{"id":10334,"date":"2026-04-18T14:30:00","date_gmt":"2026-04-18T14:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/ctiy-council-data-center\/"},"modified":"2026-04-18T14:30:00","modified_gmt":"2026-04-18T14:30:00","slug":"ctiy-council-data-center","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/ctiy-council-data-center\/","title":{"rendered":"City Council Wrecked in Voter Bloodbath After Allowing New Data Center"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Small town politicians are learning the hard way that when Americans say no to data centers<\/a>, they mean it.<\/p>\n

In Festus, Missouri \u2014 a sleepy town of roughly 12,700 residents \u2014 the backlash was so great that residents ousted half their city council after they approved a $6 billion data center development against the public will. According to Politico<\/em><\/a>, the uproar caused by the data center approval led to a surge in voter turnout, the majority of whom expressed their discontent with the old councilors by voting in four anti-AI newcomers.<\/p>\n

Take Rick Belleville, a 70-year old who\u2019d never previously run for office, but who unseated Jim Tinnin in the city\u2019s fourth ward. Tinnin, an eight-year city council veteran, had previously been elected in 2018<\/a>. This time, he lost to the upstart Belleville by over 40 percentage points after voting to approve the data center buildout.<\/p>\n

\u201cI ran because I thought the city was not listening to people,\u201d Belleville told Politico.<\/em> \u201cIt\u2019s really the way the deal was handled that led to this kind of uprising.\u201d<\/p>\n

Belleville is joined by three other fresh elects, who won as a result of their anti-data center attitude. Speaking to local media<\/a>, Belleville promised to be more transparent than the previous representatives. He said that each new council member would have a cellphone with a publicly-listed phone number for speaking to constituents directly.<\/p>\n

Though the remaining city council members aren\u2019t up for election until next April, local media reports anti-data center voters are passing around petitions to recall them as soon as possible.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe do not want to wait till next April,\u201d anti-data center voter Mary Fakes said, adding that citizens hope to boot the mayor out as well. \u201cThis is a referendum against all of them based on their support of the data center.\u201d<\/p>\n

One thing\u2019s for sure: the resounding defeat sends a clear message to elected officials across the country that public anger<\/a> at data center developments has reached a boiling point.<\/p>\n

More on data centers: <\/strong>Almost Half of US Data Centers That Were Supposed to Open This Year Slated to Be Canceled or Delayed<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

The post City Council Wrecked in Voter Bloodbath After Allowing New Data Center<\/a> appeared first on Futurism<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Small town politicians are learning the hard way that when Americans say no to data centers, they mean it. In Festus, Missouri \u2014 a sleepy town of roughly 12,700 residents…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[177,3841],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10334","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-artificial-intelligence","category-ethics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10334","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10334"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10334\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10334"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10334"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10334"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}