Community Research Library

September 2026

Paulding County Elected Officials' Timeline of Events

A chronological timeline of key events, meetings, and milestones in PACCOA's efforts to protect Paulding County.

August 20, 2026

Meeting with Estes — August 20, 2026

Notes from the August 20, 2026 meeting with Paulding County Board of Commissioners Chairman Estes.

August 26, 2025

Paulding County Planning Commission & Board of Commissioners — Official Meeting Agenda (August 26, 2025)

The official agenda for the Paulding County Planning Commission and Board of Commissioners meeting held August 26, 2025 (Agenda #569), published on paulding.gov. This is the meeting at which the Technology Park Overlay District text amendments were on the agenda for consideration.

June 9, 2026

Resident Speech: Data Center Encroachment, Environmental Concerns & Community Mistrust

A Paulding County resident addressed the Board of Commissioners on June 9, 2026, raising alarm over Switch KEEP 2.0's expansion from 126 to over 2,000 acres in neighboring Bartow County with no additional DRI review, and revealing that Switch had paid $32 million for land in Paulding County adjacent to the North Paulding school campus. The speaker described meeting a family on Bethel Church Road being displaced by a $75 million land sale to a data center developer, and warned of health impacts reported by residents near data centers nationwide. The speech also challenged the long-term economic logic of hyperscale data centers, citing China's 70–80% idle capacity and the rapid emergence of compact AI hardware, and called on the Board to represent residents over corporations.

June 23, 2026

Resident Speech: Surveillance, Obsolescence & Broken Campaign Promises

A Paulding County resident returned to the Board of Commissioners on June 23, 2026, continuing concerns raised two weeks prior. The speaker challenged the Board on three fronts: the community's lack of meaningful input on data center proposals; the unanswered question of what 500–1,000 acre data centers are truly built for, including 24/7 AI surveillance and digital financial control; and the rapid technological obsolescence of hyperscale facilities, pointing to China's 70–80% idle data center capacity and NVIDIA's $299 compact AI supercomputers. The speech highlighted Cartersville's ~5% utility rate hikes imposed on residents after approving a Switch data center, and held Commissioners directly accountable to their own campaign pledges — quoting Chairman Estes and Commissioner Schneider by name. The speaker also urged the Board to stop granting tree-buffer variances that allow developers to clear-cut land for maximum-density housing.

July 14, 2026

Resident Speech: Secret Meetings, Brandon Bowen's Conflicts & Georgia Open Meetings Act Violations

A Paulding County resident of 27 years addressed the Board on July 14, 2026, presenting evidence of a pattern of deliberate secrecy surrounding the Technology Park Overlay District. The speaker documented that the August 26, 2025 "public hearing" drew zero resident speakers — only a polished presentation by Brandon Bowen, attorney for Atlas Data Center developer, who was also verified through open records requests to be actively pursuing land acquisition in Project Sweetwater/Tidwell. The speech raised questions about Bowen's newly formed LLC, Aristotelian Property, as a potential shell company for quiet land acquisition. The resident detailed two previously undisclosed private meetings: a closed April 10, 2026 Zoom session titled "Jeff Matthews" with multiple commissioners and staff, and a May 8, 2026 "Pre-Meeting for BBQ (Data Center Meeting)" in the BOC Conference Room — both held with zero public notice. The speaker argued these meetings violated the spirit and likely the letter of Georgia's Open Meetings Act, and called on the Board to immediately institute a moratorium on data center approvals until residents have a genuine voice in the process.

August 25, 2026

Resident Speech: Text Amendments, Pinehill Investments Lawsuit & Lack of Public Notice

A Paulding County resident addressed the Board of Commissioners on August 25, 2026, raising serious concerns about the County's use of text amendments to rezone large acreage properties — a process that bypasses traditional zoning procedures and limits public participation. The speaker detailed the Pinehill Investments lawsuit, in which the County's failure to properly advertise a 2024 text amendment, failure to provide a draft for public review, and a closed-door meeting with Community Development Director Ann Lippmann were alleged to have violated the rights of developers who had invested millions in the Sheffield Highlands residential development since 2005. The case was settled out of court for an undisclosed amount, with county taxpayers bearing the cost. The resident drew a direct parallel to how the Technology Park Overlay Districts were created without proper notice to surrounding property owners, and called on the BOC and Planning Commission to cease using text amendments as a rezoning mechanism.

September 22, 2026

Resident Speech: Demand to Repeal the Technology Park Overlay District

A Paulding County resident addressed the Board of Commissioners on September 22, 2026, calling for the complete repeal of the Technology Park Overlay District. The speaker argued the overlay was created unconstitutionally — noting that the data center developer's own attorney, Brandon Bowen, drafted the text amendment while county attorneys made no documented protective edits on behalf of residents. The speech cited the absence of mailed notices, rezoning signs, or road postings, and pointed to a newly discovered ~$3 million real-estate investment on Wimberly Way under a newly formed LLC tied to a sitting Commissioner as evidence of deepening conflicts of interest. Invoking Georgia Supreme Court precedents including Cross v. Hall County and Olley Valley Estates v. Fussell, the speaker warned that the overlay constitutes illegal spot zoning and called on the Board to start over — working with citizens, not developers' attorneys — before the temporary moratorium expires.