No one proposed a data center in Everett. That is the fact at the center of a political firestorm that has consumed the planning board, clogged city council, and put years of cooperative development work at serious risk.

Here is what actually happened. Planning Board member Stephanie McColaugh, one of the newer additions to the board and a relatively new resident of Everett, read through the zoning code for the Docklands Innovation District. She found that “data centers” appear as a permitted use in that zoning code — one of many permitted uses, listed without special restriction. No developer had proposed one. No application had been filed. No conversations were happening between the city and any data center company. The entry in the zoning code was simply there, as zoning entries are, governing hypothetical future uses.

From that footnote, McColaugh built a campaign.

Within weeks, petitions circulated. Outside organizations started showing up at planning board meetings. Residents from other cities gave public comment. A draft ordinance banning large primary-use data centers appeared, apparently written in a matter of weeks. And the Davis Companies — the firm doing the actual expensive, years-long work of remedying a defunct ExxonMobil oil terminal — found itself being publicly accused of plotting environmental damage against Everett residents for a project it had never proposed.

At the planning board meeting where the ordinance was voted through to city council, Davis asked for more time. They had received the draft ordinance about a week earlier. They wanted to review it, discuss it with the board, and understand how it would interact with their existing development agreements. This is how planning processes are supposed to work. Instead, they were denied the time and subjected to hours of public comment accusing them of not caring about Everett’s health, its water, its air.

There is a real question underneath all of this. Should Everett regulate data centers? Maybe. It is a reasonable zoning conversation to have, the same way it is reasonable to have conversations about what kinds of industrial uses belong in a neighborhood near residences. But there is a large distance between a reasonable zoning conversation and what has actually happened here — a manufactured emergency, a rushed ordinance, and a coordinated public pressure campaign designed to force city councilors to take public positions on a timetable that serves activists, not governance.

The city council is now stuck. The ordinance is in their lap. Taking a thoughtful position requires slowing down, asking hard questions about the ordinance’s language, and potentially irritating organized and vocal constituencies. The path of least resistance is to rubber-stamp the work McColaugh started and declare victory over an enemy that was never actually at the gates.

And Davis is still out there, sitting on 105 acres of contaminated industrial land, watching Everett’s political class perform for the cameras while the remediation clock runs.

It is worth asking what a competent planning board member does when they find an unaddressed issue in a zoning code. They raise it with their colleagues. They reach out to the relevant developer to understand current plans. They research comparable ordinances in other municipalities. They draft something carefully and present it through proper channels.

What they do not do is launch a social media campaign, invite outside political organizations to pack public meetings, and frame a development company that has been working cooperatively with the city for years as an existential threat to public health.

That is not planning. That is politics dressed up in planning language.

Everett deserves better from its appointed officials.