By JIM BUTLER
A riddle wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma — to be clear Churchill was not talking about either PILOTs, CEAs or data centers.
His long-ago description of Russia comes to mind as the England Authority meets at 9 this morning for discussion of a Payment In Lieu of Taxes and bonds and lease agreement with Applied Digital, developer of a proposed data center near Boyce.
The discussion was scheduled back in October as preliminary review of a Cooperative Endeavor Agreement with the firm.
It could possibly still be that as one and the other are sometimes bound in the same package, according to online summaries.
The idea expressed last month was to have a discussion of the CEA (the actual contract document regarding the multi-billion dollar project), then forward it to the panel’s regular November meeting agenda.
(An aside: If inclined to speak your piece on the subject best wait until the November 19 meeting. Public comment at Authority gatherings is ordinarily limited to matters to be voted on. No vote is anticipated today.) Commissioners and the entities they represent will in the interim have opportunity for review of economic impacts and the like.
Today’s discussion is of a document “in furtherance of construction, equipping and operation of data center infrastructure including buildings, scalable power architecture, and high-density cooling configurations.”
PILOTs are, generally speaking, specific financial agreements reached as part of temporary property tax restructuring. In this case a term sheet agreed to in April covered 25 years.
CEAs are more a contractual agreement. They are required by Article VII of the state’s constitution.
One is the chicken, one the egg. Which is which sends us back to Churchill.