Normal City Manager Pam Reece said while no data center developers have come looking for a potential site, the town continues to address the issue.
On July 2, a Town of Normal group led by Director of Planning and Zoning Mercy Davison visited Aurora and its CyrusOne Data Center. The fact-finding mission also included a staff member and an intern.
Reece said their experience has been helpful with Bloomington giving Normal an opportunity to participate in the city's public forum on Aug. 26 at the Bloomington Center for the Performing Arts.
“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 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.
Reece said Davison and her group came back with notes of what they observed and what they learned from City of Aurora officials.
“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 council member Kathleen Lorenz, after Lorenz was reported to have yelled and swore at town workers. In that exchange, Lorenz spoke negatively of town leadership, specifically Reece.
Reece thinks the 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 governments that employ a city manager do, 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 [the] 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 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, she said her recollection of the events “differs materially” from other accounts.
