THE NUMBERS ON THE RECORD

• 282 spoken public comments across 13 sessions, Dec 18, 2025 - Sep 15, 2026 (corpus as of Sep 25; speaker verification ongoing)
• About 150 different speakers; 112 of 161 identified speaker labels appear exactly once
• Recoded stance on data-center development itself: about 205 comments against, 52 for, 20 procedural (plus or minus a few rows; the raw sheet tags stance by agenda item, so "support" on a moratorium item means pro-pause)
• 10 speakers account for 68 comments - a quarter of the record
• 59 speakers each on Dec 18 and Apr 7 - the two biggest rooms
• 4-1 the April 7 vote. 5-0 the June 16 vote to pause and form the committee
• 2 court losses for the County in four weeks: the moratorium (Aug 26) and the approval itself (Sep 9)
• 243 written comments on IID's large-load tariff; ~130 form letters from June 16 - both still being assembled into the public record

THE SESSIONS, WITH STANCE

Stance recoded from the raw sheet by rule and checked by hand; treat as plus or minus a few rows. A thirteenth session and new rows entered the corpus after this table was compiled; totals on this page use the Sep 25 count of 282.

THE COMMITTEE NOW HOLDING THE QUESTION

The Board of Supervisors created the Imperial County Data Center Advisory Committee on June 16 and seated it in September. Charge, from the establishing resolution: evaluate land-use and zoning rules, identify General Plan and ordinance gaps, decide whether specific plans should control siting, set proximity and compatibility standards for homes and schools, map suitable areas, determine how new rules can legally apply, and report to the Board by January 1, 2027.

Officers, per the County's September 18 release: Kristian Michelle Salgado, chair; Mike Goodsell, vice chair; John Grass, secretary. Eighteen of nineteen seats are appointed; the Westmorland seat is open. Next meeting: Monday, September 28. Meetings are public under the Brown Act.

Seven of the eighteen appointees appear in the public-comment record. Their statements, in their own words, are on Face 2. The other eleven have no attributable comment in the available corpus - which is itself a fact about how much of this process has happened off the public mic.

THE RECORD, IN ORDER

WHAT THE OPPOSITION TALKS ABOUT (194 opposition comments coded)

A majority of the comments under every theme except the site itself never mention the Aten location at all. The site lit the fight; process, water, health and rates carried it county-wide.

WHAT THE SUPPORT SIDE ARGUES (69 raw support comments coded)

The two sides mostly answered different questions: the support case was economic and legal ("it's zoned for this"), the opposition case was about impacts and process. No forum ever made them answer the same question. That is itself a process failure.

LABOR'S ACTUAL POSITION

Labor was never one voice, and never against review. LIUNA Local 1184 backed the project once a project labor agreement existed ("we're all here to support this project one hundred percent," December, after a PLA by April). IBEW 569 urged a no vote in December until local hire was guaranteed, then in June asked the County's own questions: "How will we ensure that there is local hire provisions? How will rate payers be protected? How is the county working with fire officials?" In July, IBEW's Hector Meza - 3,800 members - opposed extending the moratorium while supporting a requirement that data centers "bring their own clean generation and energy storage." The Building Trades Council backed both the committee and the pause on June 16: "Establishing clear guidelines, reasonable standards and a transparent process for future projects is good government." Read straight: labor wants a PLA, local hire, predictable rules, and no ban. No labor speaker ever defended the CEQA exemption on its merits. A standards-first county keeps that coalition; a finished-product county pushes it to choose between this project and a ban.

THE APPOINTED MEMBERS, IN THEIR OWN WORDS

Kristian Michelle Salgado (Environmental expertise - committee chair) - Reject piecemeal approval; pause new approvals while an open advisory committee and residents develop enforceable siting rules, meaningful CEQA review, and real public protections. "An advisory committee alone cannot prevent this from happening. That's all we're asking for is CEQA." (Mar 26)

Ann Michelle Hollinger (Community) - Supports responsible development; opposes the Aten-area lot merger and by-right path near Victoria Ranch. "I am pro-development, but it has to be responsible development." (Dec 18; 8 comments in the record)

Sheleah Kay Edwards (Healthcare) - Reject the site and merger without full environmental review; put residents' health before development near homes. "If one must be brought here, at least place it in a location away from residences." (Dec 18)

Gilberto Manzanares (City of Calexico) - No lot merger without CEQA and real public process; large-load developers should pay for the grid infrastructure they require, not ratepayers. (IID comments)

Flavio Grijalva Jr. (Community) - Pause large data centers while the County and community examine homes, air, water, power, and local returns. "Moratorium is not a rejection of economic development. It is a responsible pause." (Jun 16)

Dennis Morita (City of Imperial) - The City's challenge is about process, not a categorical ban: identify actual impacts, determine CEQA application, bring the public into a reasoned decision. "That petition isn't about whether the development can happen. It's really about the process." (Mar 26)

Andrew Schwartz (Organized labor) - Supported the June 16 committee-and-moratorium item and offered labor's help; the comment does not state a position on a ban. "We do support this agenda item." (Jun 16)

No attributable comment in the available corpus: Mark Hamby (unincorporated local government), Marjorie D. Marquez (education), Oli Bachie (nonprofit), Sandy Finnell (business), Jeffrey Nemeth (energy industry), John Grass (City of Brawley, committee secretary), Michael Luellen (City of Calipatria), Angel Hernandez (City of El Centro), Mike Goodsell (City of Holtville, committee vice chair), and Supervisors Peggy Price and John Hawk (whose six turns each are Board deliberations, kept separate from public comment). "No corpus comment" is not "has never spoken" - it means nothing attributable in the sessions transcribed so far.

Full per-member collections with every dated comment and recording link: committee members in the public record.

HIS WORDS, BY DATE

Transcripts are automated speech-to-text from the official recordings, lightly cleaned; errors remain possible. One December 18 planning commission turn is attributed in the corpus to "James Tison," recorded as a distinct speaker and not merged. The twenty written objections (Planning Commission CEQA item, undated, recovered from the official packet) request: continuance, public legal analysis, a side-by-side explanation of changes, clarification of effects on pending projects, stronger notice and appeal protections, anti-piecemealing language, and inclusion in the administrative record.

THE MONEY ON THE RECORD

What the filings show, at the filings level:

IVCM to the Duran IID campaign: the Registrar's copy of IVCM's Form 461, filed May 22, records four contributions to Carlos Duran's campaign for the IID board: $10,000 on March 12, $10,000 April 9, $10,000 April 28 and $5,000 May 21 - $35,000 through that filing. KPBS documented Duran's role as IVCM's media contact and his candidacy; inewsource reported a statement of economic interests showing $10,000-$100,000 in IVCM income for media communications, while the Registrar's March 6 candidate Form 700 checks "None - No reportable interests." Those two documents conflict and the underlying filing has not been recovered. Campaign contributions are not personal income, and a donation is not a conflict of interest. The filings are printed so residents can read them, not so a conclusion can be assigned.

The developer's counsel: a viral video claimed developer Sebastian Rucci "sits as the lawyer for the county." The County's June 16 agenda identifies Geoffrey P. Holbrook as County Counsel; a court document identifies Rucci as counsel for the real parties in interest - the developer's side. The claim is not supported by those records.

The design on the developer's own page: IVCM's published infrastructure page lists 132 Caterpillar G3520 gas generators, 330 MW of backup capacity and 220 Tesla Megapacks. That is the company's published description, not approved equipment, and subsequent reporting says a reduction in backup generation was announced; the live application has not been reconciled.

THE RECORD ANSWERS BACK

Public statements age. The record does not. Six pairings - what was said, and what the record shows:

TEN STANDARDS FOR ANY FUTURE APPLICATION

Condensed from the 20-county comparison commissioned for the committee record (Sep 23, 2026), with national examples; the full analysis is in the committee library at datacenter.munigraph.ai.

A WORD THIS NEWSPAPER USES DELIBERATELY

Visibility, not transparency. Transparency is a promise to show you the record if you ask. Visibility means the record is already in front of you without asking: the project page posted at intake, the legal analysis published before the vote, the meeting log on the web, the response document after the workshop. Every standard above names what a resident would see, where, and when - none of it requires a records request, a rumor, or three minutes at a podium.

RESOLUTION ONE: MAKE IMPERIAL COUNTY AN AUTONOMOUS-VEHICLE TESTING COUNTY

A proposal of this edition, drafted for the Board of Supervisors and the Advisory Committee. Precedent: Johnson County, Iowa passed the nation's first county resolution encouraging autonomous-vehicle testing on county roads in July 2014, explicitly as an economic-development and public-safety measure; Fayette County, Georgia followed the same year.

WHEREAS, Imperial County holds thousands of miles of rural county roads, some of the widest open testing geography in California; and WHEREAS, the County's own supervisors campaign on the need to "get jobs and industry back in our county"; and WHEREAS, the California DMV already licenses autonomous-vehicle testing through its permit programs, so the County's role is invitation and assistance, not safety certification; now therefore be it RESOLVED that Imperial County (1) invites companies holding valid California DMV autonomous-vehicle testing permits to test on county roads; (2) directs staff to publish a county testing-corridor map, a single point of contact, and a 30-day response commitment for testing proposals; (3) asks each participating company for a published test plan, insurance documentation, CHP coordination, and a public incident log posted on a county page, so residents can see what is being tested, where, and what has happened - visibility by default; and (4) directs staff to report back within 90 days on the economic-development commitments, local hiring and facility investment that should accompany any testing program.

RESOLUTION TWO: INVITE AND ASSIST SMALL MODULAR REACTOR DEVELOPMENT AND TESTING

A proposal of this edition. Honest constraint, stated up front: California Public Resources Code 25524.2 bars new nuclear fission plants as a permitted land use until federal waste-disposal conditions are met, and the Legislature has so far declined to change that (the latest attempt, AB 2647's advanced-reactor exemption, did not pass in 2026). A county resolution cannot repeal state law - so this one does what a county can actually do, and says plainly what it asks the State to do.

WHEREAS, Imperial County's grid cannot serve the loads now being proposed for it - IID's large-load threshold is 20 MW, and the county's adopted tariff puts data centers first in line for power cuts; and WHEREAS, the NRC issued its first small modular reactor design certification in January 2023 (NuScale's 50-MWe module) and granted standard design approval to NuScale's uprated 77-MWe design in May 2025, making factory-built nuclear a near-term technology rather than a drawing; and WHEREAS, Imperial County already brands itself an energy county - geothermal, solar, lithium - and an SMR in the 50-300 MW class is the scale of firm, clean power its own economic plans require; now therefore be it RESOLVED that Imperial County (1) formally invites SMR developers, national laboratories and test programs to consider Imperial County for development, manufacturing and testing sites, and promises assistance: a single county point of contact, expedited local permitting within the County's authority, site screening using the same published map the data-center standards produce, and coordination with IID; (2) urges the Governor and Legislature to modernize Public Resources Code 25524.2 so NRC-licensed advanced reactors can be permitted in California, and directs that a copy of this resolution be sent to the county's state and federal representatives; and (3) commits that any nuclear project in Imperial County will run under the same visibility standards this county owes every large project: notice at intake, published review analysis before any vote, and a written response to public workshops - the public at the front, not the end.

WHAT THIS NEWSPAPER DOES NOT KNOW

The record in this edition is the largest assembled, and it is incomplete, and the gaps are named rather than smoothed over: the County's June 16 bundle of roughly 130 form letters and unique written comments is not yet cataloged; IID's 243 written tariff comments are requested but not delivered; several session recordings and about three dozen transcript rows still await re-listening; some speaker identities rest on automated transcription spelling. Where this edition says "about," that word is doing honest work.