DATA CENTERS& FORUM SEASON!

Over the past few weeks, I have had the privilege of touring two data centers in Iowa, one of which is Meta's largest data center in the world, which is in Altoona, and the other was QTS in Cedar Rapids. I say privilege, because I know that as an elected official there are spaces that I gain access to that are not afforded to everyone, and I take that privilege and duty seriously to report back to our residents what I learned and how it is informing our decisions moving forward.

QTS Data Center

I have talked about the Meta data center in a previous post, so I will dive into QTS. For beginners, QTS is the managing/building company, the actual company (or companies, they were unable to disclose who or how many companies), that will be taking over the site once it is ready, is yet to be released to the public. The first thing that struck me was the sheer magnitude of the workforce and construction that was present even before we were in the parking lot. And that is because there are over 7,000 workers on this construction site right now. To give you a frame of reference, that is more than the combined population of the surrounding smaller cities: Fairfax ~3,000, Palo~1,400, and Ely ~2,300 = 6,700! All of the trade unions in the Midwest have been emptied of their workers who were available to work on this project for the next few years. Obviously that has pros and cons on the local communities, which I can discuss in another post, but I want to focus more on the facility itself.

There will be seven buildings in total once construction is complete, and all of them will be over 1 million square feet. ONE MILLION SQUARE FEET. Standing in the large hallway of one of these buildings, I could not see to the end of it. These facilities are all going to be on a closed loop water system, so there were several large chillers outside (we were not allowed to take pictures, so my apologies, you'll just have to imagine along with me!) that looked like fresh, new, white, small farm silos that were hooked up to the buildings via large pipes. As a science fiction nerd, this was like walking into a Stranger Things or Mars Attacks sets, lol.

Inside the building we got to see the distinct stages, picture a massive warehouse building with large pipes running from the chillers into the interior, more chilling mechanisms inside, another section with actual data cabinets (think War Games movie where the machine takes up a whole room, except broken out into smaller cabinets), and of course a security section. There were about a thousand workers (that's what we were told) working in the building we were standing in, and quite honestly, it felt that way. Everywhere you looked there were people cleaning, drilling, working on lifts, fitting pipes, etc.

Our tour guides told us that this was the biggest construction project that has ever been undertaken in the whole state of Iowa. And that's exactly how it felt. We learned so much about their closed loop water system, which will eventually contain about 12 million gallons of water that will be recirculated for an undisclosed time. We peppered them with tough questions about workforce impacts, water quantity/quality concerns, community engagement, pre- and post- construction impacts, and so so much more. Our planning team will be taking all of this information and we will be discussing more and more data that has been collected, so I hope to have more to share in the near future!!

Me with the QTS staff and our PDS staff in our PPE!

Forum Season

After a looooong day touring the data center the forum season officially kicked off for me! Rod and I were invited to a living room forum in the Northside neighborhood that started at 7pm and ended around 8:30pm. I am truly grateful to our hosts who arranged their home so we could answer questions from a crowd of roughly 40 people. This is democracy in action! And we had fantastic questions, so thank you to everyone who attended. We did Livestream the event on Facebook if you would like to catch it! We answered questions about the job of a Supervisor, our voting records, and the qualities an elected official should bring to this position. Thanks to Rod for agreeing to this format!

Three with V:

1. I will be at the League of Women Voters Forum this Saturday, April 18 at 10am at the Iowa Senior Center (28 S. Linn St. Iowa City).

2. The Get Out The Vote For V is not happening this Week on Wednesday, April 15th (Tax Day!) because the Board of Supervisors are hosting a budget estimation public hearing that starts at 5:30 pm on the third floor of the Health and Human Services building (855 S. Dubuque St.). Please come check it out if you have questions about the budget or you

   can also Livestream it on our website: https://johnson-county.granicus.com/ViewPublisher.php?view_id=1

3. I am turning 48 this year! And 40's have been amazing, lol. So we are going to doorknock 48 doors for my 48th birthday!!! Don't worry, we will meet up afterwards for

   some cool libations and cake at Shakespeare's Pub and Grill 819 S. First Ave. The first 5 volunteers will get our newest swag- V trucker or baseball hats (you get to choose the style!)!!!