Ferguson Voted This Down in May. It Is Back With $7.5 Million Added, the Same 75 Percent Abatement, and a Term Sheet That Budgets $400 Million for Power the Project Says It Will Not Use.

Most reporting on Ferguson quotes two numbers: $1.8 billion of investment and $22 billion of industrial revenue bonds. Both come from the same document, and the document says more than either number suggests. Exhibit A to Resolution 2026-05 is headed "PROJECT BUTTERFLY, INCENTIVE TERM SHEET, CITY OF FERGUSON, MISSOURI," and it itemises the investment like this.

The arithmetic is worth doing, because the headline figure everyone repeats is the floor rather than the estimate. Eighteen million plus 792 million plus the bottom of the equipment range is exactly $1.81 billion. Run the same table with the top of its own equipment range and the project is about $8.31 billion. The developer is not hiding this. It is simply that a document offering a range of $1 billion to $7.5 billion for equipment has been reported as a $1.8 billion project.

The public support requested against that investment is a Chapter 100 transaction under sections 100.010 and following of the Revised Statutes of Missouri. The city issues industrial revenue bonds, takes title to the property, and leases it back, which is the mechanism that makes the property temporarily exempt. The abatement schedule in the term sheet is specific:

• Real property: 15 year term. Years 1 to 12 at 75 percent abatement, year 13 at 60 percent, year 14 at 35 percent, year 15 at 20 percent.
• Personal property: 15 year maximum per parcel, with all parcels required to commence within 10 years. Years 1 to 15 at 75 percent abatement.
• Payment in lieu of taxes: an annual fixed payment equal to the unabated liability after the abatement percentage is applied.

Personal property matters more here than it usually does. Servers, chillers, transformers and switchgear are personal property in Missouri, and the equipment line in this term sheet runs to $7.5 billion. A 75 percent personal property abatement running the full 15 years is the largest single concession in the document, and it is the one attached to the line item that grows if the campus becomes a large data center.

Residents asked about electricity more than any other subject. The City's Q&A answers seven separate questions about it, and the answers are consistent with each other. Question 8: Ameren "has historically provided up to 14 megawatts of electricity to the fully operational campus without any impact to residents. Our plan is to work with our energy provider(s) to develop the campus in a way that will not require electricity from Ameren beyond historical levels." Question 9: "We do not anticipate that the Project will create any additional electrical demand from Ameren beyond historical usage." Question 45: "There are no plans to use more electrical power from our energy provider(s) than the campus used under Emerson. Usage will remain at current levels or lower."

Now set that against the term sheet the same city published. Power grid infrastructure: $400,000,000. That is more than half of all construction spending, and it is twenty three times the $17 million allocated to renovating the buildings.

Our arithmetic, and we flag it as ours rather than the City's: utility interconnection work for large loads, meaning substations, transformers and transmission, is commonly priced in the range of roughly one to three million dollars per megawatt of firm capacity. At those rates $400 million corresponds to somewhere between about 130 and 400 megawatts. Even granting wide error bars and the possibility that some of that sum covers on site generation rather than utility interconnection, the gap between the two documents is an order of magnitude. You do not spend $400 million to keep a campus at 14 megawatts.

The Q&A does not close the gap. Asked in question 43 for "the maximum total power capacity planned at full build-out, in megawatts," the answer is that the mix of uses "is not known and is market-dependent, making a specific maximum power figure impossible to determine at this stage." Both things are said in the same document: the project will not exceed historical levels, and the maximum cannot be determined.

Two smaller power facts are worth keeping. The Q&A says at question 8 that "There are no plans for diesel generators or for storing large diesel supplies on campus," which is a meaningful commitment and a narrower one than it first reads, since question 52 confirms the existing data center "does use a gas generator for emergency protocols." And question 12 leaves a door open that residents in other towns have watched swing wide: behind the meter generation "reserved for genuine emergency situations or other limited uses (for example, if Ameren reports grid strain and campus use of generators could assist Ameren in responding to such strain)." Our guide to data center generators and what they emit covers how "emergency only" commitments are written and when they hold. For the bill side, see data centers and your electric bill.

The Ferguson-Florissant School District is the taxing body with the most to lose and no vote on the outcome. It put its position in writing on April 13, 2026, over the signature of Superintendent Howard E. Fields III, Ph.D., and the statement is the most concrete document any party has produced in this fight.

The district's estimate is that it loses approximately $71 million in real estate revenue over the 15 year life of the project. That figure sits on top of a history the statement lays out: roughly $37 million lost to tax increment financing and abatements between 2010 and 2024, which the district averages at $2.47 million per school year.

The statement's most useful passage is a worked example rather than a projection. On the Northpark Partners properties in 2025, the district reports that total taxes came to $634,006.87 and the district received $10,027.09, or roughly 1.5 percent. That is what an abatement looks like from inside a school budget, and it is why the district is unwilling to take the structure on faith.

The district also flags a detail that has drawn almost no coverage and that residents should understand before the vote. The payment in lieu of taxes floor is tied to 2024 assessed values, while 2025 assessed values on the campus are higher. Freezing the floor at the earlier year lowers the payment for the life of the deal.

One more comparison belongs here, because it cuts against an argument the developer makes well. The developer's public site notes that the property currently generates "less than $1 million per year" for Ferguson, and that is fair: an 80 percent vacant campus is not a tax engine. The district's statement supplies the matching figure from its own side of the ledger. Annual local taxes from Emerson "generally ranged from the mid-$200,000s and declined to roughly $227,000 in 2024." Both parties are describing a property that had stopped paying much. The disagreement is about whether a 75 percent abatement for twelve years is the only way to change that. For how these deals are structured elsewhere and where they have been renegotiated, see our guide to data center tax abatements.

A Ferguson resident told us the campaign's job figures "reflect the people who already work there." That claim is largely correct, and the primary documents are clearer about it than the public materials are.

The City's Q&A gives the same formulation five separate times, at questions 22, 23, 31, 32 and 50: "retention of up to 300 Copeland headquarters jobs, creation of up to 170 to 200 new jobs in Phase One alone, hundreds of construction jobs." The 300 is not hiring. It is Copeland staying, and question 24 confirms Copeland already owns the campus and would lease back a portion after the sale. The largest number in the benefits list describes people who work there today.

The term sheet is more disciplined than the brochure, and this is the part residents should read before the vote. It creates two separate, binding preconditions:

• Job Retention Requirement: "250 retained FTE as a PRE-CONDITION to issuance of Chapter 100 Bonds and real property tax exemption commencement."
• Job Creation Requirement: "100 new FTE located on campus (does not include retained jobs) as a PRE-CONDITION to issuance of Chapter 100 Bonds and personal property tax exemption commencement."

So the term sheet does separate new from retained, explicitly and in parentheses, which is more than the marketing does. The honest reading is that the resident is right about the headline and wrong about the fine print. The enforceable commitment is 250 existing jobs kept and 100 new jobs created on 217 acres. The "170 to 200" that appears everywhere in the public materials is an expectation carrying the words "up to," and it is not the number the City can enforce.

The resident who contacted us said the proposal is "being brought back with worse conditions than the last." We went looking for that and could not verify it, and saying so is more useful than agreeing.

Every change we can document in the filed materials and the September 10 coverage adds money. The Ferguson Neighborhood Improvement Program, an independent Missouri nonprofit that funds home repairs, would receive $750,000 a year for ten years, a total of $7.5 million. The city would receive $700,000 for services and community impacts, up from $500,000 in an earlier draft. A $250,000 environmental mitigation fund with monitoring equipment is added. On its face that is a better deal than the one the Council rejected in May.

The sharper question is what did not change, and the answer is the entire structure that drew the objection:

• The 75 percent real property abatement for years 1 to 12, and 75 percent personal property abatement for all 15 years.
• The payment in lieu of taxes floor pegged to 2024 assessed values while 2025 values are higher.
• The bond authorization of up to $22 billion.
• The preconditions of 250 retained and 100 new full time equivalents.
• The absence of any cap on megawatts, any cap on water, or any named tenant beyond Copeland.
• All six of the protections the school district asked for in April.

So the fair verdict is this. We found no document making any term worse. We also found no document making the contested terms better. Residents who objected in May to a structure have been offered a payment rather than a change to the structure, and it is reasonable to describe that as being asked the same question twice with cash on the table. That is a different claim from "worse conditions," and it is the one the record supports.

Residents organising this weekend told us they are gathering information for an injunction. It is worth being straight about what that would and would not do, because the timing in Ferguson does not favour it yet.

A court will not enjoin a city council from voting. Legislative acts are not ordinarily restrained before they happen, and there is no decision yet to challenge: the September 10 meeting was a first reading with no vote taken. An injunction needs an act, a legal defect in that act, and a plaintiff with standing to complain of it. Right now Ferguson has none of the three. Our guide to what it actually takes to get an injunction against a data center walks through the showing courts require, including the irreparable harm element that defeats most of these petitions.

What the record here does support is narrower and, on the evidence, stronger:

• Missouri Sunshine Law requests. The City says at question 30 that it "has hired outside experts and law firms to conduct its own independent tax impact analysis, the results of which will be made public as part of the process." If that analysis exists and has not been published before the vote, it is a public record and it is the single most valuable document a resident could obtain. Our guide to fighting a proposed data center includes the request language.
• The gap between the two city documents. The $400 million power grid line and the 14 megawatt assurance appear in materials the City itself published. A council member can ask the developer to reconcile them on the record before voting, and an answer given on the record is an answer that can be enforced later.
• A megawatt cap in the development agreement. The term sheet says the development agreement will fix "the exact terms of the Chapter 100, the Job Retention Requirement, the Job Creation Requirement and/or Minimum Capital Investment Requirement." It says nothing about power. A numeric cap written into that agreement is the protection that matches the actual risk, and question 13 records the developer saying that if the City asked for generator limits, "that request would be welcomed."
• Post decision review. If the abatement passes, challenges run against the ordinance and the process rather than against the idea. Deadlines are short and jurisdiction specific; see zoning appeal deadlines by state.

Residents are also pursuing a recall of the three council members who supported the package in May. That is a political remedy rather than a legal one, and it runs on Missouri's municipal recall rules rather than on any court's calendar.