What if we just bribed them? "The letters started arriving in June, from a big developer who said he would give $10,000 to every family in town. They could spend it on anything. 'Really whatever you want,' the developer wrote," reports The Wall Street Journal. Residents of Hazle Township, in Pennsylvania, just needed to let NorthPoint Development build a data center (the first of 15!) in the foothills of the Pocono Mountains. "Then, $10,000 checks would go out to each of the 4,500 households there. It would be a $45 million payout, the developer wrote."
This is a year-changing amount of money for residents there, where median annual household income runs about $60,000. But most residents are not interested in taking the checks, or any of the more subtle bribes that have been thrown their way. "Data-center developers are increasingly offering towns and cities packages in the tens of millions of dollars, including funds for fire departments, emergency services and schools," reports the Journal. In Hazle Township, the developer trying to woo them even started sponsoring amusement park rides at a local festival. "$10,000 doesn't match how much it's going to tank my property value," one retired teacher told the Journal. This concern has been echoed by many others in the past few years, as NorthPoint has attempted to secure local buy-in first through persuasion, and now through…pecuniary persuasion.
