Cutting edge computer technology may be coming to Greene County. Greg Piklapp, director of Greene County Development Corporation via Ames Regional Economic Alliance (AREA), and county zoning official Chuck Wenthold told the supervisors at their Nov. 3 meeting that Midland Power and Simple Mining have proposed putting a modular data center in the county to mine bitcoin data.
Piklapp said the data center would consist of about 30 shipping containers containing air-cooled servers set on 15 acres of rural land. A location has not been determined. The only draw on water would be to provide sanitary service; electricity would be provided by an existing unused line. The data center would create 8-10 local jobs at a wage of about $20/hour.
Simple Mining has a similar data center in Cedar Falls, Piklapp said.
Simple Mining is proposing making an annual payment to the county of $50-$60,000 in lieu of property taxes.
County attorney Thomas Laehn said the data center would require a conditional use permit under the current zoning ordinance. He suggested that rather than a conditional use permit, the supervisors should amend the zoning ordinance to protect the interests of the county and reduce the county’s liability, and also to provide more certainty for Simple Mining. He said three or four other counties have ordinances for data centers.
He recommended the supervisors ask his office to research and write an amendment to the zoning ordinances to address that sort of construction.
The board approved hiring Justin Bristow as fulltime IT director. His starting wage will be $85,000. He will start Nov. 10.
The supervisors followed up raises awarded to fulltime Greene County Ambulance employees last week with raises for ambulance part-time employees. Hourly rates will be $23 for EMTs, $25 for advanced EMTs, and $27 for PRN-RNs and paramedics. The on call rates will be $6 for EMTs, $7 for advanced EMTs, and $8 for PRN-RNs and paramedics.
Those are the same hourly rates the supervisors awarded to fulltime employees a week earlier. The increased wages are part of an effort to hire and retain enough employees to be able to cover not only emergency needs, but all transfers from Greene County Medical Center.
