Mayor talks Google, urban growth boundary

The city’s 20-year agreement with Google includes annual payments, plus initial fees for each data center. That totals $45.5 million for the first four data centers.

The last two data centers, just now coming online, are expected to bring in about $120 million. They’ll pay 50% and 60% of their property taxes through a Strategic Investment Program.

He gave a brief history: In 2000, the town was “devastated” by the closure of Northwest Aluminum, leaving it “desperate for the jobs and the tax base that were lost.” He said “an economic development ray of hope came with the arrival of Google,” which was attracted in 2005 by the availability of land and “adequate” water and power supplies, plus attractive property tax breaks.

“These agreements have brought several hundred jobs and revenues to our community that include various system development charges, assorted fees, property tax revenue and payments in lieu of taxes,” he said.

The city still has not released a number for the maximum amount of water Google is allowed to take, which was capped in a 2021 agreement. Mays stated that Google will not get priority over water use.

He finished by noting the watershed expansion plan, first talked about in the 1990s and recently revived by studies that show The Dalles needs — besides water for current developments — 1 million more gallons per day to fully occupy the undeveloped port lands with industry.

He still hopes for passage of H.R. 655, the bill that would transfer 150 acres of Forest Service land under the reservoir to city government. “We think we can control it better,” he noted. “We need to make millions of dollars of improvements up in the watershed ... and we’d like to have those improvements made and administered on land that we own.”

Sens. Jeff Merkley and Ron Wyden are key to passing this bill, which has already passed the House, he said.

Mays also remembered, briefly, the city’s legal fight to avoid disclosing Google’s daily water use to The Oregonian. “I don’t regret doing that, but I look back on that three years ago, and I think that that lack of perceived transparency — and it really was a lack of transparency — has come back to really haunt us,” he said.

Most of Google’s water use numbers — not all — have now been released.

Mays also gave a primer on the city’s new strategic plan, based on a community survey in which 214 people participated (The Dalles has about 16,010 residents according to U.S. Census Data from 2020).

The most-mentioned subjects in survey responses were “housing and homelessness.” The city’s plan, he said, then sought a “balanced approach that combines compassion for people that are homeless with safety and also code enforcement.”

Other goals included public relations, public engagement, and customer service, and “trying to make the process for developing in our community more streamlined.”

They also want to expand their urban growth boundary, on which the Columbia River Gorge Commission “has not been what we would perceived to be very cooperative with us, to try to expand our urban growth boundary into the scenic area. So that’ll be a focus ... to try to get more housing production.”