Normal City Manager Pam Reece said while no data centers have come to the town for a potential site, Normal is still continuing to address the issue.
On July 2, a group of Town of Normal staff led by Director of Planning and Zoning Mercy Davison visited Aurora and its CyrusOne Data Center. The fact-finding mission included Davison, one staffer and an intern.
Reece said their experience has been helpful as Bloomington gave Normal an opportunity to participate in its public forum on Aug. 26.
“We want to work together with the City of Bloomington, and I appreciate their willingness to allow us to participate with their August community forum,” said Reece. “So, our planning and zoning staff has worked with the City of Bloomington to line up details for speakers and what that forum can look like.”
Reece said Normal would rather work together on the one event instead of planning and holding its own.
“We’re all one big community, in particular on this topic, and so Bloomington has allowed us to participate and get that planned.”
Bloomington officials have not yet said who will be part of the panel discussion.
The trip to Aurora is one only Normal has done. Bloomington Mayor Dan Brady said some of the city’s staff has done similarly but only on their own time.
Reece said Davison and her group came back with notes of what they observed and what they learned from officials of the City of Aurora.
“I’m sure that would be part of the conversation in August. Aurora is known for, at least in Illinois, for being one of the communities that has a pretty robust data center zoning ordinance, and it’s pretty thorough,” she said. “So, that’s one that we’ve been reviewing and might be using that as a potential starting point, and they took a year to create their ordinance.”
Aurora’s ordinance for data centers include provisions on land use, decommissioning, noise and more.
Council ethics code
WGLT reporting this month revealed tension between Reece and councilmember Kathleen Lorenz after Lorenz was reported to have yelled and swore at town workers. In that exchange, Lorenz spoke negatively of the leadership of specifically Reece.
Reece said she believes council is done with the matter.
“With this issue, the code of ethics that the council adopted, I believe, in April, is for that body,” she said. “It’s for the body of elected officials. I believe the same language was adopted by Bloomington. Good language. If council chooses to do anything further with that, that would be up to them.”
As is governments who employ a city manager, council members traditionally would go to Reece to address matters like the one that led to Lorenz’s incident. Reece said she has faced this problem before.
“It has come up occasionally, certainly in my course of my 35-year career, and I do want to say in a council-manager form of government, to say somebody’s supposed to do something is maybe a little strong,” she said.
“But I think in any organization, when you have leaders in authority and maybe with higher ability to control the outcome, having conversations that might make employees feel uncomfortable, that’s where the concern is.”
Reece said she does not expect any issues with council moving forward.
“Employees are citizens as well. They talk to council; council talks to employees. We have picnics, we have events. It’s just this particular situation, which was in public, which was unfortunate,” she said.
Lorenz declined WGLT’s request for an interview last week. In a brief phone conversation, Lorenz said her recollection of the events “differs materially” from other accounts.
