Follow Up To My Email to Commissioner Meuth

If you haven't read my email to the Ceder Creek Community's Pct. 3 Commissioner Meuth yet, you can read it here first! Now let's get into the follow up on that post...

I waited for a reply from Commissioner Meuth, but nothing came of my extended hand of cooperation. But a few days later, I wrote him another letter, but this time it was addressed to the entire Commissioner's Court and County Judge, something changed...

Here's what that second letter said: "Dear Judge Klaus and Commissioners,

As you are acutely aware, residents of Cedar Creek and the surrounding rural areas are deeply concerned about the industrial expansion of AI mega data centers in our western county. 

I have just become aware that Pacifico filed Permit 185019 / Project 413471 through an EXPEDITED Electric Generating Unit Standard Permit route. This is effectively a minor-source pathway that may proceed without formal public notice or input. 

If there is one thing Bastropians are united against, it is the lack of transparency and communication between your offices and the constituents you serve. The "back-alley" methods these data centers are using to bypass the families who already live here might be legal, but they are certainly not right. You have the power to stop them from exploiting these loopholes.

Here is what my neighbors and I cannot abide: The complete registration is not posted publicly. Consequently, residents cannot verify what portion of the stated 710 MW project this permit covers, Pacifico’s potential emissions, any enforceable operating limits, or whether all turbines and phases were properly counted together. 

As a Cedar Creek resident, and for the reasons detailed above, I respectfully demand that you DENY Pacifico’s pending county tax-abatement applications.  Provide no reinvestment zone, incentive agreement, infrastructure assistance, or any other discretionary financial benefit while Air Permit 185019 remains unresolved.

I do not make this request passively. If necessary, I will raise this issue directly during Commissioners Court.

A Note on Accessibility and ADA Compliance: As a disabled mother of a 13-year-old, attending your meetings is a significant challenge. I have had to rely on the kindness of strangers just to secure rides to your bimonthly meetings.

While your building is technically ADA compliant, the timing of your meetings—held exclusively during standard working hours—renders that compliance moot for me and many other working-class constituents. If you were to schedule just one of your two monthly meetings after regular working hours, the barrier to participation for my family and neighborhood would be greatly reduced. Doing so would earn my respect and demonstrate a genuine commitment to inclusive governance. I am a disability activist first and foremost; please understand that this is not a sidebar, but a fundamental issue of access in relationship to this topic at hand.

It is frankly unacceptable that Pacifico is using an expedited standard-permit pathway that avoids formal site-specific public input. And the public still cannot determine:

What portion of the 710 MW project is covered? Whether it truly qualifies as a minor source. What operating restrictions it claims? Whether the turbines and phases were properly evaluated under whole-site counting rules. 

No complete registration, no written major-source determination, and no independent review should mean no taxpayer assistance. You have consistently insisted that you care about all Bastropians. Now is your opportunity to prove it. We understand you are legally bound from banning data centers outright, but you do have the sole discretion to withhold abatements and tax incentives. Please demonstrate that you are willing to use—and deserve—that governing power.

I repeat: You must DENY Pacifico’s pending county tax-abatement applications. Withhold all reinvestment zones, incentive agreements, and infrastructure assistance while Air Permit 185019 remains unresolved. By denying Pacifico these incentives, you communicate to your constituents that the authority you hold is not only deserved, but truly reflects the core values of rural Bastrop County. 

Be advised: Any other actions you take will be documented, reported, and shared with local, state, and national news outlets. I say this not as a threat, but as a matter of fact—a warning. Data centers are a national story, with Texas often at the center. Bastrop County is at the top of the list for many reporters. Journalists are watching us closely, and my community is ready to share our story because the nation needs to know what is happening here and who is responsible. I assume you do not wish to be named as responsible for ignoring these concerns? 

Moving forward... I know I can come across as brash or blunt. I prefer being direct to offering false deference where it is not deserved. However, when I do show respect, it is true and unwavering. My community and I are trying desperately to work with you to protect our county—and that includes protecting you and our county from future lawsuits, Commissioner Beckett. I know that is a fear of yours, but do not think for a second that Bastropians do not understand or care about that risk. It is insulting to suggest otherwise. Bastropians offer all of you a pool of diverse knowledge, experience, expertise, and outside the box ideas that only strengthen this community. Ignoring any of this resources of knowledge, you do at your own political peril. 

So I hope we can act like adults and work together.

Commissioner Meuth: I am still waiting for a reply to my last email. Please contact me to discuss setting up a time to meet with your constituents in person, in a safe environment where dialogue can remain respectful, open, and productive. I wish to discuss avenues you can personally take to better communicate with those who elected you.

You each have a real opportunity—and a duty—to put out the fires of local outrage. Stand with us, and we will gladly make room for you. Deny Pacifico public funding resources, and watch that rage subside. We CAN work together. 

You are part of this community; show us that means something to you.

With Deepest Sincerity,

Jenai"

To my surprise, I recieved an immediate reply from Commissioner Butch Carmack of Pct. 1.

And as I wrote my reply back to Commissioner Carmack, but who other than Commissioner Mark Meuth finally replied! Only after I sent my far more aggressive expression of community advocacy to the Commissioners Court as a whole. So I've decided to share both of their replies to me. Because getting emails from two Commissioners is rare these days. And their replies had some telling information. Let's read through and discuss.

REPLY FROM COMMISSIONER CARMACK

Jenai, I just want to say thanks for reaching out. I also want to inform you that Pacifico stated last week that they are closing on the property on the 31st of this month. The question was asked “if you don’t get the tax abatement, will you still build?” their response was yes. So my question is, do you want a contract in place that sets parameters on noise, light, air pollution and water usage? Without that contract, that place can be up to 85 decibels (state law) and be as bright as they want with now measures other that what the TCEQ allows for air quality.

He continued...

Speaking for myself, I’m voting no because that seems to be what the citizens want, but with that no vote just know that the contract is out the window. Thanks, Butch Carmack

I replied back to him as quickly as he did me:

"Absolutely—we want a contract. But let’s be clear: a contract without teeth is just paper.

I appreciate your planned “no” vote, though my own Pct. 3 Commissioner, Mark Meuth, has yet to reply to a single email. I’m prepared to vote against him on communication alone. Mark was a promising candidate, but he has fallen short of public expectations. I still hope he comes around; I plan to offer my help Thursday to bridge the gap between him and Cedar Creek—or just get him to communicate at all.

That said, a “no” vote shouldn’t kill the idea of a contract; it should propot a better one. Or table the vote again, and stall. Give us time to work our State Leadership. The current draft was already too weak to make Pacifico reconsider Bastrop Anyway. With the right legal team, we could have fixed that. Truth be told, your current counsel is a few flies short of a happy spider. Bastropians have a well of ideas formulated with Texas law in mind; we don’t need to reinvent the wheel, we need to stop relying on broken axles. Don't worry, I have an idea about the axle. 

But I must say, relying on the advice of one joker who barely scraped past the Texas Bar is a recipe for disastrous governance. I didn’t spend my career as a writer without doing my homework on Bryan Goertz. His record speaks for itself: denial of DNA testing in high-profile cases, an abysmal staff retention rate, and high-profile resignations citing “paltry” raises and weak security as the tipping point. Remember Greg Gilleland? He saved this county thousands by handling civil duties internally. His departure was a direct failure of Goertz’s leadership to retain real talent. So whoever is left in that office clearly isn’t keeping him updated or competent. But I digress. 

Maybe not everyone knows the history of Bastrop County’s governance chaos yet. But they will. Data centers have opened many heavy eyelids. We aren’t just challenging TCEQ permits or disrupting financial incentives; we are researching every Commissioner’s past record, comparing it to their current votes, and deciding who stays and who gets voted out.

Let’s be precise: We aren’t mad at the data centers. We’re mad at the legal processes that stripped rural Texas of zoning power, and the apathy of Commissioners who aren’t demanding emergency zoning powers alongside us. How many times have you and your fellow Commissioners demanded real action from the State? How many of you called the Governor? I call Abbott, Patrick, Schwertner, and Gerdes almost daily. Do you? If not, will you? 

Will you join us in writing a joint letter to these state vultures, allowing Bastropians to sign on and demand emergency zoning power or a full statewide moratorium until rural safeguards are in place? Why can’t the County make a move to pressure the state with its constituents while stalling votes?

We want to see your humanity in action. Not just in the emails you decide are worth answering? Butch, I did my homework on you too. You are a far more reasonable man than others on the dais. Though you are not my Pct. 3 Commissioner, I respect you taking the time to engage.

I humbly ask you to consider a County-wide call for state action: a letter co-written by the Commissioners Court and its constituents, signed by Bastropians, and delivered to our shared state leadership. Maybe in person, if I could get a group of us organized to hand-deliver said Call to Action. 

I’ll be at the meeting Thursday, where I will bring this up again in public comments. I urge you to give this real thought—and to send copies of any resulting letter to every other Texas county facing this industrial takeover. Maybe we can get a coalition of counties to show up at the capital. What more do we have to lose before elected officials like you recognize the people you serve are also your neighbors and will back you if you back us. One no vote is good. But tabling the vote entirely to join the people in pushing the state is true power of the people. 

It's time we stop bickering over what can or cannot be done, and start getting creative. Start pulling strings the state never knew was there. Blindside them with the full weight of Rural Bastrop. Help us get other counties to follow our lead. 

Our voices—yours included—are our greatest weapon. As a leader, surely you appreciate the novelty of joining forces with constituents to demand equity for rural communities. When have you ever heard of entire counties coming together across party lines to demand a just system of rural governance in Texas. Just because it's never been done, doesn't mean it cannot be done.

I’ll see you Thursday. I’d like to shake your hand for writing back to me, and perhaps finally be introduced to Mark? I genuinely want to work with him on better communication for his precinct.

Have a good day. I surely will, knowing at least one of you still has a soul. The ball is in your court now.

Sincerely, 

Jenai"

As soon as I hit send, Mark Meuth's email reply was waiting for me. Here's what Commissioner Meuth had to say:

Ms. Marek,

 I would be honored to attend October’s Women’s Club meeting just let me know the date, location, and time. Pacifico will be doing a presentation at the August 24, 2026, Commissioners Court meeting to discuss your other concerns.

Thanks, Mark Meuth

From these two emails, I learned two very important things about what's happened behind closed doors over the weekend.

One: Commissioner Butch Carmack intends to vote "no" on the Pacifico abatements, while warning that a unanimous rejection will kill the contract's county oversight. Without that framework, Pacifico can build without any community regulations on sound, light, air, water, or soil pollution. Stated that way, it seems like we are rejecting a fair trade. Yet, with so little data on the true cost of rural mega-data centers, surrender is premature. Our best strategy is to stall and lobby the state government—a position I shared directly with Commissioner Carmack.

And Two: Mark Meuth is reportedly open to attending our October Bastrop County Leftist Women's Club meeting as a "guest of honor" to discuss improving communication with his constituents. It has obviously been made abundantly clear to him that Cedar Creek residents are just as frustrated by the local authority's lack of transparency as they are by the data centers themselves.

That all said, we should move forward with having Commissioner Meuth as a guest at our next club meeting, if he is as willing as he suggests. Here are some ideas of how Mark can improve the lines of communication between elected officials and their constituents. It's time Bastrop County modernized the way it governs and handles county business.

Step 1: Establish a "Plain-Language" Notification Standard

• Action: Mandate that all complex local contracts, abatements, or zoning applications include a mandatory, one-page Constituent Impact Summary.

• Detail: This document must strip out legalese and clearly answer three questions: What is being built, who is paying for it, and how does it directly affect local infrastructure (water, sound, air)?

• Deadline: 30 days before any public hearing or binding vote.

Step 2: Deploy Mobile and Micro & Macro-Targeted Listening Sessions

• Action 1: Launch "Precinct Office Hours" in rotating, outlying community spaces rather than forcing residents to travel to the main county seat.

• Action 2***: Establish bi-weekly, alternating between morning and evening Commissioners Court meetings to accommodate shift workers.

• Detail 1: Partner with existing local hubs like the Cedar Creek high school cafeteria, volunteer fire departments, or community libraries to host informal, 90-minute listening sessions.

• Deadline 1: Bi-monthly Office Hours, alternating between morning and evening slots to accommodate shift workers.

***THIS IS PERHAPS FAR MORE IMPORTANT THAN ACTION ONE.

Step 3: Launch a Live Digital Transparency Dashboard

• Action: Create a simple, public-facing project tracker on the county website specifically dedicated to high-impact developments like data centers.

• Detail: Use a traffic-light system (Red/Yellow/Green) to show exactly where a project sits in the approval pipeline, when public comment periods open, and links to environmental or financial impact data.

• Deadline: Go-live within 45 days.

Step 4: Implement a Feedback Loop for Public Comments

• Action: Introduce a "Constituent Response" agenda item at the start of every official meeting.

• Detail: Instead of letting public comments disappear into official minutes, the official or staff must explicitly address major themes raised in the previous meeting's public forum.

• Deadline: Immediate implementation at the next scheduled public meeting.

Step 5: Form a Civilian-Led Advisory Panel

• Action: Appoint a temporary, diverse working group of community leaders, skeptics, and local advocates to review upcoming regulatory frameworks.

• Detail: This panel acts as an early-warning system to identify blind spots in communication before public outrage forces a policy stalemate.

• Deadline: Finalize panel roster within 60 days.

Step 6: SAVE AND ARCHIVE THE STREAMED COMMISSIONERS COURT MEETINGS

• Action: This shouldn't be rocket science.

• Detail: They need to save the meeting videos, and have those links accessible to the public at any time. And make it easy for Bastropians to pull them up and view, when they are unable to make the meetings in-person or virtually, during the stream.

• Deadline: There's no reason they cannot do this immediately, by simply starting a YouTube Channel, to host the files there. ASAP isn't soon enough.

Should none of these ideas sit well with Commissioner Meuth, and he rejects standard transparency measures, he is prioritizing bureaucratic convenience over public accountability. When collaborative methods fail, the strategy must shift from cooperation to leverage. I don't want to shift to leverage if we can avoid it, but here's a quick rundown of how that looks.

We start by overloading their public information requests.

It's the weaponization of public information requests that can slow down multiple processes in government. We simply flood the official’s office with formal public records requests (such as Texas Public Information Act requests) for all emails, texts, and calendar invites regarding the data center developers. Then, we publish the redactions. If they delay or heavily redact the documents, publish those blanked-out pages on social media to visually demonstrate their secrecy to the community. Finally, we audit the paper trail. Scrutinize published meeting minutes and public notices for any technical violations of state open-meeting laws to challenge the validity of their votes. 

We finish by shifting the venue of accountability.

So far, Bastropians have done a great job at hijacking the public comment period. But we can do more. We can coordinate a rotating calendar of constituents to show up at every single meeting, using their strictly timed public comment slots to read unreturned emails, unanswered questions, and data center impact facts into the official record. If possible, we go over their heads. We can bypass the local official by bringing the local environmental, infrastructure, and transparency concerns directly to state-level regulators or the state Attorney General’s office. (NOTE: This is not advisable untill we have a new attorney general... such as Vicki Goodwin.) And finally, my favorite tactic... Brief the Local Press! Package the timeline of the official's rejections into a clean, data-backed tip sheet for local investigative journalists, framing the story around the active denial of constituent access.

Of course I didn't go into more detail on how to be a better "thorn in the side" of Bastrop County Leadership, because I still hold on to the hope that cooperation is the key to turning around the fate of our rural communities. And a quick FYI: Mark Meuth is a former Democrat, turned Republican. I'm not sure how much we can trust the word of a man who changed parties during the MAGA Era of American politics. But the only way to get to know a man, is to get to know the man. So his invitation to the October club meeting still stands, purely based on the fact that he replied to my first email. That's a good start. A very good start.

Now let's get to work!