Kelly Allen, the chairman of Alamance County’s commissioners, found herself torn between the desire to encourage public participation and the need to maintain decorum as the audience became restive or rowdy.
On several occasions during Monday’s proceedings, Allen wound up chiding the crowd for applauding or booing as various speakers wound up their remarks. She wasn’t any more mollified when some spectators started snapping their fingers as an alternative to clapping, and she even found it necessary to bring down the gavel when some assertions from fellow commissioner Ed Priola drew heckles from large swaths of the audience.
Allen and her colleagues were nevertheless willing to address one pointed demand that periodically arose about the board’s stance on the non-disclosure agreements that data center developers have extracted from public officials in some jurisdictions…