City Council - meeting_joint_regular

and call today's meeting of the rules of the government committee to order to start with local police candelas here one here for me here to me here going here have a car okay we're going to start by reviewing our agenda for tuesday the tuesday june second council meeting uh... which is scheduled for uh... nine thirty close session one thirty regular session and consent starts on page five It continues on pages 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, and ends on page 12. Section three, we have an item to reinstate remote participation at council meetings and a public hearing on recorded liens for sidewalk repairs. Section five, round nine of affordable housing and sustainable communities grant funding. Section six, the public hearing on sewer service and use rate charges, public hearing on residential garbage and recycling services, and the public hearing on municipal water recycling and recycled water rates and charges. and then a public hearing and resolution approving the Muni Water Systems Contingency Plan and Urban Water Management Plan. In section eight, establishment of the East Village bid and a public hearing on the Tully Road East Ridge bid and a public hearing on the Monterey Corridor bid. In section nine, our successor agency to the Redevelopment Agency and we have one item for land use consent. Any public comment?

Brian?

Thank you. I hope everybody had a nice weekend. I was looking at the agenda. I'm glad to see that the offline, online option for talking will be brought back. Sorry, I'm sort of tongue-tied today. It took a lot of us advocating and calling and calling and calling and calling and calling. and I'm glad that it's brought back. I sent some information to the clerk about ways to keep the people who caused all this stopping in the first place. And I know with the new software, hopefully that'll make it easier for her. I know they're limited and I'm just gonna offer a public apology to anybody if they call back because I think what they said to all of you, especially to people of the Jewish faith. Mr. Cohen, I know you went through some things. It's not okay, and they need to be held accountable if there's some way to track them down. Thank you.

Back to the committee.

Move approval with the add sheet. Second.

All right, we have a motion to second. I don't see any hands, so let's vote. Okay, that motion carries 5-0. And we're on to our first review of the June 9th council meeting, which is scheduled as usual for 9.30 closed session and 1.30 regular session. Consent is pages five and six. Section three, we have the mayor's June budget message. The approval of operating capital budgets and schedule of fees and charges. And we have actions related to the wastewater facility security and access control. And that is it. Public comment?

No public comment. Okay. Second.

All right, we have a motion and a second on the June 9th agenda. Let's vote. Motion carries, 5-0. And now onto our consent calendar. We have two items on consent. Do we have public comment on consent?

Brian?

On consent item number two, there was something about donations. I have several computers and stuff. I don't know if this is the appropriate place to talk about it, but they're pretty nice machines, and I'd like to be able to donate them. I don't know if the library, if somebody could help me out with that. I've tried calling and leaving messages with people. I haven't heard anything back, so that's why I came here to talk about it. Thank you.

Back to the committee.

All right. We have a motion and a second on consent, so let's vote. Okay, that motion carries, oh, not yet. I'm getting ahead of myself, motion carries 5-0. Okay, we're on to item C1, first of two memos to consider. The first is a memo on rank choice voting for vacancies, co-authored by myself, Council Member Kamei, Council Member Mulcahy, and Council Member Tordillos. Just to briefly give an overview of the thoughts here, Last time we had a vacancy and we were discussing District 3, there were people who actually said, can't we do a ranked choice voting one step in order to save money? And the charter does not allow us to even consider that option. So a charter amendment needs to occur in order to allow for the council to have that as an option for special elections moving forward. And that's what this memo requests. I will start with public comment now.

As I call your names, please go ahead and make your way to the podium. Gabby, Tom, Vicky, and Jordan.

Good afternoon, Council Members Doan, Kamae, Cohen, Foley, and Candelas, and city staff. My name is Gabby Chavez-Lopez, and I'm the Executive Director of the Latina Coalition of Silicon Valley. Since 2021, our organization has supported ranked choice voting and for decades has worked extensively to help remove barriers for civic participation and access for Latinas and working families across San Jose through voter engagement, leadership, and workforce development and community education. I also experienced the District 3 special election personally, and I saw firsthand the amount of time, energy, and public resources required for a second runoff election. I want to emphasize that this proposal does not limit the city's options. It expands them. This simply gives San Jose another tool to fill vacancies in a more cost-effective and community-centered way when appropriate. The recent District 3 runoff cost taxpayers roughly $3.6 million, the runoff alone $1.5 million, and ranked choice voting could significantly reduce those costs while still ensuring voters have a meaningful voice in the process. At a time when communities are asking for investments in housing youth parks and public safety. We should be open to tools that save public dollars, I also want to address concerns about communities of color. This data shows strong support for rank choice voting among Latino immigrant and black voters, because it gives voters, the opportunity to fully express their preferences along a spectrum of candidates. rather than feeling forced in an all or nothing choice. Most importantly, this proposal is not a mandate. It does not eliminate appointments or traditional elections. It simply gives the council the flexibility and allows San Jose voters themselves to decide whether they should become an option, this should become an option moving forward. So I respectfully ask you to vote yes to advance this measure so that the people of San Jose can weigh in. Thank you so much.

Hello i'm Tom Sharon I am a co founder and the President of a group called the California ranked choice voting coalition and obviously we're focused on. One thing and that's across the state and I also happen to live very nearby and milpitas and lived for about a decade in San Jose in Japan town. Uh, so I have a very personal interest in this as well. And, uh, you know, there are a number of people that are very passionate about this reform and for good reason, right? It has so many benefits. There's a lot of popularity of this reform across the country and here in California, but in San Jose's case for this specific instance, it is a common sense. dollars and cents argument, first and foremost, to adopt this for special elections. And as Gabby alluded to, special elections are expensive, but they're democratic, right? So there's a good reason to do it. You want majority winners if you can avoid spending the money for a runoff. A runoff is about a million and a half dollars, as exemplified in D3 last year, whereas the implementation cost to run ranked choice voting is a few hundred thousand dollars. and to put it on the ballot will cost 500, $600,000 probably, but all of that still adds up to less than a single runoff election. And that these costs are things that will pay off for years and years. You know, the city runs special elections every five, six years on average. So there is significant cost savings available to the city to make this move. Thank you.

Good afternoon. Can y'all hear me? Cool, cool. My name's Vicki Muller-Olvera. I live in South San Jose, and I support ranked choice voting. So it saves a lot of money, so they already said that, but it gives voters more choice. You know, I mean, a lot of times you vote for, you know, you're the lesser of whatever, or, you know, you don't like any of the... Your choices and you're stuck just kind of putting your voice aside and voting somebody else's choice. That's how a lot of people feel. And we're seeing a lot of this lately in elections. And I just feel like it gives people more of a voice and therefore more buy-in. And I do a lot of getting out the vote. And people just, I get, it hurts my heart when people say I don't vote because, you know, my voice isn't heard. You know, so it gives us a chance to, you know, hear more voices. Thank you so much.

Jordan Moldau, District 3, also speaking in support of this proposal for all of the reasons that have been stated so far. Additionally, I think it's just superior to what we have now, just straight up better than a top two jungle primary. If you haven't ever gone down the Wikipedia rabbit hole of reading about different voting methods and all of their upsides and downsides, there's no perfect voting method for electing a single person in a pool of three or more people. So yes, there are some issues with rank choice voting. uh, mathematically speaking. Um, but every system has that. And I think we're, we've seen recently the issues with the top two primary system. Um, again, I think ranked choice voting in one election is going to be superior in basically every scenario, uh, compared to what we have now. So even if you have misgivings about ranked choice voting, I still think it's worth voting yes on this proposal. That being said, I don't think the proposal goes far enough I think it's still going to be confusing if this election is ranked choice voting for my Council member, but then the next election for my Council member is top two primary. And you know it's also just going to be every time there's a vacancy on the Council it's a stressful time to figure out what to do. And I think on top of all the other things that council has to decide when there's a vacancy, having to make a decision between two voting methods is just another unnecessary stress to place upon the council and the public. I think it would make more sense just to put as a ballot measure, do you want ranked choice voting for vacancy elections? Just that's it. And I'd prefer to do it for all council elections, not just special elections.

Back to the committee.

Okay. Thank you so much for public comment. And now we'll start with Vice Mayor Foley.

Thank you. Thank you to my colleagues for bringing this issue forward. It's a potential that this could happen this year. We don't know. The first question I have is do we need to do a workload analysis on this particular issue, Lee?

or kevin or whoever no not an official one and since this is basically work directed at the city attorney and city clerk it's probably better for kevin to answer thank you kevin fisher assistant city attorney if the rules committee approves our office has essentially done already done the work for this we did some work on this back in 2022 when the it was being considered previously so The city attorney, if the Rules Committee approves, will move it on to the full council with the draft resolution and charter measure. So we would not need a workload analysis. And we would be looking at coming back on June 23rd.

Okay, so you're saying when this comes to council, you'll come complete with the resolution to put it on the ballot. Is that what you're saying?

Yes.

That's not premature to having a discussion with council first and getting authorization from them?

Well, ultimately, obviously the council can decide at that time whether or not to move forward. The city attorney, she's willing to move it forward to the full council if the rules committee wants to move it forward. As I mentioned, we've already done the work, so the thought is cut out that intermediate step. Also, just to point out, I don't know if it was in the memo, but the deadline to put something on the November ballot is August 7th. So the first council meeting in August is not until the 11th. So we have a little bit of a time crunch, too.

I appreciate that. I don't like to be motivated by time pressure. Good policy should be thoughtful and not be motivated by the next election cycle. Having said that, I've been on the council for appointments to fill vacancies and for special elections that not only resulted in a high cost to the city but also a high cost to the candidates. Running a special election, particularly in D3 where It was such a close primary election, was very difficult and expensive. So I'm going to make the motion to move this to council. But I have some concerns, and some of the concerns I have is the cost that it's going to cost us to put this on the ballot as we're looking at the budget. Where's that money coming from? Out of what pot is the general fund, these funds coming out of to take 600 or whatever it is to put this on the ballot coming from?

Lee, you want to address that?

So that'll come out of our elections appropriation, and I'm forgetting the exact name. Tony can go over it. We typically budget for at least one ballot measure to move forward in any given election cycle outside of the council elections because of issues like this. So the council will not be put in a position of needing to cut another proposal to fund this. It's already baked into the proposed budget and the existing budget that you're in.

Okay, that's good to hear. Thank you. So I made the motion to approve this item.

Second.

Okay, we have two seconds.

And now we'll go to Council Member Kamei.

Thank you. Since I've been on council, which I'm entering, this is my fourth year, entering fourth year, there have been several vacancies. And I know that it's been very, very costly, not just to the city, but also to the candidate. And it's great to be able to have an option should the council decide to move forward with this. So I am in support of the motion and look forward to the information from the City Attorney's Office.

Okay, I don't see any other hands, so let's move on to a vote on this item. Okay, that motion carries 5-0, thanks everyone. And now we're on to our final item, which is our Data Center Uniform Standards Memo. I co-authored along with Mayor, Council Member Kandelis, and Council Member Ortiz. I'm gonna let Council Member Kandelis give a brief introduction before we go to public comment.

uh thank you chair i know i i appreciate uh the collaboration of those in our brown act um including the mayor uh yourself and and councilmember ortiz um look the the purpose of of our memorandum is to essentially set some guard rails um or a set of uniform standards uh for these potential projects occurring in our city um some concerns we've had uh in the past from from our community range from those concerns around our water usage, what this means for our energy consumption, our air quality, for those people who are in our community who have real concerns based on what is happening in other places. And so this is our attempt to have some guardrails and codify some conversations to the administration to kind of flush out and essentially give our community a little bit of reassurance to the steps that we're taking with regards to those environmental concerns, which are very real. And at the same time, also, you know, being being pragmatic of how we are approaching the development of these data centers, making sure that we are working with our labor unions to make sure that we're thorough in our labor standards to make sure that we are if if we are moving forward with the concerns availed that we are emphasizing strong labor standards and and things that ensure that we have pathways for folks to enter the skilled trades for the future of our workforce. And so I appreciate the opportunity to work on this and would urge my colleagues to move forward with, I believe it's a workload analysis, and have a more robust conversation in the coming weeks. Thank you. And with that, I'll move approval of this item.

All right, we have a motion and a second, but let's go to public comment now.

I currently have eight speaker cards. As I call your names, please go ahead and make your way to the podium. I'm going to call the first set. Brian, Dash, Vanessa, and Will.

Thank you for putting this on the agenda. I hope the guardrails hold because there's a big desire to cut loose people and get the machine to do it. And that's seen with a passion. It's almost a sacrament now, which is sad because machines are machines. Even when you talk, and I use AI a lot. Even when you talk to AI, it says, I'm just a this. Even it knows that it doesn't replace people. But the people that control those data centers, they don't know that, which is sad. Plus what it does to the environment, what it does to water, and maybe eventually we'll get to the point where we can find a way to defeat entropy and it doesn't have to be cooled like that. So hopefully when you have these more robust discussions, you include all of that in there. Thank you.

Good afternoon chair Cohen and Council members, my name is Vanessa tapia I'm an organizer with the South Bay Labor Council representing more than 100,000 workers and their families. And we support the city creating standards for data Center development, but those standards shouldn't stop at environmental impacts, they should also include strong Labor standards. The workers building and operating these facilities are on the front lines of these projects, which is why it is critical that these data centers are built by skilled, trained union workers. Project labor agreements and the labor standards included in SB 887 help ensure that these projects are built safely, responsibly, and with good local jobs. San Jose has a chance to set the standard nationally by showing that growth and innovation go hand in hand with protecting workers in our communities. Thank you.

Hello, my name is Dasha Leeds, D3 resident and conservation coordinator for the Sierra Club Loma Prieta chapter. Right now, the city is operating from a deficit of public trust on this issue. Alvizo residents, for example, were not engaged meaningfully regarding the massive power line running through their community or regarding the data center proposal for the 159 acres of open space in Alvizo. On April 21st, we learned that the city has 34 data center projects in its development pipeline. After hundreds of letters, 20 public comments in chamber expressing concerns with data centers and asking for more transparency, we still don't know what parcels are being considered for these projects or what communities will be affected. We know that the city is having frequent behind-the-scenes conversations with the data center companies, but not with community members. And we don't know if the city has signed any nondisclosure agreements with these companies. You've heard the community speak out in April for more transparency, and presumably the city has the power to make all of this information publicly available. So we're concerned that the city hasn't exercised its power to do so in this case. So it's really difficult for us to trust the city to create adequate standards when it won't act meaningfully on this front. We're concerned that the memo doesn't direct the city manager to consult community members, environmental groups, and experts when creating these standards. The community does need to be meaningfully engaged and involved in these standards from day one. Otherwise, what is stopping this from being yet another rubber stamp for the AI data center industry? So we do hope that this item moves forward, but with additional safeguards. We ask you to implement the six requests outlined in Elena Yin's letter. Number one, including quantitative thresholds. Two, making a public dashboard for all data center projects in the pipeline. Three, suspending the execution of any new data center agreements while these standards are still being finished. Four, mandating both cumulative and project-by-project environmental analysis. Five, ensuring that the stakeholder process for these standards includes extensive community engagement, including neighborhood associations.

Thank you, that's your time. Calling the next set of names as well, Emmanuel, Jordan, and Doug.

Good evening, Chair Cohen, members of the council. Appreciate the opportunity today. My name is Will Smith, business representative for IBEW Local 332. I'm definitely speaking in favor. I personally lobbied for the Senate Bill 887 authored by Senator Padilla on behalf of my members. We wanted to make sure that we incorporated labor standards with these environmental concerns. Not only do our members build these projects, but they also live in the community. So it's rightfully so to consider the environmental impacts such as to water. A lot of times when these reports are viewed, they're not necessarily viewed in here and how they're built here in Santa Clara County. A lot of times it's viewed overall or over a broad area or outside of this area. Water is definitely a precious resource to all of us, and these things can be built either without water or air-cooled or looped closed systems. So there's ways for them to be built in a responsible manner. We have to also consider that construction is one of the most lethal industries there is. There's always fatalities that occur, unfortunately, on construction projects. So when we're talking about a complex project as a data center in the complex intricacies of the electrical, not only do you have to worry about the circuitry that you're working on, but the redundancies that the other circuitry that could backfeeds Most projects aren't built that way. They're not that intricate. Once you lock off that circuit, you're safe. But these projects have battery backup. They have redundant systems where they are fed off of multiple sources. And so if you're building this without a skilled workforce, the risk is amplified, and we're already in an industry where fatalities are very high. So, speaking in favor, and just want to make sure you guys.

Thank you, that's your time.

Jordan Moldau, District 3. I'm supportive of the proposal on the table. I also agree with everything that's been said by the previous speakers about needing to move beyond what is written in the current memo. I just want to address one additional thing, which is that, you know, we've said that each individual data center project will have to go through its own environmental clearance, which means, you know, finding out if it has any significant impacts and mitigating them. But, you know, there might be certain dimensions of impact where an individual data center is not found to have a significant impact, and so they don't have to do mitigation. as we've heard, the city plans to build 30 plus data centers around the city. And in aggregate, that could have some very significant impacts. And so I'd like to repeat, I haven't heard it said at this meeting yet, but I do know that it's been called out in previous meetings on this topic. I think there really needs to be an EIR study of the aggregate effects of the 30 data centers that the city is trying to build. And if we don't do that, I don't really feel like there's any guarantee that when we build these 30 data centers that we are going to be better off even if every individual project looks good on paper. Thank you.

Hello, Chairman Cohen and council members. My name is Emmanuel Zendejas, and I'm a business rep for local 104 Sheet Metal Union. I'm here representing my members. A little bit of my background, I have worked in data centers in a nearby city, Santa Clara. And it gives our workers a place to work and commute in a local area. Like I said, I was born and raised here. I would love to see this bill pass or at least labor-friendly regulations, and I encourage you respectfully to try to pass SB887. This is just... We need to have this. I understand they have environmental concerns, but with these environmental concerns, we could go air-cooled. And Local 104 would love to have that type of work, 100%. willing and able to provide that workforce. We need to have those environmental standards. I 100% agree. But we also need to have those labor standards. And I encourage you guys to support this. I appreciate it. Thank you.

I'd also like to call Chris and Alina. Please go ahead and make your way to the podium.

good afternoon chair cohen council members my name is doug block i'm with the silicon valley meps which includes ibew sheet metal workers the plumbers and pipe fitters local 393 and the sprinkler fitters 483 and together we are the largest affiliates of the santa clara and san benito building trades council I want to thank the memo authors. We support a policy to create uniform standards for data centers, not only on environmental, but also labor and community benefits. Our unions have long been building data centers in Silicon Valley. Our members are on the front lines of these projects. And San Jose is actually a national leader in this space. These standards will help you stay ahead of the curve on these important issues. I want to thank Chair Cohen and remind the committee members that San Jose was actually the first city in the United States to require workforce and community benefits agreements as a condition of approval on a data center project when you pass the exclusive negotiating agreement with Prologis. under a memo that Chair Cohen wrote. This memo references SB887, which is a building trades backed bill, which includes environmental, includes community benefits, includes labor standards as well. And so we urge the council as you explore this to use the current version of language that's in that bill on the labor and community benefits standards and bring it over along with the guardrails and environmental safeguards into a policy. Thank you.

Hello to the committee. So I wanted to share that Santa Clara University recently did a study of first of its kind of water and data centers in the state of California. And their conclusion was after reaching out to every single water district in California that holds data centers asking for actual distribution numbers of how much water is actually used by data centers, they could not Have the answers from the water districts. So there's publicly available information about water usage in planning So showing how much the data center expects to use but once the data center is in operation There are no publicly available numbers And so I want to ask the committee and the council's what numbers are you basing your decisions off when you're saying that our water? infrastructure and how much water they're going to use is going to be fine and Additionally, the memo states that City of Santa Clara has roughly 60 data centers and in fiscal year 2025 produced $45 million in the general fund. That's around $750,000 per data center. While the memo also states that in San Jose, one data center, we can expect $7 million. I don't understand the math with that. So what kind of data centers are you building when one can produce 7 million, but in Santa Clara, 60 is producing 750,000 each? Additionally, you should know that Santa Clara has its own municipal utility district, Silicon Valley Power, giving it direct revenue stream from electricity sales at San Jose served by PG&E cannot replicate. So again, where is your math? Additionally, I've spoken to several realtors and they have all shared from their experience that all of the values around the home values around data centers will lose, will go down. And so are you calculating the loss revenue in value property tax? And so there's a lot of economic benefits promised, but a lot of it is unproven. There's no math. So I'm really asking you to be transparent and to also check out the letter that we sent. Thank you.

Good afternoon, my name is Christopher Popp. I'm a business representative for IBW 332. So I've heard the mention of the environmental protections for our water and our power and our air, and I am all completely in favor of those. But I am here to also speak in favor of attaching the strong and robust labor standards to the process of approval of the data center projects within the city of San Jose. The labor protections will ensure that these projects aren't just built under the idea of a race to the bottom with wages and instead support living wages and standards for the workers that are skilled and trained and working and living within our communities. attaching these labor protections will protect our community members and neighbors to make sure that when they build these projects they're getting a wage that also allows them to live within the areas that these projects are being built i'm sure i don't need to remind you that this is one of the most expensive areas to live And allowing construction projects like these to have a streamlined process when they could end up exacerbating any forms of poverty within our communities without strong labor standards doesn't make sense at all. And this is a simple ask to please ensure that our neighbors and our family members who use their efforts and their skills and their knowledge to build the city that we live in are able to continue to live here. Thank you.

Back to the committee.

Thank you. And I want to thank everyone from the public for coming out to talk about this important issue. I'll just say that while I've been... sharing with many of my colleagues around the state about how we in San Jose are doing this right, and we have willing partners in the industry who are following strict standards. Doing it right shouldn't be about trusting us or trusting our partners that we're doing it right. There should be a codified set of standards that are required to be followed. And I think we can get there with standards that make sense, that protect our labor partners and also protect our environment in the city of San Jose and protect our rate payers. And as long as those standards include using San Jose Clean Energy as a power provider, then actually San Jose does have revenue and benefits from selling power to data center customers. So move on to the rest of the committee for comments and start with Council Member Kamei.

Thank you so much and I'd like to thank all the speakers who came out to give your perspective on this very important issue. I also want to thank my colleagues for bringing this forward. This is something that I think more and more is gaining interest and certainly we need to have community involvement in this very important issue. My question for those here who are part of the committee is, is the intent to create a council policy that will go to council, or would this be standards that we're delegating the authority to the city manager? Because that would be taken into consideration under the workload analysis.

My expectation is that the council will weigh in on those standards at the point at which they are formulated by staff. At least that's how I was anticipating it. So we have the chance at that point to add or adjust through our memo process if there's things that we don't think were covered by that policy. So the timeline for this would be to come back to the committee in what, a couple weeks with the workload analysis and then have a few months to come back to council with, or some period of time to come back to council with those standards.

Yeah, I think we'll probably need two weeks on the workload analysis. I don't think whether it's an administrative policy or a council policy will sway that workload analysis either way. The council policy is just, you know, there's noticing an additional step to approve it, but the actual work behind setting, you know, those guidelines, guardrails, as well as any, you know, collaboration with stakeholders would all be relatively the same either path.

I'm sorry, I was going to say on top of that, the good news is that the committee's been, the T&E committee and others have been having this conversation with staff regularly, and I think staff has well on its way to preparing some of these standards and understanding what has to be included in the standards.

Okay. I guess I wasn't sure whether this would be an administrative policy or a council policy because the threshold for council policy is a little bit higher. And so thinking that this is so important, I mean, it's going to be with us for quite a while. I guess as long as it comes to council for review, that would be great. So thank you for that clarification.

Okay, I don't see any other hands. I'm just gonna make one other comment about this too, which is one of the concerns that I've had about codifying a set of standards with too much detail is that technology is improving very rapidly, and so that we don't want to necessarily codify a standard that actually allows a company to use a less current standard or something less stringent than they could otherwise do. So we want standards that are guardrails but are not necessarily specific to the point at which somebody could come in and do less than the current state of the art. So that's the challenge that we're walking here and one of the reasons why we've been taking some time to figure out the way to do this is that we wanna have standards, we wanna make sure people understand that we're holding people to certain standards. But we also want companies to come to us and say, hey, we have an even better way of doing this that's even better for the environment than the standards were a year ago when you approved them. So I just want that to be out there as well.

You may have had conversations at the T&E committee, but some of the speakers brought up the labor standards as well as community benefits. I think that's something worth looking into as well.

For sure.

Thank you.

Okay. I don't see any other hands, so let's vote on this. We'll look forward to seeing it back at rules in a couple weeks just to move it forward to council at that point after we have the workload analysis. And that brings us to open forum.

Brian and Jordan.

I hope everybody had a nice weekend. Memorial Day is something to take very seriously. And have fun with your family too. I had a long, but I'm not going to do that. The oligarchy effect, political scientist data, Galeans and Page, demonstrates that preferences for the bottom 90% of income earners have statistically near zero effect on public policy. while the wealthy elites heavily dictates become laws. Now, I think that's a little bit too much, but I spent time studying and writing. I read about a thousand pages and skimmed, I don't know, a lot more than that in preparing something. It's about 40 pages long, and I just say that because I come here to tell you that I spent this much time on it. So I tried to make it short, but It is almost impossible for a regular citizen to have the same impact as somebody who's a lobbyist or somebody who's rich. It just is. There's the financial cost if somebody tries to run for office. As you were saying, it's very expensive to run for office. There's the hate factor that comes into it when people get ridiculed and their faith gets made fun of. I DON'T HAVE REALLY ANY ANSWERS. ONE THING I WOULD SUGGEST THAT WAS ON THE BOTTOM OF YOUR AGENDA, YOU HAVE A LIST OF THINGS THAT WE CAN'T DO. IF YOU PUT DOWN THERE THAT OUR COMMENTS, OUR EMAILS, WE PROMISE, MAYBE IT'S JUST SYMBOLIC, WE PROMISE THAT WE READ YOUR EMAILS, EVEN IF IT'S JUST SUMMARIZING, AND THAT IT MAKES A DIFFERENCE. THAT MIGHT HAVE A TINY IMPACT. THANK YOU.

Two things for me today. One, I mentioned a few weeks ago that the Air Resources Board is considering a rule change for cap and trade. So that's happening tomorrow morning. Just as a reminder, they're considering adding more pollution credits into the market. So there'll be more pollution that's allowed and there'll be less money available for public transit and affordable housing and TOD and that kind of thing. So I'd encourage council members to considering consider contacting CARB and letting them know how you feel about that change. Second, I'm glad to see that agenda item for next week on remote participation. I'd just like to remind the council that the memo that's currently on the table is just for public comment for city council only. And I'd encourage the council to additionally bring back public comment for the standing committees and the advisory committees. The memo from the clerk says that that would be happening in the fall. I prefer to see that come back sooner than that. And additionally, on top of bringing back remote participation for members of the public, there's also the possibility of using AB 707 to enable remote participation of advisory committee members as well. So I encourage consideration of all of those things sooner rather than later. I also saw in the memo from the clerk the proposal to decrease the default speaking time to 60 seconds, which I disagree with. I think 60 seconds is too short as a default. If you introduce yourself and you thank staff, that's already like 15 seconds wasted. I think at least 75 seconds, but I'd prefer two minutes or 90 seconds or a formula that depends on the number of speakers rather than it being arbitrary.

Back to the committee.

All right, thank you. We are adjourned at 2.45 p.m.