The Montgomery County Commission unanimously approved a tax incentive package Monday for Google's proposed $15 billion data center, despite ongoing concerns from residents about how the huge data center could have negative effects on the county.
According to cost/benefit analysis documents, the deal is much bigger than the $15 billion figure previously announced. Google could invest as much as $87.5 billion in equipment over the life of the project, with an initial phase of roughly $24.5 billion in equipment and $13.4 billion in real property improvements between 2026 and 2029.
The tax incentive plan was prepared under Missouri's Chapter 100 law and calls for the county to issue up to $100 billion in industrial revenue bonds. Under the structure, Montgomery County technically owns the equipment and leases it back to Google triggering a personal property tax abatement for Google for 25 years, running from 2028 to 2052. No property tax abatement is included in the deal.
County Commissioner Ryan Poston said the deal was structured to give the county a better outcome than what was already available. Montgomery County sits within the Enhanced Enterprise Zone Two, which runs along Interstate 70 and Highway 19, and under that designation, companies could have received a full real estate tax abatement. Instead, Poston said the commission negotiated a deal in which Google pays 100% of real estate property taxes in exchange for a 70% abatement on personal property taxes.
"You give a little over here to gain a lot over here," Poston said, "and that's what most people are not realizing."
During the abatement period, Google will make payments in lieu of taxes, PILOTs, at 30% of what would otherwise be owed to most taxing jurisdictions. The ambulance and fire districts are fully protected, receiving 100% of their normal tax revenue throughout the deal.
Google's data center, referred to in planning documents as Project Spade, is already under construction south of I-70 near New Florence on what was once farmland. A second data center being developed by Amazon Web Services called Project Green is located farther east of New Florence and is not as far along in construction.
Over 25 years, the cost-benefit analysis projects Google's tax abatement will be worth between $1.6 billion and $2.2 billion. In exchange, taxing jurisdictions in Montgomery County are projected to receive between $1.05 billion and $1.42 billion in PILOT payments. The Montgomery County R-2 School District which carries a tax rate of 3.9745 stands to receive between $551 million and $744 million in PILOTs over the life of the deal.
Google has said the completed facility will employ around 300 workers. They also expect those jobs to be high paying, predicting the pay to be approximately 150-percent of the county's average annual wage.
Monday's vote comes as community opposition to the proposed Amazon data center project is ongoing. Residents with the group Preserve Montgomery filed a nondisclosure lawsuit in February alleging county officials violated Missouri's Sunshine Law, which requires public business to be conducted openly. Poston declined to comment on the pending litigation.
Residents have also pointed to nondisclosure agreements each commissioner signed last July. Poston said the NDAs were not related to the data centers themselves, but were instead tied to a road relocation specifically to protect the identities of landowners involved in moving Buechele Road.
"We never signed a nondisclosure with Amazon or Google," Poston said. "We kept talking about data centers as soon as we found out it was Amazon, as soon as we found out it was Google."
Water use remains the sharpest point of contention. Amazon has said its facilities will require roughly 49 million gallons of well water per year. Poston pointed to what he described as an aquifer containing 23 trillion gallons of water and said residential wells sit at different depths than the industrial wells Amazon plans to drill.
Poston pushed back on those fears, saying the data center industry is among the safest that could come to a rural county.
"This is not going to dry up the aquifer," he said. "This is not going to pollute the ground."
Some residents have also raised concerns about how the massive developments could change the character of their small rural community. Poston said the data centers are located along the interstate, away from the community's core, and argued the economic benefits would enhance rather than erode small-town life.
"We still want to keep our small town feel and our small town culture," Poston said. "Since I've been a commissioner, we've lost 1,000 in population. I would like to just get back to where we were, and we still had our culture then."
Data center development has drawn scrutiny across Missouri. Columbia and Camdenton each passed one-year moratoriums in May on data center applications and construction.
Missouri Gov. Mike Kehoe announced his support for the Google project last month, calling it a testament to the state's growing appeal for technology investment.
The lawsuit filed by Preserve Montgomery County remains ongoing.
