Key conversations were held between city officials and a data center developer months before the topic was ever brought before the public, according to reporting by KSDK 5 on Your Side.
The conversations came to light due to Sunshine Law requests by Festus residents that revealed emails between city officials and executives with CRG, a developer pushing to build a data center in Festus after pulling out of a proposed site in St. Charles. Those emails showed that the developer offered input on the city's data center rules, that city leadership deliberately facilitated closed-door meetings between developers and council members and that Gov. Mike Kehoe took interest in the project ahead of a pivotal vote by the council, according to KSDK.
On Aug. 18, City Administrator Greg Camp sent out a “confidential” email to council members about the data center. In it, he described a meeting between city officials and CRG executives. The email also noted CRG had details about a specific location of the data center, the annexation of the land, zoning, development and utilities, according to KSDK.
The emails produced by the Sunshine Law request show at least five separate instances in which Camp coordinated private meetings between CRG’s development team and council members.
By spreading out meetings one-on-one, city officials avoided triggering the Sunshine Law’s open-meeting requirements.
In several emails, Camp emphasized the need to limit how many council members could attend meetings at the same time.
“We are setting up stakeholder meetings with the development team to discuss the project and answer questions,” one email reads. “We have to limit how many Councilmembers can attend at the same time.”
Camp told KSDK staff the discussions were hypothetical.
“The discussion about the potential of a data center located in the city of Festus, or in Jefferson County, is the discussion about the potential of a project,” Camp said. “Until we actually have the project, until we have a site plan, until we have details, until we have a development agreement, they're hypotheticals. I don’t deal in hypotheticals ... At the end of the day, we’re working towards the possibility of taking those hypotheticals and turning them into something that’s black and white.”
Look for more coverage of the data center discussions in future editions of the Leader.