WRIGHTSTOWN (NBC 26) — The overwhelming majority of voters in the Village of Wrightstown voted 'no' to a data center development referendum question, telling the Village Board they do not want a data center in the area.
A referendum question on the Village of Wrightstown Ballot on Tuesday, asked whether the Village should support or participate in large scale data center development within or affecting the Village.
“I really don’t want to see the rural area that we live in turn into a huge construction site," Mckenzie Johnson, a Village resident, said.
The referendum question, the wording for which was approved by the board in May, asked:
"Should the Village of Wrightstown authorize, support, participate in, or facilitate municipal utility infrastructure, public utility service commitments, public facilities, the operations of a facility for the providing of video service, telecommunications service, or Internet access service, directly or indirectly to the public or related municipal infrastructure improvements associated with a large-scale data center development within or affecting the Village?"
More than 87 percent of the voters (1,033 to 151) said no.
“We don’t want a data center in this town at all," Jason Stun, a Village resident, said.
This year, Wrightstown has been one of the villages at the forefront of the data center debate. We've covered several meetings about possible development in or around the village
Including a meeting in May, when top executives from Cloverleaf, an AI data center developer, answered direct questions from the community.
At those meetings, the public showed strong opposition to data center development, and it was the same on Election Day.
Many Village voters said the referendum question was the main reason they decided to vote in the primary at all.
“I just want to protect the area for my daughter and all the future kids coming up in the area," Johnson said.
The referendum is advisory only, so it does not hold the Village Board to any sort of action either way.
Voters, like Stun, said they hope the Village takes the vote seriously.
"Otherwise we’ll have to make some changes at the village board," he said.
As of 11 p.m. on Tuesday, there was a large majority of 'no' votes for the referendum question.
