Emporia Neighbors United is restarting its petition effort against a potential data center with a flurry of activity.
The lead opposition group to the Flint Hills Digital Campus had to restart the work after submitting nearly 1,400 signatures last week, only to have the petition invalidated before the signature verification process even began. The petition was thrown out because it did not follow a procedural step where petition circulators have to verify they witnessed the petition being signed. The petition circulator “recital” of signature proof also has to be verified, either by oath or affirmation by a registered notary.
Emporia Neighbors United restarted collecting signatures shortly after the announcement from Lyon County Clerk and Election Officer Amie Jones late Friday. The group says it had over 450 signatures Saturday. The effort needs at least 804 collected and validated signatures to either prompt the Emporia City Commission to affirm the signatures, thus basically ending the overall data center push for at least a decade, or to put the item on the Nov 3 general election ballot.
Sunday’s petition collection effort includes temporary signature points at Emporia Tobacco & Vape by the Walmart gas station until 8 pm and G’s Smoke Shop, 2 Commercial, until 6 pm Sunday. Emporia Tobacco & Vape will have another collection point from 10 to 4 pm Monday, with G’s Smoke Shop offering another opportunity from 2-3 pm Monday — ahead of a petition signing activity outside White Auditorium from 4-7:30 pm Monday. A door-to-door effort is also launching.
Petition organizers want to have this collection effort done and verified by the City Commission’s July 22 meeting. City commissioners are already planning to deal with several policy matters connected to the potential data center in far west Emporia, including approval of a new Digital Infrastructure zoning overlay, rezoning of 11 tracts of land and applying the DI-O to the tracts in question, as well as approval of new, separate but connected policies for large-volume water and large-volume wastewater users.
KSA 25-3602 was first approved by the Kansas Legislature in 1970 and has seen numerous revisions through 2022. Click here to read the statue as listed on the Kansas Officer of Revisor of Statues website.
