Port Washington Planning Commission approves tax district for incoming data center
PORT WASHINGTON, Wis (CBS 58) - The Port Washington Plan Commission met on Thursday night, Oct. 16, and approved a tax incremental district (TID), to allow the company behind a $8 billion data center to work with the city.
The TID still has to be approved by the common council after a first and second reading before there is a final vote.
Port Washington mayor Ted Neitzke says taxes will not go up for people living in Port Washington.
“This puts the city of Port Washington in a position where we will have a thriving, vibrant community that does not impact our historical parts of our town and it puts taxpayers in a really advantageous position just a few years down the road,” Neitzke said.
Neitzke says that Vantage, the company behind the data center, will be paying for all infrastructure needs for the center.
“Vantage Corporation has agreed up front to pay all costs that the city would have had to endure to do the infrastructure updates,” Neitzke said.
Dozens of people living near the planned site in Port Washington spoke at the meeting on Thursday night, expressing their concerns with the tax situation and also the impacts the center could have on the city.
“Any infrastructure that is built will impact future generations long into the future,” Port Washington resident Christine Le Jeune said. “Once the infrastructure is built, we have to deal with it and the rest of the generation that is coming up has to deal with this and also the environmental implications.”
Several people at the meeting that live in Port Washington told CBS 58 they believe they will feel the costs of the data center on their taxes in the long run.
“The nature of the TID district is ultimately that they get reimbursements for it, so ultimately we are the ones who end up footing the bill for it in the long term,” Le Jeune said.