The Lucas County Bee

Spencer Township has always been a quiet forested area in the east with meadows and large properties. The west is farmland. The people here love it to be quiet. Its been like this for over 100 years. That could all change if the current trustees remain in office after the November election.

Just over a year ago on September 5, 2024 there was a Spencer Township trustee meeting. According to the minutes, The Trustees Michael Hood, Steven Kester and Raymond Havens voted yes, unanimously, on two zoning resolution changes that may effect very large tracks of land in Spencer Township and turn it into something completely unrecognizable compared to what it is and has been for over a century. Here are the minutes from that meeting.

Note: Spencer Township does not video or audio record any meetings for public review. The current trustees put a stop to that. Given the unbelievably massive ramifications of these resolutions it would seem reasonable to seek public input. The trustees didn’t do that. In fact It gets worse.

During the trustees meeting on Nov 7 (2 months later) trustee Kester called an executive session(confidential meeting out of public view) to discuss what appears to be the the same thing. Why?

Yes these are the same Data Centers that the salt of the earth people in Richfield Township are scrambling to stop. Signs against them are popping up everywhere because it was the same story there. The trustees did not make a reasonable effort give any information to the people who who’s lives would be flipped upside down by these zoning changes.

Turns out the people of Spencer Township never could have known. Sure the meeting was public but how was anyone to know the ramifications of these resolutions? The language seems to be intentionally ambiguous.

Even now people are just finding out what these land gobbling behemoths are. Spencers Zoning inspector Jacob Barnes and Glen Grisdale from Reveille Planning were also involved in creating the land use plan for Spencer township that gives assent to these huge changes. That Land Use Plan was approved during the Nov 7 meeting as well. Not a peep from them either.

Just to give you an idea of how disruptive Data Centers would be to life in Spencer Township here are 10 easy reading basic facts.

1. A self sustaining data center will take up to 5 sq miles of land if it has a solar field for power.

2. They produce a low droning noise constantly

3. Bloomberg Reported on September 29, 2025 that wholesale electricity in areas where Data Centers are built has risen as much as 267% in the past 5 years. Data centers increase local electric utility rates by driving up overall energy demand, which can strain grid capacity and force utilities to invest in costly infrastructure improvements. (the exact language of the Nov. 7 Spencer executive session in the minutes).
   

4. The investors are rarely American. Sources say typically “Asian Pacific” whatever that means.

5. High Resource Consumption: A single data center can consume up to 2 megawatt hours of power—equivalent to the power used by 2,000 homes—and millions of gallons of water annually for cooling, straining local resources and infrastructure. For comparison There are only 1750 people total in all of Spencer Township.

6. Ineffective Tax Incentives: Tax breaks for data centers do not deliver the promised economic benefits, such as high-paying jobs, and they reduce local tax revenues, while shifting financial burdens onto communities and schools.

7. Water Wells where Data Centers are built with water cooling ponds will often go dry because the depth of the pond is over 60ft. This was said to have happened in Bowling Green Ohio. Note: this would certainly dry up all of the farmland that is anywhere near a Data Center. One could easily speculate that Kitty Todd Nature preserve as well as wiregrass lake and Secor Metro Park could easily be effected. Yes these things are that big.

8. Where Data Centers are built home values plummet. This is just common sense. If you have a nice home with a yard in a semi rural to rural residential area like Spencer Township then a massive Data Center is built near you your home value tanks. The noise and the hiked utilities and the Data Center visible from your property would negatively effect your investment without a doubt.

9. A Data Centers average lifespan is 11-15 years.

10. After a Data Center is decommissioned it will be the people in the area who must pay to have it torn down. They do not have transferable use. 10s of millions of dollars are involved in the demo of a Data Center.

Hope is not lost. Spencer has a way out of this. Trustees Hood and Kester are up for relection on November 4 . If defeated, challengers Shawn Valentine and Bob Barnaby have both promised to quash any Data Center plans and to keep Spencer what it is and to bring transparency and financial responsibility back to the township. Which way Spencer?

Part 2 Coming soon.