Good Evening Commissioner Waldref, I am writing as a concerned constituent of district one, and a long time Spokane resident including seven years living downtown. I pride Spokane in our ability to balance business and economic needs while maintaining our “close to nature” lifestyle. Between this and the recent news of Avista’s newest customer, I feel a need to write you to urge the city of Spokane, preferably along with the county of Spokane, to enact a three-year minimum moratorium on the construction of any new data centers in the area until local environmental impact surveys can be complete by independent agencies to ensure we are not contributing to the decimation of our communities and tribal lands here in Eastern Washington. I work in commercial insurance underwriting for Liberty Mutual Insurance, the fifth largest property and casualty insurer in the world, and the 4th largest commercial lines carrier in the country. I specifically work for our Global Risk Solutions side of the business under North American Specialty. While I am writing solely in my personal capacity and not on behalf of my employer, my role has given me a front-row seat to the unprecedented growth of the data center industry. This business unit recently announced our goal to become the largest insurer for data centers around the world. I’ve been in meetings with our President of Sustainability to address internal concerns about our business plans. What I can say from someone on the inside is these data center construction projects are not only moving forward without conducting the appropriate environmental reviews, they additionally will bend and rephrase any environmental study done that may not be favorable to their project, to sound like the concerns being pointed out are based in fear and not in reality. Their whole attitude is if we don’t do it, someone else will, and that means moving forward with these projects with no care or concern for the long term impacts these projects will have on the communities and environments these centers are put in. They also are experts at placating and gaslighting you when concerns are brought up, saying we need to adopt more of a pragmatic business mindset and less of an ideological mindset, and that our concerns are grounded in anxiety and disinformation. All of this is incredibly concerning when you add in the latest plan for Avista to provide a large portion of our power to one customer; a data center. Thank you so much for taking the time to read and address my concerns. I trust you will always have the best interest of your constituents and of our neighbors when making decisions as a county commissioner and appreciate all the hard work you do. Best, Jake Reinert District 1