Kar McCollester (00:01.294)
Welcome to Mighty Municipalities, the podcast about small municipalities and how they can punch above their weight. I'm your host, Karl McCollester and along with my co-host, Mark Partin and our guests, we take you through the highs and lows of working in a small municipality. Whether it's the hardship and frustrations that are holding you back or the progress and wins that are propelling you forward, we're here to share the lessons learned and give you strategies to help improve your community. How are you doing, Mark?

Mark Partin (00:29.599)
Doing great and since we have last done a recording together, the weather has dramatically changed for the better. And in South Carolina we're quite a bit cooler and really enjoying that. So hope it sticks around for the rest of the fall.

Kar McCollester (00:36.685)
Yes.

Kar McCollester (00:45.366)
Yes, me too. I in in South Carolina, when we mean the fall, we mean mid to upper eighties. But it is still so much nicer than the alternative. as we were talking offline, I just got back from a conference in Austin, Texas, and it was in the still in the mid-90s there and I was suffering from FOMO throughout the days I was there.

Mark Partin (00:50.601)
Yes.

Mark Partin (01:08.095)
Yes.

Kar McCollester (01:10.03)
envying my my friends and family as they got to experience cooler weather finally whereas I was still sweating buckets. it was it was a very great conference. not the greatest weather. So well Mark

Mark Partin (01:17.78)
Yes.

Mark Partin (01:24.475)
And I I actually I actually put on long sleeves the other day for the first time in a while, so yes.

Kar McCollester (01:27.986)
really? Wow. Yeah, yeah, I am jealous. Yeah. I I finally came home Friday evening and very much appreciated taking the dog out. It was the the best outing for a while. So Mark, I think we had a couple topics to talk today, starting with you wanna talk a little bit about the eSTEAM festival that's coming up in Sumter and some of the context around that.

Mark Partin (01:38.515)
Yes.

Mark Partin (01:51.741)
Yes, Sumter began the eSTEAM Festival several years ago and it's is really headed up by the economic development team, but it also has partners with the city, the county, school district, local industries, local businesses. So it's really has become a community collaboration, which could be a whole separate conversation to have on the this podcast. But what I really wanted to talk about is today is

as we're recording this is September 27th, and the festival is this coming Saturday. And the festival is held downtown. Main Street's closed off and a couple of the larger parking lots are filled up with different displays. And this has really turned out to be a very successful venture with all of those different entities I mentioned involved in it. And the the

attendance is in the thousands,

I think last year they estimated over five thousand people came to it and it has really has turned into a great way for educating young people, particularly that's the focus on the younger generation. these are some quality jobs that don't necessarily require furthering their education, but they are jobs that are available, you know, right here in our community. Some may require a two year degree, some may require, you know, four year degrees, but there are a large number of them that

You can go straight from high school into doing these jobs. And the you know intent, this is Mark's interpretation of the intent, but it is to let people know there are good jobs to do right here in your own community. And you don't have to leave. You can stay here, be a part of the community, help develop the community for the future, and sustain the workforce because you know, as we've talked about often on in other podcast episodes.

Mark Partin (03:52.229)
a large part of the working population is entering retirement age or even already past retirement age and this is one way to get the interest of the younger generation for good quality well paying jobs here in in our own community so I'm looking forward to the festival this weekend and expect another just great

Kar McCollester (03:57.902)
Mm-hmm.

Kar McCollester (04:06.156)
Yeah.

Mark Partin (04:17.287)
outpouring of participation and support from the community, the industries, other businesses in the area. but on a broader scale, this brings up the topic of work yes.

Kar McCollester (04:25.069)
Yeah.

Kar McCollester (04:31.758)
Okay, so just I'll I'll obviously cut this. But so I wanna just ask a couple of things about the festival before you get to the broader scale thing. So Yeah, that's fantastic. you it's great to hear that it's so well attended.

Mark Partin (04:39.399)
Okay. All right. Mm-hmm.

Kar McCollester (04:50.03)
Clearly communicating to the people in your town about what's available workforce-wise helps keep folks in your town, which is that alone is a a great initiative and a great way to continue growing your community and keep it stable. W what do you s think businesses see as the benefit to be involved? Is is it a

Are they specifically talking to people about the jobs that are available today? Are they talking about jobs they have available regularly? Is it more roles? What do you what have you normally seen when you're at those exhibits?

Mark Partin (05:27.151)
we've seen both actually. so it's these are the type jobs that we have currently that aren't going away. You know, these are skills that are perpetually needed and you cannot go wrong if you do these skills. Some of them may be, you know, forklift drivers or machine shop operators,

Kar McCollester (05:46.392)
Yeah.

Mark Partin (05:51.006)
you know, maintenance technicians, those type jobs that you always have to have them. You know, some of the skills may adjust as technologies change, but their basic jobs are always going to be there. But then they also bring in new technologies to show where things are going in the future and these are jobs that are coming up and they use, you know, new technologies that the kids have exposure to as

They may seem cool and untouched right now, but they know it's coming. And you know, Central Carolina Technical College here in town has a a program where they develop robotics and you know I I saw one product they developed was an artificial hand for someone who had lost their hand. And it was a functioning, you know, looked like a I mean it looked robotic, but it had five fingers and a you know

Kar McCollester (06:44.249)
neat. Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Mark Partin (06:50.979)
a f a thumb and four fingers and so they they show that really neat things can be done right here and are being done in your hometown. So it's it's both. We need these jobs. Here's some future jobs that you can steer yourself towards. Yeah.

Kar McCollester (07:09.176)
Gotcha. Were there any you know, have over the years that you've been to it, were there any ones any specific exhibits that come to mind that you thought have certainly made an impact on either the the younger folks there or the adults?

Mark Partin (07:28.701)
Yeah, I think you know, and this is Mark's opinion, not from the survey or anything, but

Kar McCollester (07:31.246)
Sure, of course, yeah. Yeah.

Mark Partin (07:34.684)
One year they had a drone exhibit and and some robotic exhibits, not just the one I just mentioned, but some other items and I think particularly around drones, the you know, many younger people see it as a fun thing that you have a drone and you fly it up around your house or you know, whatever and it's it's just fun. almost like a video game with the controllers they use. But then when they saw industrial applications and law enforcement applications

Public safety applications and public services applications of drone use, that it really, you know, a spark goes off. And I this isn't just play, this is a real world use. And you know, I know the power line or power companies use them regularly to evaluate power lines, and I see them flying over my neighborhood sometimes, and you know, that's what they're doing, they're checking out their assets and making sure they're you know in the state and condition they need.

Kar McCollester (08:07.704)
Mm-hmm.

Kar McCollester (08:15.362)
Gotcha.

Kar McCollester (08:27.202)
Certainly.

Mark Partin (08:34.547)
to be in. So I think that's probably one of the most interesting ones where they could see what at that age you think of as a plaything being applied in a in a real world scenario.

Kar McCollester (08:35.554)
Very neat.

Kar McCollester (08:43.918)
Mm-hmm.

Kar McCollester (08:49.132)
Okay, so that's a great point. So really encouraging your local industries not just look at it as a as a job fare, but really to think about what are the roles you need to regularly fill that, you know, because of the number that you have and turnover and things like that. You know you have a regular you need a regular pipeline for and think about how those things may evolve or be currently evolving, and show that to

the younger folks who are currently in middle school or high school.

Mark Partin (09:22.313)
Yes, and you know, this isn't unique to my hometown, but pick any smaller town anywhere in the nation and the young kids will say there's nothing to do here or there's no reason to stay here. Well part of this is showing them there is a reason to stay here. There is interesting stuff to do here. give it a shot. Think about it before you just depart and go somewhere else.

Kar McCollester (09:33.218)
Mm. Right.

Kar McCollester (09:46.488)
Sure, and and frankly it's a great opportunity for a municipality if they're the ones putting it together or working as part of several local government entities or nonprofits to put it together to have that conversation with a local business, especially some of your more impactful local businesses, in a way that's hey, let's work together and help benefit you and bringing extra value to that business within your municipality. Absolutely.

Mark Partin (10:13.651)
Right. And I I think one of the the good side effects or testimonies of the collaborative nature of this festival is

the different industries and businesses they won't show up and and say, I want to get all the good people. We don't want, you know, company XYZ. They're not in competition. They're there working together to grow the workforce and grow the community for the future. It it's not a competitive atmosphere at all.

Kar McCollester (10:45.496)
That's great. And then I you told me you had some thoughts about how this led to the bigger role of workforce development within the community.

Mark Partin (10:53.039)
Yes, you know, when I really started thinking about it, I was

beginning to or originally thinking about this festival. But then as I really put some thought into it, this is more of than just a festival and youth development, but it really is a workforce development tool that fits in with many other programs overall. So you know like here I know locally we have what's called an emerging leaders program that is geared towards juniors and seniors in high school and it exposes them to differ

Industries as well as leadership skills, and they get some college credit for it. There is, you know, in the city of Sumter, we have our own municipal employee development programs. Some of them are you know stretched out throughout a year, some of them are stretched out through just a day or two, and then others are real specific on a you know a certain skill. And then there are opportunities through other entities here in town like the

Community college, the local USC branch, and Central Carolina Technical College has ongoing employee training opportunities. So you know a lot of entities come together to provide opportunities for workforce development. And it's not just you know formal certifications, some of them are informal to help build those soft skills and maybe those skills you haven't tapped.

Kar McCollester (12:25.782)
Mm-hmm.

Mark Partin (12:27.221)
Into a long time as a way of laying a foundation for the community to have a solid workforce to draw from and not just be skill specific or industry specific, but leadership in general that you can take in any industry, whether it's public, nonprofit, or governmental, and apply those skills to continue to serve the community and help the community grow.

Kar McCollester (12:54.766)
I you know, sticking on one part you said that stood out to me, especially around the idea of the soft skills, 'cause I think a lot of industry and technical college systems, universities are usually very aligned towards the hard skills. Like a r you know, the the conversation of, you know, you have a a warehouse, how many forklift operators, how many

electricians, how many mechanical maintenance people you know are you going to need regularly, and what can we do to fulfill those jobs? What do you see as the role of a municipality or what a small town can do around the soft skills piece that a, you know, whether that they can do to help their businesses, and whether that's if they have a community college nearby or if they don't.

Mark Partin (13:53.596)
if this doesn't answer your question, let me know, but I I'm gonna throw this out there and as as at least one answer. So I think one of the challenges with soft skills now is and I'm gonna go into a reference here, but there's a book by Ram Sharam and other co-authors titled The Leadership Pipeline.

Kar McCollester (13:58.328)
Sure. Absolutely. Thank you.

Mark Partin (14:18.491)
And in that book they identify several steps in different leadership. And not everybody will go up every step, but there are certain things you have to do to move up the ladder, so to speak. And the first step that everyone needs to master is leadership of self. And that's where soft skills largely fall. So you know, such things as do you get up when your alarm goes off? Do you show up to work on time? do you show up

Kar McCollester (14:30.2)
Mm-hmm.

Mark Partin (14:48.515)
you know, dressed appropriately for the job. You know, if if you're in a manufacturing job, is your clothing you know loose and flowy so that maybe there's a a risk of you getting injured in a machine or do you have the right clothing on? You know, if you work in construction, do you have steel toed boots on? You know those sound like simple things, but they're part of self-leadership in showing up to do the job that you

Kar McCollester (14:51.662)
Mm-hmm.

Mark Partin (15:18.295)
you have. And you know, those are skills that

surprisingly they're not intuitive. Some people need to be taught them. And if you know if they're coming from a a family that maybe you know a parent didn't work in that field, they don't know because their parent did something different. You know, maybe their parent did a white collar job and they're interested in a trades job and how you show up to work is different for both of those. You know, one's not right and one's not wrong. It's just different. And then also how do how do you address people? You know, how do

Kar McCollester (15:26.968)
Right.

Mark Partin (15:52.336)
you because so much of our communication is now you know in short burst of you know just a few characters here and there, can you carry on a conversation that's you know appropriate? Can you write a memo that's appropriate? those are all some of the skills that municipalities and and you know public schools, private schools, community colleges, that's something they can teach to prepare

kids not for a specific job but for all jobs that they may, you know, enter into. So those are just some of the soft skills. And that's the first level of leadership is can you lead yourself.

Kar McCollester (16:32.81)
Mm, okay. Yeah. Great. Yeah, so y my when I think of that kind of first stage, that's the

Kar McCollester (16:44.568)
was I think the first or second habit within Covey as well, kind of the sharpened saw, you know, you know, get your own house in order before getting further out. So yeah, that certainly rings true in my experience, and what, you know, other thought leaders have talked about on that side as well. Well very neat. anything else you want to talk about on the Warforce development standpoint?

Mark Partin (17:03.701)
Mm-hmm.

Mark Partin (17:09.147)
no, just for or very briefly, for communities that have festivals like this

Think about them as more than just a good time for people to show up and you know eat some hot dogs and corn dogs and cotton candy. And how can you really utilize these opportunities to either celebrate your community or help your community develop? and it doesn't just have to be workforce development, but these are opportunities to develop your community further.

Kar McCollester (17:40.312)
Great point, yeah. and I see this being a challenge. I don't know if Sumter does it, but certainly thinking about along those lines, if there are outcomes, what are the things we want to measure year over year? outside of just things like attendance, right? Attendance is great. but for something like this that has a purpose, you know in in addition to a general awareness,

you know, what are the other things we we can be looking at as far as satisfaction from the exhibitors and hearing from them, maybe even as a first simple step.

Mark Partin (18:18.431)
I think

some easy metrics to look at, you know, broadly look at the unemployment rate in your community and then look at the unemployment rate in specific industries. But then beyond that, are there certain jobs that we had trouble filling five years later? It's not quite as hard to fill those jobs. So a lot of that I think can go around the unemployment numbers and then you know the exodus of people leaving your community. Is that decreasing or increasing?

Kar McCollester (18:36.662)
Mm-hmm. Right.

Mark Partin (18:49.399)
so those are I think some easy metrics. Probably mostly around unemployment would be a good place to look. Yeah.

Kar McCollester (18:57.132)
Right. Absolutely. Yeah. And yeah, clearly that's a more of a lagging indicator. It's something that happens down the road from the event. you your your event may only influence that, yeah, two or three years down the road. But I've once you've been doing it for several years, certainly you should be able to see some sort of thing, you know, normalized against the larger economy or against your state's economy, things like that. Yeah, good point. Well

Mark Partin (19:13.876)
Right.

Kar McCollester (19:25.518)
the next thing that I thought it's it's been a very hot topic, so I th I felt like we should at least talk towards it as a a initial angle today in talking about what's happening with data centers. And one of the things I was found interesting is not only of course are there statewide bans, but here in South Carolina where we're both at, while the state has not had a ban and the

Current governor who you know will be ending his term in January has not indicated that he's not does not plan to do a ban. There are a number of counties, and you know, quick search shows that there are a about 15 of them right now that are either have enacted or proposing to enact you know at least a moratorium on not maybe not an outright ban, but at least a moratorium on data centers. and

you know, at least one municipality, Mount Pleasant, is talking about that as well. and I think that there's a lot of nuance around the pros and cons of the data s of having data centers that municipalities should consider before you potentially having a a very quick reaction. in that y you also have to then of course, depending on what your thoughts are as a municipal leader

how you communicate that and how you honor the wishes of your citizens and and what they want to do and balance that with the your potential long-term vision of what the community can and should do from an economic development standpoint. Mark, what are some of the things you've been hearing lately from that discussion?

Mark Partin (21:15.215)
some of the biggest concerns I've been hearing are largely environmental focused and by that I mean what about water? You know, 'cause you hear a lot about how much water they use.

Kar McCollester (21:22.103)
Yeah.

Kar McCollester (21:27.062)
Right.

Mark Partin (21:30.671)
And you know, they have responded and made adjustments to reduce water usage in a good way, but that is a large concern and and I think that mainly affects communities or mainly concerns communities who draw from rivers and lakes because you know several parts of the country are in droughts and they can see literally see the water level as an issue. So water has certainly been one and then w what about

Kar McCollester (21:36.419)
Right.

Kar McCollester (21:48.152)
Mm-hmm.

Kar McCollester (21:56.494)
Mm-hmm.

Mark Partin (22:00.589)
power where are they going to get power from

Kar McCollester (22:01.838)
Mm-hmm. Yes.

Mark Partin (22:03.387)
you know, s again, certain parts of the country have issues with power capacity and others may not have issues currently, but they know it's not far from being a problem. So another is that and then you know they're massive warehousing type buildings and where do you put it? So those are really the three areas I hear the most chatter about, not not just locally but you know, all over the

physical footprint, water and power usage. So those are concerns I hear a lot about. What what about yourself? What are some concerns you hear about or

Kar McCollester (22:43.96)
Yeah, I I agree. I think the maj the one that people start with as a con is the concern over water. And you're completely right, Mark. I think a lot of that depends on exactly what they're specifying and promising, what you maybe can manage as part of the development agreement as far as maximum draw, without, you know, a new application, to you know, back to the municipality.

And then also, yeah, where where you are at, because if you are in Camden down from Charlotte, there are a lot more municipalities before you impacting that same water coming down that river. so you need to think about both what your draw is and then how that affects things downstream from you. or how that you know, if this is upstream from your intake, how this might impact you, especially in a low water situation.

how this is gonna affect the the water the water pressure and the intake for you. I think that, you know I would even propose that does, you know, come into concern as far as especially if you are drawing mostly from wells, the part of the challenge is you don't always have a the clearest idea of where you are w where the water table is at this point versus that level of draw.

Mark Partin (24:06.837)
Mm-hmm.

Kar McCollester (24:09.074)
so it's invisible, but that almost makes it more dangerous to a certain extent depending on what they're drawing. So I think it would still be very important for a municipality of whatever they do is or a county that's considering siting one of these, determining what exactly that draw is going to be and make sure there are hard limits and agreements on that, that if the you know they cannot draw above that and they cannot

Mark Partin (24:13.236)
Yeah.

Kar McCollester (24:34.894)
pull water directly themselves. They have to do it through the local water system so that it can be monitored and r and regulated. and they're not, again, all of a sudden, especially if you are in a rural area, if you're outside a municipality or on the edge of a small municipality, just that draw from that water table could significantly infect wells around the area, you know, from farms and and households and everything else. So you certainly want to make sure that they're not

Mark Partin (24:55.839)
Mm-hmm.

Kar McCollester (25:02.122)
being bad neighbors effectively at the smallest scale. I think the other thing we hear a lot is is the electrical. I think that's a the there have been, you know, there there's certainly a large amount of electricity that these things can draw. A lot of or at least some of that can be mitigated through solar and and building out some of that in conjunction to handle whatever that wattage is that they plan to to pull

Mark Partin (25:02.181)
Yeah.

Kar McCollester (25:29.644)
But there still is normally a a draw. And of course, the this is one that's probably the outside of most municipalities who aren't electricities, what we call the municipalities that have electric power utilities in the area. If you're not electricity, you probably have the least control over this because this is something that's really up to your state regulator as well as then the the power company itself. and so it the evidence has been that

rates have gone up as these data centers have come into place. while the power company maybe say they have the capacity to handle this and welcome it, then you know, the very yeah, two or three years from now or the or the very next year even they're then talking about wanting to build more capacity. And of course that normally hits all of the existing subscribers as as much as new ones. So that's one that I think you can control less.

Sighting of course is can be important. I think that's one of the outside of the fact that people know about it and maybe are mad about it, it's one of the less impactful things just because these things are normally you know s they're certainly dense from a power consumption standpoint, but they are not dense from a traffic standpoint or something like that.

I think then the the last piece that's certainly been up in the air is what the actual net economic impact is for that municipality or county. certainly, of course, you have a piece of developed land now versus undeveloped land, so you potentially have some tax revenues from that, which is great. but the job impact numbers are really out there or are

are really all over the place about how much how many jobs they'll be bringing. Of course they'll bring construction jobs short term, and that may be enough for you as a municipality to consider this. the

Mark Partin (27:18.054)
Mm-hmm.

Kar McCollester (27:31.978)
number of jobs that are in those data centers though s certainly have come down since the first data centers. I remember there's people were competing for the data center that was the Amazon one down between you know down off twenty six

near Mount Pleasant, which may be one of the reasons why they're the ones the ones considering not wanting another one now that that comes to mind. but it there were a good number of jobs with that at the time because the process of maintaining and swapping the servers, you know, were high paying jobs that came with that. And look you know, given that it was a seven by twenty four operation, you know, yes, it took up a decent amount of land, but it also

Mark Partin (27:54.569)
Yes, that's it.

Kar McCollester (28:17.976)
came with at least you know 75 high paying jobs. as more and more of these things become automated as you know the corporations certainly are highly incented to do, are you down to a couple security guards and a facilities manager and that's it. Right? So I think the

Mark Partin (28:21.427)
Yeah yeah.

Kar McCollester (28:42.956)
the biggest concern for a lot of people is just that, right? What is what are the what's the actual positive impact? Yes, it built it specs a building. Yes, that building has value that may come on my tax rolls, that may improve my tax roll somewhat, but then how much does it? Because it will be a it's something that only another person who wants a data center will see as valuable. And so if depending on where the the industry goes, that may or may not be as valuable

twenty years from now as many other spec buildings might. and so I think those are all the things I'm hearing. And I I do think it's important for and this is the role of the municipality or the county, is to walk into those agreements clear-eyed about exactly what's being promised for that build. Just like we would for any manufacturing, you know, business park.

Mark Partin (29:16.766)
Yeah.

Kar McCollester (29:42.57)
siding or construction, but maybe we think about we've you know think about those more there there's more of a standard calculation for figuring out whether this, you know, this this papers, as the developer might say, right? the challenge right now is there is a lot less track record of what a a especially an AI data center can do for that same kind of thing. but I think it w it is instructive to potentially look at, you know,

Mark Partin (29:54.429)
Right.

Kar McCollester (30:12.908)
what the existing s data centers in our state already provide, what benefit they provide, what job impact they've provided over the years, and look at those as examples. so if you, you know, can go talk to Charleston County or

Yeah, more towards more towards Harleyville or something like that. But talk to those municipal leaders, talk to those county leaders, and understand what the impact has been for them. It you know, in a more rural area it still may be a net positive to have this land that is completely unused to now improve your electrical infrastructure and provide ten jobs, right? If s five of those are high paying because, you know, the site manager and

Mark Partin (30:32.852)
Yeah.

Mark Partin (30:54.975)
Mm-hmm.

Kar McCollester (30:59.63)
things like that that are maybe highlight technical jobs as well as the construction activity and things like that. But I think it does get fuzzier for our more our larger municipalities, our more urban spaces about whether these things, just like a developer's looking at whether it pencils out, does it pencil out for us as a municipality to put this much land and this much resources towards that item?

Mark Partin (31:27.145)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. I know we're bumping up on our our usual length of time, but could you give a brief explanation of what all data centers support? Because we're mostly hearing about it now because of AI. But certainly they're they're not new and there are many, many applications that we have to have data centers for. So could you give that a little bit? Yeah.

Kar McCollester (31:31.277)
Yeah.

Kar McCollester (31:45.752)
Yes.

Kar McCollester (31:52.078)
Sure, absolutely. Yes, the you know, anything that you any piece of software that you use on a phone or on your computer, or at a store, or your bus schedule depends on, is ninety eight percent likely at this point running through a building like that, running through a data center, connecting off to the cloud, or maybe, you know, again a more bespoke.

Data center, if you're talking about Amazon or Microsoft, but there are already thousands of data centers out there that are providing the resources for the that piece of software to run on. Because when you are you know checking out at the local grocery store, that

checkout machine is adjusting the inventory and a piece of software that may be running out of Spokane, Washington or may be running out of that data center we just talked about in Mount Pleasant. we don't know and frankly probably most of the people at that company don't know either. There are you know probably a set of developers who have it and and you know, frankly, depending on the size of that grocery store chain, it could be running out of both with redundancy in Mexico, and having multiple copies. And so

Mark Partin (33:03.477)
Yeah.

Kar McCollester (33:16.578)
These data centers are where all of those things run. All of our computer programs are gonna be running in in a large building like that, most likely.

Mark Partin (33:28.297)
Okay, so so what I hear is it's not really a question of data centers yes or data centers no. If we want to continue with the technologies we have, we've gotta figure out how to work with data centers.

Kar McCollester (33:47.992)
We l I think we largely do. I think the you know, to give a slightly more room for those who aren't crazy about them, 'cause again I I use them for a lot of things myself. I you know, I use AI. I think there's a lot of benefits to AI. There are two things that are going to continue to happen. The data center that was built in Mount Pleasant, I bet as far as its capacity to run programs.

probably runs ten to twenty X at least more more programs and things in it today using the same amount of heat and power that it did when it was built twenty years ago. so everything largely continues to get smaller, everything largely continues to take less power. If you think about you know how much heat your laptop

See if you know we all had the the fifteen pound laptops versus the laptops of today, everything is continuing to to get smaller and smaller. Right now we are in this I mean, I I don't think I I think a bubble is a little unfair because the capacity is projected to be needed based on you know on what the what they're seeing as their current growth trends. but

Mark Partin (34:42.485)
Yeah.

Kar McCollester (35:08.95)
Yeah, for the c for what's needed today with the hardware today, there is this amount that we are short on, most likely. And if you've used some of the chat things, you can potentially even see that where maybe things were very quick to respond, you know, back in November. They're a little bit slower to respond these days, depending on what you're using and how much you're paying, because there's so many more people using these things. They're now triaging how quickly, you know, people are getting a response from these AI.

at chats and capabilities versus where they were even back in november. These things have grown you know exponentially. and so there's this exponential need for capacity at this moment. And so yes, the question is it is going to need to be built somewhere. it would be great for this to be figured out and almost thought of at a national level of where do we have the

Where do we have the land and the power capacity that makes sense? Either with a you know combination of energy policy that encourages additional solar panel placement or geothermal or what have you, right? Or nuclear or whatever that plans where these things are or helps rate the sites in a way that's more visible to everybody. That it's like, okay, these sections, these areas of a county.

these areas of a state or these areas of the country are the places where it makes most sense and has the least

potential impact to the people in that county, to the people in the state, to the people in the country as a whole. and so there's certainly some things that could be done. And frankly, you know, these people who are building data centers so fast have the you know are wanting to try to build these things in the most advantageous places possible. the so some of that is certainly happening within these corporations. but they're mainly looking at it as from a standpoint of what you know their their driver also

Kar McCollester (37:14.786)
that may not be your cities or counties biggest drivers, where can I do it at the cheapest cost? Right. and that may not be the place that independent of cost or with cost only being a smaller factor makes most sense for the, you know, again, the county, the state, the nation as a whole. So yes, they absolutely need to be built, or at least there has to certainly be an a ramp up of the capacity that's there.

Mark Partin (37:21.267)
Mm-hmm.

Kar McCollester (37:44.984)
For the capability, if we keep ramping up our usage to match that without there being slowdowns and outages and things like that. Right. and so then the just question is where and what makes the most sense. And I certainly am sympathetic to the idea of that it may be that your specific city or municipality or county or

Mark Partin (37:56.063)
Yeah.

Kar McCollester (38:14.346)
even state does not make sense for for various reasons. it'd be great to keep this as a rational argument. Which at least are not always you know, going along with our the argument that's been had for ha what, sixty years to a century now of where we put our nuclear waste, our spent fuel rods after we're all done. These these these arguments do not stay rational. you know, and so

Mark Partin (38:21.193)
Yeah.

Mark Partin (38:34.28)
Right yep.

Kar McCollester (38:39.86)
that is of course our challenge, right? And so especially if you're a municipality and you're thinking about either a data center has approached you or you you're thinking about a moratorium on these data centers, the main thing I would start to take a look at is again, see if you can find out from your

you know, neighboring organizations who maybe do have a data center, what the impact has been, what the both from a positive and negative, and then leverage that to have a civil as possible conversation with your constituents as far as what what we think makes sense for us, right? And that may be a moratorium. That may be we think we can handle as many data centers as they'll t they'll give us. That may be

We think we can handle one, thank you very much, and it's going to be exactly this size and this exactly this maximum power draw. Knowing that up front b and having that discussion up front with your constituents both makes it easier for your constituents to understand and make them feel part of the process. And also, frankly, probably makes you more appealing to most data center builders if you've already basically paved that road for them.

You've already gone down the path, people have already had their say. Everybody has a very good idea of who are gonna people who are gonna be the staunch opponents versus the staunch proponents, and you have now just made that entire process easier and also if you're concerned about this, less fraught for you politically. So hey, bravo. So something you should certainly think about.

Mark Partin (40:19.615)
Hmm.

All right. Well, I think we have reached the time in our podcast where we're gonna talk about some grants. So

Kar McCollester (40:30.88)
Yeah, yeah, those there was some pretty good discussion. So you wanna start?

Mark Partin (40:36.117)
Sure. the first grant we have for today is the South Carolina Recreational Trails Program from the Parks and Recreation and Tourism Department. And this is a program that local governments can apply for to construct, rehab, and develop infrastructure around

trails. So it can be existing trails getting improved and or new ideas for new trails to be developed. So the deadline for this is October eighth and the there is a requirement that the applicants attend meeting workshop with parks recreation before the final application is submitted and award amounts are fifty thousand to one point two million dollars so

very nice grant opportunity there and take advantage of it if your community has trails or would like to have trails.

Kar McCollester (41:36.302)
Great. And then the next day on October 9th, SC FEMA, so again, it's another South Carolina one. This is effectively a distribution of some federal funds from FEMA around flood mitigation through SCDNR. They did not give specific amount criteria that I could find in the grant announcement.

it is 7525 match. but what I did find there were they linked to two past projects that they considered you know exemplars. And one of them was a Hilton Head project, and that was a $3.82 million project. So while it did not in that application specifically say whether that was across multiple grants, you I think you can safely assume this is a million-dollar plus grant.

For you know, flood risk reduction. And in their case, it was around planning for levees and or road height adjustments to mitigate storm surges. So clearly a lot of capability built into that grant, especially if you can figure out how to get the the twenty-five percent match.

Mark Partin (42:56.241)
Okay. the next grant is similar in that it deals with weather and and disaster issues, but this is a federal highway administration protect program and it has these are competitive grants and just like the previous grant we talked about, there's not a clear

individual award amount but the total funding for the program is three hundred million dollars with an october ninth deadline and these grants can be used to develop

new highways for evacuation purposes or to develop funding for or develop flood programs to prevent fund flooding and just how to respond to extreme weather events which these you think a lot of these are focused on the coastal areas where hurricanes have you know done a lot of damage in the recent ten or twenty years.

So think if you're a coastal area or a coastal state because you know like even if you're inland you can be affected by hurricanes, take a look at this program and these local governments are eligible and the deadline is approaching on October 9th.

Kar McCollester (44:22.694)
And then one of our regular ones, the South Carolina Park and Recreation Development Fund still has funding left. They have not updated their county funding balance sheets. So the last one up there is still as of July. Again, this is an 80-20 match, up to $100,000 around renovating, improving public recreation facilities. So we've mentioned it before. It's back up again. So please go ahead and take a look.

Mark Partin (44:51.989)
Yeah and the next grant is from the Office of Juvenile Justice and there is a four million dollar total funding for this program and we have October twenty-ninth November fifth deadline. So you have you know a month or so to go and go to grants.gov to submit this information. But these are around drug related issues, so treatment court.

prevention programs for juveniles as well as veterans and local grants are I mean local governments are eligible for this as well as court systems so take a look at that with the November 5th deadline for part of it and October 29th for the balance.

Kar McCollester (45:45.09)
And then continuing with our our justice grants here, the Bureau of Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Assistance has a grant specifically for rural areas, up to two and a half million dollars in award per award. and this is around things that, especially if you have a small rural police department, you know, can certainly be helpful. So this is you know training.

equipment, technology enhancements, data analytics and intelligence. So any of those things that you I would think most of us would consider core to a small police department's

operational capabilities, just making it so that your police department can better r respond and mitigate violent crime out in out in your small community. Certainly take a look at that grant due October thirtieth.

Mark Partin (46:45.471)
Alright, and the last one for today is also October thirtieth and it comes again from the Bureau of Justice Assistance. And this grant has amounts from nine hundred and fifty thousand to two point five million and it is a stop school violence grant and it's focused on local governments, municipal governments, and public safety agencies for programs to stop school violence and to you know stop.

threats that come into the schools. You know, we hear you know sometimes about bomb threats and you know other violence, gang activity threats around schools. And these programs are this grant is designed to develop programs around addressing these issues. And you can go to grants.gov to submit your application and again with October 30th as the deadline.

Kar McCollester (47:40.75)
Great. Well, with that, Mark, I hope everybody gets their pencil sharpened and their forms going to get those ones. And of course, as we find more, we will happily share those all with you. as usual, please don't forget to encourage your friends andor yeah like and subscribe yourself so we can keep track. And you know please feel free to send Mark and or I feedback on things that we've spoken about.

Mark Partin (47:47.881)
Yes.

Kar McCollester (48:10.626)
things that you think we've missed. I'm sure especially in the data center a area, there are some points that some people fell feel we totally whiffed on. love to hear from you about it and and discuss that further.

Mark Partin (48:16.777)
Yes.

Mark Partin (48:24.551)
Yes, share your thoughts, but please be kind. Yeah.

Kar McCollester (48:26.894)
Yeah, right. With that mark, great talking with you. See you next time.

Mark Partin (48:33.333)
Carl. Thanks, Karl Bye-bye.

Kar McCollester (48:35.224)
Bye.