councilwoman Bridgette Myles said Restaino “refuses” to attend regularly scheduled council meetings but “absolutely” should have attended Wednesday’s meeting to hear what residents said about the settlement, which she voted against and described as “not a good deal” for the city or its residents.
“The mayor should have been here and outside counsel to answer questions from the people,” she said.
Restaino did not answer any questions about the controversial settlement in the days leading up to Wednesday’s meeting, with the city’s paid spokesperson, Philip Wells from E3 Communications, issuing statements in response to questions suggesting the mayor was unable to comment due to ongoing litigation with NFR.
The mayor is scheduled to hold a press conference today where he is expected to discuss the now-approved NFR settlement.
Most of the public speakers who called for the settlement to be rejected or for the council to hold off on a vote for at least a few more weeks aired concerns about the part of the agreement obligating the city to assist with NFR’s plan to build the Niagara Digital Campus, a series of nine data center structures planned for the company’s redevelopment territory.
Others were also upset with the settlement’s price tag — a $4.029 million payment to NFR to cover expenses related to land the company is “donating” to accommodate Restaino’s plans to develop a $210 million arena and events campus known as Centennial Park.
Several residents suggested the city has a lot of other issues it needs to address and the settlement dollars would be better spent on addressing them.
“We need to fix the city. We need to develop the city before we talk about a data center or Centennial Park,” resident Anita Hartunian told council members during the public speaking portion of the meeting.
State data center moratorium vote expected
While city lawmakers approved a settlement involving Niagara Falls Redevelopment’s plan to build a $1.5 billion data center on Wednesday night, the vote may be moot as officials in Albany are preparing to impose a statewide moratorium on such projects.
Multiple media outlets, including the New York Times, reported plans by Albany Democrats to vote on the measure at some point this week.
The bill under consideration, which would drop the moratorium term from three years to one year, is expected to be approved along with several other bills, Democratic state Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie told Spectrum News on Tuesday.
Final approval of any bill approved by the state legislature also requires approval from Gov. Kathy Hochul, who has yet to publicly endorse any temporary ban on data center development. Hochul has only said that she believes data centers must be “more self-sustaining” to protect residents from dealing with possible impacts such as higher water and electricity costs.
“They need to be able to manage their own energy costs without making local ratepayers pay more, and again, this is a local decision for municipalities, it’s land use, which is the purview of local governments,” Hochul has said.
State lawmakers’ plan to impose a statewide data center moratorium comes as members of the Falls city council are slated to consider a settlement deal with NFR that would require the city to assist the company as it pursues the Niagara Digital Campus, a $1.5 billion data center to be built on land NFR owns on the city’s east side.
A majority of council members have told the Niagara Gazette they are inclined to approve the deal during tonight’s council meeting.