Tiebreaking coin flip gives Pine Island City Council seat to Delana Weis
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Delana Weis won a coin flip Thursday evening to keep her seat on the City Council in Pine Island, a city about 20 minutes north of Rochester.
There were two City Council seats up for grabs in the Nov. 3 election. Tosca Wohl, who campaigned as an opponent of Google’s proposed massive data center in town, claimed the first seat, but incumbent Delana Weis and challenger Dominick Pahl tied for the second council seat, with each of them getting exactly 711 votes.
Per state law, a city's canvassing board is required to "determine the results by a lot" in the case of a tie, which means the decision is left up to chance. Just three days ago, a tie in the election for mayor of Spring Lake Park, a small city just north of the Twin Cities, was broken when a film canister with the incumbent’s name was drawn from a bag.
On Thursday night, Weis called heads before the coin flip at the special meeting at City Hall. The 1974 quarter landed with the head facing up, making Weis the winner.
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Neither Weis nor Pahl gave interviews, but Pahl came over afterwards to share his congratulations with Weis.
“It's great. I'm glad Delana's doing it,” Pahl said. “Excited for her.”
Pahl said he plans to run again in the future.
The new makeup of the City Council will have to navigate a period of transformation for Pine Island. Google has proposed building a massive data center in the city, but it's long been controversial in town, with critics saying the project has been developed in secrecy. Pine Island residents said they didn’t learn that Google had developed the proposal until after the City Council had already approved the plan.
An environmental group sued, demanding a more thorough review of the project’s potential environmental impact. A judge then put the project on hold while considering whether it merited more environmental review. Last month, Google agreed to a settlement with the Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy, which filed the lawsuit, and agreed to undergo a new, more-robust environmental review under the supervision of the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency.
The fierce community opposition to the data center even spurred some political newcomers to run for office in Pine Island, including Mark Lang, who won the race for mayor over incumbent Brandi Veith Staloch.
Lang has said that while he’s not opposed to the data center or artificial intelligence in general, he is upset with the opaque process in which the data center project, known as Project Skyway, was developed and how it was rolled out.
Both Weis and Pahl seem supportive of Project Skyway. Weis was part of the council when it voted 5-0 to move the project forward. In October, Pahl told the Zumbrota News Record that he supports the pursuit of Project Skyway.
“I believe the project can benefit our community — particularly through economic development and strengthening our commercial tax base,” Pahl said.
