Beat
11 entries
Snohomish County Tribune
The Snohomish School District offers 18 career and technical education pathways, and its worksite learning program gives students CTE credit for supervised paid work. This opinion piece argues local employers should carry that learn-by-doing model into jobs exposed to AI.
Snohomish County Tribune
All but one person who testified at the county's hearing on its data center moratorium opposed allowing data centers, and more residents submitted written comments in opposition. The council set the six-month moratorium on data centers in unincorporated areas in late June; one Arlington-area resident urged the council not to trade the county's farms, forests and homes for data centers.
The Daily Herald
About 13 people spoke at the Snohomish County Council's public hearing on its six-month moratorium on new data center development in unincorporated areas. Most supported the moratorium and some called for a permanent ban; Council member Nate Nehring said permanent regulation will take several months and anticipated extending the pause to a full year.
Lynnwood Times
The Snohomish County Council scheduled a public hearing for 10:30 a.m. August 19 in Everett on Emergency Ordinance 26-026, the six-month moratorium it adopted unanimously on June 24. The ordinance pauses applications for data centers of 2 megawatts or greater in all zones of unincorporated Snohomish County and expires December 25 unless renewed.
KNKX
A civic assembly of 29 randomly selected Snohomish County residents met over three spring weekends at WSU Everett to work out how county government should use AI, producing 35 recommendations on transparency, accountability, privacy, environmental impact, and human oversight. County councilmembers say they will consider adopting the recommendations into law.
Lynnwood Times
Snohomish County Council member Nate Nehring explains the council's unanimous June 24 vote to pause data center development in unincorporated Snohomish County for six months, extendable to twelve, while the county writes a permanent policy.
HeraldNet
The Snohomish County Council voted unanimously for an emergency moratorium pausing new data center development in unincorporated Snohomish County for six months while it writes a permanent policy. The ordinance requires a public hearing within 60 days and can be renewed for another six months.
The Daily Herald
The Daily Herald's editorial board argues Snohomish County should keep data centers away from its water supply during a drought that left state snowpack at 53 percent of median in April. It cites Skagit County's June 1 moratorium on new data centers, a proposed Seattle moratorium, and Arlington's Project Cascade, a roughly 1.2 million-square-foot facility Amazon confirmed as a delivery-support project requesting 9.5 megawatts and about 44,000 gallons of water a day.
The Daily Herald
Snohomish County PUD fielded eight large-load service inquiries in 2025, double its previous average of about four a year, with requests ranging from 3.5 to 150 megawatts; none so far are data centers. The utility generates about 6 percent of the power its customers use, buys the rest from the Bonneville Power Administration, and requires developers to pay infrastructure costs upfront under its growth-pays-for-growth model.
The Daily Herald
The Daily Herald's editorial board backs Snohomish County's plan to convene a civic assembly of about 40 randomly selected residents over three weekends in April and May 2026 to draft recommendations on county government's use of AI. The county council voted 3-1 in July 2025 to use the process; invitation letters go out to residents in late February.