Google data center vote delayed by massive sit-in

I heard about this this week, began Monday night, it was supposed to continue last night, it didn't, it's going to continue later this week, and this is drama in Duluth over the proposed Google data center in Hermantown. The city council there Monday night was set to consider some key permitting issues, and dozens if not hundreds of people showed up to make their voices heard, to protest, to sign up to speak, and they had to shut down the meeting and reschedule it. to talk about what's happening here and what's yet to come. Let's bring in Tom Olson, no relation, different spelling, reporter with the Duluth News Tribune. Thanks for being with us today. All right, thanks for having me. So you were there Monday night, right? Yep, I was there Monday night for the planned meeting that ultimately did not happen. Yeah, well, we'll talk about what it turned into. What was, in a second, what was the Duluth City Council set to consider on Monday night that brought so many people out? Well, to be clear, it's the Hermantown City Council. Hermantown City Council, pardon me, I'm sorry, thank you. Yeah, a lot of people just think Duluth. Just outside of Duluth, yeah. Yeah, just our kind of neighboring town of about 10,000 people. Very familiar with Hermantown, yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, the plan there was there was actually six resolutions on the meeting schedule Monday night. The biggest thing was a special use permit, which is effectively the kind of maybe the biggest or kind of final major hurdle for this proposed Google data center in Hermantown. um and the special use permit um what is effectively uh would give Google permission to use that site as a data center there were some zoning changes last year and um there were some related um things just as far as um agreements with Google and the county and such but the biggest thing was um you know authorizing this usage of this site as a data center and and was there than a public hearing portion of this? I mean, I understand it sounds like people were upset when there was a public comment form that they were no longer allowed to sign up for, but what happened there? Yeah, so this was a special meeting, actually. It was not their regularly scheduled meeting or anything. This was called effectively just to handle these resolutions. And community members, you know there's an organized group of folks kind of under this this umbrella term of stop the Hermon town data center kind of the organized group opposing this these folks have been turning out to every meeting speaking these hours these meetings have been taking hours there's been tons and tons of comment from folks and then of course our supporters there too but there has been quite a quite an opposing effort to this and um yeah they were showing up and trying to sign up and there were i'm sure hundreds of people who um turned out there in about about five minutes or so before the meeting was set to begin um i i was in the meeting room so i wasn't out in the lobby where this was happening but um we were told effectively they cut off the um sign up sheet they were about to start the meeting they were kind of turning folks away essentially because the place was packed and the meeting was about to begin and uh amber i know amber was working on getting some photos did you have oh yeah let's show some of the photos here the crowds um a lot of people that packed in there and then they were chanting too i know part of it was uh that they were upset because they wanted to continue to sign people up um what could you hear from inside the city council chambers about what was happening outside yeah so um initially they just kind of kind of noticed people coming up and police officers kind of restraining or pushing back some folks who are getting really close to the council chambers. So kind of sitting at the far end of the room at a very, not a big room, as you can imagine. So yeah, kind of seeing this little bit of turmoil ensuing over at the entrance. I scampered over there and yeah, the police officers were kind of holding these folks back the crowd got larger and larger and it's i mean i could see several dozen people i'm not sure how many entirely were there or down the hall but um pretty pretty quickly they started chanting let us speak let us speak um over and over again um they um went to a few few alternate chants were chanting shut it down shut it down they were stomping their feet initially after a bit they kind of just sat up sat down turned into more of a sit-in but they were still chanting making noise preventing the meeting from starting they were just just upset about uh you know not being able to speak and not being able to to view this meeting and so i think at that point it just turned into a we're not going to let this meeting happen okay and then ultimately declared an unlawful assembly the meeting didn't happen It was then rescheduled. It was supposed to happen last night, and then that didn't happen. And that had to do with also concerns about the early voting site there as well. Yeah, so yeah, this council chamber is actually used also as Hermantown's early voting site. So being in the meeting room Monday, I mean, they still have all the election equipment and stuff um sitting in there and they have um you know voting hours for residents of the city who want to come in and vote early and um they scheduled this meeting to start at 7 30 last night um voting was supposed to go until 7 um now there's obviously a lot of concern about having folks there to vote after work and you know wanting to do that you're also going to have hundreds of people showing up you know well before this meeting and then how do you manage that flow and get people out of the building and then back in for this meeting um there was also some complaints from the citizen groups about you know scheduling it so hastily and again kind of not doing anything to address their concerns about so many people being excluded from the meeting that was another another complaint that was raised okay so now it's scheduled for friday Yep, Friday at 6.30, so going to be probably a late night for some of us. But, yeah, the plan is to continue on. They're going to let in 85 people. That's what they say the capacity is for the council chambers there. There's probably going to be a lot more folks turned away, but they're going to have a virtual option for viewing it. they're not in the past they've had this overflow room down the hall but that's kind of where this issue came from the the other night and that you know they were letting hundreds of folks into the building and then um you know obviously they disrupted and prevented the meeting from happening so is there a reason that they can't go to a different site then that would have more people and not have the concerns about the early voting spot um that's exactly the argument of this Citizens group, the Stop the Data Center group, there have been, for example, there's been a number of open houses and things hosted by Google to let the community come and see things and question this. They've done it at an event center in Hermantown. There's been folks saying, why not do it there? Why not do it at the high school gymnasium? Why not let folks give everyone a chance to show up, even if it's hundreds of people. But the city, I haven't exactly heard a clear explanation for why they're not, but they're continuing to go forward with their plan of doing it in the council chambers and not offering any, you know. Well, we'll check back in with you again throughout this process. We got to run for now. We appreciate your time. All right. Thanks for having me. All right. Thanks so much.