The Dalles City Council met jointly last night with Wasco County Commissioners in their third meeting to decide what to do with the new round of Google payments for their fourth and fifth plants in The Dalles.
The three previous Google projects in The Dalles, which enjoyed a 15-year tax break on any improvements to the raw land, and in return made specific guaranteed annual payments to the city and county.
Projects 4 and 5, now under construction, are getting tax relief in return for payments derived at through a complicated formula known as SIP for “Systemic Investment Plan.” Payments are calculated on a formula that depends on multiple variables. Of the four components of the SIP, the value of only one is known in advance, as City Manager Matthew Klebes explains:
“Really, the only thing we know right now is what the initial payment for each data center shall be, which is again $3 million, split between the city and county.”
That would be $3 million for each data centers. Since there are two data centers being constructed, that’s a total of $6 million.
A public survey commissioned earlier by the city and county showed the number one preference was to use this windfall money for schools, specifically a new high school. The group toyed with, but did not commit, to a concept explained by Commissioner Scott Hege:
“The idea is to basically take those initial payments, those six million dollars, as a pledge towards a high school – I’m just going to say a high school project. It would be a pledge that the school district would have to pursue something, and they would have to be successful at it and probably successful within a certain period of time. It wouldn’t be a forever kind of thing.”
There were some concerns about making such a commitment at this time. County administrator Tyler Stone went right to the heart of the matter, with this comment:
“There’s three school districts in the county that may have something to say about that.”
Ultimately, the group decided not to join forces to commit those funds, at least at this time. But they left the door open to revisit the issue in the future when they have some firm numbers to work with.