City Council - Regular Meeting

Thank you. Thank you.

okay okay thank you uh apologize apologies for that we you know technical uh technical difficulty as they say okay so i like to uh reconvene the meeting and welcome everybody back um we i left off at public comment um i have two public comment cards for this particular um uh in this particular area and then of course the um the other uh public comment will happen when i get to um that item on the agenda so um let me kick this off with uh the first public comment from mr tom wong

Thank you, Mr. Mayor and the City Council. I would like to address the issue. There's mental health facilities that actually help in our community. There's some people that cannot take care of themselves. And there are facilities here in the city that helps these people out. And they provide a very much needed quality of life for them. And speaking with some of these facilities, it turns out that they're underfunded and they are lacking a lot of needs. They want to expand to help more people, but they're being told that there's red tape and there's things that they need to do better. And it's prolonging and extending upgrades of the facility. that they can help more people or get better quality of care for the current staff, people that they have that they're helping. So I ask that the city council please look into this and to help these care facilities, these small care facilities throughout our neighborhood, to help them out to see what you can do in funding and quality of care and helping them with food and other services. Most of these directors who are taking care of these people they make less than $50 a day. And they're doing it out of kindness of their heart. Because after you pay everything, after you pay your electricity, your food costs, your maintenance and everything, they actually make less than $50 a day. So they are providing a care for our community. We don't want these people who have diminished capacities in our neighborhood wandering around And it's not a good thing for our community or for these people. So please help them with that. And I noticed that there's an item on the ballot for this November for raising the business tax. And if you do get some revenue from that, to see about setting aside some money to help these people out. And they still are part of our community. They may have diminished capacities, but they still are somebody that we need to take care of. And thank you for your time.

Thank you. Our next speaker is Lorena Vieira.

I know that we're here today for other staff, but I believe that if you have the information or the false information from the stock company, we have the right to revoke the approval. If you see the form that I'm giving you, it's the docket that Mr. Gallaty provided to the CEC to approve some information. If you go to page number three, You can see that the data that the stack company used was from 2020, 2022. Excuse me, let me finish.

Ms. Vieira, if this is about the Stack Center, if you can please wait until the end when we get to that item on the agenda.

Well, this is not in the agenda, and I would like to present this as a you know, item that we're not in San Jose. We are in Hayward. And the information that the stack company provided, it says that the closest to the facility is in Jackson Street in San Jose.

Ms. Vera, I know the item on the stack is at the end of the agenda, and we will get there. Okay, I hope you can give me that. Yes, and I'll save your card. Thank you. OK, I do not have any more public comments, so I will move on to city manager's comments.

Thank you, Mayor, Council. First, I'd like to report about the Hayward Executive Airport that hosted its annual open house event on Sunday, September 13, from 10 to 3. The free event for families and aviation lovers drew more than 15,500 visitors from Hayward and the East Bay, which was record attendance. The event provides the opportunity to see a variety of aircraft firsthand, take an airplane ride to discover what flying is all about, and learn more about exciting careers in aviation. Some of the 62 exhibitors included the Hayward Police and Fire Departments, SF Drone School, and Archer Aviation, representing the electric aircraft of the future. So just want to give a congratulations to the Hayward Executive Airport team. Also on September 26, the Hayward Mariachi Festival returns, a vibrant celebration of Mexican culture. The Hayward Mariachi Festival is expected to draw thousands of attendees from across the San Francisco Bay. Renowned mariachi bands will showcase the genre's rich heritage through stunning regalia, intricate instrumentation, and soulful vocals. The festival will also feature a vibrant mercado with local artisans, authentic Mexican cuisine, lucha libre entertainment, and interactive cultural demonstrations. And the family-friendly event produced by the Hayward Chamber of Commerce will take place at Southland Mall from 12 p.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday, September 26. It celebrates our community's diversity and cultural richness and promises to leave a lasting impression. Thank you very much.

Thank you yeah I just wanted to I was going to make that report at the end of the meeting but I was at the airport open house on Sunday it was packed and it was a great event and of course the weather was great but just to see. the vendors there and all the information booths there about how to become a pilot how to become you know how to you know get into the aviation field it was great so big kudos to the airport and the airport staff and I know our public works director is in here so thank you mr. Amiri for that okay moving on to the CR Consent calendar. Oh, no moving on to The swearing-in of our new city commissioners What I am going to do is before the city clerk Does the swearing-in I'm gonna go I'm gonna forego staff report on City commissions and then I'll just go straight to the city clerk for next steps. I

Thank you. Good evening, Mayor, council members, community members. You're correct. This item relates to the appointment and reappointment to the Clean and Green Commission, the Community Services Commission, the Library Commission, Personnel Commission, and Planning Commission.

so I'm gonna ask if our newly appointed members actually mayor before we do this rain in we need to take action yes absolutely absolutely of course so let me let me do that yes so I'm gonna forego staff report and I'll come up to council to see if there's any questions regarding council or commissioners seeing none I will close This portion, open it up for public comment. I do not have public comment cards, nor do I see anyone online. So I will close public comment, and I will entertain a motion to accept the current class of commissioners.

I'll move the item.

Moved by Mayor Pro Tem Syrup. Second. Second by Councilmember Goldstein. I know you said it, but I heard Goldstein beat you. Second by Councilmember Goldstein. And if there are no objections, it will unanimously pass. Congratulations, ladies and gentlemen. Let's give a big round of applause to our new commissioners. Madam City Clerk, take it away.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Now I'm going to invite our newly appointed members and our returning members to please join me at the podium. Do we have all of you here? Perfect. All right. So I'm going to ask you to raise your right hands. And I'm going to ask you to repeat your full name one by one. And we're going to go ahead and start over here.

I. I. Oh, Daisy Maction.

I. Ariela Susana Abella.

I. Jedmaris Nugal. I. Bridget Lowe.

I. Shireen Purcell. I. Huang Dao.

I. Phyllis Asando.

I, Israel Mendez.

I, Eric Hernandez. I, Victor Gomez.

I, Carmen Caballero.

I, Vasco Yorgo.

I, Bonnie Tendencia.

I, Jose Montesinos. I, Kyle McCray.

I, Guadalupe Romero. I, Vrushali Nanjundapa.

I, Jesse Gunn.

OK, thank you. Now I'm going to ask you to repeat after me. Do you solemnly swear or affirm that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the state of California against all enemies, foreign and domestic? Go ahead.

Do you solemnly swear or affirm that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the state of California against all enemies,

that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of California. Go ahead.

That I bear true faith and allegiance to the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of California.

That I take this obligation freely without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion. Go ahead.

That I take this obligation.

and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties upon which I am about to enter. Go ahead.

And that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties upon which I am about to enter.

Very good. You may lower your hands. Congratulations. Welcome to the commissions. And please have a seat. Thank you.

As the newly appointed commissioners find their way to their seats, I just wanted to say on behalf of the council, thank you for applying and going through the process and, of course, going through the interview process. These men and women are volunteers. They serve on a variety of different commissions and they're the ones that are making decisions and are making sure that the city meets its mission and its goals and its priorities. So again, let's give the newly appointed commissioners a big round of applause and thank them for their service. Okay, our next item. Okay, thanks. OK. OK. Our next item is our consent calendar. I have two cards to comment. Terry Martin, there is no number on the agenda item. But what I'll do is I will open up for public comment, and then we'll entertain a motion. So let me go to the first speaker is Terry Martin.

Press the button. Can you press the button?

Yeah. There you go. It's on. It's on? What item of the agenda are you looking at?

Pretty much the first initial. There's a lot of issues on the consent calendar, but I'm going to pick out the first ones that came to mind. One is the PRONUVO contract item, the image trend data contract, and the Adobe services. Now combined, This represents $1.5 million. And all of these are being routed without public discussion. The subject to form escape hatch from item 26295 explicitly notes that the contract is subject to approval by the city attorney. But that means that the council is voting to approve a financial cap deal before the final legal terms are fully ironed out or signed, granting the center manager a wide latitude to finalize this contract behind closed doors. And so I'm looking at this and going, well, there's this 500,000 five-year agreement with Pernuvo Radiology, and it's basically slipping in a brand-specific medical device on the consent calendar that avoids public scrutiny over competing bids or alternative medical local systems. And pretty much kind of all of them sort of follow within that. And that, I think, is a huge issue that maybe you need to have a public discussion about. Thank you.

Thank you. Our next public speaker who wants to speak on item number 13 is Tom Ferreira.

Hello, Council. Hello, Mayor. My name's Tom Ferreira. I'm speaking today as a citizen, but also speaking as a labor leader with SEIU UHW. And the thing that comes to mind is my union brothers, sisters. Union brothers and sisters. This item, item 13, I spoke here in December about our financial situation. We're after balancing everything and moving general fund money over, we're less than a million dollars away from bankruptcy. And then here we are gonna spend a little over $500,000 for a conference room. And all I could think about is the six HPD staffing employees that were eliminated. the maintenance people that were eliminated the library library employees that were eliminated especially kirby i remember the lady was speaking here she was full-time she got pushed down to part-time she didn't know what she was going to do with her and her daughter with medical benefits and everything else i think about that and that's why i'm saying My union brothers and sisters, this could have saved some of their jobs or brought them back. I appreciate this not from general fund, but still, I think it's the wrong time to do this kind of building project. I think a few years down the road would be better. And just to show the public that we do care about a balanced budget moving forward. So thank you for your time. Appreciate it. Thank you.

Thank you. Okay, next speaker is online, is TJ from Hayward Concerned Citizens. And I'm assuming this is on the agenda, on the consent calendar. If not, I can move on.

Hi, yes, I am calling about item number 13. Good evening, Council. This is TJ of Hayward Concerned Citizens. I'm speaking on behalf of myself tonight on item 13 on the consent calendar, which covers the City Hall second floor facility improvement project, which includes a new conference room and two new enclosed offices for the deputy directors of transportation and engineering. I think the timing of this is terribly wrong. It sends a confusing message to your residents about what is considered a priority while Hayward continues to be in a budget crisis beyond your current balanced budget. Nearly a year ago, the council and executive team took voluntary pay cuts and paused cost of living adjustments as a good faith gesture of making sacrifices to help balance the broken budget and sustain our city services. So why stop there? We've already experienced the impacts of layoffs, frozen positions, cuts to library services, using our Measure C funds to help balance your budget. taking back grant funding that was awarded to nonprofits in a previous CBGB cycle and this year's national night out caravan being canceled due to placing constraints on staff overtime. The message you're sending does matter. The fact that this city hall improvement project is on the consent calendar means that you need to be transparent about how the funds are being used for this wishlist item and approve the over half a million dollars to be spent on it. And let's be honest, there's always that codicil that this half a million is not coming out of general fund money. But correct me if I'm wrong, it's all of our taxpayer money. Measure D, for instance, Measure D is the utility tax we voted in that your residents pay. And the water enterprise revenue comes from the bills the utility customers pay, which is also from your taxpayers. I realize staff in any business need the proper amenities to help them do their jobs in the most comfortable and effective way. But how many years has City Hall staff managed with cubicles and meeting areas as they already are? What I'm suggesting is to defer this for the time being. I'm sure there are other more pressing public facing needs these funds can help fulfill from making that sacrifice today. Thank you.

Thank you. I don't have any other cards, and I don't have any other speakers. So what I'd like to do is come back to the council, and I'll entertain a motion.

I'll move the item.

Moved by Mayor Pro Tem Syrup. seconded by Councilmember Goldstein. And if there are no objections, actually, can we take a roll call vote? Councilmember, oh, there he's back. So moved by Mayor Pro Tem Syrup, seconded by Councilmember Goldstein. And if there are no objections, the consent calendar will unanimously pass. Thank you. Moving on. Hold on. Our next item is an informational item. And item number 20, Metropolitan Transportation Commission Pavement Management Technical Assistance Program, P-TAP, 2027 grant award for updating the city's pavement management program project, number 05110. There is no staff report on this, and this is purely an informational item. And just wanted to open up for counsel to see if they had any questions or comments regarding this. If not, I will close this item, and then I will move on to council reports and future referrals. I just wanted to reiterate to the city manager, thank you very much. And of course, the director of public works for Sunday. Sunday was a great day. To see 15,000 people, it's a clear demonstration that every time the city puts on these kinds of events, they're certainly a draw. So thank you for that. If there are no other oral reports, I will then move on to council referrals. which is item number 21, city council referral, prohibition data center development, referral from Mayor Salinas, Councilmember Syrup, and Councilmember Andrews. Before I, I wasn't sure who was going to kick this off, but before I pass it over to our Director of Public Works, I wanted just to set up a little bit of context here, and I'll just be real brief before I give it to our Development Services Director. This meeting and this referral... Wait, hold on. This meeting and this referral comes in response to a town hall that we had last month in South Hayward. And it also comes in response to a few weeks earlier than that when people began to express concern regarding the stack in the industrial zone. And what we're going to hear tonight is a referral. I also want to be clear about what our goal tonight is. Our goal tonight is to listen. Our goal tonight is to talk to staff and direct staff as to what next steps are. There will be no action taken tonight. We're not voting on anything. We're not doing any of that. We are simply listening, and we will be directing staff as to next steps. We will try to listen to everybody. And I'm sure I can speak for the council when I say we have received your emails. We have received your phone calls. And we have been listening to all of you. And I hope tonight we can bring more clarity and be able to direct staff as to next steps and what we will be doing next. So with that said, I wanted to pass it on to our Director of Development Services, Ms. Sarah Bowser.

Good evening mayor and council. I am going to turn it over to our planning manager Leah Schmidt who will go through a slide presentation for you tonight Thank you so much

Thank you. Good evening, Mayor, members of the City Council, and everyone who's in here tonight. Welcome to City Council meeting. It's really happy to see you all here. I'm going to provide a brief presentation related to the City Council referral outlining actions to limit or further regulate data center development in Hayward. So on August 12, citing significant community outcry related to the approval of the STAC data center and then concerns about health and environmental risks related to development of data centers in general, three city council members directed staff to return to the full council with options to prohibit or otherwise limit data center development. In addition, the referral directed staff of this council sustainability committee to prepare a report on the economic and environmental impacts of existing data centers. This presentation includes a brief background of data centers in Hayward, the environmental review process around these facilities, and current regulations related to data centers in Hayward, and then details three options to further regulate or limit data center development. Just so we're on the same page, I wanted to take a moment to define data centers, which have been around since at least the 1960s. OK. OK. Data centers are buildings designed and equipped to allow for high density computing equipment such as server racks used for data storage and processing generally for offsite users. These facilities require uninterrupted power supplies and cooling. Generally, they rely on the electric grid, but they do have on-site backup power, such as generators. Functions may include on-demand services, cloud computing, enterprise services, internet facilities, and more recently, AI computing. There are four data centers in Hayward that fall within this definition. two that were constructed in the mid-aughts and have been operational for over a decade, and then two larger scale facilities, one of which became fully operational within the past few months, and one that is currently under construction. Data centers are subject to environmental review under the California Environmental Quality Act, or CEQA. The environmental analysis may be prepared by the city or the California Energy Commission, depending on the energy generation at the facility outlined on the left side of this slide. Subject areas analyzed under CEQA are shown in the image on the right side of the screen. Numerous studies and analysis are prepared in order to measure potential impacts of a project based on these subject areas. If any impacts are identified, the project must include mitigation measures to reduce those impacts to a level of less than significant under state law. For example, the STAC data center had 14 mitigation measures, including the requirement to use 100% renewable energy and to use renewable diesel for generator testing to manage greenhouse gas and air quality impacts, respectively. Additionally, the project incorporated construction-related mitigation measures to minimize impacts to air quality, biological resources, cultural resources, geology, hydrology, and hazardous materials. In April of 2026, in light of recent data center approvals and recognizing that there was a need for additional oversight and guidance for staff and developers around this topic, the city council adopted amendments to the zoning ordinance to define data centers in the municipal code. to establish a new major conditional use permit process requiring city council approval, allowing data centers in two industrial sub-districts subject to major conditional use permit approval, and requiring that all new data centers submit sustainability plans and community benefits packages regardless of project or site size. We do not have any pending applications for data centers under these new regulations. So the following three slides outline various options explored in the staff report that the council can take to strengthen or limit regulations related to data centers. The first option, maintain the status quo while strengthening regulations, would allow data center applications to be processed under the current regulations while staff actively develops updated regulations. Updating and strengthening the current regulations could include requirements around monitoring and reporting, requiring additional environmental studies that may not be required under CEQA, and possibly a decommissioning requirement, among others. This process of preparing updated regulations could take up to six months. It would require robust community outreach and would ultimately come back to the city council for adoption. Other jurisdictions that are taking this approach include San Jose and Los Angeles County. Benefits of this option are that it would provide time for staff to do analysis based on best practices in data center development, while the council can approve or deny projects on a case-by-case basis on the merits of the specific project and location. Drawbacks include a longer time frame for implementation, that the applications must continue to be processed under the current regulations, and that the city must redirect staff and resources to this effort. The second option explored in the staff report is to adopt an urgency moratorium subject to certain findings to pause data center approvals. This action would require a four-fifths vote of the city council upon adoption and could be extended up to a year. A pause in data center development would allow staff time to study the impacts of data centers and to develop updated regulations based on the impacts and best practices. If this option is chosen, staff can make every effort to bring this report back and the related findings back to the city council by the end of October. Other jurisdictions that have adopted moratoria while regulations are being evaluated include Oakley, El Monte, Baldwin Park, Montebello, Gilroy last night, others probably today. There's a lot of them. Benefits of this option are that it's temporary. It allows staff time to analyze best practices and impacts of data center development and to monitor implementation of state laws related to this particular use that are sitting on the governor's desk right now. Drawbacks to this approach are that we must develop payward-specific findings to support this urgency moratorium, continue to accept and process but not approve data center applications, and that the city must redirect staff and resources to this effort. The third option explored in the staff report is a permanent ban on data centers. This option may or may not be accompanied by a moratorium. Similar to the amending the regulations option that I described above, this process may take several months to implement since there are existing data centers that must be addressed in these regulations. Other jurisdictions that have banned data centers include Monterey Park, Coachella, Cudahy, and Irwindale. Benefits of this option include the ability of the city council to define the ban and any exclusions or exceptions to the ban for existing data centers. It would provide staff time to monitor data center development in other jurisdictions without having to process any new developments. Drawbacks include the longer time frame for implementation, that it would create uncertainty around existing data centers, which have invested heavily in Hayward, that the city must continue to accept and process applications until the ban is adopted, and that the city must redirect staff and resources to this effort. Further, there will be a loss of potential revenue and community benefits associated with new data center development. So following council discussion and public comments, the council is asked to provide guidance to staff on their next preferred steps. And that concludes this presentation.

OK. Thank you. anything else that's it okay perfect all right so before I go to council comments what I'm gonna do is I do have cards here for public comment before I get to that I also wanted to I'm sure folks in the outside in the in the hallway i guess uh they know that 2a there's a weight there's an overflow okay good all right um okay so just in case nobody heard uh or just in case some of you didn't hear this i'll say this again uh the public comment section provides an opportunity to address the council on items not listed on the agenda or informational staff presentation items the council welcomes comments and requests that speakers present present their remarks in a respectful manner within the established time limits and and focus on issues which directly affect the City or are within the jurisdiction of the City. As the Council is prohibited by state law from discussing items not listed on the agenda, items will be taken under consideration and may be referred to staff. The City Council welcomes comments including criticism about the policies procedures programs or services of the city or of the acts or admissions of the City Council speakers shall not use threatening profane or abusive language which disrupts disturbs or otherwise impedes the orderly conduct of a city of the City Council and The city is committed to maintaining a workplace free of unlawful harassment and is mindful that city staff regularly attends council meetings. Discriminatory statements or conduct that is hostile, intimidating, oppressive, or abusive are per se to a meeting and will not be tolerated. So with that, I also just want to say that there's a lot of us here. I know there's a lot of thought on this. And I know there's a lot of feeling on this topic. And if we can just, we're all up here. We cannot reply. But we're listening. And we're listening. Let's be respectful. We will listen to you. And then we will provide feedback, and then we're going to direct staff. But we've had some of these meetings in the past. And I know passions are high, but I'd like for us to get through this process so that we can listen. We're all taking notes. And so that we can do, after you do your job, then we will do our job. All right? So with that said, I'd like to, and of course, per council guidelines on a referral item, public comment is one minute long, okay? So with that said, our first speaker is Lorena Vieira.

I think I already gave you copies of the document that I wanted to present to revoke the approval of the stock company. If you look into the page number three, you can see that the stock company provided false information because the data is from 2020-2022. And it's talking about all the chemicals that we get in the air, and also indicates that the closest facility was in Jackson Street, San Jose. As we all know, a stock company also is trying to open a data center over there. This morning, or yesterday, I made a phone call to the, in the second document, Mr. Um... The person that provided the mesogality, I'm sorry. It says that the consulting company is David Power and Associates. I made a phone call yesterday and today. I received a phone call from one of the members. I did ask if they were involved with the Stein Company in the past. The first answer was no. Then I said, are you sure? Because I can't work with you.

Ms. Vieira, your time is up.

I don't think so. I put three cards.

Ms. Vieira, your time is up. Ms. Vieira, we have a stack of speakers behind you.

I understand that, Mr. Salinas, but this is a major thing. If we have false information, I think Mr. Lawson, who is the attorney, can tell you we can revoke the approval.

Ms. Vieira, please. Thank you.

I'm sorry, but you have to let me talk because I have more to say.

Ms. Vieira, I know you do.

Okay, then I guess you want to deal with the appeal.

Thank you. Our next speaker is, first name is Marissa. And then if I could have lined up in the middle of the chamber here, next speaker is Marissa. I don't have a last name. But then I have, is it Kim Cawthorn? And then Marla Sather? And then Jules Menehivat.

Hi, good evening. Some of you guys already know who I am. But on this Stack Center, I think we need to do some regulating, keep it in line. It was forced upon the city because I guess you guys want money. I don't know. You know, we should also ban future data centers, because as you could see by this turnout, nobody in Hayward wants one of those. And I live kind of in that area. And maybe it's over there, but when it's quiet at night, all that humming, I will be able to hear what that is. And being near the Hayward interpretive storyline, That's not a good thing either. But if we're going to monitor, we shouldn't be monitoring these for future and also maybe ask them to do solar.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next speaker is Kim Cawthorn. And then Marcella Smith can line up next if she's here.

OK. We need to hold them accountable. Last week, an ex-employee of Anthropic and the heads of all the AI companies admitted that this type of company and the data centers that are attached to them are dangerous. Let's listen. Let's be a part of the groundswell that does work towards slowing it down. We can do it. Even if we are just a small town, that doesn't matter. It adds up. We can be the small town that helps to make the dollars add up to go against this. If we don't act now, it'll be too late. AI is coming on a lot faster than computers. We should not allow one more data center to be built. If there are people getting paid to support data centers, seek them out and sue them. With what there is now, hold them accountable. Make them pay extra taxes. Test the water and the air in which they produce. Watch them like a mother hawk.

Thank you. And Marla Sather.

Is that on?

Yes.

Good evening, Mayor, Council, and staff. My name is Marla Sather, a 40-year Hayward resident. I'm here to deliver a data center oversight ordinance and technical letter with signatories. I am also delivering a petition signed by approximately 2,300 Hayward residents. and with more signatures still coming in, supporting the direction of tonight's referral. The petition asks the Council to protect Hayward from further hyperscale data center development and to require rigorous monitoring and reporting for the SVY03A facility already approved and under construction on Eden Landing. This is the significant public outcry the city manager announcement referenced. It is on paper in signatures from residents across the city. Thank you to Mayor Salinas, Mayor Pro Tempore Syrup, and Council Member Andrews for authoring the referral. Please pass it as written with both parts intact. I also have proposed motions and a cost benefit and alternate use analysis. Thank you.

Thank you. And then Jules Menjivar. And then behind, if we can queue up, Tom Wong and, let's see, Gene Buchanan.

Good evening. This is... Directed to Mayor Salinas, Councilmember District 1 Roach, and District Council Number 6 Cyrus. We're in an election year. I hope you do all you can to retroactively ban the Eden Landing Data Center. Thank you.

Thank you. Marcella Smith. And then if we can have queued up, is it Ironde Rodriguez? Go ahead.

The data center is an absolute betrayal of the residents of Hayward community. It reeks of illegal processes going on from the beginning. It reeks that right now. And it is a reflection of this city council who consistently makes bad decisions. And by that, The movie theater, the loop, and I could go on and on and on. And now we don't have money to run the city properly. We are upset. We will not. We will show up. We will keep showing up. This needs to be banned. And we are willing to do whatever is necessary to make that happen. Thank you.

Thank you.

Next speaker is Tom Wong. But then can we have Luciano Duran and Sheila Cho line up? Go ahead.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor and City Council. Thank you. This data center is, we shouldn't just ban it. We should actually do a reverse course. We should actually have them move out and shut them down. This is a danger to the community. There's over 22,000 square footage of e-waste that was never addressed. I mean, what happens with all these chips that are outdated? And AI and data centers, they're updating their servers probably every six to eight months, and nobody's talking about where all this e-waste is going. And it is harmful to our community. So I ask that you do more due diligence in not only banning, but also putting safeguards and rails to it. This takes away jobs, takes away money from our community. The tax dollar goes directly to the city coffers. It does nothing for our community. It doesn't go to the restaurants. It doesn't go to our neighbors. It doesn't help our parks. I mean, this funds the city's pet projects. And we need to stop this data center. There are better businesses that we could bring into the city.

Thank you. Janine Buchanan. And then can we have lined up Scott Galati and Terry Martin?

Good evening. My name is Jeannie Buchanan. I'm a Hayward resident. I want to address the other part of the initiative tonight, establishing ongoing monitoring and enforcement framework for already approved sites like the stack. Hayward's protection will rely entirely on this policy. As you know, the original CEQA study only measured noise at DBA levels. it did not evaluate the low frequency DBC levels, which bend over barriers and even penetrate residential walls. For example, noise from HVAC chillers that run 24-7. Therefore, please mandate three items in the monitoring framework. One, independent pre-operational DBC baseline testing at residential property lines. Two, enforceable low frequency DBC limits. And three, perimeter noise monitoring results available to the public. Without this, code enforcement will not be able to protect our neighborhoods. Thank you.

Thank you.

Hello, good evening council members. I'm Aira, a Hayward resident, and honestly, I'm shocked this got this far. I support banning future data centers requiring real strict oversight of stack. Stack is a 300,000 square foot and 77 megawatts. The Hayward Herald report, it moved forward without city council vote because it was classified as office use. That was a loophole. A project that could affect our city's water, power, air, noise, And Shoreline should not be able to just slide through as just another office building when we know it's more than that. I'm not anti-technology. I'm against residents dealing with consequences we never had a real chance to approve or sign up for. Please ban future data centers. Require STAC to publicly report its actual water, energy use, generator pollution, and noise. This was a huge oversight that should not happen again. Thank you. Thank you for your time.

And then when you come up, we're just trying to keep track of you in the system. That's fine. We just need to hear your name. So if you can state your name and where you're from, that would be great. That way we can make sure we're on cue.

Yes, my name is Luciano Duran, and I live with part of my family here at Gisler Way. Good evening. I just want to say thanks, first of all, to dear Mayor Salinas, Mayor Pro Temporo Serap, and Council Member Andrews for listening and making this possible, and all the residents of Hayward. And as we can see, and becoming aware more and more, internationally, even nationally, locally of course this is the issue of our time this is something we have not encountered before I would say this is something major that is affecting societies and towns throughout the United States including Hayward and its effect its effect is in It affects us in ways that it's hard to know yet, but the things that we do know are very serious. It increases radiation heat-wise. It affects everything in the environment, the air, the water, sound. And, of course, it depreciates value of properties nearby because of all the pollution that it's generating. And the product itself of AI is questionable as we have come to know now.

Mr. Durand, time is up. Okay. But we got it. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. And then Sheila Cho. Yeah. And then can I have lined up Eric, is it ,, and then Jeffrey Hammond, and Robert Stevens? Okay.

Good evening. I'm Sheila. I live in Hayward and I speak for Hayward residents against SVY03A. Seven data center bills are waiting for the governor to sign or veto by September 30th. Three of them directly matter here. AB 1577, AB 2619, AB 2469. And they basically require reporting energy, sound, fuel, or water usages to get approval for future discretionary permit or business license or requiring water supply assessment for water impacted expansions. The city approved the 76.6 megawatt facility that projects 9.5 acre feet of water per year and a peak day of almost 170 173 000 gallons and none of that had to be disclosed at the business license stage i asked the council tonight to direct the mayor to send a letter to support all seven bills on the city's behalf before september 30th and i asked every resident here to please also do the same and whatever sacramento does please pass tonight's referral with the urgency ordinance and oversight ordinance because only hayward can write hayward's rules thank you thank you

Good evening, council members. My name is Scott Gulati. Thank you for having me here today. I've worked on many data center projects throughout the Bay Area. I represent applicants who have a desire to build a data center, some here in Hayward and elsewhere. I helped them get through the California Energy Commission, which is an extremely thorough process. I understand the potential fears of data center. I really do. I empathize with the people in this room that are nervous about what data centers could cause. And had I not worked on as many data centers that I have and read all the studies and seen all the work, I might feel the same way. California is ahead of the entire country in adopting stringent environmental and energy regulations that don't exist in most states. What they do is make sure that many of the potential impacts that you read in the newspaper and that people might be talking about here, they don't happen here in California. I have worked on 14 of the last 16 projects that went through the California Energy Commission since 2018. Because of this regulatory environment, all of the environmental impact reports that were prepared for those projects found that there were no significant impacts.

Oh, Mr. Galati, I wasn't paying attention. Mr. Galati, go right ahead. No, your time is up. Thank you. Thank you. Terry Martin.

Hi, my name is Terry Martin. I live in San Leandro. So what I'm going to tell you is actually It's the diesel generators that are the problem. So basically, what you have approved is the equivalent of every three days during a test, and it's the testing, the monthly testing, 55 pounds of raw chemical mass into the airshed, which is the liquid equivalent of 15 two-liter bottles of liquid causing chemical poison. okay when these things start so basically how they get through the cec and what the loophole is is they say oh we're just going to measure it you know diluted these things are going to put the equivalent of that over the neighborhood okay and it is going to poison people people will die if you took one of those bottles in here and i opened it up and just aerosoled it everybody in this room would be dead Everybody, okay? That's what you approved with the diesel generators, okay? And so basically, you know, inside a closed room at that volume you know it's going to affect our you know our kids and everything else um and these diesel generators that's what they're putting out and there's there's nothing to stop it because it's the cold starts it's the equivalent of an industrial generator of going in and saying hey can you get my car to pass smog and now times it by this industrial you know these generators 28 of them it's 100 just let me one one more thing it's a mile long thing of 18 wheelers constantly going around the neighborhood every week that they're testing. That's what you're doing. That's what you approve.

Good evening council members. I'm Eric Negomir with the Silicon Valley Leadership Group representing our regional innovation economy. First, we'd like to acknowledge the challenges you face and thank you for your hard work. As you consider options around data centers, know that SVLG and our members are here as a resource for you. We urge you to look beyond prohibiting new data centers and instead build on your recent work to ensure responsible development. Done right, data centers deliver significant tax revenues and infrastructure upgrades without harming residents' quality of life. Silicon Valley's leading companies are deploying real, innovative, and at-scale solutions to drastically reduce water consumption and address other key concerns. We ask for your participation in a thoughtful dialogue between government and your industry partners. We appreciate your work and also everyone here. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Did you ask them to say where they live? No, I did not. Well, if you want to just go ahead. Tell us, Mr. Harmon, hold on a second. If you want to tell us where you live, that'd be great. Ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, you're fine. Ladies and gentlemen, please. Hey, you guys, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, listen, if we're going to have outbursts like this, I will close the meeting and we will have this discussion amongst ourselves. All right. Please give everybody the respect and and let everyone talk. I understand. I get it. We get it. But but let's have everyone talk. and present their point of view, and so we can get through this, all right? There should not be a shouting match, shouting people down, and just because you disagree with them, all right? So please, we're gonna respect all of you, so please respect the process, all right? Thank you. You're good, you're good, thank you. Mr. Hammond.

Hello, my name is Jeffrey Hammond and I'm one of the Hayward planning commissioners who approved the STAC data center development. I am a volunteer and I do not receive any compensation for my time. I'm here tonight to state that I stand behind all my decisions to approve the STAC data center development because I believe the data center is good for Hayward economically now and for the future. I believe that we have a unique opportunity here in Hayward to use data centers to help build the infrastructure we need to attract future industry which will help create good jobs here in Hayward. I believe that much of the outrage and concern surrounding this project is unfounded and based on misinformation. I question how many people have read all the staff reports, environmental impact reports, CEQA findings, or even the minutes from previous Planning Commission meetings. I have read all the reports and I have found no reason to deny this project or especially to ban all future data centers. I fully support greater public outreach and I would encourage data center developers to offer greater transparency and public involvement.

are yours the city council thank you thank you uh hey you guys you guys please all right and like I said we will I will close the chamber and we will have this discussion by ourselves all right so please um Mr. Stevens.

Thank you. Good evening, Mayor and Council. My name is Robert Stevens. I am a resident of Hayward and I am a planning commissioner. This issue is not about the environmental impact of data centers. Data centers have operated successfully in Hayward since the 1980s. The most recent one, Stacks, went through a secret review at the Energy Commission and found no substantial adverse impact. This is also not about the electric grid. Has anybody read the August New York Times Magazine that talks about how close we are to the precipice of collapse of our grid? The data centers pay to rebuild our grid. I believe this is about the existential threat that AI is said to pose to us. A data center is the only tangible target anyone can target. After all, you cannot... picket and algorithm. But a data center is the basic plumbing of the internet. Without it, we have no email, we have no streaming. What happens if Netflix goes out tonight? Finally, a data center generates revenue. A ban generates nothing. Stacks alone is going to produce almost $9 million. I really urge you to think diligently about this task.

Thank you. Our next line of speakers is Habiba. Sarah Emanoff, E.J. Siri, Andreas Kluver, and A.J. Lopez. So if you guys can just all line up here and queue up. Thank you. Go right ahead.

Good evening. My name is Habiba, and I'm here with CARE, the Council on American Islamic Relations. I want to tell you who these data centers are directly impacting. When these data centers are built, they are being built around black and brown communities, leading to a disproportionate impact on already marginalized populations. These developments require intense use of resources and energy, which is a direct cause of the increase in the utility bills of our communities. The cooling systems needed for these centers result in an expulsion of heat, dramatically worsening the heat exposure in these communities. The intense use of water and the development also leads to these communities having a lack of access to clean water. And not only that, these data centers are then used to conduct genocide and unleash mass surveillance on our Palestinian brothers and sisters. CARE directly works to support Muslim, black, and brown communities. And much of the work we do is in regards to understanding our rights. Our communities have a right to be put first, have a right to access to clean water, have a right to not pay the costs of these data centers that not only do not benefit them, but also target our communities. So I urge you, council members, to put our communities first and ban the development of these data centers.

Thank you. And if I can remind folks just, you know, if you can tell us your name and where you're from, and then that would be great. Let's see, Sarah, and I apologize, Emanoff?

Emanoff, thank you so much. I live six miles away, right on the border of Hayward and Union City. Thank you for having me here. I want to say that I work with Safe Take International, and I've had first experience with power line harmonic distortions, and the same kind that are caused by data centers. And three people on our street got diabetes. And we had such horrific things. Our appliances were blowing out. We had scorch marks where our Federal Pacific and Zinsco electric panels could not hold the surge. The Bloomberg report just came out saying that data centers within 20 miles of AI hyperscale data centers, which are different than data centers, by the way. The load is very different. I need to clarify that, that it's going to be such bad harmonic distortions, your appliances are not going to burn out. and you're going to pay much more in rate, but it's not clean, it's not healthy, there's cancer, there's infertility. I'm telling you, I don't know, people say, this is not about being opposed to AI. This is about people who live directly So I'm asking you, please, wait, wait, this is my ask. Sorry, trying to say this really fast, and it's on my phone. The ask is very important to flat out deny extra power lines. And I know that they're using this additional, but you have to, look, I work with these people. I mean, I work. Ms. Aminoff. You need to be upfront with knowing how much load you will be building exact figures, estimations, no estimations.

Ms. Aminoff, thank you.

Thank you so much. Thank you.

Good evening. My name is EJ Sire and I represent about 1,500 Hayward residents who call Hayward home but make their livings and support their families as union construction workers. I don't think that it's going to come to a point where the city should be looking at some kind of responsible action towards the community's concerns by waiting on a moratorium or anything. I think we have the power to do that now. Unfortunately, if Prop 45 passes this November, you're not going to have any ability to do anything because the state's going to tell you it has to get built. If we're looking at the issues and the concerns of the community, then let's put the issues on the table. Water consumption, closed-loop or air-cooled systems, energy demand, ratepayer protections, infrastructure and environmental impacts, and requirements for a skilled and trained workforce so we don't have YouTube.com contractors building this stuff. San Jose is already developing a policy. California Labor Federation even put out a statewide policy and recommendations to do this kind of stuff. A pause by itself does not solve anything. If there is going to be one, use that time to create clear rules for responsible development that actually addresses the community's concerns regarding ratepayer protections, water, and things like that. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good evening. My name is Andreas Kluver with the Alameda County Building Construction Trades Council. Our affiliates actually represent the workers that build the data centers. In fact, thousands live in Hayward and make their livelihood out of projects like this. However, Today we're here in solidarity with many people in the room to make sure you're establishing a responsible data center policy. Local communities and jurisdictions should have control over what gets built and how it gets built. We need to make sure that issues as addressed before, environmental issues, issues of water, issues of energy, issues of community benefits, and of course issues of labor standards to ensure that those folks that are building these centers are from the community and are having sustainable jobs and wages. So we're actually in full support of taking the time to develop a responsible data center policy. We would like to be a big part of that and work with you and work with many folks in the room here to ensure that. And only then, once that decision has been made how to move forward, would we support them. Thank you very much. Thank you.

Mr. Lopez, before you start, let me queue up the next folks. Can I have Jesse Gunn, Lilith Sib, and then JP Sanchez, and then Mila. OK, Mr. Lopez, go ahead.

Thank you, Council. I just want to say my name is AJ Lopez. I'm a Hayward resident for a long time. Mr. Salinas, you actually taught me at Chabot, Mexican-American history. I just want to say more than anything, as a concerned father and a member of this city, that I just want to see Hayward thrive. I want to see us thrive as a community. You all know the facts. You've heard the facts from everybody here. I could spout those off, but I want a future for my daughter. I want a future for the kids of Hayward. And that doesn't involve data centers, pollution, environmental concerns for their health near schools. We have other ways to get money for these schools. There's grants. We could get federal grants, things like that. But as a parent, I'm concerned for my child's future. And I want her to grow up in Hayward just like I did. And thank you all. Thank you.

Hello, my name is Jesse Gunn, and I am the treasurer and an executive board member for the Hayward Education Association here speaking on their behalf. Yesterday, our faculty representative assembly representing roughly 1,100 teachers, psychologists, counselors, and nurses in the Hayward Unified School District voted unanimously to oppose data centers here in Hayward and to call for their ban. Not a pause, not a moratorium, but they're banned. These data centers do not positively impact our community. In fact, they directly and negatively affect our students, our families, the people who call Hayward home, such as myself. Thank you so much, counsel.

Thank you.

Hi. My name is Lilith, and I'm a student in HUSD. And I would like to talk about the data center environmental impact. It is going to impact the Earth. It is just going to use and pollute our water, and it is going to hurt younger generations. The children are the one that will have to live with the impact that we leave. So my only ask is to ban all data centers, especially hyperscale data centers in Hayward, and set the example.

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, listen, I appreciate the applause and the congratulatory remarks, but can we please just, let's calm it down, tone it down a bit so that we can proceed. I did want to say, I did want to highlight and call out Lilith. Lilith, thank you for being here. And I think this is the... fourth time maybe that we've seen each other and i do remember you uh and uh and i do listen to you and and um let me just tell you and i know your mom's sitting next to you um uh you have been very clear-eyed about this and you have been very articulate about this issue so i just wanted to say thank you and just recognize you for that so thank you for your work on this

um our next speaker is jp sanchez yes sir hi council my name is jp sanchez i live close by south hayward and educator by industrial i stand in solidarity amongst the community that we say no to constructing more data centers the increasing trend of the advancement technology development is a sham because it will never benefit the general public how do we know that look we got not one but two amazon data centers all of our taxpayer money will go directly into the hands of the rich rich, elite, corporate, conglomerate, and imperialist masters like U.S. imperialism. This pattern is similar to what's happening in the Global South, such as my homeland, the Philippines, the project that's being proposed by the U.S.-led Israeli alliance initiative Pax Silica. This type of predatory development will displace thousands of indigenous people and create unsustainable jobs and destroy the environment. This will happen similarly here if we don't put stop to these data center developments here in our city. So I ask you, Council, to halt these operations, ban future tech initiatives like data centers, and listen to your constituents. Thank you. Thank you.

And Mila, before you speak, let me call on the next folks. Holly, is it Edmondson? Katie, is it Kalia? Katie? Kalia? Gregory, is it Fit or Fight? Yes. Sean, is it, I can't pronounce the last, is it S-K-E-V? Sean? Yeah, is there another Sean in the room? Okay, and then Sonny Alvarado. Let me look it right up.

Hi, my name is Mila. I was born at St. Rose Hospital in Hayward, not in Los Gatos. And I'm here because I just want to make it very clear that calling a data center stack is disrespectful to our community and everything that Hayward community stands for. You don't have to listen to the applause to know what the people of Hayward want, and that is AI data centers out of Hayward. And on that note, I do want to point out the connection between these AI data centers and facial recognition technology and surveillance technology that is used in Israel, that is used in the Philippines, that is used all around the world for imperialist nations like America to surveil citizens. And if we allow it here, we are failing our community. Just know that you work for the people of Hayward, and as our representatives, we implore you to make the correct decision. It shouldn't take this meeting to understand and do what is right. I don't care how much money they offer.

That's it.

Are we good? Also, I think there was a Holly. I don't know where that person is, but I'm cutting in line. Do you want to come up then?

Yeah, you're next.

I'll go after you.

OK, good evening. My name is Holly Edmondson. I am here as a resident of Hayward, a mother of a three-year-old, and as a person who cares, a person who cares about our people and our environment. And I hope you're listening. I'm deeply concerned about the effects of data centers. I heard from opposing sides tonight that there are no adverse effects. How is that even possible when they're using tons of water per day? And you heard from all the facts tonight that were presented. I mean, that's just to name one, is about the water. sorry I also did not hear from anybody the opposing side that they were Hayward residents not one not one person was a Hayward resident from the opposing side I strongly urge you to stop data centers until we fully understand the impacts after they have been heavily researched, studied, and scrutinized. You're in these positions of power. That's an honor. Listen to these people. Nobody in Hayward wants this. I'm worried for my three-year-old son. Our children deserve better. Think about our future and think about our kids. Thank you.

Thank you. Dr. Katie?

Yes, I'm Katie Kaliʻiʻaʻa. Hi, council members. I'm a Hayward resident, and I was born and raised in Hayward. My family's been here for over 100 years. And I am obviously against data centers. And I went to the town hall meeting where it was established that the city claims they cannot stop the current data center that's being built, the 310,000 square foot one. and that they also didn't know who the owner of that data center was. So there's a lot of information that, frankly, we don't even know yet. But hearing what everybody has said about the environmental impacts, that particular data center is about a mile from my father's home. I came here today with my dad. He's in this room today because it really matters what happens to us here in Hayward. We actually really care. As you can see, all the folks who are here At the very least, I want to point out that that data center, I think they found a loophole here in our city and they took advantage of us. They took advantage of all the people here. And we need, at the very least, a moratorium and absolutely a ban. So thank you for listening to me.

Hi, my name is Gregory Fite. I live up in Upper D Street, kind of at the edge of town. And yeah, I love Hayward. And I love the internet. And I love all these things. And I've seen a lot of technology change. And a lot of it, you just kind of get used to one step at a time. And then one day, we woke up and we saw data centers, these colossal energy monsters, these water hogs, these tech overlords that we have many of whom live right across the bay from us and all of a sudden it kind of all comes together our data is being scraped and collected illegally people are being targeted people are living in a police state this has to be considered as well as the environmental effects of the data center we have to consider the social effects the idea of using artificial intelligence to replace human judgment. And we also have to protect our children and keep pollutants out of the atmosphere, especially when our federal government just said, oh, you want to emit carbon into the atmosphere? No problem. Hayward can do different and better.

Thank you. Thank you.

Hi, my name is Sean Scheme. And I'd like to make one distinction here that I've heard over and over repeated. But between the list of data centers that we have here in Hayward, we have three that are legacy data centers and one that is a hyperscale The difference being that the hyperscale will take and consume much more resources, electricity and water, but also that it operates 100% for AI. And my point being is that I don't think you can have a responsible conversation about the stack data center. without including the issues that surround AI. And did anybody watch the news this last week? I think we had a whole gamut of people that lead the industry standing up and saying, we've got problems here, we've got to slow down. So I am all for and support of banning, or at a minimum, a moratorium where we can go back and review an extension.

Thank you. Appreciate it. And Mr. Alvarado, before you speak, let me queue up the next group of folks. Tom, is it Wetzel? Margarita, Alanis, Damian? My name is Sonny Alvarado. I'm a Hayward resident.

I'm a ninth grade biology teacher with the honor to teach in the city that I grew up in. And right now my students, they're learning about invasive species, which are plants or animals that are introduced to an ecosystem and they put a strain on the resources or nutrients and prevent the indigenous animals and plants from growing. AI data centers are equivalent to invasive species. It will use our water, electricity, which should be used by the people who live here. And these companies are not building AI centers in their hometowns, so why are they building it in ours? Can you guys be the champions and lead us to protect our water and electricity? And I know you guys have made the correct decision before, especially Zermeno. He helped us out with the Hayward Rental Stabilization Ordinance, right? So I know you guys can make the correct decisions. Let's make the correct one on this one.

Thank you.

Hello. My name's Tom Wetzel, and I live a few blocks from here in Hayward. And I worked for 20 years in server development in Silicon Valley. And based on that experience, I don't really understand why this huge, vast expansion of data centers, which have all these servers and disks in them, what do they need all this data storage for? Is it for like flock surveillance camera footage to track everybody? Is it for all the AI systems that are taking away people's jobs? I think given the environmental impact, we need to have real answers, believable answers to those questions. And the previous speaker who talked about the AI basis of this expansion raised a very relevant question. And I think until we have an adequate and believable and acceptable answer, there should be a ban.

Thank you. Tom, right? No, you're Tom. How about is, who is Tom? You're Tom, okay. Margarita? Yeah, let's go to Margarita.

Hello, my name is Margarita. I'm coming from Union City, and I want to say we the people over profit. Who are these data centers actually helping? Not the hardworking people living in the area. As many of us know, having data centers will increase all types of pollutions, like water pollution, air pollution, and land pollution. These data centers will also increase electromagnetic field exposure to people, which can and will cause serious health issues and problems. Data centers take up large amounts water, and electricity. This can lead to less water being available for us to drink and higher utility bills. We cannot drink data, but we can drink water. Higher utility bills will cause even higher worries. An item of food usually costs up to an hour of labor. We have to worry about the food we put on our table, and it doesn't make sense for us to worry about higher utility bills because of computers. The people should decide this, not billionaires. So please say yes, pass referral, put a ban on future data centers, comply with environmental health regulations. Thank you.

Prarit? Yeah, OK. And I don't know if I said that correctly. No worries.

My name is Prarit Jain, and I live near Burbank Elementary School. I worked at a top five AI company on frontier AI models. I was part of that team myself. I quit five days ago, partially due to data center build-out. Many tech workers like myself don't even want data center build-outs this fast. We want to slow AI growth as well. In fact, some of the top AI CEOs want to slow this growth as well. Dario Amadei, the CEO of Anthropic, just this week said, An AI agent swarm could take over the internet within 6 to 12 months, a full takeover. I'm having serious conversations just this morning with my friends about pulling money out of online financial systems to keep my money safe. uh the federal government uh has no desire to regulate this so it falls to uh city councils such as yourself this is no longer ai uh sorry science fiction uh my ask is to slow down at least data centers where the primary purpose is to train evaluate or run ai inference uh i know that uh i'll leave it there actually okay thank you appreciate it

I'm Robert Seitz. I've lived here for about 40 years. I'm almost 80 years old. During that whole time that I've lived in California, I have had to be very careful with two things, my water and my energy expenditure. I'm on a special plan where I don't use any juice at all between 4 and 9 p.m. And I take showers that are about a minute. And yet, here we are. We're coming up with a technology that requires enormous amounts of both. And it makes no sense. It's upside down. It's as if we have all this extra energy and all this extra water. Gosh, what are we going to do with it? And that's not what's really going on. How could people be so blind? That's all. Thanks.

Thank you.

Hi, City Council. This is Anjo. I live in Union City, but I have been working in Hayward for the past four years. I'm a member of the organization Anak Main Hayward, a Filipino youth organization which connects the impacts of US policy to our homeland, the Philippines. We vehemently condemn the building of the stock data center. As Filipino youth, we already know the impacts that building data centers in Hayward will have, because these are already happening in our homeland. As we speak, the U.S.-backed Packed Silica Initiative seeks to build more data centers and semiconductor manufactories in the Philippines. And it's already displacing the land and water from indigenous peoples and impoverished farmers in the Philippines. I hope it is not lost on us that what happens in my homeland is reflective of what will happen to the working class and migrant communities here in the U.S. But if I will be frank with you, City Council, the data centers are only scratching the surface and banning them is the bare minimum. We recently conducted a tech tour around Hayward where we visited the intersection on West A Street and Hathaway where a Filipino migrant was violently detained by ICE right here in Hayward despite being a sanctuary city. And what was present are flock cameras infamously powered by AI. We also know that the Skydio drone manufacturing, which is only a few blocks behind Chabot College on Industrial Boulevard, these AR-powered drones are being made right in our backyard and then sent to our homeland in the Philippines. The people of Hayward, especially the youth and students, are calling on you, City Council, ban the data centers and correct the injustice. From Hayward to the Philippines, no to data centers and surveillance in our communities. Thank you. Thank you.

And then can I get, here in the middle aisle here, can I get, is it Uri Mendoza? And then Sarah, just first name Sarah. Tahoe Rowe. Mimi Nguyen. And then Malcolm. Is it ? Yeah, I apologize. And then Crystal Huerta, I believe. And then . OK. And then . Oh, no. Mendoza? Is there a Mendoza? No? OK. So Sarah? No? Tahoe Rowe? There you go.

My name is Tahoe Rowe. I'm a resident of Hayward. Skydio drones, flock cameras, and AI data centers, they're all something we have here in Hayward. They're used to kill people, suppress popular movements, kidnap community members, and raise the unemployment rate. That's what they are built for. They are all tools of fascism, imperialism, and world domination. Is that what Hayward is supposed to be about? Are we supposed to be the industry of fascism and empire? I don't think that's the vibes of Hayward and what most residents here want. And speaking about bans and moratoriums and talking about responsible AI development, so often we talk about slowing down AI or building it out responsibly as if AI is inevitable, and we just have to get used to it. But making peace with AI is giving up. Do not make peace with AI. Destroy and kill it. Thank you. Thank you.

Mimi? Yeah?

Hello, my name is Mimi Nguyen. I'm a Hayward resident, and I support a permanent ban on AI data structures. We can join the other districts in setting an example and doing the right thing. I saw the long list of cons on the slide regarding permanent bans on AI data centers, but everything on that list will be worth it to accomplish, including retroactively banning existing data centers. It will all be worth it because it will be an investment in humans. One of the points is loss of revenue. But if the money is coming from AI, it is unethical money, and we don't want it. Because AI is an inherently unethical machine. So we don't want it. We don't need it. Everyone sitting here before me are meant to represent Hayward. So please hear us when we say we want a permanent ban on AI data centers. Thank you.

Thank you.

Hello. My name is Malcolm. I was born and raised in Hayward. I support the ban on future data centers. It happens too often that marginalized communities bear the brunt of environmental harm caused by corporations. I have some quotes from a Democracy Now! article regarding XAI's data center in Memphis, Tennessee. Quote, we are unfortunately a cautionary tale about what will and possibly can happen if you don't have the right rules and guardrails in place, says Kishan Pearson. This is unprecedented, the amount of pollution that we're being exposed to. Nitrogen, dioxide, formaldehyde, chemicals that we know cause cancer, end quote. Kishan Pearson, Executive Director of Memphis Community Against Pollution. we could learn from memphis's mistakes and prevent the acceleration of environmental damage and set a good example for the rest of the bay that hayward won't let corporations walk over us for their shirts or short-term financial gains for an industry that could put people out of work with their ai agents and possibly poison our air and emit low frequency sound waves don't let hayward residents foot the bill people people over profit forever thank you thank you

Yeah, Crystal.

Yeah, Crystal. OK. I'm Crystal. I'm a resident of Hayward. I feel like you guys have been listening to us a lot all night, so I'm going to give you something else to listen to. That's just a brief little video of a 38 megawatt AI hyperscale data center in other parts of the country. We have other people all over the nations that's been giving us insight of what's happening. They're giving us warnings. And we, the people of Hayward, are listening. And we're saying no. I and my children live two miles away from that Eden Landing hyperscale data center. That's what we're going to hear on a daily basis, okay? We, the people of Hayward, I'm sorry if this is going to offend you. We're not asking you. We're telling you. We don't want this. Ban it.

And before you speak, give me one moment. Can we have, stand here in the middle, Claire Valderrama? Wallace?

Claire?

And then Alan, is it Busto? Bustal? Is that what it is? And then Marcos or Morkos? And then Nicholas Nguyen. Ernest Pacheco. And then Abigail Olivia.

Good evening, council members. My name is Hanami Tateno. I am a proud Hayward native currently residing in Oakland, California. Like many here before you, I urge all elected officials to reconsider its approval for the STAC infrastructure that is currently under construction in the Eden Shore area. To remind or educate everyone in this room, STAC's data center was only approved because it jumped through loopholes, proving that the company only cares about profits rather than the people living in this community. Despite the shiny public benefits package that it flashed in front of the planning commissioners, including a possible bike path extension, solar panels at the city's water resource recovery facility, and temporary jobs for unionized laborers during construction. However, it is common knowledge just how destructive and detrimental a single data center is for a community. As Councilmember Syrup said, the data center will use as much electricity as one-fifth of all the homes in Hayward. The sudden spike in energy demand and usage will exponentially have negative impacts on the current and future residents of the community. Further, the data center will require hundreds of thousands to millions of gallons of fresh water to cool down, which will take away from families who need it. Running water and drinking water will become a scarcity. The data center will also be near two schools, an elementary school and a middle school.

Anami, Anami, time is up.

I just want to say one more thing. The 28 diesel backup generators at this data center will release fine particulate matter, also known as PM2.5, which is strongly linked to respiratory disease, heart disease, and asthma, which will be directly impacting the students that go to the schools. Thank you.

Are you Claire? Yes, I'm Claire.

I'm Claire, and I'm an associate professor at the Department of Nursing at Cal State East Bay, and I've been there for 14 years now. There's no shortage of evidence that data centers wreak havoc on the environment and worsen living conditions day to day and for future generations. They provide infrastructure for the violations of international humanitarian law. Hayward resident Lyle Perjoles went to the Philippines just earlier this year, and he was massacred along with 18 others, including youth, journalists, a poet, student leaders, and teenagers. Drones, like the drones manufactured here in Hayward, were utilized to surveil them. So we cannot separate drones and cameras from governments and corporations that use them to protect profit, such as the Pax Silica Initiative, selling the Philippines to the U.S. Data centers are the blueprint of the war economy, reliant on the exploitation of workers, displacement of communities, and militarization for so-called advances. There are no take-backs. No future apology will undo such harm. Make no mistakes. Decisions you make here will impact these very neighborhoods you were elected to serve and areas around the world as stated by others. Ban data centers. Invest in Hayward youth and Hayward families.

Thank you.

Alan? Yes. Hi, I'm Alan. So regular data centers are pretty bad already. The AI data centers in particular use specialized equipment, like the most expensive part of it, is largely unusable for anything other than ML purposes, which means things like generating misinformation via fake images and video, in identifying or misidentifying people in surveillance, targeting people in warfare, again, mis-targeting, and many other things, decreasing people's critical thinking skills. These aren't just standard data centers that, oh, just power the cloud. They don't really have alternative uses, and especially with these companies having financials, their unit economics don't really make all that much sense. They very well may become defunct, at which point even if they're being used for some of the less bad versions of stuff, which are still bad, they're likely going to end up being used to support warfare and surveillance in the end state because that's the only thing that, you know, the government's the only one who could really pay for these things. Thank you.

Appreciate it.

Hi, I'm Marcos from Hayward. The harm from data centers outweighs the positive. It's obvious to the common folk that data centers are currently being pushed under the current administration, side by side with AI, AI-generated content. ISIS data collection on citizens flocks sudden brute forcing of surveillance cameras, a push towards humanoid robotics, and data centers being used in support for Israel's military intelligence. With that harm also comes the environmental damage and environmental deregulations under this administration, the risk of stunting child education, and a billionaire's goal of cutting jobs for profits and harming the working class. A perfect example would be my situation and how it's harming the working class, my colleagues in the industry I work for. I'm a senior digital artist working at a studio with high clientele, watching firsthand the job reduction due to AI. 3 fourth of our production team was laid off due to AI. I was fortunate enough to maneuver around this layoff, but my colleagues weren't. Please vote on the ban for the data center.

Thank you.

good evening city council mayor and staff my name is nicholas i am a member of hayward's bird watching and wildlife community i want to first off thank you all for providing us all the space to come here and express our opinions today and i think we have a unique opportunity here today to stand our ground against the building of or the destruction of the environment in the bay area i think environmental capital is not just aesthetics it is also a part of what create a clean air in our environment our beautiful place to live in for humans it is very easy to destroy and very expensive to rebuild later on so despite the profits that data centers claim to bring to hayward in the long term there are a lot of costs that we should consider Corporations, at the end of the day, are interested in profit over people. And I acknowledge that you all are facing a lot of pressure from different companies and also administration to fulfill their concerns. But I want to urge you to consider what the people here have to say and what we think about what's going on. Thank you.

Ernest, but are you Abigail?

Yes.

Yeah, OK. I'll do Abigail and then all good.

Is this mic on? Yeah.

I want to make sure. Do you have it in that order? OK, perfect.

OK. Good evening. My name is Abigail Oliva, and I am an environmental health and safety specialist who works closely with the CEC, BACMED, EPA, and all other regulating agencies in California. I stand before you expressing my unwavering support to ban large-scale AI data centers from Hayward. There is far too much uncertainty surrounding the dangerous rush to construct AI data centers. Policymakers, compliance officers, and regulators lack the frameworks to properly zone, permit, regulate these facilities. The systematic failure could not have been shown more clearly through the loopholes that STAC took to construct the Edens Landing Data Center. Instead of putting standards into place, first governing bodies are being pressured to write, review, and approve regulations after developer plans are already placed on the table. The strain of these facilities placed the local infrastructure um yeah the strain that these facilities place on local infrastructure is absolutely absurd ai data centers deplete crucial water resources in the state that has a continuously that has continuously suffered from drought conditions for the past 25 years they also draw power away from residents who are already paying way too much for the monopolized gas and electricity company in the bay area proponents often counter these missile lever your time was okay thank you so much

And then before you speak, can I have Natalia? Your last name is very long. And then Peter, is it Leroux Munoz? And then Kenneth, is it Sika? And then is it Kylie Spears? And then Brent Hoang? Oh, Hao. I apologize. Go ahead, Mr. Pacheco.

Good evening, Ernest Pacheco, 30-plus year Hayward member. I support the council passing the referral, but I want to talk about something and remind the council and the community we've been here before. Back in 2007, two fossil fuel companies tried to force two power plants into our community. At the time, the CEC, the council, every elected initially said, you can't stop them. The subject matter experts, the Sierra Club NRDC, all the EJ groups, everyone said, we're not going to help you fight it. It can't be stopped. This was after the manufactured energy crisis of the millennium. a word came together and we stopped the power plant what we did is we revitalized we set a state president precedent we revitalized the fight against natural gas power plants in california we held the other power plant up for years and we forced a national precedent of being the first power plant to have greenhouse gas emissions built into the permit we got millions of dollars in mitigations which mitigation is sort of a failure that beautiful library we have is one of the mitigations we also for And in 2007, started organizing our CCA, which is now Ava Energy. That came out of that fight. Working together, we can stop these data centers, and we can actually set precedent that can be followed all over the place. Thank you. I look forward to working with the council on that. Thank you.

And I hope you say your last name when you come back.

I got you, actually. I'm going to leave a little eye candy for you right here. Featuring some native plants and animals that are actually endangered along the shoreline.

And if you can speak to the mic, yeah.

No problem. Hello, city officials and community assembled. I am in deep, deep gratitude for the hard work, presence, and globally represented voices from everyone here today. Thank you. My name is Natalina Campopiano, and though I am not born or native to this land, Hayward has raised me. It has been the only hometown I've ever had, so you can imagine I'm very protective of it. For 20 years, I've given back to this land and the people here as it has given to me, and I'm sure everyone here can relate. To my correct knowledge, as we live on this land, we are the stewards of this land and waters, especially while its care is not in the hands of its faded native folk, blessed be the Lishon peoples. I believe there is not much we owe in this world besides money and vows, but we owe this land its proper care, and it is on us. If we allow a dangerous house of pollution machines to thrive in their dirty work, we will have failed this land, the waters, these precious animals and plants. We will have failed our communities, our children, and our futures. Now, I will not allow that, but the question is, will the elected stewards of this land, of this city, with the most power here, Allow this danger to befall us all. And we're all very curious to see how you handle our fate. Thank you so much for your carefully measured consideration. Thank you. Blessings.

Good evening. Peter Laro Munoz on behalf of the Bay Area Council, a civic organization based in San Francisco. Our organization has studied the issue of locally serving data centers, and we support thoughtful regulation on this matter now. San Jose is thinking through similar issues and provides an example for how Hayward can take a pause to set threshold requirements for data centers. They're exploring a framework for uniform standards, and they are taking community input to set heightened obligations for these facilities while preserving opportunities to leverage the $3 to $7 million in general fund revenue each project provides. Hayward is already there. You have updated your zoning rules earlier this year, and those changes set stricter standards for data center approval, including council approval of all projects through a major conditional use permit. And they are the first to acquire a sustainability plan and a community benefits plan for each project. Any pause should be thoughtfully structured, focusing on identifying regulatory gaps to be corrected, while continuing to review applications at their earlier stages. City staff should also conduct a fiscal analysis of data centers' contributions to the general fund to consider all impacts to public safety, parks, rec, and other community expenditures. Thank you.

Thank you. Can I have Kenneth?

Or do you have Kenneth up next?

Yeah, Kenneth, please. Yeah, Kenneth Sika. Yeah. Are you Ms. Spears? Yes. Okay, and then I have, yeah, and then you're next, yeah.

Sorry, I didn't know I was up next. So we as Hayward residents generally come to you all to not only give us a little bit of grievance when it comes to our perspective, but I would say as individuals in the community, we generally tend to give our best understanding of what you all would like to give to us. Data centers don't give us what we would consider prosperity. There's no guarantee for data centers to actually give us when it comes to Pardon me, I'm bad at speaking in public. Data centers don't give us a grant on what they can boon to the community. They give us what we can take as far as water, as far as energy, as far as the resources and land, but they don't give us a guarantee on what they can produce in regards to what they can give us to the community. They say that we can give us.

The time is up. Thank you so much. Yeah, thank you, but we got it. Thank you.

Hi, my name's Kaylee. I was raised in Hayward. I went through the entire HUSD school district. I am here to ask you to stop the super crazy data center that's being built right now. I went to Hayward High School, and I had to take a government class on how the government is run. I know that you guys are civil servants. are elected by us. You should be listening to us. Almost everyone, pretty much everyone in this room who is a constituent, who is your constituent, is saying, we don't want this. And we are begging you and asking you so intensely to stop this. It's going to harm us. And that should be the thing you don't want. Because you are supposed to represent us and stand for us, not stand for the data centers, the tech, everything. Stand for us, the people of Hayward, instead of us. the rich guys. Thank you.

Good evening, everyone. My name is Brent Haug. I am a member of Local Union 595 with the IBEW, and I'm a resident here in Hayward. I have lived here in Hayward in District 1 now for the last seven years. I'm glad we are here today to talk about the data center being built in Hayward. I've worked in this industry for the last decade, and I understand both the opportunities these projects create and the enormous amount of infrastructure that they require. I'm also a resident and rate payer, and I think the questions about energy, water, infrastructure, and impacts on our communities deserve real answers. I believe that this is a great opportunity for us to establish strong standards for data centers being built, and I recommend that the policies have language in there that protect the rate payers as well as the local communities. If these facilities are going to be built here, we need to know what the rules are. The policies should be in place to protect the residents, the rate payers, address environmental and infrastructure concerns, and require a skilled and trained workforce to build these highly complex facilities. We have an opportunity to get this right here before moving forward. Thank you.

Thank you. Appreciate it. My last three cards are Lucy Lopez, Francisco Perez, and Ieni Odigel. Lucy Lopez, Francisco Perez, and then Ieni Odigel. Yeah.

Good morning, everyone. Or I'm sorry, good evening. Sorry. I think about tomorrow. Sorry. Good evening, Mayor Salinas, council members, and city manager Ott and staff. Thank you for hosting tonight's topic. It is one that is all over the country. And on behalf of the Hayward Chamber of Commerce, we respectfully ask the council and staff to continue to research and fully vet this critical issue before moving forward with any changes to our zoning code that would prohibit all future data center development. Most importantly, we ask that the business community and subject matter experts be given more time and meaningful opportunity to participate, provide feedback, accurate information before any significant policy direction is determined. Businesses are essential to Hayward. They generate revenue that supports public safety and essential city services. They create jobs, drive investment, and innovation. There's a ton of innovation being done here in Hayward right in our new innovation corridor, industrial corridor. I call it the innovation corridor. and contribute to the economic growth of our community. Their voices and expertise should be part of this conversation. Yes, conduct a comprehensive and economic environmental analysis, but I ask that you work with us to hear from the businesses and their employees who also live here in Hayward. environmental experts, labor, and utilities. We fully recognize the concerns surrounding energy, water, infrastructure, environmental impacts, and land use, and those concerns are valid. However, there's also a ton of inaccurate information being shared. Those concerns deserve full, careful evaluation, but so do the potential economic benefits and consequences of closing the door entirely to future investment.

Ms. Lopez?

Okay, let us continue gathering the facts and determine what policy is right for Hayward. Thank you.

Francisco.

My name is Francisco Perez. I've grown up in Hayward, been raised here my entire life. We have seen what these data centers have done across the country, and we are here to reject the idea that data centers should be built here. These data centers recklessly harvest our water resources and our data and are used to support mass surveillance through the flock cameras we have all seen go up around our city. Hayward is not for sale to the highest tech bidders. We will not be gaslit and told that this is in our best economic interests. Hayward is here to reject a future with data centers in our neighborhoods, and we are here to reject a dystopian, AI-centric future that this council is attempting to build here in this city. Thank you. Thank you.

Buenas noches, council. Yennifer, born here in St. Rose. And all community family members are still here. I grew up seeing my neighborhood gardens going dry because the state policy was put out limiting residents on water use. And we still hear that every so often. Now that I pay my own rent for my own apartment, I'm told to minimize my electricity and don't turn on my washer and dryer between 4 and 9, because God forbid. It also is a fact that our water and electricity bills are going up constantly, 10% last year, 10% this year. We Hayward residents are limited for the sake of California and our environment. How is it possible that we added another data center knowing that they are doing exactly the opposite of what residents are being limited? Please ban all data centers. And for those existing, do not allow them to cause more harm to Hayward. Please pass the referral.

Thank you. Okay, I am going to go to, I have a few callers online, so I'd like to first call upon Maria Del Carmen.

Yes, hi, can you hear me?

Yes.

Hi, this is Maria del Carmen Espinoza, and I am a parent and student advocate within Hayward Unified School District. And I just want to let you guys know, I mean, you up there, all of you up there in the board, I just, it's, on the council, it's infuriating that we have all of these people pleading with you to ban these AI centers, and yet you're still giving it a thought of, you know, oh, let's just postpone it. No, ban it. My biggest fear is some of these students, the young students, the middle schoolers, the high schoolers, they don't even want to live anymore because they don't see a future. Because of AI centers, because of AI, everything is taking over. So how do you think these young students feel knowing that they have no future? That's what they think. They have no future. So why even be alive in 10 years? And that is the fear. So please, just ban these centers. Help HUSD have some faith in you guys. Thank you.

Thank you. Next speaker is Zoom user. Zoom user.

Hi. I'm Suzanne Luther, lifelong resident of Hayward. First thing I want to say is that Hayward prides themselves on being a green city. So I'm just going to leave that there. But tonight you stated at the beginning of this issue tonight that you were only listening. So first I ask that you not only listen, but that you actually hear. your constituents' concerns, requests, demands, fears, comments, input, efforts about this important issue. It's true that California has major regulations in basically every industry. California regulates everything. However, there is no enforcement. There is no money to pay for enforcement, so all the regulations mean nothing. I'm speaking tonight to ask you, mayor and council, to request that you vote on this issue at the next council meeting and do not wait until after the election. And I recommend that all of you in the audience also request that this mayor and council vote on this at the next council meeting and ask that they not wait until after the upcoming election. And all of you in the audience, if council doesn't decide on this before the election, I suggest that you should consider whether you want the council members that are up for re-election to continue making these decisions for you.

You are voting. The next speaker is Selena Martin-Reyes. Selena Martin-Reyes.

Hi. Can you hear me?

Yes.

OK. Good afternoon. My name is Selena Reyes. I'm a Hayward resident, and I'm here to urge the city of Hayward to vote in support of a data center ban in Hayward. As our oceans hit the highest temperatures on record, while Nino grows on course to be the strongest in centuries, our company profits and cheap non-human labor worth the accelerated extinction of humanity. The construction and use of AI data centers will negatively impact environmental resources to ecosystems, residents of this city, and our surrounding neighbors. We know the marshland along the 92 itself is helping hold up rising sea levels. These data centers not only have lacks to know regulations and oversight, but also consume and add demand to our water and electric infrastructure that is needed for live beings to use, not for AI tech that humanity has lived and thrived without. With the new abnormalcy of frequent environmental disasters that cause extremely high tides, health hazards, environmental impacts nationwide and around the globe, we owe it to living organisms and humanity to limit unnecessary overconsumption that only feeds the pockets of oligarchs and corporate politicians.

Thank you. Our next caller is Galaxy S25.

Hello, my name is Eduardo. I am a proud parent of three students here in Hayward and a resident for the last 18 years. And I also am in favor of banning these data centers. Shame on our city council who has decided to sell the health of our future and our children's I really do urge that you vote on this ban because you are all elected officials. And I am a very influential individual in the Southgate community. And so I urge you to do what's right for our children and for our residents. I yield my time.

Thank you. Um, let's see. And, uh, I may not know how to pronounce this, but it's a very short name. It's A-N-H. Is it Ah? Ahn? Hello?

Can you guys hear me? Yes.

Hi. My name's Ahn. I'm a Haywood resident. Um, I urge an urgency, um, and support the council members to, uh, write for a moratorium while a ban or stronger rules are prepared. Please publish both the 5 to 9 million revenue studies and show Hayward's actual share. Servers keep only about 12% of taxable value after five years. Hayward's utility users' tax expires in 2039, and Santa Clara's 58 data centers send that city only 200K to 400K a year in property tax. Per the CEC's review, STAC has about 20 diesel generators and about 149,000 gallons of diesel on site. Required public reporting of energy, water, and generators run hours, a combined health risk assessment with Hayward Exchange at 92, a noise baseline study, and decommissioning bond. Other cities learn these lessons after Google.

Your time is up. Thank you. Marlena Rose Silva. Marlena Rose Silva.

Good evening, Mayor and City Council. I'm Marlena Rosalva. I am on the Board of Directors of Ohlone Audubon Society, a local chapter here in Alameda County that includes the City of Hayward, where we emphasize conservation of birds and their habitat, and we oppose any kind of construction of data centers and so therefore we support the ban on data centers and also ask to stop construction of any current data centers and therefore we are speaking for our non-human relatives and all of the ecosystem without which no humans would ever be able to survive so remember it's also about our non-human relatives the plants and the animals all our floral fauna including the waters and the land and the air as well without whom none of us could ever be alive thank you thank you

Our next speaker is Naely Torres Veloso.

Hello, can you guys hear me?

Yes.

Perfect. So I am calling all the way from Cal Poly Humboldt. I was born and raised in Hayward, California. And I, for one, when I first heard the news of a data center being built on Hayward, I was so disappointed. I was president of RAGE, which stands for Revolutionaries Advocating for Greener Ecosystems at Chabot College. Seeing the pride that the mayor had over there over a styrofoam ban was beautiful, like something so nice to see. And I want our community to have pride over just being more environmentally friendly in the area. Just seeing so many people already being angry over a data center being built gave me so much pride and hope. I just hope you guys see what these people are saying and take note of it and hope you guys vote for the ban against data centers. Thank you so much.

Thank you very much. Andre Van Horn. Andre Van Horn? Going once. Going twice. Mr. Van Horn?

Can I be heard?

Yes, I can hear you.

Oh, sorry, thank you. I'd like to fully support this data center. We have an industrial area in this city for a reason, and we should make use of it. I think the process for approving the data center was great. The city council set out clear, obvious rules that developers could follow and took away the veto points that we've used to sabotage housing developments. industrial work, whatever the case may be. Sabotaging these projects and undermining a real clear process is why we have empty lots all through the downtown. And I would like to applaud this council for not falling for this, supporting the real budget for this city and supporting development. We have an industrial area and we should use it. Thank you.

Thank you. okay um so i do not have any more cards and there are no more callers uh online so what i like to do is i like to close a public comment um we have one more hand that snuck in and i will take it i will take it um

Hi, everyone. My name is Mildred Vasquez. I was born and raised in Hayward, California. Currently, I'm on Zoom. I'm a Cal Poly student, and I'm currently actually in Hayward. I wanted to be in support of the ban, a complete ban and a pause on the current data center. As mentioned earlier, electricity bills could go up. Noise pollution will continue. And I just really don't see what the point of supporting the growth of AI will be. Like, there is no reason for it. And I just think that if our city council values the lives of the people who voted for them or the people who supported them, I think that we... we'll get what the people are asking for. You can see, I don't have to tell you that there's a large majority of people who do not support this and who showed up, who took the time to come here because they are so passionate about this not going through. That's it.

Thank you. Appreciate it. Okay. So I'm going to close public comment on this item. And what I'm going to do is I am going to take a seven minute recess so that we can stretch our legs and maybe take a bio break. So Madam City Clerk, if you put seven minutes on the clock. Thank you.

Thank you.

If I can call the council back to the dais. If I can call the council back to the dais, please. Councilmember Bonilla. Councilmember Sermeno. Councilmember Sermeno. Councilmember Bonilla.

Okay.

Okay, can I get everyone to sit down, please? Can I get everyone to sit down, please? Thank you. Thank you. OK. I want to make sure we're all aligned. All righty. So thank you very much for that. And before... Let me make sure we're... All right. OK, so let me kick this off. And my remarks are going to be very brief. And then I'll open it up for my colleagues up here to sort of come in and build up the framework that I'm going to sort of propose that we lay out and begin to direct staff in a direction so that we can move forward. I heard just some observations. And first of all, I wanted to say thank you for coming out. And thank you for putting up with me, for being the timekeeper. That's not an easy job, by the way, nonetheless. I understand that there's clearly a voice in here that is looking for an all-out ban for data centers. And I hear it. We hear it. And I understand that. There's three other big buckets or big themes that I am hearing that I heard this evening. There is clear expectation of more transparency and greater expectations around transparency. Transparency things like reporting reporting either, you know monthly or annually the operation of the You know the data center but also I also heard the widening of letting people know, right? More people need to know about this and there's gotta be greater degree of reaching out and making sure people know about these kinds of projects. The other theme I heard this evening was accountability for data centers. Things like clear rules for data centers. I heard responsible policy objectives and responsible policy goals. Clear rules. I heard labor standards, a clear articulation for labor standards. I also heard a comment that articulated threshold standards when coming to the city. What is that? I also heard there was a statement, and I forget who said this, but there was a commenter that said, represent us, right? And that's part of the accountability piece, right? Making sure that... your expectations as neighborhoods, your expectations as a city are included and represented. The other bucket, a third bucket that I heard this evening was community benefits. And, you know, looking at how data centers benefit the community. How, you know, what are clear expectations that if built, how a data center would benefit the city. And clearly laying that out, clearly articulating that and what does that look like. And how does that connect a building like this or an industry like this or a company like this? How does it benefit the city or neighborhoods? And so there's those three general themes, transparency, accountability, and community benefits. And so what I would like to do, and given the urgency, and clearly there's folks here, and there's a lot of folks that have been emailing me, and there's a lot of folks that have spoken with me and talked to me about this. And clearly, there's an urgency regarding this. And I think that's why Council Member Andrews and Mayor Pro Tem Syrup and I, we put this referral together and we brought it to the council because we do sense the urgency and we see it. So what I'd like to do is, given the urgency, i'd like to see direct staff if we can then put together a moratorium to stop process right now so that staff has a opportunity for us for you and for us to look at the existing policy that we have and then look at how we can increase the standards, tighten up the standards, edit those standards around transparency. And I'll just give you one example with transparency. The data center right now is in the furthest part of the industrial zone and the nearest neighborhood. the Glen Eden neighborhood, is about a mile and a half, two miles from the building. And the proximity, although it is an industrial zone, the proximity is about 500 feet, I believe. So maybe when I think about the transparency piece is that we need to widen the proximity of notification of this, particularly since only the industrial zone is zoned for it. So I think with this, I think we need to look at that. So that's just one example, and I have plenty more for accountability and community benefits, but I just wanted to call that out. So what I'd like to see is for us to stop process right now come back with a with the moratorium so that we can then proceed to evaluate the policy that we have and see how we can edit it moving forward because I think you know the points we heard tonight and I think the feedback we got tonight clearly there is there's a need for that So I'll stop there. There's more I want to talk about, but I'll stop there and see if my colleagues have more to say or build on that. And I don't have... I don't know if you guys are hitting the... Okay, Council Member Zermeno. Okay, so go ahead.

Council Member Zermeno. Mayor, thank you very much and thank you all for being here. It's tremendous. I did have a couple of questions for our staff. And thank you for the presentation also. In the United States, presently, we have 7,900 data centers throughout the country. So of the emails that I received, many of them state the data centers use up all electricity all of the water. They kill all the flora and the fauna around the data centers. They pollute the air. So I want to know, have we looked into at all if any of the communities around the 7,900 data centers have actually caused that? In other words, if I am paying my PG&E bill and the data center all of a sudden needs extra energy, will they receive the energy and cut me off? This is what the people are worried about. The people are worried that they are going to use so much water that I will not have any water. Has that happened in the 7,900 communities that have a data center?

Ladies and gentlemen, I'm going to pause here for a second. We've sat for about two and a half hours. We listened to you. We allowed you to do your job. You did it. Let us have our time, and let us work through this. And the cheers and jeers, respectfully, if you can just let us do our job, and we can get through this a lot faster, OK? Thank you.

Thank you. Yeah. Staff has done a lot of due diligence. And we've looked at a lot of studies. There's a lot of articles. We've looked, you know, primarily we're focused on California and the Hayward and looking at kind of the locals impacts. And so those are things we are looking at and have looked at. But we have not looked at every single community that's had a data center. And I think depending on the direction tonight, staff can review more studies and look at other case studies. But we haven't looked at every single community across the country.

Thank you. Thank you. So I will be brief. Again, thank you all very much. Two words I heard today, I do agree with our mayor, by the way, but two words I heard today was, slow down and study and in my mind that is something that i believe we should do and i believe that's what a moratorium will do if we have a moratorium that will allow the our city staff to look into not only the three items that our mayor mentioned but also um Does it kill all of the animals around? And does it kill all of the flowers? And maybe they can look into the 7,900 other data centers. I think it's important for everybody to see the pros and the cons and allow us then to receive the results of these studies so then we can move forward and intelligently make a decision as to how far in advance do we go, how many do we want, and, of course, the areas where they possibly could be placed. So moratorium is what I would vote for today. Not vote for, but I agree with a moratorium of sorts. So thank you, Mayor, and thank you, city staff.

Thank you. Councilmember Roach.

Thank you. Yeah, thank you, everyone, for being here tonight. We're here because we were listening, because I think the mayor and Councilmember Ranches and Mayor Pro Tem Syrup heard that call and realized this was such an important moment that we all had to get together and have some discussion about this. So I'm glad we're doing this, because like you, I'm very concerned about what's happening around the country with these large city-sized, hyper-scale data centers. They're causing havoc in some of these small communities, and there's some real consequences. and impact in the communities that I am very concerned about. I'm reading all the same things you are. I'm trying to consult environmental experts, technology experts, other governments, and how they're doing this, and trying to find a way forward. I'm also concerned about the emergence of AI. I've got young kids in this city as well. And these are all things I think we're all concerned about. And like all of you, this all became very important in the last eight months or so. And so what came before this, I think we were going off regular land use policy in our industrial sector. And I commend the Planning Commission for following the rules that were there at the time. But this is now called for a bigger spotlight. And I think we all have to rise to that occasion and understand, what does this mean for the future of Hayward? I want to thank the staff for creating a report that talks about the regulations, where we were before and where we are now. And I want to make clear that back in May of this year, because we realized that these data centers were potentially something different we needed to look at, we made new regulations. Hayward is now the strictest city in the Bay Area to bring a data center to the way it currently stands. In order to bring a data center to Hayward, you now have to come before the city council for a major conditional use permit. You have to provide a sustainability plan and a community benefits plan. And that is tougher than any city, except maybe San Jose, who is now putting some of these regulations into place. So we've heard that call. But I think that it is OK to move forward now and to talk about, OK, what does that mean, a sustainability plan or a community benefits package? I mean, how do we? answer some of the very serious concerns about the environment that we've heard here today. I just want to find some of my notes that I went back to. I also think we do need to wait and see if the state catches up to provide us some backstops on ratepayer protections, backstops on water use and transparency in water use, so that data centers or large industrial users are very transparent with their water use. So we can look at real numbers. There's a lot of numbers thrown out today about how much data centers really use in water. I don't know. I'm not an expert at that. I'd like to find that out to know for sure, because there's big numbers all over the country. Some of these data centers use large amounts of water. There's emerging technology that will make that not necessary. Let's find that out before we make absolute decisions. I also think rate payers absolutely should not be footing the bill for infrastructure that's built to bring energy to data centers. I absolutely want to look at that. I absolutely want to look at the noise. We should be monitoring the noise levels from both the diesel generators, as was mentioned, and the HVAC equipment that is on top of these buildings. Let's see. And the other thing I think is true that a lot of people said, I didn't know this was happening. Well, I think most of us don't know if there's a large townhome project going in, or if there's a large bottling plant going in the industrial center? We didn't know. I mean, I don't always know. But I think this has now risen to a level that I think what the community is asking, which I think is a good idea, is if a data center were to come in the future, that that would be potentially a citywide notification. I think that's proper. I'd also like to see us, you know, should we take this pause, maybe provide town halls and get some experts out to answer these very real questions. I think, you know, like noise was played tonight. Like, I don't know. I mean, I've heard some of these data centers in the rest of the country are operating 24-7 on diesel generators because they cannot get the infrastructure to bring in the power. This is not the case. We have an industrial area for this purpose. We have the infrastructure there. So a data center here will not be, including the stack center, will not be running 24-7 on diesel generators. But what the noise level is, I don't know yet. Let's find out. That is why tonight I hear you. My recommendation to staff is to bring back findings for an immediate moratorium. to stop any further applications for data centers until we know for certain that we cannot mitigate all of these concerns around water use, noise impacts, and emissions from diesel generators. I'd like to know that for sure and answer some of the questions retroactively that I think we did do a good job of answering with the Stack Center. As was said, California has some of the tightest environmental regulations in the country that you don't see in some of the other states, and that's why you see some of this terrible impacts that we've seen on the news. So what the Stack Center had to go through is still a million times better than what we see in the rest of the country, even though I know there are still concerns. And so that's my recommendation on the moratorium. Sorry, I'm nervous too. On the second item of the referral, directing the City Council Sustainability Committee, which I serve on, to develop a report on the economic environment impacts of existing data centers. I support that part of the referral as well. Thank you to my colleagues. I'm supportive of the recommendation the way it is written, and I would like that report to include impacts on water use. So looking at the amount of water, testing the water, because there's accusation about water sort of poisoning the system. And let's find out if that's true. I'm not sure that's a fact, and so let's find out if that's true. and also looking for water that's released back into the environment if these data centers do that. Looking at the emissions from backup generators, monitoring the average energy use of the stack data center and other data centers, and monitoring noise levels from the testing, so when they are going to be testing the backup generators, and the noise from HVAC equipment that's used to cool the center. And finally, looking at any increase in rate payer rates that might creep into our local electricity rates. I think there's a huge mixed review on that. That's not an absolute. Let's find out if that's happening around the country and if that's going to be happening here. And those are my recommendations. Thank you.

Thank you. And before I call upon Councilmember Andrews, I just wanted to edit slightly a term we're using. the building is not the stack center. It's called the stack. And so I just wanted to clarify that because I know those are two different buildings, two different projects. Thank you.

Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, staff, for the report. And thank you to all the residents who came out to speak on this issue. I wanted to thank my colleagues, Mayor Pro Tem Syrup and Mayor Salinas, for bringing this referral with me. And all three of us have our different reasons for bringing it. For me, it was to have the discussion in person. In person. And for residents to have a forum and to have a discussion. And for staff to provide information to the community directly about what happened and what are our options on how we move forward. I am interested in reviewing oversight ordinance and review of aspects of a moratorium, or find out what specifically Hayward residents do not want to see in Hayward. Currently, these applications have to come to council. We have already put in place what others are trying to figure out right now. But the issue is that we didn't name it, and what are the actions we were doing, and how were we including community input? I wanna also acknowledge that the major critique at the time we received prior to us strengthening our requirements was that we did not demand more in community benefits. That was what we heard at the time. That is what the Planning Commission heard at the time. Staff in the Planning Commission responded by increasing the amount of community benefits. We have the most community benefits out of our project for a data center in the Bay Area right now. After that decision, the council acted. And I want to make clear, the city of Hayward currently has the most stringent requirements as it relates to data centers. But we responded based on feedback from the community that previous items were not heard by the full city council. First, I just want to take a moment to acknowledge our planning commissioners. They're not just people we appointed. They have various backgrounds, including engineering, construction, public service, legal, and other backgrounds. But also these folks who have dedicated their lives to public service. They are organizing cleanups around your community. They are picking up your trash. They are ensuring that we have libraries full of books and resources. They have dedicated their lives to this community. Let's just give them some respect. They had a difficult decision to make, and it was based off of the law at the time. But back to the council and our actions. This council and previous councils have enacted moratoriums that benefited the city, but it still gives future councils a direction on how to make updates when necessary due to changing technology or what the community is willing to accept in the future. I want to be clear on another reason why I wanted this forum. I wanted to confirm that staff properly noticed, but I agree, that we can do more. But what I will say is I agree that our applicants can do more as well to educate the community about their projects, and they should not rely on staff to do this work. For the development community, Hayward has proven itself to be business friendly by inviting your input into our business friendly regulations. And in fact, we hosted the Startup World Cup in our backyard at our university. The mayor was there. I was there. We have open arms to the business community. Let's look at this as an opportunity, an opportunity for Hayward not to be a roadblock, but the standard on how to work with the community on how to move forward. A resident I deeply respect said to me plainly, just tell me how my bill won't go up. Let's look at rate payer protections, rigorous oversight and reporting, show how improvements to our infrastructure will be paid, through your project. Include labor standards, workforce agreements, and other ideas that are possible. We understand what businesses need is predictability, but we should also take this time to ensure our community knows what to expect. Thank you.

Thank you. Council Member Bonillo. Thank you, Mayor. First, I just also want to say thank you all for coming out tonight and for sharing your concerns. I heard you, and I think you heard from my colleagues that we all heard you. And we share your concerns about data centers in our communities. I know that I share many of the concerns that were brought up tonight. This is our community. I was born here, too. I'm raising my family here. My parents are here. And we must do everything in our power to protect our community and to protect our residents. And I think that's the action that you're going to see us take tonight, is to really make sure that the concerns that we heard tonight are fully studied and addressed, and to ensure that our community is protected going forward. I think we owe it to the community to make sure that in some sort of consolidated way, I get that we've made updates and changes to ordinances and to regulations, but I still think we can do more to address the feedback that we heard tonight. I think we need to take a deeper look at just an overall comprehensive responsible policy. And until we have something like that in place, I stand with my colleagues and with all of you in saying we need to put a stop to data centers. We need to put a pause to them. We need to put a memorandum in place. And we need to really make sure that we understand the issues around the environment that we talked about today, water, air, and all of those other issues, the electric demands, the potential impacts on rate payers, noise, fuel. We talked about community health issues that need to be addressed. We also talked about how we need to do more from a community engagement perspective and make sure that we're being more meaningful in how we're engaging the community and how we might be more broad in our engagement to make sure that the community's voice is centered in all of the decisions we make around building out this community. And I also agree that we need to have stronger regulatory monitoring and oversight in place. This will help us ensure that we're not negatively impacting our community and that the concerns that we're hearing tonight have been appropriately mitigated. I also agree with a comment from one of the public commenters that said, let's watch these data centers like a mother hawk. I think it's our responsibility to do that. If they've come into our community and they've given us these guarantees of how they're not going to impact our community, then I think it's our responsibility to hold them publicly accountable for that. We should be demanding scorecards, demanding more public accountability, and making sure that we're holding these data centers to do and to perform in the ways that they've committed to doing. For these reasons, like I said, I agree with the pause on all future data centers until we have more of a community-driven data center policy. But I really want to underscore, I want whatever we do in this space to be community-driven. I want the voice of our community to be centered in whatever policy we make. That means we need to go out and we need to do town halls. We need to validate that the issues that we're looking into are the issues that the community has. We need to make sure that we have the right regulations in place and the right standards in place to address the community's concerns. And I think all of that needs to be consolidated into a policy that comes back in front of this council with community input, all of you back in front of us to say this policy works or it doesn't work. And then that can be the guide that we use to determine future data center development or not in this community. So I want to make sure that we set this policy with the broadest community input possible and that it's truly shaped by the residents of Hayward. And until then, I would like and hope on all new data centers in Hayward. Thank you.

Thank you. Mayor Pro Temsar.

Thank you, Mayor. Just a few clarifying questions for staff. Can you clarify the vote threshold required to pass a moratorium? It said four fifths in the slide, translated to a council of seven. What does that vote require? For this council, four-fifths is at least six council members. So a moratorium would require six out of seven of us to vote in support of it when it gets brought back, if it gets brought back, seeing that that seems like the majority direction. Yes, sir. OK, thank you. Did any planning commissioners or council members sign any NDAs related to this data center or prior data centers? Can someone on planning maybe clarify that? Because I think that's something that's gone around too, and I just want to put people's minds.

Not that I'm aware of. It's not the practice to sign NDAs.

Great. And then maybe for the city manager or for planning or development services, have other developers indicated interest in developing data centers in Hayward? And are they of comparable megawattage to the Stack data center?

Yes, we've received interest. And they're bigger than the Stack.

OK. First, I just want to start off by saying thank you to everyone who wrote in, who called in, is watching online, and came out in person tonight to express their thoughts and their feelings on data centers in Hayward. There's been a lot of conversation on this issue nationwide, and I think Hayward was bound to have this conversation. This is happening, just to be clear, because of all of your organizing and your advocacy. So I appreciate you calling this question and making this happen. What happens tonight is also not the end of the conversation. This is the beginning of the conversation. I want to thank the Mayor and Councilmember Andrews for co-authoring this referral with me, and I think what's abundantly clear from all the comments that we've received tonight is that Hayward residents do not want data centers. In addition to the public comment that we received, a petition was submitted with over 2,000 signatures, and we've also received dozens of emails on top of that. People have valid concerns and a healthy skepticism of the billion and trillion dollar corporations that want to use our resources for their profit. This issue has evolved rapidly over the last year. The definition of a data center has rapidly evolved and the impacts of those data centers, some very severe, have varied from place to place. All of these variables have created a climate of anger, of frustration, of mistrust, and of misinformation around what's happened in Hayward. And I think that before we even consider the idea of a data center, we have to work as a community and as a council to address that. And so I also believe that that starts with hitting the brakes. Just this week, we had tech CEOs telling the country that AI could kill us by 2030. So even they're advising we slow down. And whether that's true or just a story to distract their investors from the fact that their companies aren't that profitable, the uncertainty around the cost to ratepayers energy bills, the regional and long term environmental and health impacts, the state legislation that's coming down the pipeline and the possibility that we're also in a massive economic bubble that might burst any moment, that uncertainty is very real. And I think as city leaders, we should be cautious. Even Texas, of all places, has implemented a statewide moratorium due to how many centers they've built because they committed more electricity than the state can actually generate. So as one of the authors of this referral, it sounds like we're not taking a formal vote but rather giving direction to staff. I am in support of it. Given the time needed to develop a ban and given that there's already interest in a data center coming to Hayward, I'm supportive of an urgency moratorium because that's something that we can put in place sooner rather than later. However, I still think the idea of a ban should remain on the table. And I think when we discussed the moratorium, and I agree with one of the callers that said bring it back Next week is not enough time for our staff. But I think if people want accountability, bringing it back before the election is a very reasonable request. So I'm in support of that too. But when we discuss the moratorium ahead of the election, I think we should really get into the weeds about what it is exactly we want staff to look at while we're in that moratorium period. Should that moratorium pass, and again, it requires six out of seven votes, and I hope that you will all come back to make sure that that moratorium passes, we should have an understanding that we have marching orders from our community. I agree with many of the ideas and demands that were presented tonight. We must improve our monitoring, reporting, and enforcement processes. Maybe that's something that could also be developed concurrently in our sustainability committee. Maybe the sustainability committee might consider meeting more frequently to help expedite that process. I know one of the demands in the petition was a new community advisory panel. I like the principle of deeper community involvement, but we also have a very robust community services commission looking for new responsibility. And maybe there's a way to work in the community services commission as part of how we assess community benefits packages. And again, these are things that we can consider when we have the moratorium discussion as to what we want to develop. But I just want to kind of help get the ideas out there so people can start to understand the way I'm thinking about it. I also think developing a simple policy preventing any council member or appointed official from signing NDAs related to development seems reasonable. I know San Jose is considering this. I think the Spotlight just published a piece on this maybe three or four days ago. If we're elected or appointed to represent the public interest, the public deserves to know that we're not signing away our ability to share what we're learning. These new policies and practices feel necessary, if not a little overdue. And I want to clarify that this is not just for data centers. I think this is common sense for public servants and for the benefit of the community, for any industry that residents might have concerns about in the future. So just to summarize what I've said so far, the moratorium comes first, and then there's work that we should be prepared to do beyond that while that moratorium is active. And I want to be clear that I am committed to extending any moratorium as long as possible, should it pass later this year, until all of these new protections and practices that we're discussing here are in place and we're able to review meaningful data from our sustainability committee, including the cumulative impact of data centers regionally on PG&E's grid and how it's impacting rate payers. Based on our findings, a full ban might make complete sense, which is why it remains on the table for me. And in the meantime, I think a moratorium allows us to block new data centers from opening sooner while we work to get a handle on the ones that have already been approved, while minimizing the fiscal and legal liability to the city. I think that's the extent of my comments, but I want to say thank you again to everyone who has spoken up on this issue. Your advocacy is why we're having this conversation today, and this conversation is far from over. Thank you.

Thank you. Council Member Goldstein.

Thank you. He really does deserve the applause. He puts a lot of thought and effort into it, and he does a really great job articulating it. I'm going to be a little quieter and maybe not talk on everything that you brought forward. But let me just start off by telling you how much I appreciate you showing up. Your emails, your phone calls. I really appreciate it. And the reason that I appreciate it is we work hard. All of us live here in the city. We have to. That's one of the rules. And I live here. I raised my family here. We drink the water here. We breathe the air. But that doesn't mean we know everything. And so when you folks are coming forward and raising issues, sometimes we know, sometimes we don't. And there's a lot of information that's flown around the internet right now that sounds really scary. And I could not tell you at the beginning of that conversation a couple of months ago, six months ago or whenever it really started, I could not tell you with certainty that any of it was real or not real. I didn't know. So what I'm getting at here is that we do need to slow down, take the time to make sure that the information that we have is accurate, and more importantly, that we're articulating Accurately to you giving you an opportunity to hear what's going on Why we're making these decisions that we make and I'm not just talking about data centers and whatever the next thing is is You know gonna happen here in Hayward because we're right in the middle of everything. We're the heart of the bay, right? So we owe it to you and we want to do that when I signed up for this to be a City Council member in fact Before that, when I was on planning commission, openness and transparency was something I'm absolutely committed to. And so I promise you, we are going to do that. And so I'm in favor of a moratorium because I believe it'll give us all time to investigate further the things that we think we know, take the edges, right? There might be things that we really don't. And give us some time to look at that, but then also look at the things that we absolutely don't know. A couple of speakers brought up about how AI data centers are being used for surveillance and the human impact. I didn't think about that. I'm just being honest with you. I didn't think about that. But we ought to. We ought to be thinking about the human impact of not just AI, but data centers generally. I work in IT, my day job, and the benefit that I see is that the younger engineers are actually becoming more expert faster. And so there's some good that I see it. I'm not defending anybody here. I'm just saying I see some good. But at the same time, I don't know where the blind spots are. And so I'm in favor of a moratorium to give us the time to investigate those blind spots. We're also working very closely with our state legislature. They are currently in the process. I think there's seven or eight bills that are about to be signed, and they range from more monitoring and enforcement, more transparency. The ratepayer protections really strikes a nerve, doesn't it? And we want that. And so we are working with our partners in the state legislature to make sure you get that. Here, in our conversations, we've been very much committed to having more community engagement and striving for monitoring and reporting, public dashboard, for example, so that you can see what we see. Of course, at any time, if you're seeing stuff that we're not seeing, make us aware. If we don't know, we don't know. That's the value of having you participate in this process with us. That's why we appreciate it. I do have a couple of questions. metrics that were brought forward that were absolutely stunning to me the first time I heard them. And so I did a little investigating, and I already know the answer to the question. But for your benefit, I'm going to ask the experts, and they're going to tell you. And so one of the metrics was, if I heard it correctly, was 9.72 acre feet of water consumed daily. Had you heard that one? Anyone on staff?

No, I can give you the information on the stack, if you would like.

Yeah, so the stack data center was accused of, or allegedly, using over a million gallons a day of water. Can you just comment on the total water use?

Yeah, so based on the study that we have that was done in compliance with the state environmental laws, the anticipated water use is 173,000 gallons for a 24-hour period, which translates to about 3 million gallons per year Compared to a standard home, which is 300 to 400 gallons daily So the data centers annual water use is equivalent to about 28 households water use in a year. I

Okay. And that water use that you're describing, is it only dedicated to the data center operation or does that include, you know, toilets, landscaping? Do you know what the breakdown is?

I assume it's everything.

Total water use. Okay. So I saw a metric somewhere that it was like half and half. So about half of that was for landscaping and Yeah, I don't have that breakdown, but the total use is about 3 million gallons per year. Okay, all right. So, sorry I caught you off guard. I thought we had that one, so I beg your pardon for that. The one thing that comes up in conversation a couple of times was about low frequency noise, and I don't recall seeing that in the MND or anywhere else. Do you know if that has been studied?

That isn't studied under CEQA, under noise impacts. It's not analyzed. There's nothing in the checklist about that particular frequency.

Okay. And then, uh, one of the, uh, so that's something that we could look into for sure. And then one more question and that is around the, uh, around the energy use. Uh, there's been some concern that the huge amount of energy that they're going to use is just going to completely pollute our skies and so forth. Can you, can you talk about the energy requirements?

Yeah, they are required to use 100% renewable energy.

OK. And do you know approximately the percentages of renewable energy production?

Yes, it's about 77% solar and about 23% wind.

OK, all right. Very good. So solar and wind. And to our knowledge, those things don't actually produce noxious fumes or exhaust or?

No.

Okay, I'm asking the obvious question because a couple people heard me say that, and they just didn't want to believe it. But it's required. It's in the documentation. You can read it for yourself online. So we are going to do more, and, again, I am in favor of taking the steps we need to do that. Thank you.

Thank you. Council Member Andrews? Oh, I just saw your name up there. I wasn't sure. OK. So I think we have direction, moratorium, or did you want to summarize? Direction. come back with a moratorium. I think what Mayor Pro Tem Syrup brought to us was keep a ban on the table. But first a moratorium, and then as we talk about that, then we can certainly not exclude that and not have that. While we do that, we will focus on three areas, either tweaking what we have, enhancing, editing, or adding in the areas of more transparency, higher levels of accountability, and greater community benefits. And so that's what I heard. I don't know if you heard more.

Yeah, that's correct. So we'll come back in late October with a proposed emergency moratorium, urgency moratorium. And then as Mayor Pro Tem Syrup said, it would be great if at that meeting, have council provide some direction as to what you want us to study and do during that. In addition to, obviously, some of the, we've already heard you and heard the community about monitoring and some of the stuff for the existing data centers. We'll try to flesh that out a little more at the meeting when we come back. I do think we, I talked to the city attorney, I think we would like a vote. Would be great.

Tonight tonight on on the running direction by motion.

So it's obviously it's not a just for clarity You're not you're not enacting a moratorium tonight You're not this doesn't have the weight of an ordinance, but it does provide the community and the staff the Clear direction to move forward with a temporary moratorium. Okay, so

I'll move the item. Okay, so moved by Mayor Pro Tem Syrup. I'll second the item. So moved by Mayor Pro Tem Syrup to come back with the moratorium with the items that we just outlined, and then second by Mayor Salinas. And if there are no objections, it will unanimously pass. Congratulations. Thank you. Okay.

I think there needs to be clarity.

You say moratorium. Ma'am, ma'am, I think we're going to be, staff has heard us, staff is going to respond, and we will be working with staff moving forward. Okay? Okay. Okay, we got it.

It's not popping up for me, but I'm a yes vote.

OK. And the motion passes with seven yeses. Okay, moving on to, this was our last item. Moving on to adjournment. Our next meeting will be October 6th, 2026 at 7 p.m. Thank you for coming out. Meeting adjourned.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

All right.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. for about 40 years. Right. That's what I heard from him, yeah. I was born and raised in the high school in the 80s. No, no, no. I worked in Cambridge. No, no, no. I started living there. All right, thanks, John. We'll see each other more. Thanks. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. I'll talk to you tomorrow I'll talk to you tomorrow

My wife, we only heard about this like three weeks ago. She's done so much research. And she's got the whole city. So I say, my wife, I'm going to shut up.

Thank you. Thank you. But this is why I think Thank you.