Grimes County residents push back against potential tax breaks for incoming tech and energy companies.
Watch the full story here:
Elected leaders at the Grimes County Justice Center are making decisions about possible tax breaks for certain types of tech and energy companies.
Citizens voiced concerns over verbiage changes Tuesday that could allow these companies to apply for local tax breaks. Residents argued that the county needs to push back against data centers and battery energy supply systems, saying the influx of projects is happening too fast.
"Overall, the presentations were if a data center does come here or a solar farm or anybody else make them pay taxes," Karen Shiver said.
"Overall the public commentary was we may not be able to prevent uh data center and solar farm and and all these projects from coming to the county, but we are under no legal obligation to offer any of them a tax abatement," Shiver said.
County Judge Joe Fauth did not want broad language that would eliminate other types of industries from consideration.
"So I wanted to get the language changed in there that if somebody wants to come in and put a power plant in like Taska, let them do it," Fauth said.
Fauth told me that no one has applied for the tax breaks yet.
"No abatement agreements presented to me or to, actually, they're presented to the commissioner typically of the area that it's going to be in, and the commissioner would then bring it to me and then we, the commissioner and I would take it to the court. That's would be normal procedure," Fauth said.
Neighbors told me more research needs to be done about these energy and tech companies.
"And stop hearing just from the people who are selling you this. That's like believing a used car salesman and everything he says to you," Donna O'Connor said.
"The projects that are coming in are numerous and that they are not anything designed to benefit the residents of this county," Shiver said.
"And I just want them to put a pause on them until we can figure out what kind of regulations we actually need and what are the environmental and health issues as well as the financial issues with those," O'Connor said.
There will be another chance for public comment at the next commissioners court meeting on May 6.
This story was reported on-air by a journalist and has been converted to this platform with the assistance of AI. Our editorial team verifies all reporting on all platforms for fairness and accuracy.
