Discussion of data centers is not on the Clark County Fiscal Court’s agenda for its meeting this Thursday. It never was.
As reported previously by WinCity Voices, the Oct. 22 regular meeting was rescheduled and will be held on 5:30 p.m. Oct. 29 in the circuit courtroom on the second floor of the Clark County Courthouse.
Officials say the reason has nothing to do with data centers. It was changed because the Fiscal Court’s meeting room downstairs is needed for early voting, which begins this Thursday and continues through Saturday.
County Judge-Executive R.J. Palmer said Monday afternoon that discussion of data centers isn’t on the agenda, and special meetings don’t include public comments or magistrates’ comments about items not on the agenda.
“We just needed to have a meeting to pay the bills,” he explained.
Adam Johnson, an organizer of the No Kings protests, said he and Robin Kunkel started a Facebook events page, Demand a Data Center Moratorium in Clark County. Jessica Estes Charles is also listed as one of the creators.
The Facebook page mentions that the city of Winchester has enacted a moratorium on data centers, and suggests that people come to the Oct. 29 meeting to ask the Fiscal Court to enact one for the part of the county outside city limits.
Johnson said Monday he had not talked with Palmer about the meeting, but others have. The day after the Facebook page was created, he learned that the meeting had been changed, and he and others assumed it was “because they needed the bigger courtroom” to accommodate a crowd.
“Then what I heard shortly after that was [that] they were not going to allow public comments,” Johnson said.
Magistrate Robert Blanton thought that Chelsea Kirk, a Democratic candidate for state representative, was behind the effort to get the issue on the agenda. Kirk said she supports the effort but did not initiate it.
She was “amplifying” it, she said, because so many voters she’s talked with support it.
Palmer said that Magistrate Stephen Craycraft had sent him a proposed resolution about data centers, and he forwarded it to County Attorney William Elkins to consider.
Elkins told him he wanted more time to study it.
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Also, the judge said, Elkins won’t be at the Oct. 29 meeting, and he didn’t want to take up the issue without the county attorney being there.
Unless it is placed on the agenda, or there’s a special meeting on it, it’s unlikely to be discussed in November because the meetings are all special called meetings. The Nov. 11 meeting will be rescheduled to Nov. 10 at 8:30 a.m. because of Veterans Day, and the Nov. 26 meeting will be rescheduled to Nov. 24 at 5:30 p.m. due to Thanksgiving.
“That’s almost two months without any public comment,” Craycraft said.
The resolution for a two-year moratorium could be on the agenda for consideration at the Nov. 10 meeting. “I expect it will be,” Craycraft said.
