On February 4, 2026, 6 pm, the City of Pine Island City Council will hold a public hearing at a special City Council meeting at Pine Island City Hall, 250 South Main, Pine Island, MN. The purpose of the public hearing is to consider property tax abatements and business subsidies for the proposed Project Skyway hyper scale data center technology campus and 4 to 9 additional projects expected to be constructed over the term of the abatements.
Citizens of the City of Pine Island who believe that their city council should stop approving the Ryan Companies Project Skyway proposal are concerned about the negative energy, water, pollution and community impacts of the project. They believe that stopping the approval process would allow more time for the city council to prudently review and consider what is currently known about these negative impacts and do a proper environmental impact assessment.
A major negative community impact of a hyper scale data center is the granting of local and state tax abatements to the wealthiest technology companies, one of which will be the end user of the Pine Island project. Corporate welfare is unnecessary for these wealthy companies and should not be granted at the state or local level. It is wasteful to pay a company what they would do anyway. Our current state law regulating data centers, HF 16, was passed in 2025. It includes data center sales tax exemptions for up to 35 years. The Minnesota Department of Revenue estimates that over $480 million dollars in sales tax revenue will be lost over the next four years due to data center tax abatements. This loss is not unique to Minnesota. In a 2025 study conducted by Good Jobs First (good jobs first.org), ten states are losing more than $100 million per year due to sales and property tax abatements. Iowa has lost $151 million annually, Texas $1 billion annually and Virginia almost as much. These types of revenue losses are not reported by all the states.
It is expected that the comments made by citizens at the February 4, 2026 meeting will include how the proposed local tax abatements will result in a fiscal loss to the community. According to Reverend David Derksen, a resident of the City of Pine Island and a spokesperson for the Stop the Pine Island Data Center Group, “We are talking about giving away millions of dollars to incentivize building something many residents do not want in our community. Are those pushing this project prepared to make up those lost tax dollars when the bill comes due? I sure do not need my taxes increased to subsidize a multi-billion-dollar company!”
There will be a rally on February 18, 2026 at the Minnesota state capitol rotunda from 10:00 am to 11:30 am to support changes to data center state regulations and all interested persons are welcome to attend. The rally is sponsored by the Minnesota Coalition for Responsible Data Center Planning and other Minnesota residents. For more information, please send an email to nopidatacenter@gmail.com
Let our state senators and your house representatives know that you want our state to protect us from the negative energy, water, pollution, and fiscal impacts of data centers. We can plan and protect better.
