When the deck is stacked against you, it’s smart to demand a reshuffle.
Local, organized opposition to invasive data center development played a strong hand in convincing a majority of Archbald Borough Council to demand the demotion of President Dave Moran, Vice President Richard Guman and President Pro Tempore Marie Andreoli at Wednesday’s council meeting.
The vote was obviously influenced by a Stop Archbald Data Centers petition for the immediate recall and removal of Moran, Solicitor Jay O’Connor, Borough Manager Dan Markey and Zoning Officer Brian Dulay. Pennsylvania doesn’t allow the recall of local officials, but the petition proved powerful enough to flip the same-old script.
Even the three discounted council members voted for their own relegation, finally reading the room and the writing on the wall.
The drive to oust Moran, Andreoli and Guman from power was largely sparked by revelations in a recent report published by DeSmog, an international investigative journalism outfit focused on the environmental and social abuses of exploitative industries.
Game respects game. In his exhaustive report, DeSmog contributor Edward Donnelly obtained internal emails that showed developers enjoyed early and expansive access to Moran and other officials and exercised outsized influence on the crafting of zoning “overlays” that opened the borough to the development of data centers where they don’t belong.
While borough officials chummed it up with developers, citizens pushing council to limit data center development to industrial zones were ignored.
Donnelly’s story, headlined “Data Centers Are Poised to Engulf a Pennsylvania Town,” landed like an atom bomb. Archbald residents naturally read it as detailed documentation of betrayal. It should also serve as a wakeup call for how easily outsiders exploit the inexperience of temporary officials empowered to make decisions that will impact generations to come.
Wednesday’s reshuffle wasn’t quite a coup, but the result was regime change by any measure. A “new” council presided over Thursday’s hearing on the proposed Green Mountain Data Center “Campus,” which would consist of seven two-story data centers, each with a 138,000-square-foot footprint and 65 feet tall.
Moran and Andreoli didn’t show up to face the music. Their absence at roll call drew a chorus of boos that would surely have been louder if they attended. To his credit, Guman was there, and posed some pertinent questions. The Green Mountain team’s testimony was more credible than the fantastical claptrap offered by representatives of the proposed Wildcat Ridge Data Center “Campus” at a hearing the previous week.
The Green Mountain team seemed organized, honest(ish) and prepared for criticism. It didn’t matter. They were there to sell something no one in the crowd of 300-plus wants. The opposition rightly sees invasive data center development as an existential threat. All the gifted firetrucks and “induced” jobs in the world won’t change that.
Of the countless shouts from the crowd, the one I wrote down in capital letters said it all:
“THESE ARE OUR LIVES!!”
Invasive data center developers are up against an organized, educated and earnest opposition willing to do the work. Mostly.
It pains me to poke the opposition, but I play the cards I’m dealt. A flyer recently posted on the Stop Archbald Data Centers Facebook page solicited viewers to copy and paste an email urging state and county officials to support a temporary moratorium on data center development. It included “mugshots” of the politicos that might as well have been captured in a circus mirror.
In the lineup on the flyer, I would swear state Sen. Marty Flynn, D-22, was Dean Norris, the actor who played Hank Schrader in “Breaking Bad.” The image of Lackawanna County Commissioner Thom Welby would fit in an online ad for “Tai Chi Walking for Ripped Grandpas.” Commissioner Bill Gaughan looks like a teenage Will Ferrell. The flyer is a glossy, goofy mess.
Why? Because the flyer is “AI slop.” COMMUNITY NOTE: Using generative AI to solicit opposition to AI data centers is like littering to protest landfills. It’s an unforced error that invites developers and bootlickers to accuse the opposition of hypocrisy and unseriousness because it embodies both.
I discussed the AI flyer with Kelsey Pazanski Wargo and Justin Healey of Stop Archbald Data Centers at Thursday’s hearing. Both agreed it was a bad look and promised the group will do whatever it can to stop “AI slop” on the page.
It’s not as easy as it seems. The Facebook group has more than 6,000 members, some from other states and communities across the country. The platform allows a maximum of 10 rules for group participation, all of which have been used, Justin said.
He said he planned to post an appeal for a moratorium on sullying the page and the group with “AI slop.” That’s great, but such an appeal shouldn’t be necessary. Ultimately, it’s up to individuals to police themselves.
The use of “AI slop” in anti-data-center advocacy is not limited to Stop Archbald Data Centers. “Digital creators” do it routinely with no apparent sense of irony or self-reflection. It’s also lazy. The AI industry writ large is a sucker bet on humanity’s addiction to ease. The industry’s dealers are banking on our willingness to surrender our creativity to automation. Why do the work when an AI gremlin can do it for you at lightning speed?
Because the work is what gives the product worth. All AI offers is a soulless, shaky imitation of work. The product is a Marty Flynn you can’t tell from Hank Schrader.
If you can’t or won’t grasp the self-owning futility of that, you’re stacking the deck against yourself.
CHRIS KELLY, the Times-Tribune columnist, is a terrible poker player. Contact the writer: ckelly@scrantontimes.com; @cjkink on X; Chris Kelly, The Times-Tribune on Facebook; and @chriskellyink on Bluesky.