Correcting the Starry-Eyed Mr. Bill

I will give starry-eyed Polk County commissioner Bill Braswell one thing: He is good at informing the general public via his weekly articles in a hyperlocal rag called the Four Corners Sun. What he is really bad at, though, is reaching beyond his naïveté and lack of imagination. For example, while he had a personal 9/11 story, he appears to not understand the connection between the events of that day and his constituents’ concerns with technologies like AI, data collection, the Internet, and their resultant data centers.

Bill! If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. All of your assessments of data centers in Polk have so far been massively overly favorable. You seem to find no data center handicap at all.

Just like our governor, Ron DeSantis, who wants to ram through his Amendment 3 proposal with no study and no research on its potential impacts, Bill Braswell wants to do the same. He wants Polk to be a data center leader just because he thinks that is exactly what will happen. He wants this without it being preceded by ample information for voters to see.

Meanwhile, Polk staff are already planning the framework for this implementation. No preliminary study. No valid research.

This attitude of Bill’s lacks intelligence and will likely negatively impact voters throughout the county. First steps, Bill.