[tzs]

The McD, strip mall, metal shop, and gas station will all be going into places that were long ago zoned for that kind of business, had all the necessary infrastructure to support such business installed long ago, and won't bring any new significant quality of life issues to people who live or work nearby. They also generally aren't asking for special tax breaks.

The water treatment plant often will be voted on, because it will often be financed by a bond issue or levy that requires voter approval.

The apartment complex is the only one that doesn't fall into either of those types of projects, and this is one that gets exceptions because it is to solve a problem the local area is having by directly addressing that problem. They need more nearby housing, so they make exceptions for housing projects.

Not many towns have found their AI needs are hard to meet because of the latency over the internet to their AI provider's datacenter, and so need to get a local datacenter built.