TEMPLE — A 900,000-square-foot Hyperscale Data Center for the technology giant Meta, formerly Facebook, was announced late last month.
Temple will house the second Meta data center in Texas, with the first located in Fort Worth.
According to the Temple Economic Development Corporation, Meta will invest $800 million and host approximately 100 permanent jobs in the region.
But that “investment” will also come with taxpayer subsidies.
“Texas was recently named the top state in the nation for tech worker migration,” said Adrian Cannady, president and CEO of Temple Economic Development Corporation.
“When you combine that with Temple’s low cost of doing business and central location between major markets, it creates an incredible competitive advantage for our region. The Hyperscale Data Center will have a positive impact on our community not only by creating jobs, but because of Meta’s commitment to invest in local schools, nonprofits and community projects.”
“Community Projects”
According to Meta’s announcement of the Temple Data Center, which references their commitment to investing in the local community, “Since our data center in Fort Worth began serving traffic in 2017, we have provided over $2.6 million in grants to schools, small businesses, and local organizations.”
Besides Fort Worth ISD and the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History, other local partnerships include Girls Inc., which “equips girls to navigate gender, economic, and social barriers, and grow up healthy, educated, and independent.”
Girls Inc. celebrated the confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Jackson Brown and acknowledged the International Day of Transgender Visibility, remarking, “We stand with LGBTQIA+ youth and continue to advocate for the rights and dignity of girls and all youth.”
Read Fort Worth is another of Meta’s local partnerships. Its board includes Fort Worth Mayor Mattie Parker, who has spent the past month attacking Republicans for refusing to expand Medicaid and support “gender-affirming care,” also known as child gender mutilation experiments. The board also includes Fort Worth ISD Superintendent Kent Scribner, who is retiring early after failing to address parental concerns over critical race theory and explicit materials in their children’s schools.
Resources
In an effort to garner community goodwill, Meta announced, “In Texas, we are investing in the Richland Chambers Creek Wildlife Management Area. This water restoration project will restore over 64 million gallons of water per year to Texas watersheds.”
Data centers utilize vast quantities of water to maintain cool temperatures for the servers in use, hence the focus on managing water resources.
Local news also reports that Meta will receive a 75 percent property tax break for the first 10 years from the city of Temple, with additional unknown levels of property tax breaks for the subsequent 10 years.
The city will reportedly still receive around $7 million in property taxes from Meta per year, and other taxing entities such as Bell County and Temple Independent School District were exempt from the tax breaks.
Thus, a 75 percent tax break means the city could have been receiving nearly $28 million in tax dollars from Meta. However, the burden will undoubtedly shift to citizens.
What’s Coming to Texas
As property taxes rise for average Texans—but Meta gets a 75 percent property tax break—and parents fight back against woke corporations intent on indoctrinating children into their gender-destroying ideologies, Meta signed a letter supporting child gender mutilation experiments on Texas minors.
Meta (Facebook) has quite the sordid past of leftist political propaganda, including censoring the Hunter Biden laptop scandal, silencing Chad Prather one week prior to the Texas Republican primary, and Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg spending millions of dollars—“Zuck Bucks”—to influence local elections.
Nevertheless, Gov. Greg Abbott has explicitly invited Meta into Texas despite having publicly lambasted them, as Texas Scorecard previously covered. It appears the Temple Data Center is the project the governor and Meta were so insistent on maintaining secrecy around last year amid open records requests for transparency.
“Meta’s continued expansion in Texas is a testament to the exceptional business climate and skilled, diverse workforce we have here in the Lone Star State,” said Gov. Greg Abbott.
“It is because of hardworking Texans and our commitment to helping businesses grow that companies continue to move and expand all across Texas. We are excited to welcome Meta to Temple and look forward to the new job opportunities they will bring to the local community, as well as the advancements in technology we will see in the future.”
