What the Developer Says About Power

I was organizing data on Project Shelby the other day.

That's the big data center Panattoni is planning for Stark County.

And I came across something that made me stop and think about what I'm actually looking at.

The developer filed information with a local news outlet saying the project would be served by AEP Ohio for power.

That's it.

One sentence.

AEP Ohio.

But here's the thing that caught me: the way I logged it in the site's tracking system forced me to be honest about something I'd been sort of skirting around.

This isn't verified fact.

This is what the developer said.

Tracking Claims vs. Confirming Facts

When you're building a civic records database, you run into this problem constantly.

A document exists.

Someone made a statement in it.

But that doesn't automatically mean the statement is true.

It means someone said it.

And there's a difference.

I could slap that claim into the Project Shelby dossier and move on. Most people reading it would probably assume I'd already checked it somehow, that it came from some official source, that Stark Civic Monitor had verified it.

But I hadn't.

AEP Ohio might serve that property.

Or there might be complications.

Or the situation might change.

Or the developer might be right and I just haven't confirmed it yet.

So the site tracks it as exactly what it is: a developer claim from a specific date, tagged with a source, marked clearly as unverified.

The reader can see it.

They can read the original source material themselves.

They can cross-reference it against other filings or news reports or utility records.

And if something doesn't add up, they can dig.

That's what matters.

The Difference Between a Database and a Narrative

Here's what I'm realizing as I build this thing: there's a huge difference between a platform that collects facts and a platform that tells a story.

A story can be incredibly persuasive.

It can walk you through a sequence of events and build an argument that feels airtight.

But a database is just… here are the pieces.

Here's what got filed.

Here's who said it.

Here's when.

Here's the source.

Verify it yourself if you need to.

That sounds less powerful.

It should sound less powerful.

Because it is less powerful—less power to persuade you of something you didn't independently confirm yourself.

And that's the whole point.

Where My Role Gets Complicated

I'm building a tool for people to see information.

But I'm not neutral about whether that information is accurate.

I care deeply that it is.

So there's a tension there.

I want to organize and present everything, to make the hunt easier, to let readers find connections they wouldn't have found before.

But I also have a responsibility not to launder unverified claims into official-looking facts just because I've put them in a database.

That's one of those places where my faith and my ethics collide, honestly.

If I'm serious about using these skills responsibly, then responsible includes being honest about what I know and what I don't know.

It includes admitting when something is a claim versus a confirmation.

It includes not pretending certainty I don't have.

That's harder than just presenting everything as equally solid.

But it matters more.

Seeing What's Really There

That's what Stark Civic Monitor is trying to do with Project Shelby and everything else tracked on the site.

Collect the real documents.

Log what people have said and who said it.

Mark what's verified and what's still just claims.

Tag the sources clearly enough that someone can go back to the original and read it themselves.

Then step out of the way.

The more that's happening locally right now—permits, meetings, projects, filings—the more useful it becomes to have a place where you can see everything side by side instead of chasing it across six different websites and three different offices.

But that only works if what's there is honest.

So that's what we're trying to build.