In his regular monthly meeting on Thursday, May 21, Union County Sole Commissioner Harold Collins held a first reading of the revised ordinance regulating the establishment of cryptocurrency and data mining facilities.
Union County has had a “very strict” ordinance in place since October of 2023, but Collins has been hearing concerns from the public that the ordinance might not be strong enough to keep such facilities out of the county.
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Collins has publicly stated multiple times that he does not want “data centers” coming here, and so he has tasked County Attorney William Mercer with revising the existing ordinance to make Union County an even less desirable location for developing these facilities.
Cryptocurrency and data mining centers are known for producing lots of noise and/or consuming large amounts of local resources like water and electricity, and residents have also expressed environmental as well as privacy concerns regarding the local storage of vast quantities of data.
Union County’s ordinance helps to control the development of these facilities while avoiding potential lawsuits if the county were to outright ban them, Mercer said.
The revised ordinance features a few key changes geared toward making it stricter, including an expansion of what activity is considered under the ordinance; “server farms” are now addressed, which encompasses cryptocurrency, data mining and other similar facilities.
Additionally, the revised ordinance requires properties to have a minimum of 500 acres of continuous acreage, and “any buildings associated with the server farm must be at least 0.5 miles from the nearest residential property line.”
As required, the county will host a public hearing for the revised ordinance, to take place on June 11 at 5 p.m. inside the Union County Courthouse.
Copies of the proposed revisions are available through the Commissioner’s Office, and residents are encouraged to attend the public hearing and provide feedback for possible inclusion in the final draft, which will get a second reading and enactment in an upcoming regular meeting.
Among other business, the commissioner delivered a Notice of Award that the county would be contracting with Colditz Trucking for road paving in the county.
Colditz came in with the lowest of three submitted bids, and the contract will amount to roughly $1.6 million, to be paid using funding from the state’s annual Local Maintenance and Improvement Grant.
Collins also renewed the agreement between the county and Air Methods LLC to continue the emergency life-flight services that are available to all Union County residents, both full and part-time. The annual agreement is not to exceed $61,580 and will go into effect on June 1.
The county partners with Union General Hospital to cover half that amount, though only transports that incur out-of-pocket costs for patients are billed to the agreement, at a capped rate of $800 per transport, and the final total is usually below the maximum agreement amount.
Air Methods operates the medical helicopter that is based at Union General. The company is about to complete its 10th year partnering with the county and hospital, and Air Methods representative Marcus Lindsey attended on May 21 to discuss the service with residents.
Lindsey said that, from June 1, 2025, through April 1, 2026, the AirLife helicopter team had transported 134 Union Countians “for emergency specialized care at no cost to any one of those citizens or their families.” Most of those patients were relying on Medicare, he added.
“This covers all Union County residents, no matter where we may provide that air medical transport service,” Lindsey said. “Even if you are traveling out of state, if you are in an area served by our company … and we are the provider that transports and bills for that transport, you are covered as a Union County resident.”
The meeting lasted an hour and a half, though the official part of the meeting ended after about 30 minutes, with the remaining hour dedicated to public comments.
Recreational sports took up a lot of that time, particularly concerning safety for youth players in several county programs as well as displeasure with the third-party organization that runs the soccer program for Union County Rec.
Longtime Rec Coach Kevin Stalcup voiced multiple concerns with safety for children at Meeks Park, which is “overcrowded” and has lost fields for youth sports over the years with zero expansion of still-existing facilities, even as participation has grown.
His primary concern is that there is not enough parking to accommodate all the guests during busy game days, putting visitor cars in the grass, on the sides of the road, next to sidewalks and other places, which increases the chances of accidents involving children.
Stalcup believes rec sports have simply outgrown Meeks Park and that the county needs to build a new facility to safely accommodate multiple programs in one place – baseball, softball, T-ball, and even football, the latter of which does not have anywhere to practice at present.
He pointed out that youth sports are “not fully funded by taxpayer dollars,” noting that youth participants and their families financially contribute to the programs in multiple ways, so expanding play areas would be “making responsible investments in the youth of our county.”
“I’m not asking for a multimillion-dollar complex,” Stalcup said. “I’m just simply saying, let’s have a conversation how we can improve it.”
Several youth soccer players, their parents and coaches attended the meeting, and while it seemed that some of their concerns were being actively addressed – County Manager Tony Hughes had already announced some important safety upgrades at Elan Fields where they play – they wanted to make it known that they are unhappy with the organization running rec soccer.
County Rec Director Susan Stalcup took to the podium at the end of the soccer comments to say that the county was in talks with a new club to see about changing the management of the program, with more details to be made available later.
Amid questions of transparency regarding SPLOST, the commissioner said he was planning to host SPLOST town hall meetings later this summer to provide information and answer questions related to the sales tax continuation referendum planned for November.
Yet another subject broached was transparency for the annual financial audit presentation that will be coming up soon, with a resident requesting an easily understood presentation of information pertaining to the county’s finances.
One guest asked why the county was still contracting with the third-party appraiser GMASS for property valuations, and Collins said he was told by the Tax Assessors Office that in-house appraisals would cost about $500,000 a year, or $250,000 more than hiring GMASS to do it.
That’s because in-house appraisal costs would include salaries, benefits, equipment, vehicles, training, etc., for multiple employees, Collins said, adding that his office is researching other companies that might be able to compete with GMASS for the county’s business.
