These are property tax abatements. I don't see the big deal. Apple has to pay the property tax equal to the farmland for the next 20 years instead of the much higher tax on the datacenter property. Who cares? Unless someone is arguing the datacenter is going to use a lot of tax funded city services (police? fire? ... ?), Waukee isn't giving Apple anything. On top of that Apple is pledging to give them $100M for various things. Seems more like instead of paying property taxes, Apple is donating money to the city which will probably get it an income tax deduction. It's a scam I don't really care about.
If you do care about it, maybe you should be complaining much more about all of the corporations that are "Delaware" corporations to avoid state taxes instead of being corporations where they're actually located.
If you do care about it, maybe you should be complaining much more about all of the corporations that are "Delaware" corporations to avoid state taxes instead of being corporations where they're actually located.