Mayor Sam Adams has promised a thorough yet speedy examination of whether Portland—in the wake of last year's Pioneer Square bomb plot—should rejoin the Joint Terrorism Task Force it withdrew from five years ago amid political and civil rights concerns.

Last month, he submitted a work plan and several issues to consider, soliciting comments and questions from broad swaths of community members. The next step in that process has been scheduled for tomorrow night, a two-hour town hall meeting (in which participants will be asked, at points, to huddle in small groups) at Portland State University's Smith Ballroom. The plan calls for the council to vote next month on whether it makes sense for Portland cops to embed themselves with federal agents.

Tomorrow's meeting (at 1825 SW Broadway) starts at 6:30—and if as many people show up as officials are expecting, it should be a doozy.

A couple dozen or so Portlanders got a sneak preview last week (which I wrote about in-depth here) when US Attorney Dwight Holton and Oregon's lead FBI agent, Art Balizan, spoke at a Human Rights Commission meeting in North Portland. They calmly and earnestly tried to reassure Portlanders that things are different now that George W. Bush has gone back to Texas, while the ACLU and community members hammered back over concerns about safeguarding Oregon's unique civil liberties laws and that FBI tactics have slipped, not improved, in the past five years.

If you want to study up, Adams' office has a long list of documents, comments, and news articles (both pro and con) on a special website devoted to the issue. I've been among the skeptics, but to read a good argument from someone who's not, check out O columnist Anna Griffin's take this week on Holton and Balizan's message of diplomacy.