North Port’s development services director, Alaina Ray, has resigned after five years with the city, and City Manager Jerome Fletcher says threats, harassment and intimidation are the reason. The resignation follows online allegations that Ray used her prior connections in Loudoun County, Virginia to bring data center developers to North Port or personally benefit from the project. Fletcher said there is no factual basis for those claims, adding that she had not spoken with a developer since joining the city.
Fletcher also defended the city’s development code rewrite, a process that began in 2015 and was adopted in 2024, and said the city will refer threats to law enforcement when warranted. No replacement has been named. The resignation comes as the City Commission holds a temporary moratorium on data center development while it evaluates regulations, a debate touching on growth, water and infrastructure across the Suncoast.
Data center proposals are popping up in communities nationwide, and the tensions here mirror what other towns are working through. The difference in North Port is how quickly a land-use dispute turned into harassment of a public employee. What do you think North Port’s data center rules should look like when the moratorium ends? Let us know.
