Who owns our AI?
A few companies are building data centers measured in gigawatts and asking towns to host them. When communities pushed back this summer, the President's answer was:
“You can't fight it. You have to go with it.”
71% of Americans oppose an AI data center near them, across every party (Gallup, March 2026). In a democracy, a community decides what gets built in it and who controls the tools its children use. That question belongs to people of every party.
Three kinds of buildings we already have.
- ▸Devices students own. A Raspberry Pi or a donated laptop that runs a small AI model with no internet at all.
- ▸One quiet box per school. Holds student records, runs a capable local model, keeps working when the internet goes down.
- ▸A civic hub at city hall or the college. Larger shared models for schools by day, the college at night, city services always. Each agency's data walled off. On city hall's backup generator.
Cost: about $9 to $14 per student per year for the AI layer when the city and college share the hub, compared with about $43 for per-seat AI products, in our medium sized district model. The largest real cost is people: a quarter to half of one operator, which a county office or a college apprenticeship can supply.
Bring this to your council.
We'll walk your district, your city and your college through what it would take, in a public meeting if you want.