How will County hearings handle public comment?

French describes personal attacks and a volunteer chair considering resignation, then requests a facilitator and security. His account of the previous hearing is attributed, not independently established.

Data Centers · Al French, Spokane County commissioner

“I would also like to encourage that we have security present at the meetings to … deal with those disruptive forces that don't have any respect for the legislative process and want to hijack it.”

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wrapup. So um you want to go while Mark's getting Yeah. So um my mis deals with the planning commission and uh last Thursday they were subjected to three hours of uh uh rankress uh testimony, personal attacks, uh a variety of uh things and planning commission. the these are volunteers uh that give of their time and energies and expertise to serve the county and uh uh on Friday morning I got a call from the chair uh saying he'll never do that again and ready to resign. Uh this is uh they they can engage in these kind of activities with the board and you know the board can decide how they want to deal with that. But when when we're dealing with volunteers on some of these commissions, uh we we've got to be able to protect them. And so I would like to suggest that for the next uh um planning commission hearing, which is supposed to be a workshop uh on the data center legislation, uh that we provide a facilitator uh to facilitate the meeting because the chair has said we will not do it again. And uh I would also like to encourage that we have security present at the meetings to uh be able to deal with those disruptive forces that uh don't have any respect for the legislative process and want to uh hijack it. Um, I'm very concerned that if we do not support our commissions, our volunteers, uh, it will lead to us having difficulty filling some of these positions with volunteers and subjecting themselves to personal attacks to um um, you know, these are professionals and uh, they didn't volunteer for this kind of nonsense. So that's my request to the board is the to provide some support to the planning commission so that they can finish their work and and deliver that product back to us. The Commissioner Brooks.