Resident suspicion and distrust of Adelanto’s top municipal officials is intensifying as those officials are seeking to rezone a substantial portion of the 52.87-square mile city to allow for the operation of data centers.
Adelanto, San Bernardino County eighth smallest city in terms of population, is also one of its most impoverished. With a mean household income of $68,685, Adelanto is ahead of only two of the county’s 24 cities and incorporated towns in that regard, as 17.2 percent of the overall population lives below the federal poverty line, while family-level poverty in the city is reported at around 15.9 percent to 16.4 percent.
Nearly twelve years ago, in the aftermath of the clean sweep that was effectuated in the 2014 election when Rich Kerr ousted Mayor Cari Thomas and John Woodard and Charles Glasper defeated Steve Baisden Charles Valvo, Kerr joined forces with incumbent Councilman Jermaine Wright and Woodard to embrace the long-in-coming liberalization of California’s marijuana laws that were fully effectuated with the passage of Proposition 64 in 2016. Presciently anticipating Proposition 64’s passage, the three spent 2015 acclimating the city’s populace to the concept of simply allowing a limited number of warehouses in the city industrial park zone to operate as indoor marijuana farms where medical marijuana was to be cultivated.
Over the objections of then-Councilman Ed Camargo and Glasper, the troika of Kerr, Wright and Woodard undertook to transform Adelanto into a cannabis-based economy by making Adelanto, in Kerr’s words, “the marijuana capital of the world.”
What was at play was a series of get-rich-quick real estate sale schemes. Comparatively speaking, land in Adelanto was inexpensive. Both real estate speculators and individuals interested in establishing marijuana-oriented businesses began delivering bribes to Kerr and Wright with the understanding that they would open the way for commercial cannabis or marijuana cultivation operations to set up and/or get permits on various properties around the city. This involved changing the zoning in certain areas of the city. Woodard, a real estate agent/broker, functioning on inside information he obtained as a city council member, would pass that along to would-be marijuana growers or prospective cannabis shop or prospective dispensary operators. They would purchase relatively inexpensive land somewhere in Adelanto and Woodard, as the broker, would get a commission on the sale. That land would subsequently be rezoned for use as an indoor marijuana farm or cannabis processing plant or cannabis product/marijuana distribution or wholesale or retail establishment.
Kerr, Wright and Woodard profited by their exploitation of their governmental decision-making authority. Ultimately, however, because of the sloppiness in their manner and mode of operation, Wright and Kerr were both taken down by the FBI on political corruption and bribery charges, and were ultimately convicted and sent to federal prison. Woodard with his more sophisticated approach, avoided being prosecuted. All three – Kerr, Woodard and Wright – were out of office by the end of 2018.
An element of the graft and fraud the three had perpetuated while they were yet riding high in 2015, 2016 and 2017 was inadequacy of most of the land in Adelanto for the purposes those securing a profit off of it by selling it to the would-be marijuana entrepreneurs.
Located in Mojave Desert, Adelanto has shortages in two areas to modern indoor marijuana cultivation – electricity and water.
Kerr, Woodard and Wright were able to capitalize on the greed of those intent on becoming large -scale marijuana producers by representing themselves as willing – which indeed they proved to be – to rubberstamp massive marijuana cultivation operations, even before the zoning and other entitlement issues relating to the development of the property in question was settled. The commercial marijuana operation proponents/applicants, blinded by the dollar signs in their eyes, generally acted hastily, delivering the payoffs virtually simultaneously with purchasing the land, which would shortly thereafter be rezoned for marijuana cultivation or cannabis product derivation, manufacturing, distribution or sale. It would only be later that they learned that the necessary utilities – water and electricity – were unavailable.
Kerr Wright and Woodard got out of those deals the money they were after. The real estate speculators got out of those deals what they were after in the form of the profit they realized when they sold the property they had purchased at a bargain basement price to those prospective marijuana farmers who anticipated getting in on the marijuana bonanza. A handful of marijuana/cannabis-related entrepreneurs who somehow, by hook or crook were able to get the water and electricity they needed to actually operate, profited, as well. A far larger number got burned.
With the 2018 election, a set of politicians who in some fashion touted themselves as reformists were elected, with Gabriel Reyes replacing Kerr as mayor and Gerardo Hernandez and Stevevonna Evans supplanting Woodard and Glasper Earlier in 2018, Kerr had installed Joy Jeannette as Wright’s replacement. In the nearly eight years since, Reyes and Evans remain in place, while Camargo, Jeannette, and Hernandez are gone, having been replaced, in no particular order, by Daniel Ramos, Angelo Meza and Amanda Uptergrove.
While the prospect of Adelanto becoming the “marijuana capital of the world” is no longer operative, “the next big thing,” as it were, is sweeping across the globe, the United States, California, Southern California, the Mojave Desert and into Adelanto, if not in actuality, in concept. That concept is data centers.
Intensive computing capability is a primary underpinning of artificial intelligence and robotics, two manifestations of technology that have captured the popular imagination at the moment. As a result, there is both an actual current, and anticipated future, need for densely-layered computing power, which is attained through data centers.
Data centers house hundreds of interlinked computers and thousands of servers operating 24 hours a day, seven days a week, utilizing electricity throughout literally thousands of miles of circuitry. The electricity produces heat, lots of it. High-density artificial intelligence and its necessarily accompanying computing racks can draw 30–80 kilowatts per rack, producing heat equivalent to dozens of homes per rack. Without effective cooling, processors overheat, throttle performance, and risk permanent damage, making water essential for maintaining safe operating temperatures and stable humidity levels, which typically stand at 40 percent to 60 percent relative humidity, to prevent static electricity and corrosion.
Data centers use massive quantities of water primarily to cool the thousands of servers that generate enormous heat, with water-based cooling systems being more efficient than air alone.
Across the globe, hundreds or perhaps more than one thousand companies, ones that have long been established or only recently established or untested start-ups, led by AWS, Microsoft Azure, Digital Reality, Equinix, NTT Global, Google Cloud Platform, GDS Holdings, Alibaba Cloud, QTS Data, Oracle Cloud are looking to get in on the ground floor of the data center frenzy. Accordingly, those companies are looking for settings where they can secure the land and necessities to construct those data centers.
Among those necessities are governmental entities willing, in accordance with their land-use, business-licensing and regulatory authority to accommodate the data centers in their jurisdictions.
In recent months and weeks, there has been intensive contact between on one end, Adelanto officials, extending to Reyes, Evans, Ramos, Meza and Uptergrove, as well as City Manager Jessie Flores, and on the other side, representatives of companies known to be focused on developing data centers. Members of the city council have been traveling hundreds of miles to hobnob with large-scale data center moguls. To even those who are most knowledgeable about those contacts and what they entail, it is unclear as to who is seducing whom.
From a certain perspective, it appears executives with the data center companies are pressing Adelanto’s city fathers to give them a chance to make a pitch for what they can do to improve and transform the community by setting up an operations or operations there. From another perspective, it looks as if it is Adelanto officials who are the ones making the pitch, trying to persuade the companies’ executives that they could do a whole lot worse than choosing Adelanto as the site for the data centers they need to build.
A wide cross section of Adelanto residents believe that no matter which side is trying to transform Adelanto into the data center of the world, the concept is a bad one. Among those are a subset who see an outright and conspiratorial attempt at fraud.
As has already been demonstrated when Kerr & Company sought to usher Adelanto into becoming the most prolific source of domestic indoor-grown marijuana, the city is located in the middle of an electricity-stressed and water-stressed region. Despite that, Adelanto’s elected officials, all five of them, are enthusiastically embracing the concept of clearing the way for large-scale, indeed massive, data centers being established in the city.
In lining their pockets, Kerr and Wright simply took thinly-disguised bribes, as in Wright’s case, accepting cash payments in secret, or in Kerr’s case, having “donors” provide his wife’s “charity” with generous contributions, ones that were generally in the form of cash. Woodward did a far better job of masking what was going on, having the money laundered to him in what came across as his perfectly legal reception of a fee or commission for selling property, indistinguishable from what real estate professionals do on an everyday basis. Those closely examining the current situation see the present council members engaging in an effort to exploit the outside world’s enthusiasm for a product that is suddenly all the rage to line their pockets in a way that replicates in some measure what Woodard or those who speculated in property located in Adelanto with his assistance did. That grift involves, allegedly, the securing of property at current market rate or tying the property up through an option to purchase at the current market rate, and then unloading the land at a substantial profit after it has been rezoned to allow for its development as a data center.
A move is now on to have the city tweak its city code, development code and zoning maps to better accommodate energy and utility facilities, data centers, battery energy storage, and microchip, semiconductor and drone manufacturing.
On the table for discussion and further study are amendments to the city’s general plan and land use guidelines that will redo the language relating to the elements of production and actuation relating to artificial intelligence and super-high speed data processing.
The contemplated language changes in the various codes do not pertain to any specific proposals at this point, but rather laying out standards and perhaps protocols to allow those who in the future have plans that are either modest, moderate, large or grandiose and include data centers and the like will know where the city stands and how to get started in bring a proposal to City Hall to see if it will fly.
On August 19, the Adelanto Planning Commission considered, for discussion and recommendation purposes only, the updating of the city’s zoning code that would clear the way for data centers to be built in the city.
That update pertained to Title 17 of the Adelanto Municipal Code to identify, according to the city, “additional land uses that may be considered in the Light Manufacturing, Manufacturing/Industrial and Airport Development District zoning districts, subject to discretionary permit approval. These uses include energy and utility facilities, data centers, battery energy storage systems and microgrids, microchip and semiconductor manufacturing and drone manufacturing.”
Ahead of the meeting, the city council and Flores had designated Planning Commission Chairman Chris Waggener to make a skillful and non-threatening introduction and illustration of the proposed code changes, followed by a persuasive explanation of their benefits to the community while allaying any concerns those in the community had about them before orchestrating what the members of the council hoped would be a unanimous recommendation from the commission to adopt the new standards.
As it turned out, however, Waggener employed all the subtlety of a bull in a China shop in seeking to carry out his assignment. Wearing a red Make America Great Again hat to the meeting and conjuring President Donald Trump’s bromide that those who are opposed to data centers are backward-looking and will never get ahead financially in the current technological climate.
It did not appear Waggener anticipated either the number of those who turned up the meeting to go on record as being opposed to data centers – 47 of the 59 people who went on record – or the vehemence of their sentiment against the facilities.
The proposed amendment being considered pertained to a textual change to the code. It did not involve the approval of any actual data center application, as no project proposal had been submitted to the city. To those expressing opposition to data centers, Waggener iterated, more than once, that what the commission was taking on that night did not entail approval a data center or give go-ahead to any such development.
“This isn’t about data centers,” Waggener repeated over and over.
Those in attendance understood that, however, and recognized that what the meeting was about was giving the city council political cover, meaning that in adopting changes to Title 17 of the Adelanto Municipal Code pertaining to data centers at some point in the relatively near future, the mayor and council members would be able to cite the planning commission recommendation to do so as a rationale for their decision.
As it turned out, however, the mayor and city council will not be able to do that, as the planning commission, in deference to the overriding public opposition to data centers, voted 3-to-2 against recommending the zone changes to the city council. Waggener and Vice Chair Ricardo Rubalcava voted to recommend the adoption of the amendment, asserting in union, essentially, that an influx of data centers will benefit the city economically. They were opposed in that view by Terry Delgado, Paul Casilla and Jayshawn Johnson.
Though the highest ranking members of the planning department do not want to get in Dutch with the mayor, the city council or the city manager by openly coming out against constructing data centers en masse in the city, planning division staff members and those in the city’s engineering division are against the zoning update that is being forced upon them. Some of those have expressed the opinion that “money in brown paper bags” going to the city’s top decision makers is the rationale behind the zone code revamping.
In reaction, the city council is now moving to scapegoat Waggener.
“I was extremely disappointed with how the business was handled,” Mayor Reyes said at the August 26 Adelanto City Council meeting, a week after the August 19 debacle. He made it sound as if it was Waggener who was seeking to push the city into accepting the building of data centers. “That is not who we are and how we conduct ourselves.”
Reyes indicated he believed Waggener should be removed as commission chairman.
Evans, who is vying against Reyes for mayor in this years election, joined in with him, but went further. She said she wanted Waggener bounced off the commission completely. “We have removed commissioners in the past when we didn’t agree with the way they addressed the commission,” Evans asserted, saying that Waggener had spoken to residents “in a way that was completely inappropriate.”
Reyes used his mayoral authority to call for a vote by the council next month to remove Waggener as the commission chairman.
Meanwhile, a band of outspoken residents say they are not fooled by Reyes’ or Evans’ words and that the entire council – Reyes, Evans, Ramos Meza and Uptergrove – are in the pockets of the nascent data center industry.