Craig Regan 14 said:

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Unless of course, the city has no other buyers and is stuck with this land because it is another failed government land deal they cannot admit to.

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$30mm is a good chunk to add to the tax roll. Not sure why they ever took it off in the first place. Not sure this deal really ever gets it back on either.

There's a standard thread running through the bad deals and it's not volunteer council members. The difference this time is that the one half of the Macy's boondoggle brain trust has already left town, so she can't be the scapegoat this time. At what point does the other half need to be released back to industry? COCS should demand better.

TAMU1990 said:

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the middle ground is at 60. It's still bad.

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The company is in charge of monitoring themselves.

If they're making money, the fines are trivial. This isn't a dude running his lawnmower.

EliteElectric said:

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EliteElectric said:

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I just sent this to all councilmembers and the mayor

Quote:

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9/8/2025

To: Staff and Council
With: City of College Station Texas
Re: Proposed Data Center, Real Estate and Capital Expenditures

Dear Mayor, Members of Council and city staff,

My name is Andreas Pavlatos, and I have been a business owner in College Station for over 16 years now, I have also paid taxes in Brazos County, Bryan and College Station during my entire 32 years in Texas. I am writing this letter to voice my acute displeasure and deep concerns regarding city leadership, and staff, and the actions taken by said group regarding Real Estate and Capital Expenditures in hopes that my voice, and by proxy the voice of many like-minded others will be heard.

Time and time again it seems that improper decisions are being made "on behalf" of the citizens and taxpayers of our community, without engagement, transparency or our consent. It's an ugly pattern of poor decision making. I can name at least a dozen, off the top of my head, since I came to the area in 1992, but will spare you the history lesson as I am sure you all are well aware of these mistakes. I am also aware and freely acknowledge that many of those past decisions were made by past regimes, however the pattern persists.

The full weight, financial injury and tax burden of those poor decisions are born solely by the taxpayers, your constituents, who have had little-to-no say in these decisions. The decision makers themselves, most of whom have had their taxes frozen due to their age, see no financial impact of their decision making.

Recently, a councilmember made us aware that the city has intentions of allowing a large datacenter to be built inside the city limits, and with no citizen engagement or input on the matter. We have built a datacenter (Stream Data Center | San Antonio) and can tell you from experience, they are very loud and unsightly and a huge drain on local resources. I do not believe the city should allow a large data center to be built inside the city limits without - at a minimum- community engagement, transparency and a vote by the citizens who would be affected.

In closing, let me say that there should be transparency in all levels of our local government. Not the type of transparency where a sitting councilman is threatened or chastised by staff for sharing information about a potential project that impacts thousands of citizens. Not the type of transparency where a sitting councilman asks for information on a property purchase and is denied it. Not the type of transparency where the only way citizens can get information on the property dealings of the city is via Freedom of Information Act filings. It seems that staff and the city manager are making all the decisions and then seeking acquiescence of Council and doing so by use of withholding information in order to couch their positions to council. This is evidence of systemic failure in leadership and borders on criminal. The citizens of College Station deserve better.



Sincerely,

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in the 24 hrs since I sent that I have received1 response. 1.

Quote:

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Thank you so much for your message and interest in our community. I will definitely take your thoughts and comments into consideration.

Thanks, David

David White
College Station City Council- Place 3

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I got that one, one from Yancy, and the mayor sent me one this evening that was very generic, but he did acknowledge that I was speaking Thursday, and that I have a meeting with him next week. So, he read my very lengthy email.

Even though all y'all know who I am now… I'm not going to post my email. Folks in my subdivision have seen it, and let's say, I didn't mince a lot of words. I work in tech, and have a pretty good idea of what this is.

davido said:

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birdman said:

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Partyof4 said:

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Thursday's City Council meeting is at 6:00...As of now, it is the last item on the agenda so be ready for a late night!

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I still want somebody to use their allotted two minutes to simply use a power tool or blast speaker at 85 decibels. That's it.

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Why 85? Contract says 63 day and 56 night.

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Because they're lying.

Everybody needs to quit using $30 million as the sales price. IT ISN'T $30 MILLION. It's only possible. City government is throwing out the best-case scenario.

The proposal states the Bitcoin miner has the OPTION to buy all of the land. If so, they spend ~$30MM. That means they also have the option to be less. Acreage is determined by mining company, not the city.

They might only want 1/3rd of the acreage. In that scenario, the city gets $10 million in the bank. And utility capacity needs to double. And you've ruined Midtown. And nobody would want to move into the unsold acreage around a Bitcoin mining facility.

RTFD

These are canned responses they are sending to everyone who emailed them. I got the same emails.

I get the feeling the COCS isn't happy all the citizens are making this a big deal. They wanted this to remain quiet until they approved it and then they could send out a nice press release that would lay out how great it is for everyone.

Now that another "big idea" has become public too early, for some reason the uneducated public is up in arms. Still, we probably just need more "facts" to show us how great of an idea it is. They will provide those at the meeting. Good luck to us I guess...

I have a question for this passionate group.

How do we make a change?
In my opinion the way our City works has been broken for decades and we continue to let it happen. How can we take the current momentum and make a positive change for the future? Once again my opinion and I hope I am wrong. Nothing we say or do tomorrow night is going to make a difference. Our leaders think of us as peons. And we deserve that because we have allowed it to happen for many years.
Let's carry this passion into Friday and beyond no matter the outcome tomorrow night.
I was shocked when Bob Yancy reported he could not get answers to his questions of staff. In my world people are fired immediately for those actions. And yet these are the same folks we entrust to negotiate multi million dollar deals on our behalf.
I think we can do much better if we try.

Elect leaders who will hold the employees and city manager accountable.

and as a friendly reminder that this is a pattern

I was shocked when Yancy said at the town hall that the org chart should be-
Citizens-
Council-
Staff

and that was essentially inverted. This is a sitting elected official bemoaning the fact that he can't get info that he asked staff for directly. Way back during the Macy's debacle, I was SHOCKED to learn that Yancy was denied documents. SHOCKED.

I fired an employee once for refusing to provide the Tx Toll Tag account login info to us so we could add a tag to our account. Once that employee was gone we asked TxTT for new credentials and when we logged in we found out that employee had 7 tags on their family members vehicles in Elite Electric name. It's been my experience 100% of the time, that when subordinates refuse to hand over info it's because they are hiding something. EVERYONE at city hall is your subordinate, demand answers.

EliteElectric said:

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I was shocked when Yancy said at the town hall that the org chart should be-
Citizens-
Council-
Staff

and that was essentially inverted. This is a sitting elected official bemoaning the fact that he can't get info that he asked staff for directly. Way back during the Macy's debacle, I was SHOCKED to learn that Yancy was denied documents. SHOCKED.

I fired an employee once for refusing to provide the Tx Toll Tag account login info to us so we could add a tag to our account. Once that employee was gone we asked TxTT for new credentials and when we logged in we found out that employee had 7 tags on their family members vehicles in Elite Electric name. It's been my experience 100% of the time, that when subordinates refuse to hand over info it's because they are hiding something. EVERYONE at city hall is your subordinate, demand answers.

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I am still asking for a list of where all the HOT taxes go and can't get a clear answer. I would love to find out., I know that the Christmas operation south of town has received a lot. Do they still get some? They purchased about $2.5 Million dollars of land across hwy 6....the car lot and jockey lot, If they still get HOT money, do they really still need it?

It goes even deeper than this, half the time a citizen speaks there's always two council people who are playing on their phone and won't look up to the citizen speaking. It's one of the most infuriating things I've ever witnessed to watch someone take time out of their day to speak to their elected officials and someone won't even have the manners to look up and look them in the eye.

Then whenever a citizen or council person says something remotely out of line with the staff's opinion it has been my experience to watch them make a face or scoff and immediately look over to staff with a face that says "can you get a load of this guy"

I've floated this to a few of you in private, but with the turn out that showed up for the town hall, TexAgs people could with ease host a Aggieland candidate forum in the next election cycle and ask hard questions. Nobody is gonna get them all right and make everyone happy, but it would allow yall the chance to talk to potential leaders on what you expect from them.

I don't know if you know who I am but I'm the guy who walked over and thanked you during the town hall for policing the crowd when they were getting off the rails a bit

hopeandrealchange said:

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I have a question for this passionate group.

How do we make a change?
In my opinion the way our City works has been broken for decades and we continue to let it happen. How can we take the current momentum and make a positive change for the future? Once again my opinion and I hope I am wrong. Nothing we say or do tomorrow night is going to make a difference. Our leaders think of us as peons. And we deserve that because we have allowed it to happen for many years.
Let's carry this passion into Friday and beyond no matter the outcome tomorrow night.
I was shocked when Bob Yancy reported he could not get answers to his questions of staff. In my world people are fired immediately for those actions. And yet these are the same folks we entrust to negotiate multi million dollar deals on our behalf.
I think we can do much better if we try.

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They need to fire the city manager and I stated as such in my email. Who runs the city? The city manager is not accountable to the voters.

single largest improvement could be made in CoCS government is moving to single member districts. Too much of the city is unrepresented

EliteElectric said:

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single largest improvement could be made in CoCS government is moving to single member districts. Too much of the city is unrepresented

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This is a must. It would have to be brought forth as an initiative via petition since this council would never willingly vote something like that in.

Reading the municipal code it appears we would need 25 percent of the previous elections voters. Following a presidential election would make the challenge even harder is my guess.
Source: https://library.municode.com/tx/college_station/codes/code_of_ordinances?nodeId=PTICICH_ARTXINRERE

TAMU1990 said:

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They need to fire the city manager and I stated as such in my email. Who runs the city? The city manager is not accountable to the voters.

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Only the city council has the power to fire the city manager.

There is not one single council member who will even consider this option.

No one on the council has the basic leadership skills to call out the bad decision makers by name.

If just one person on the council had the integrity and backbone to call out the city manger, assistant city manager or staff who have made poor decisions by name, and put it on the agenda -- they would be the hero of College Station. Even if the vote didn't pass; they would earn the trust of the voters.

All of the people on the council have a professional resume and i assume have had to be in positions to hire, fire, coach, council, and discipline people. Even people they may have been friends with.

I often wonder what the reason is for not calling them out. Everyone who runs for office says they want to serve the people and the people want a new city manager. Folks who run for office always say they are going to fix things and change things. The voters want things fixed and have the council change their poor decision making and have fiscal responsibility.

Yet here we are complaining about the same old stuff with a different group of people.

City Manager has got to go. He tries to dictate the direction of the council instead of being a tool for them to use.