Know what’s still open
Neutral facilitation for local governments and residents facing a proposed data center.
Where this starts
By the time most jurisdictions can scope and hire help, the decision that mattered has already been made. The political trajectory of a project is largely set in the two to eight weeks after the first public awareness — before the first hearing, and usually before a permit is filed. Whatever a community knows when that clock starts is what it will have to use.
We are not your advocate. We run the process between you and the applicant, which is what makes our findings usable by everyone in the room — including the people you will need to convince.
Establishing what is actually open
The first question in any engagement, in these words: what has been filed, with whom, and on what date? That date is the boundary of your authority. We map the five gates — comprehensive plan, rezoning, conditional use, utility service and access, incentives — and separate the discretionary approvals you get to decide from the ministerial ones you must grant. What that gives you is an honest picture of your leverage, including the parts of it that are actually a price rather than a veto.
Standards before an application
An undefined use is a by-right use. In most small codes there is no definition of “data center,” so the classification falls to an administrator picking the nearest category. Defining the use and making it conditional in industrial districts only is the highest-value action available to a local government in this field, and it is free. So are the NDA and sunshine policy, incentive guidelines with clawbacks, and a notice-procedure audit. All available before an application is filed. All substantially harder afterward.
Listening and stakeholder mapping
Community history and identity, and the trusted local voices residents actually name — the extension agent, the fire chief, the retired engineer. We use representative methods rather than treating public comment volume as public opinion, because comment measures the intensity of the organized, not the view of the community, and reporting it as the latter is how officials end up defending a number that will not survive an election.
Capacity support
A jurisdiction with no technical staff facing outside counsel, an acoustician and a utility economist is not having a negotiation. We provide plain-language materials, help identify and equip trusted messengers, and press for developer-funded, community-controlled independent technical review as a condition of approval. Building your capacity is not a departure from neutrality — it is what makes neutrality mean anything.
Joint fact-finding
Rather than commissioning a study you cannot afford to answer one you do not trust, the parties jointly scope the questions, select the experts, and fix the method before results exist. It is the mechanism that gets an outgunned community a credible answer without funding a parallel technical operation.
Turning claims into project-specific questions
Almost nothing about data centers generalizes. Water draw as a percentage of your utility’s permitted capacity and summer peak-day production, never as an absolute. Your tangible personal property rate and depreciation schedule — one variable, a twenty-seven-fold spread in five-year local revenue on identical investment. Which tariff serves the load. Generator tier. Your district’s already-published GASB 77 disclosure.
Correcting the record
A published, dated log of claims examined, with findings and sources — applied identically whether a correction lands on the applicant or on the opposition. That symmetry is uncomfortable and it is the point: a correction that only ever runs one direction is advocacy, and everyone in the room notices by the second meeting.
Turning commitments into enforceable terms
Numbers, dates, responsible parties, consequences. Dual enforcement, so the same standards sit in the permit conditions and the contract — permit conditions stay revocable for the life of the facility, contracts do not. Security sized to the largest single obligation. Successors and assigns bound. Every condition you want operating in year fifteen has to be written in year one.
Monitoring and follow-through
Annual public reporting, compliance dashboards, renegotiation triggers, dispute processes — and a closing report saying what we heard, what changed because of it, and what did not change and precisely why. That last document is the most commonly broken promise in this field and the cheapest one to keep.
Why you can trust the process
Our terms are published before the first session, so you never have to take our word for any of it.
Fixed fee or hourly, never contingent on approval, denial, or any substantive outcome. Our fee cannot move with your vote, which is why a finding in the applicant’s favor is worth something and a finding in yours is too.
Applicant-funded, jurisdiction-selected escrow is the structure we recommend: the party with the money pays, the party with the standing selects and instructs us, and neither controls the finding. Better still, adopt it as a standing policy before any application arrives.
No downstream work for any party. No implementation contract, no communications retainer, no advisory role after the process closes — so there is nothing we are angling for. A published concentration limit on annual revenue from any single client, and a public record of engagements declined. You should ask that of anyone who offers to help you.
We will not tell you a project can be stopped when it cannot, run a process whose conclusion is predetermined without saying so publicly, or advise you to sign any agreement covering information that bears on community impacts.
Contact: info@commonwatts.com
Why you can trust the process
Our terms are published before the first session, so you never have to take our word for any of it.
Fixed fee or hourly, never contingent on approval, denial, or any substantive outcome. Our fee cannot move with your vote, which is why a finding in the applicant’s favor is worth something and a finding in yours is too.
Applicant-funded, jurisdiction-selected escrow is the structure we recommend: the party with the money pays, the party with the standing selects and instructs us, and neither controls the finding. Better still, adopt it as a standing policy before any application arrives.
No downstream work for any party. No implementation contract, no communications retainer, no advisory role after the process closes — so there is nothing we are angling for.
A published concentration limit on annual revenue from any single client, and a public record of engagements declined. You should ask that of anyone who offers to help you.
We will not tell you a project can be stopped when it cannot, run a process whose conclusion is predetermined without saying so publicly, or advise you to sign any agreement covering information that bears on community impacts.
Start a conversation
Tell us where the project is, who is involved, and what stage it has reached. A short conversation is usually enough to work out whether this is the kind of thing we do.
info@commonwatts.com