Some people came to Microsoft’s data center open house Tuesday with questions and concerns about their planned Granger data center. A faith-based nonprofit came to ask the tech giant to share some of its profits to meet growing community needs.
Indiana’s 50-year sales tax exemption for data centers will save them hundreds of millions of dollars a year. So Ryan Juskus thinks Microsoft should do more than fund things like new water lines when it builds its Granger data center.
“Not just working with county officials, which is important, obviously, but also with community members who want to address wider needs in schools, housing, education, health care, transportation, and not just with infrastructure, which is important, but infrastructure is not going to help everyone flourish in our county.”
Juskus is with We Make Indiana, the nonpartisan interdenominational faith group. A couple days before the event Juskus says they gave Microsoft a proposal to enter into a Fair Share Agreement. The company would commit to paying into a fund that would be overseen by a community board.
“We have 40% of families living paycheck to paycheck in the county, in South Bend 30% of third-graders can’t pass the reading exam, we’ve got 10,000 people in the county losing their Medicaid right now, we’ve got 15,000 units of affordable housing that are missing in our county, so we’ve got real needs. They’re talking about being a better neighbor, which we fully support, and we’d like to see what it means. A real neighbor would help us tackle those issues in our county.”
Microsoft’s designated spokesman at the event, Jonathan Nobel, declined to discuss the idea in detail.
“We’re really here to hear from the community. We’re taking all that feedback in. It’s hard for me to respond to something I haven’t even seen yet.”
