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Wheeling City Council did the hard thing Tuesday night, not the easy thing.
In a 6-1 vote, council approved a memorandum of understanding with Silicon Foundry Energy for its proposed data center campus at the former Centre Foundry & Machine Company site.
Dozens of residents packed the meeting to object. But when you boil it down to what is best for Wheeling moving ahead, council indeed made the right call.
This is the choice those seven elected members of our community -- Mayor Dennis Magruder, Vice Mayor Jerry Sklavounakis, and councilors Tony Assaro, Ben Seidler, Connie Cain, Ty Thorngate and Dave Palmer -- actually faced: Approve the memorandum of understanding with Silicon Foundry and retain control over this project, or walk away and potentially surrender that control to Charleston.
That's not an exaggeration. And that made their choice clear.
Under West Virginia's House Bill 2014, a data center of 90 megawatts or more qualifies as a "high-impact data center." Once such a facility receives state certification, the rules change.
Municipal ordinances regulating zoning, noise, lighting, development and land-use no longer apply. Neither do local building permitting, inspection and code enforcement requirements.
Think about that -- those are precisely some of the issues residents are worried over. Noise. Lighting. Development. The effect on the surrounding neighborhood.
If Silicon Foundry eventually crossed that 90-megawatt threshold and became a state-certified high-impact facility, Wheeling would lose much of its authority to regulate those very things.
The memorandum approved Tuesday is designed to keep that from happening.
Silicon Foundry, per the memorandum, agrees to remain below the 90-megawatt threshold. That keeps regulatory jurisdiction local and allows Wheeling to establish a Tax Increment Financing district in the area, which brings further controls. The company also would be required to compensate the city for lost tax revenue if the project eventually exceeded the threshold and affected the TIF.
City Manager Robert Herron said it best. The memorandum "keeps control local so that council can work on this." That's the point.
Rejecting the memorandum of understanding would not have stopped the data center.
The project already meets the city's zoning requirements. Silicon Foundry could still develop the property and, without the MOU, potentially seek high-impact certification under state law.
If that happened, Wheeling would have been left with essentially nothing. Again, I don't blame residents for their concerns. Any thoughtful resident should be going into this asking questions.
Andrew Mull told council there's "a lot of confusion about why citizens don't want to trust" the project. Liz Stephens, who lives two blocks from the site, said it plainly: "It's obvious that nobody really cares what we have to say." Aiden Kosol questioned trusting a company that didn't exist before January. Megan Ondeck noted financial penalties would mean little if expansion ultimately proved more profitable.
Those are fair questions. They deserve real answers.
Assaro, Warwood's representative on council and the lone dissenting vote, gave voice to that frustration. He acknowledged the memorandum provides "some extra guardrails," but ultimately concluded, "There's nothing good about this entire situation."
Councilman Ty Thorngate offered residents something closer to the path forward, telling them, "I hear you. We as a council hear you," while pointing to a forthcoming city ordinance addressing noise, water use, light pollution, electricity and other concerns.
That ordinance now becomes critical.
If Tuesday's action preserves Wheeling's authority to regulate the project, council's next responsibility is to use that authority.
Put everything in writing. Establish environmental safeguards. Determine what protections are available concerning power demands and costs. Give residents a clear process for filing complaints and getting answers.
Give the ordinance teeth.
Mayor Magruder also noted Wheeling officials have been talking with leaders in New Albany, Ohio, where more than 40 data centers operate, including a 200-megawatt Meta campus.
Keep making those calls. Find out what New Albany got right. More importantly, find out what officials there wish they had done differently as this industry developed.
Again, here's the reality as it sits today: this proposed project meets the city's zoning requirements. It represents a $130 million investment in an industrial property that sits vacant. And now it comes with legal guardrails Wheeling otherwise would not have.
Saying no Tuesday might have felt like the smart move to some.
It wasn't.
If Wheeling had said no to the memorandum, all bets could have been off.
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There's another part of Tuesday's meeting worth noting.
Wheeling City Council often is criticized (fairly, in my opinion) for how it handles public comments, which typically come at the end of the session. Tuesday was different.
Council suspended its rules and allowed residents who wanted to address the memorandum of understanding with Silicon Foundry to speak before the vote.
Of all the actions taken Tuesday, that may have been one of the most important.
Did hearing from those in attendance change a single vote?
Probably not. The outcome likely was going to be 6-1 regardless.
But that's not the point.
When residents are forced to wait until after a decision has been made to say their piece, it reinforces the worst people believe about government -- that nobody is actually listening, and that no one cares.
Allowing public comment before a vote doesn't mean council will agree with those speaking. Representative government doesn't work that way.
But people deserve the opportunity to make their case while the question is still formally before their elected representatives. They got that Tuesday.
Now comes the difficult part.
The memorandum approved Tuesday gives the city a seat at the table when it comes to this project.
What council does with that seat -- particularly through the ordinances to be developed -- will determine how well the city protects Warwood and the rest of Wheeling as this project moves forward.
John McCabe is editor of The Intelligencer and Wheeling News-Register. From 9-10 a.m. each Friday, he joins Howard Monroe on AM 1600 WKKX to discuss the most pressing issues in Wheeling. Reach him at jmccabe@theintelligencer.net.