Independence residents launch petition to recall official over data center deal
Earlier this month, Independence residents voted out two City Council members who approved billions of dollars in tax breaks for a hyperscale artificial intelligence data center coming to the city.
Now, some residents hope to trigger a recall election to remove a third councilmember who voted in favor of the breaks — First District Councilmember John Perkins.
A newly formed political action committee, the Independence Community Action Committee, formally launched a campaign this week to recall Perkins.
Organizer McKenna Cobb, who has lived in Independence’s First District for a decade, set the ball rolling by submitting a petition for Perkins’ recall. City Clerk Suzanne Holland certified Cobb’s petition Monday, kicking off a 30-day signature collection period.
“Through this entire process, we totally felt like he hasn’t made an effort to accurately represent or listen to the residents here in this district,” Cobb told The Star. “The general feeling was that our leadership fell flat when advocating for a better deal (on the data center).”
Nebius, a Dutch corporation specializing in AI services, is set to break ground this year on the massive data center campus off of Bly Road in northeast Independence.
The $150 billion project, which will be twice the size of Arrowhead Stadium and will rely on a nearby power plant reopening at nine times its former capacity, has been touted by school and union leaders because of the tax revenue and jobs it will bring, but has garnered backlash from a vocal group of residents worried about health, financial and environmental risks.
The data center will benefit from 90% to 98% breaks on property taxes and taxes on construction materials. Instead, Independence schools and other taxing jurisdictions will receive upwards of $650 million in PILOT fees (payment in lieu of taxes) over the next 20 years.
Cobb said that multiple District 1 residents, in the northwest quadrant of the city, became frustrated with Perkins’ level of communication with his constituents leading up to the March 2 City Council vote on the tax breaks.
Perkins did not hold any public meetings specifically for District 1 residents surrounding the data center and its accompanying financial plan, Cobb said. Instead, she and her neighbors attended information sessions in other districts, lacking specifics about how the project would impact their neighborhood.
“It minimizes the magnitude of the project,” Cobb said. “If your own leaders aren’t talking about it directly to their constituents, it’s kind of like, ‘Maybe this project isn’t a big deal.’ And then you look at it and you’re like, ‘Oh, this is the biggest economic development project in Independence and my leader’s not talking to us about it.’”
Perkins was not immediately available for comment Monday afternoon.
Protest votes continue
Cobb said that seeing Independence decisively vote Perkins’ peers out of office was a major motivating factor behind the recall effort.
“I saw how much people were locked into the issue,” Cobb said.
Along with Perkins, City Council members Bridget McCandless, Jared Fears, Jennie Vaught and Heather Wiley voted for the tax breaks. Councilmember Brice Stewart, whose district includes the data center site, dissented, as did former Mayor Rory Rowland.
During an April 7 municipal election, McCandless ran for mayor but lost to political newcomer Kevin King, while Fears lost his re-election bid. Both King and newly elected Councilmember Jackie Dorman were endorsed by Stop The AI Data Center in Independence, the group that preceded the Independence Community Action Committee.
Cobb said that the effort to recall Perkins represents an ongoing demand for accountability from local officials as decisionmaking around the Nebius data center continues.
“A recall is not necessarily the most enjoyable avenue to take, and it is really frustrating to be at this position,” Cobb said. “But moving forward, we want to make a statement that we want true grassroots community representation.”
Evolving petition networks
Under the Independence City Charter, organizers will need to collect signatures from about 8% of registered First District voters in order to get a recall measure on a districtwide ballot. Cobb said that the requirement works out to about a thousand signatures, but that the group is aiming for 1,300.
Cobb said that organizers and volunteers will begin circulating petitions immediately. The signature effort will be the PAC’s first major coordinated effort, she said, though several members participated in a campaign by Stop The AI Data Center In Independence attempting to force a referendum on the data center tax breaks.
In the month following the March 2 vote on the $6 billion tax breaks, more than 100 residents circulated copies of a petition seeking to bring the financing plan to a public vote. Following a lawsuit by three organizers, a Jackson County judge ruled that the tax breaks were not eligible for a referendum under the charter. However, residents collected and submitted nearly 5,000 signatures anyway, developing a system of nightly petition drives.
“We’re kind of transitioning — not out of the data center movement, but into keeping people organized and engaged on what’s going on,” Cobb said. “This is the most organized and loud I think I’ve ever seen residents be on any given topic.”
Whether or not Perkins is recalled, Cobb said, the PAC hopes to continue building political momentum among their neighbors, and that city leaders keep paying attention.
“We hope that there’ll be an opportunity for them to look up — the remaining council, the new council — and be like, ‘Hey, we should have done something better,’” Cobb said. “‘We should have done something different.’”
