Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Thank you.

and a lot of concerns about what a new data center might mean, and that's why we're holding this session, because community input helps guide what our priorities are, what our regulations are, what the rules of the road are in San Jose. And I want to be really clear, we are not here tonight to persuade you to be pro-data center. That is not the point of this. The goal of tonight is to understand what your concerns are and make sure that they are deeply and fully incorporated into the process we're going on over the coming months. Because we see what's happening in other communities around the country, where elected officials are signing NDAs and rushing into projects, not putting in place the right level of regulation. and allowing communities to be harmed and that is not how we do business in San Jose. We want to be crystal clear with private property owners who may own industrial land and want to consider a data center project and more importantly with the entire community what the standards are. And my view is that if a data center gets built in San Jose in the future, it ought to be under the strongest standards around labor, environment, both protecting rate payers for energy, water use, community engagement, regulations related to noise and aesthetics. San Jose really has an opportunity with your input to set the national The national bar because with all decisions we make at City Hall their trade-offs But as we weigh those trade-offs your concerns and interests have to be Front and center have to be the priority. So this is the beginning of our process. This is our first community listening session as I MENTIONED WE ARE IN A PROCESS OF DEVELOPING REGULATIONS TO COVER ALL OF THOSE AREAS OF CONCERN. BUT UNLESS WE FIRST START BY HEARING FROM YOU AND UNDERSTANDING WHAT THOSE CONCERNS ARE AND REALLY TEASING OUT THE DETAILS AND WHAT YOUR EXPERIENCE IS, WE WON'T HAVE THE BEST POSSIBLE REGULATORY ENVIRONMENT. SO I'M LOOKING FORWARD TO KICKING THIS OFF. I'M GOING TO INTRODUCE TWO PEOPLE HERE AT CITY HALL WHO ARE LEADING THIS WORK. Our deputy city manager, who you just heard from, Manuel Panetta, who is going to share with us the agenda for the rest of the evening. And he's joined by Erica Garofo, who is our strategic customer development lead, who is also doing a lot of this work. So it's my pleasure to hand it back to Manuel, and we will jump right in. And I'll be over in the back there taking notes. So thank you all again for being here. Really appreciate you being so civically engaged. Manuel, thank you.

Thank you very much, Mayor, and thank you especially to all of you for being here tonight. I know it's not easy to give up your time late in the afternoon from 6 to 8 p.m., so I really appreciate it and I'm really looking forward to having your feedback. I do have a very short presentation up front just to kind of provide some guidance to the conversation as well as kind of what we're going to be talking about. And I do want to note that while this is a listening session and we are going to be focused on listening to you, happy to jump in if there's any clarification, any specific questions that help the conversation, I'm happy to do that also. The few slides I'll be doing up front hopefully will help with that as well. So once again, the agenda, we have the welcome. Thank you again, Mayor. Really briefly, we're going to go over what our data centers, I'm sure everybody knows, but the reason I'm doing it is because, as you've probably noticed, we have both data centers and other large load customers over 20 megawatts. So just briefly touch on that, why the city is developing uniform standards, the scope of the uniform standards, so kind of what we're going to talk about today, then the community outreach schedule and the outreach that we've done up to this point. And then we're going to open it up for public input, which is really going to be your opportunity to tell us what you think we should hear tonight. I do want to note that during public input, there will also be a QR code. So if you don't feel like you want to speak in public, which I know sometimes people don't feel comfortable with, and if we run out of time, there will be a QR code, and you click on that QR code, and you'll be able to give us written comments as well. Thank you.

Why didn't you schedule us in the chambers?

Let us all go to the chambers together as one group. You're telling other people who are coming now to go to the chambers.

Yeah, so we had to change. There's people who are isolated and not with the main group.

We should all be together. Let us all

So we had the overflow room in case we didn't know how many people to expect today. And we'll certainly be able to watch the meeting in the chamber, and they'll be able to comment and comment as well. We set this room up. We expected this room to support everybody and provide an environment for people to comment. But we'll move forward in the agenda as well and on to the next item. So we'll move forward. And as I mentioned, right, we do have the QR codes. People can send written comment as well. And then we'll spend time providing public comment. So with that, let's go on to the next slide. Yeah, so I wanted to do a quick bite on what are data centers and large load energy customers. So data centers, everybody's familiar with, right? We all use our phones. We know data, watch Netflix, use for other purposes as well, and use for AI. And then we also have research and development facilities. The key differences between the two is that typically data centers are used by multiple customer, one customer, and that's where they do their services. while R&D facilities are used by a specific customer, and they do research and development amongst other things. One of the key items is that R&D facilities typically have less generators than data centers. Data centers typically fully back up the amount of power that they have available, and that's a significant difference. Next slide. So why are we developing uniform standards? We, of course, have city council direction to develop them uniform standards for data centers. And we expanded that, as I mentioned, to any projects that are 20 megawatts or more to make sure we get all the projects. I do want to note that these are going to apply to both projects the same. So from a standard perspective, there is no difference between the two. Our goal is to create consistent expectations for everybody, as well as that we develop the best projects possible if projects are developed. And we do have a lot of environmental requirements that are already part of any project in the city, including data centers, and there's other regulations and processes. We want to build on those to actually do even more so we can get the best projects possible. Next slide. So a question I've been asked many times is why data centers? Why large load customers? Certainly there's a lot of economic activity associated with it and revenues as well as jobs. Definitely construction and workforce opportunities are part of it. There are investments in infrastructure, especially electric infrastructure that come along with it. And, you know, we are Silicon Valley, and we do have a high-tech economy. Data centers are not new to Silicon Valley. I think there are approximately 90 right now in Santa Clara County, about 60 in the city of Santa Clara by itself. And they support the regional economy for a lot of the work that's done right in the valley. And ultimately, it is a long-term investment in the city that's kind of part of that community. I think the key part for us is while there are benefits, right, and there are needs, those potential benefits has to be considered along all the project impacts, right? We want to make sure we're addressing your questions about energy, about water use, about air quality, about noise, and if there's mechanisms that we can address things even beyond kind of what we would be doing today under the typical standards. Next slide. So really briefly, wanted to touch, as I mentioned, that we already do some work, a lot of work associated with development in the city and data centers. Similarly, there's a public outreach that we do for the city outreach policy. We heard some feedback that you would like to see that enhanced, and we want to hear your thoughts on how that could be enhanced. Projects have city public hearings, so each individual project. Very important to note, we're not approving any projects today. No projects are being approved or discussed. This is really about the standards of how these projects, when they come forward, what they're going to have to do when they're considered as part of it. Each individual project will have to do their own analysis and will have its own public hearings. So we already have those, but is there a way that those could be enhanced? The Bay Area Air District already has requirements, right? For example, for generators. They have permits that tell... data centers and users, how many hours can those generators run? That's something we can talk about today. The CEC, California Energy Commission, also has requirements for large load customers. So that's something that we already do, but is there anything else that can be done? and we do what are called water supply assessments. So there's three water providers in the city, plus there's a recycled water system as well. So for every project, we do what's called a water assessment to see where the water's coming from, how much water a project's going to use, can it be served. So that's what we do today. But on your thoughts, what else should we be doing beyond doing that water analysis and see how a project is served? And of course, many of you are familiar with CEQA, the California Environmental Quality Act. And that includes a lot of things. And that's not a full list, but includes things like noise, greenhouse gas limits, water limits, and lights, and many other things. Next slide. Okay, thank you. So for today, we are going to be talking about the new standards that we're developing that are going to add to that CEQA process. These are the proposed topics that we're including and just putting it out there for some ideas as well. Obviously, if you want to add and give us more information beyond that, please do. That's what we're here for. But sometimes I find it useful if I kind of throw some examples out there for you to kind of start thinking about. So there are We know energy consumption and energy sourcing is a big component of that. It's something like 100% carbon neutral energy, something that should be looked at. Water usage has been a big discussion. There's different water usage technologies. Some technology uses more water, some less. Recycled water is an option as well. We have 100 miles of recycled water in the city. Air quality and backup generators. We talked about briefly there's permits associated with that. What else can be done beyond the permits that they already have to get? Noise, water quality, environmental protection, community notification and engagement. So the council has a policy on community notification and engagement. We heard thoughts about should that be enhanced? How can it be enhanced? What else do we want to do beyond what we do today to make sure when a project comes along, you do hear about that project? And I do want to note, that the city has a website that lists all the projects that are 20 megawatts or more that have submitted for the city because we want to make sure that you're aware when the projects are coming forward and that if you're interested in a specific project, all projects, there's one location where you can see where those projects are at and what their status of their proposals are. And then, of course, economic and community benefits. There's some economic community benefits we already talked about. Is there more we should be looking from these type of projects that benefit the city? And one thing that's come up, architectural design standards. If you go to some of the older data centers that I worked on many years ago, the architecture is not what it was today, right? Is there something we should be doing so they fit more within the built environment? Next slide. So the community outreach schedule, we've done a lot of stakeholder outreach prior to today. Today you have the community of community listening session. Thank you. Yeah, if I don't have it up high enough, usually people tell me to be a little more quiet and I'm not louder. Then we have a developer round tables we're gonna be doing. I really wanna note where you'll see August 31st to September 11th, we are gonna have a small group working sessions with key stakeholders and community members. So there's gonna be a QR code that's gonna come up on the screen and obviously all these presentations are gonna be available. If you're interested in participating in a small group working session to discuss the standards in more detail, please pull up the QR code and there'll be an opportunity for you to sign up as we develop the meetings when we're gonna have those meetings. And then we're gonna have a mid-October final large format community session, such as this one. And at that one, we're actually going to present the data center standards in draft form. And at that one, we're going to make sure we want to hear any questions you might have. We want to make sure that we gather additional feedback. And then any final comments or additional comments before we go to council so we can give council a full picture on what the staff is recommending, what the community feedback has been, what all other feedback has been, and hopefully develop standards that work well for everybody. Next slide. So with that, we are going to start the public input, and we're going to start with environmental impacts and resource use. And I guess, I think just looking at the crowd, we have 40 minutes. If you don't get a chance to speak, please submit your written comments. And there's going to be a second section to talk about community benefits and public outreach. I would ask that if you don't get to speak on this session, on this 40 minutes, Please allow someone new to speak as part of the next one. But please, this is not your only opportunity to comment. Please, if you want, if you can, also submit written comments as well. So we'll do a minute for each one. Line up. If you can allow people to have a little bit of space as they line up as well, you don't have to go in immediately. And we will track a time to make sure that we're giving people as much of an opportunity as they can. I will sit down while you do that, but I'm happy to answer any questions or any clarifications.

We have multiple microphones, too, if you'd like to stand up over there or over there. And just a heads up for the folks online, we are taking public comment in person only, so the online viewers are view only, but, of course, the QR code is available to submit comments. Okay, go ahead, Roland.

Okay.

I knew that batch would come in handy. So my question is very simple. You talk about data centers, and I support data centers, but the problem is these data centers cannot possibly operate without battery plants. That's the bottom line. And when I go to planning, they're telling me, well, you know, we plan for data centers, but, you know, battery plant is somebody else. Well, we've only got one in my backyard on San Ignacio. Actually, I was in that building during the 1889 earthquake. It used to be an IBM building. And there is another one that's going to be coming online less than a quarter mile away behind the Lockheed, behind the Ross. And my question is, why do these battery plants have to be in our backyards? If you go to San Jose Clean Energy, which you're all familiar with, the battery plant is in Merced County. So that's my question. Thank you.

About a year and a half ago, the city of San Jose swept about 35 people who were living in a homeless camp. They swept all of them and offered no housing, no place to park, no nothing, not a single service to make way for the Microsoft data center. The majority of those people are still unhoused. This city is disingenuous. The mayor is only here temporarily, and he is made from tech bros. When he ran for office, he was backed by tech bros, and thank God he got 3.6% of the vote, which is what he deserved. The majority of the city council does not stand for anything. They are there, they make really good speeches, and they have really crappy votes. We find them to be disingenuous. We don't trust them. And if you can't plan a meeting that we can all fit into, you can't plan anything else.

I'm going to switch over to that mic. We'll go back and forth. Go ahead.

Okay. My name is Dr. Sharad Lin, and I'm going to just talk about one project that is sort of an example of, you know, I'm not against all data centers because we all use them, but these data centers have to be located in the proper location. So there is a development proposal for a data center, a very tall one, in downtown at the corner of San Carlos and 2nd Street, and that data center will have eight floors. it will be almost as tall as a 28-story building, which is, you know, the buildings, the residential buildings that are next to it. And it uses a minimum of twenty two megawatts now to understand what twenty two megawatts is take a take a small or medium small medium size steel plant of five hundred thousand tons of steel production annually that's how much twenty two megawatts is And this is being located only 43 feet from the nearest residential tower. And I'm asking the city to plan this so that zoning counts.

I'm sorry, sir. I'm going to have to cut you off there. Thank you for your comment.

Thank you. I heard you mention the job growth, but from my read, that's just an illusion. The job growth usually happens when the construction site is built. We do get a lot of people to build that site. And then after that, only about 30 to 50 people are actually employed by these data centers, and they're usually not local people unless they have the experience. And we will also talk about power grid. I don't know about how many of you, but we all received that message from June to September not to use our AC, keep it at 78 degrees, and we're constantly getting those notices from PG&E. How is that gonna be sustainable when we have these data centers and are constantly, they're draining the electric grid? Another piece is the water. This is the first year in 25 years, according to the US government, that California has been drought-free as of January 2026. So these data centers use a lot of water. And then lastly, as a parent, I know Matt, you are a parent, I would not want this near my kids with all the pollution risk and health risk that it's going to give them.

Thank you.

I apologize if I can pause for one second. We got a request for the small group signups. If you can just put up the QR code for a second in case somebody doesn't want to wait till the end. So I don't know, Erica, if you can go. I apologize. We'll make sure you get your full time. So here are the QR codes. It shows both the community feedback form. So if you want to use it now, that's also showing up on every slide. And on the right is the small group working session interest form. Once again, if you don't get the picture today, we will be posting the presentation as well. It'll be available online. But I wanted to be respectful of the request in case somebody didn't want to wait till the end. So we'll go back now to the public input. Thank you for your patience.

Mayor Mahan, this is probably one of the most consequential things that you're going to do in this administration, figuring out how we're going to take these very finite resources and stretch them to cover these data centers. If we get this wrong, It could be very bad, and I won't go into details, but just think about what's gonna happen when you get the drought of the century, and we get eight years of no rain or very low rain, and we all remember the droughts that we've had recently, What's going to happen to San Jose? You need to go and be very careful here. Go through the process. Think about all of the consequences of these things and what happens in the worst case. Gray water, for example, is very high in dissolved nitrates. What does that mean for a data center? How are you going to get that gray water to that data center, and how are you going to get it back to the plant to be treated again? Thank you.

Thank you. Okay, industry lobbyists and the mayors have tossed around closed loop in a very disingenuous way. First of all, if it is truly closed loop, the energy usage is just passed upstream because in a truly closed loop system, it requires more electricity to operate. So PG&E is gonna spend more water to power their steam turbines and more water for cooling. That's not a solution. In other cases, the design involves some closed loop. When the coolant passes over the server components, it has to exchange that heat somewhere. So in the heat exchanger, it either passes that heat to air or water. In the latter case, it's evaporative cooling all over again. In more advanced designs that they're going to use immersive cooling, those chemicals have been linked to PFAS, forever chemicals. There's basically no good solution to the water consumption problem. And first of all, and you also have to consider scope one, two and three water consumption upstream for manufacturing of the chips and the utility usage.

Thank you so much for your comment. Appreciate it.

Good evening, thank you for hosting this session. I'm Laurel Prevetti speaking on behalf of the League of Women Voters, San Jose Santa Clara and its co-presidents. San Jose has placed a large bet on the contribution of AI data centers as a benefit to the city. The promise of those benefits must be weighed against the cost to the environment, precious resources and community health and well-being. stringent rules are required to create the necessary guardrails on this new technology, from the facilities that enable it to the technology itself. The League of Women Voters, while supporting progress for San Jose, asks the city to create AI data center guidelines that protect critical energy, air, water, and other resources by placing reasonable maximum limits to ensure adequate resources for future long term job generating uses that serve San Jose residents. Thank you.

Thank you.

Is there going to be on this side too? Sorry.

Yeah. Oh, okay. Hi, my name is X. All questions and concerns are my own opinion. I just want to know how we are all going to benefit from these data centers if they do get built. Because right now, all I see is circular financing with these big sevens. And the only people that are benefiting from this are the big seven merchants of death. Like these guys are like rich beyond their wildest dreams. And then secondly, what are we going to take of the people that these data centers make sick? Because we live in America. The moment you get sick, like just get out, you know, just get kicked out. The city isn't going to take care of you. We're the fourth largest economy in the world here. And it's not going to take care of its sick people when this data center gets built because it will. Thank you.

I'm going to switch over to him because he's been waiting. Go ahead.

Is this mic on? OK. Hi, everyone. I live in Silverleaf neighborhood of South San Jose. And I was watching NBC Bear. was on there, and he had mentioned during the interview that a lot of these data centers are built in far-flung industrial areas and not in neighborhoods. And one thing I did want to raise to the mayor is that that could be further from the truth for Silverleaf neighborhood. We are literally across the street from Equinix data center sites. We're not opposed to the data centers. What we're opposed to is the sheer concentration of data centers within a specific corridor. So within a mile and a half of my home, there are five data center developments, not one, five. The closest is the Equinix facility I just mentioned, barely a quarter mile from my house, half a mile away, Menlo Equities, which is the Western Digital, was just approved for a 100-megawatt facility that was... that is a Western Digital Campus next to Holmes. So next to the Targets and all the homes that are there, there's going to be all of that. Less than a mile away from that is Equinix's Great Oak South Campus, which is another 90 megawatt.

Thank you for your comments. We're just going to add one thing. I'm sorry, the minute is up. That wasn't a minute.

You started the clock before the mic. Thank you for your comments, and please do submit. I do want to provide just one comment. Yes, one clarification that the mental equities project just submitted recently, I think a day or two ago. It has not been approved. Nothing has been approved in that project.

No, no, I just. The problem with that is that you are doing all of this before the standards are set.

Is it going to be retroactive?

So just wanted to note that.

Go ahead.

There is a way to provide power for data centers so that our electric bills go down instead of up, so that we create more community jobs with zero pollution. There's more than enough roof space and homes and businesses that can install solar and batteries. These systems go in very, very fast, and they would be paid for by the data centers, not by the city, not by anybody else. Specifically, we should require data centers to generate their power, all the power they need from local solar and storage. The result will be cheaper power for everyone and zero pollution. Of course, PG&E would not generate the profits that they expect, but our community will benefit tremendously, and we can do this.

Thank you.

Okay, we're gonna switch over to the, yes, go ahead. I would like to start by saying we are not Silicon Valley. We are on the historic land of the Muwekma Ohlone people. Hello, hello.

Now can you hear me?

Can we restart my time?

I'm gonna restart the timer one second.

Sorry, this is, I should have gotten trained by the clerk's office.

Okay, go ahead.

Okay, start by saying we are not Silicon Valley, we are on the historic land of the Muwekma Ohlone people. Not Silicon Valley, that is made up. And to talk to you, You said input matters, but the input of 30 to 40 people yesterday did not matter as you all voted to pass rezoning the IBM lot instead of listening to the concerns of waiting until after there are proper regulations put in place. You said we're not rushing anything, but you most definitely did rush it by approving rezoning. Again, when you said the community input matters, you actually first listed private property owners, which I feel like is like a little bit of a Freudian slip. And there's multiple articles about data centers heating up cities by multiple degrees. We're already past the tipping point of global warming. We have a super El Nino phenomenon coming up, which is an increase in natural disasters due to the warming of the Pacific Ocean.

Thank you so much for your comment. I appreciate it. I'm going to...

Hello, my name is Neil Bono. I'm a District 10 resident and a recent graduate of Random High School. And I represent Silicon Valley Youth Climate Action, and I actually had a meeting with you. And I just want to come here today and further elaborate on my points. And there's been many recent articles that 7 out of 10 San Jose residents don't really want the AI data sensors, as we can see with everyone here. And even the standards and center warehouse or office building, AI data centers are massive power hods. And they just pull massive amounts of energy off our grid and use millions of dollars of water. I just want to speak for the student advocates. And we're just concerned about our future. And we just want to make sure that the future that we have in the world we have for ourselves is something that we want to live in. And we just don't want to live in the repercussions of our past generations. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

Hello, my name is Jay Schuller, San Jose resident. I want to highlight the benefits of this being that there's going to be up to $190,000 per data center per year, which is trivial compared to the impact on our communities. That's the cap on business taxes in San Jose. The bigger money is going to flow to career politicians who are looking to run for things like mayor, assembly, and governor of the state of California. And I want to also highlight the fact that a business that cannot afford to pay all of the costs to the community of California electrical, water, waste treatment, air pollution, et cetera, that it's generating, it's not a good business. And right now, AI, for example, which is driving a lot of this, is not profitable. So this is a bad business proposition for the city of San Jose.

Thank you very much.

Hi, Erica. I sent you an email with the junior version of this about a month ago. I'm the author of Data Center Local Risks. If you want a free copy, just come to me. There's a lot of valid points that have been brought up, but what I don't see municipalities particularly, obviously because I'm a San Jose resident doing, is looking at the legal risks. Looking at the financial risks and looking at there's all other sorts of risks that are not being evaluated. And to, you know, carry on that point, this is not a financially viable business at all. A lot of the cancellation in data centers over this past year, about 60% of projects, aren't coming from activism, laws, or civic-minded professionals. It's coming from the tech companies because it's not affordable and it's not sustainable.

Thank you so much for your comments.

We're going to go over to. Just a quick note, and obviously if you want to clap or cheer, it's a community meeting. I do want to give as many people as I can an opportunity to speak, so typically it takes time away from that. So if you could do the quiet hands or anything else instead, it would be great. But if you choose to cheer, that's fine. It's a community process. Happy to hear it. Just wanted to put it out there so we can hear as many people as we can.

Thanks.

Good evening. My name is Alice Kaufman. I'm the Policy and Advocacy Director for Green Foothills. And we are asking the city to put a pause on accepting or processing any data center applications until after the new standards are in place. Now, I've heard... I've heard that the reason that the city says it wouldn't be useful to do this is because the process is too time consuming and that there wouldn't be any new projects that would sort of get in under the wire or be grandfathered in. And I guess my response to that is that if that's the case, then where is the harm in going with a moratorium, it would reassure the community that you're listening, it would make sure that there's, it would show that there is responsiveness, and I think that it would provide that benefit, you know, seems like it wouldn't provide harm and it would provide the benefit. But I have also heard people say that the city needs the economic benefit from this. And I guess my response to that is we've seen this happen before. We thought the Google Diridon station was going to bring a whole lot of financial benefit. It hasn't happened yet. So please, let's not rely on private development.

We're going to go to the far side of the room. Go ahead, ma'am.

Hi, I'm Cynthia Kaufman, retired De Anza College faculty, and also I work with Fossil Free California. Thank you for having this session. I have to say that everybody here in the room knows the downside of data centers. I want to jump on what Alice just said also about the importance of the moratorium. Our city council already, the races are flooded with money, flooded with tech money that's just getting bigger. It used to be that the fossil fuel industry was the biggest donor to California politics. Now that's been eclipsed ten times over by tech money. The state is awash in tech money trying to influence our politics. I want to say to our city council members that you actually do have the power to say no to this. Municipalities all over the country have said no. As somebody said earlier, 60% of data center projects have been stopped. Over $700 billion worth of data center projects have been stopped. So please put a moratorium on this until the community has time to get together to decide what we want and to not rush this. Thank you.

Thank you. Go ahead.

Hi. Hello. Hi, my name is Ted Smith. I've lived in this community for more than 50 years. In the 1980s, I was involved with a group of people that got together following the groundwater contamination down at Fairchild in South San Jose. We came together because we, at that point, realized we needed a right to know ordinance. And we passed the first and the best right to know ordinance in the country, which later became the model for the California and then eventually the national through EPA. I think we need right now a right to know movement and ordinance for transparency because this is incredibly complicated stuff. And the devil is in the details, as we all know. This is not the time to get into the details. But I do want to give you a couple of things. There's 5,500 data centers now all around the US, 10 times more than the next closest country, which is China. US companies in Silicon Valley control about 80% of all the chips and all the going on right now, the compute power.

I'm so sorry to cut you off, but that's your time. Thank you.

Hi, I am Toshal. I am a nearby resident and homeowner at Great Oaks Parkway, and I'm seriously very concerned about the proposed 44,400 square feet, approximately 99.7 megawatt data center in the Great Oaks residential neighborhood. I respectfully ask the city to carefully evaluate the following concerns before approving the project. Point number one, residential proximity. The proposed facility is immediately adjacent to established residential homes. A facility of this scale may not be compatible with the existing residential character of the neighborhood. Air pollution. Proposal reportedly includes approximately 72 megawatt of backup power. I request detailed analysis of the number of type of generators, fuel used, annual testing hours, emergency operating assumptions, and resulting NOx, nitrous oxide, and particularly emissions at nearby homes. Cumulative air quality. The Great Oaks area already contains significant data center and industrial infrastructure.

I'm so sorry to cut you off. Thank you. That's your time. Thank you. We're going to go to the far side of the room. Sorry, just relocated the mic so that I can see you. Thank you.

James Jones, architect for now 24 years. I live in the Penitentiary Creek area, north San Jose. So these data centers basically can be controversial. So I'm asking that you probably include in your environmental impact report a task force, include a feasibility study, master planning, right, and with that task force, look at, with EPA regulations, especially around waterways, and then look at the zoning and high density in suburban areas where you can actually minimize that to keep those away from high density residential areas or suburban areas and therefore you want to minimize litigation right with those closed loops with the chemical waste in the waterway and I think that's going to be helpful because a lot of us are fearing that you know RPG is going to go up etc but if we have the constant reporting the task force you're going to minimize that liability thank you so much

Our mayor has a TikTok account where the majority of his uploads can best be described as look at this cool thing in San Jose that I'm doing. And if you look at the comments in all of those uploads, it's no more data centers, no more data centers, build more housing, no more data centers. We're having the wrong meeting. Have you listened to your constituents? They're all saying the same thing, that we don't want them here. It's going to cause so many problems. You zoned the IBM property for industrial? It's right next to residential. We have so many housing issues. This is the wrong meeting. I see my time.

I'm what?

Oh, you're right. So my name is Christopher Andrade Smith. I'm an Evergreen resident. I've lived in San Jose my entire life. I don't like to speak without being prepped, but today I am going to. Where is the accountability here? This is happening without any sort of input from people. You guys are saying this is for the future of the world, and this is going to benefit young people. But every single time I talk to a young person, they're not happy about this. Look at this room. How many young people do you see here? I'm 20 years old. I'm an outlier here. Why are we not discussing this with the people who are gonna have to suffer the impacts of it 200 years from now? Why are we not expecting the people who are gonna have to go into the workforce moving forward to actually have a say in what's gonna happen moving forward with this? There's no accountability from our government and these companies are ripping us off. We're having to pay more, we're getting less, and they're paying nothing. And what do they get in return? They get data centers and they get all these results. I want to see results in my day-to-day life, and these data centers aren't turning it. So you need to make sure that accountability is there.

Thank you so much. Go ahead.

Good evening. My name is Kathy Sutherland. I'm a longtime advocate, live downtown forever, member of the League of Women Voters, and also a member of the Santa Clara Valley Open Space Authority. But I am speaking for myself. San Jose can and has demonstrated that they understand community input and can act upon community input. I ask that council and staff develop guidelines that reflect us and ask that they also consider the impacts of the actions that the state takes. Yesterday at the council meeting when they were discussing the IBM plant and then also the general plan, what the mantra seemed to be as the state is doing this. So if San Jose does come up with good guidelines that reflect our values, we need to have a way to think about how we work with the state so that they don't take those guidelines away from us.

Thank you.

I urge the city to place a moratorium on all data center buildouts. Big tech already tries to hide its direct water use. After a 13-month legal battle over Google's data centers in Oregon, records show that the data centers use 1.5 million gallons of water a day, which is up to 40% of the city's total water supply. However, indirect water use is the lion's share. Last year, Meta reported their direct use as 3.1 million gallons, while indirect was over 72 million gallons, a 24 times increase. Data center submissions would likely derail San Jose's carbon neutrality commitment by 2030 indefinitely. Humans survived centuries without data centers, but none can survive without clean water. Thank you for listening.

Thank you. Over here. Good evening. I'm Sonal Nayak. I'm a nearby resident near the proposed data center adjacent to Great Oaks area. My concern is about cumulative impact of these data centers into our community. First is air quality. The project reports like a huge backup power along with the data center. I requested to fully evaluate generator emissions, including NOx and particulate matter and the cumulative impact of these data centers to the industrial facilities in the area. Second is noise. These facilities would operate 24-7. And with continuous cooling systems, generators, transformers, and electrical equipment, the nighttime noise impact to the nearby homes should be evaluated. And third is water. We request you to please disclose the peak and annual water consumption, the cooling technology, and how much portable water versus recycled water will be used. This is next to an industrial scale facility, and we need a thorough investigation of the impact to the community. Thank you.

Hi, my name is Sheikh. I have about 15 years of experience in data centers. And data centers is good for Silicon Valley, provided they are built and operated efficiently. Many data centers I see that are not quite fully utilized. That's one of the things I would recommend to put in the standards to make sure that the data centers are fully utilized, not half or one-third utilized. The committee should also consider distributed data centers, which can be smaller sizes, spread it all over the place with the air-cooled technology, air-cooled air conditioning without the use of water. And I think we should make our standards a little more strict to build and operate the data centers efficiently. Thank you.

Thank you.

Hello, my name is Lisa Charpentier. I think we need more time. We need more time for each of us to speak tonight and we need a longer schedule to get community input and as well as to understand the impacts of data centers. So I'm asking for a moratorium through at least the end of 2027. As we're talking tonight, let's look at the so-called Silicon Valley history. In December of 1981, construction workers discovered a leaking chemical solvent at Fairchild Semiconductor at their San Jose facility. This cancer-causing chemical, TCE, was then found in a nearby drinking water wells at nearly 20 times the permissible limit established by the EPA. Over the course of two years, more than 60,000 gallons of toxic chemicals leaked from the tank, spreading underground more than half a mile into the surrounding neighborhood of Los Paseos. Fairchild said that they didn't think that this could happen. The mayor said that she thought that economic activity would let this happen. We are going to repeat history.

Good evening, Lena Drape with the Santa Clara Valley Open Space Authority. The Open Space Authority's mission is to conserve the natural environment, support agriculture, and connect people to nature for current and future generations. This evening, I would like to elevate the voices in this room who represent these future generations. Every land use decision that we make today determines the choices that they will have tomorrow. So it's our responsibility to listen and make decisions that may address near-term revenue needs, but that also serve long-term economic and environmental sustainability. While the Open Space Authority has also called for a moratorium on accepting new applications until sound regulations and standards are in place, we appreciate the latest memo that does call for retroactive application. We ask that as council and staff develop these guidelines, they also pay close attention to the policy changes occurring at both the federal and state level that could loosen those local protections for these types of projects and could in effect eliminate the community's ability to meaningfully engage in decision making. As neighbors and stewards of these lands, we believe community engagement on this matter must be a priority, thank you.

Thank you.

Go ahead. I'm Krista Hamby. I live in downtown San Jose. I've been here my whole life. I have a lot of issues with data centers. But what I'd like to bring up today is I know that for 100 megawatts, there are more stringent checks that they have to do through the state guidelines. ridiculous to me that they're putting in their applications for 99 megawatts to miss that goal of 100 and getting approved for 99. So I think that the city needs to have more stringent guidelines for maybe over 50 or something because these people are getting over on you. by making it 99. And according to your own website of the approved data centers that we have so far, two are 99 megawatts and one's 91. These people are getting over because they're missing the 100 mark. And I just think that's ridiculous. I'm also worried about the air pollution from backup generators and how bad that can be. So my time's up. Thank you.

Yes, hi. Are you next?

We're going to go to the middle and then you.

Good. Thank you.

Mani Bhikkala, D3 resident and youth director for Silicon Valley Youth Climate Action. We're here to call for a pause on data center approvals until strong standards are met. Air pollution. I live a few thousand feet from the proposed data center on First Street, and my grandma lives even closer. Its diesel generators would emit as much pollution as 428 gas cars a year, and they'd be allowed to run two and a half times that much. She suffers from life-threatening respiratory conditions and lives in an old, leaky building with no HVAC. She and thousands of other vulnerable elders and children should not be subject to this danger. If built similar to the first street project, the 30 odd data centers possible in our city would produce as much pollution as up to 36,000 new gas cars. So please ban diesel generators and natural gas in all new data centers. Please require battery storage instead. We're out of our minds to lock in decades of emissions and air pollution, even as we commit to carbon neutrality in just four years. Thank you.

Thank you. Go ahead.

My name is Steve Munson, and we're here talking about the next 250 years of this town. And is it going to be good AI or bad AI? Bad AI pollutes. Good AI does not pollute. I'm developing 600 megawatts of geothermal power and can bring it here across the grid to clean up the mess that we're facing. We're looking at something like With 1,500 megawatts of new gas power, you're going to kill about 800 people, according to Heart and Lung, and you're going to give asthma to 4,800 people. This has got to stop. Is this going to be the carbon capital of California? I've got some things that I would hand out to deal with every single issue. There's 12 of them, no time to talk about it. if you would like to have the handout you can look it over and it also tells you what our company green cloud would do for this town not to it but for it and we'll keep the power uh in your hands we won't give your power away to the data centers uh thank you so much for your comment we're going to go to the first so i would look forward to what i've got if anybody wants to see these things thank you very much

Hi, I'm the Reverend Matthew McHale. I'm the minister at the First Unitarian Church downtown here. And I'm also, our church has a local organizing committee with PACT, People, Acting, and Community Together. I know there are at least four of my interfaith colleagues here today as well. We've heard a lot about various data centers Some people may know that there's, I think, 34 proposed or planned data centers. We've heard about 99 megawatt data centers. I want to talk about the one that's 417 megawatts, which would be the largest one in California, the fifth largest one in the United States that's planned on being built in Alviso, literally across the street from a residential neighborhood. They've tried to make it seem like it's actually pretty good ecologically. They talk about how they'll have their own grid, and so it won't cost rate payers any money. The reality, though, is that grid will be powered entirely by natural gas. Entirely. So I'm very concerned about the environmental impacts. I'm also concerned that you have two more developer meetings, and the next community meeting is the time where you release the final report.

Thank you so much for your comments.

And we need a moratorium.

I'm a junior in high school and a part of San Jose team of Silicon Valley Youth Climate Action. I'm concerned about the water usage of these new AI data centers. I mean, on a personal level, I'm worried about getting higher water rates the same way, the same stress that my family and a lot of other families faced during the drought a few years back. And this is on top of all the housing affordability concerns already. And on a larger level, I'm concerned about whether wastewater treatment facilities are equipped with the capabilities to handle the pollutants of the cooling tower blow downs and sufficiently so that when the water is returned back to the environment or even the potable water supply, the quality of our water quality and the local ecosystems aren't compromised. So my first request would be I would like to see in the standards that there's a guarantee about pre-filtering in the data centers so that there's less stress on the facilities, as well as just a clarification about what kind of cooling systems are they actually going to use. I hear so much about closed loop, but I would really love to see that written out. I'm so sorry to cut you off. Thank you for your comments. Thank you.

We'll go to the side of the room. Whoever's next can step to the microphone.

Go ahead. Yes.

Hello, everyone.

We're humans. We're still humans. We're not taken over by robots yet. So thank God for that. I'd like to say to city council and those making decisions, the large data center projects have already been massively approved without us knowing the harsh effects of the impacts on the environment. This is a human rights issue. Our air and our water jeopardizes humans and animals and is catastrophic for humans. our young people, our older people, everyone across the board. I would say we need to take a huge step and put a moratorium on data centers for now. Let's take a look at this, find out what the 24-hour humming noise, that type of pollution, what kind of impact that causes to our health, industrial exhausts and greenhouse emissions impact to our sewers and watershed. Thank you. Thank you.

We're gonna go to the far side of the room.

Hey, my name's Ken. I'm gonna be probably 200 feet from the Silver Creek data center that's been proposed. And it feels like I'm just hearing about these projects and they're already going to be talked about being approved in October. So it's been a little frustrating to feel like I'm being railroaded and have no say. I don't feel like public comment has really been respected. And something I want to point out is I think every single person here is representative of about 1,000 voters. So the fact that we're all here taking our time and we have the privilege to be here tonight, you know, because everyone has busy lives and it's crazy that this is in the middle of the week. I mean, on the weekend we might even see like ten times this number of people. So I just want to say I think we all need a moratorium on data centers.

Thank you. Hello my name is Andrea Ventura. I am the policy director for Clean Water Action. I'm also a San Jose resident and we to support a moratorium. We believe first of all how much do we need. We've got data centers in San Jose and I work specifically on drinking water and PFAS. My own well was taken offline because of that contamination. We don't have the water supply to support this at this time. And in the state legislature, we have seen this industry fighting any rules and standards for these data centers. As a private citizen, I also want to say that too often I've seen my city government follow bright, shiny new things, and it does not trickle down to the benefit of all of us. It's time to think beyond your own term in office, and it is time to think the long term and move more slowly and do the right thing for our communities. So we're calling for a moratorium.

We're gonna switch to this side.

Hi, my name is Lori Katcher. I'm a 24-year resident of District 6 in San Jose. I'm an organizer with Showing Up for Racial Justice, Santa Clara County, and I'm here speaking for myself. Thank you. I agree with so much of what my fellow community members have shared tonight. And I'm just looking at the fact of this little form that says that you're going to have eight small group working sessions with three to four participants. So am I correct that that is 32 people total? Is that correct?

We can obviously add more if we need to.

Okay. So I think that the evidence of the number of people in this room, the number of people in the overflow room, which is where I was, and the so many people that don't even know this is happening yet tonight, We are your stakeholders. We are the people that will be breathing this air, that will be drinking this water, that will be living in the increased heat of our climate here in the midst of data center heat, and we deserve a robust community engagement session. That's what we deserve, and so we're asking for a moratorium until this engagement session is extended. Thank you.

Yeah, yeah. Is this working? Yes. Well, thank you, everyone. We are going to switch sections. But obviously, if you want to stay within the same comment, please do. We are, you know, one of the things that this is a community session. I want to be as flexible as I can and want you to be and be able to feel comfortable in whatever comments you want to make. We did provide some guidance. on kind of what we were hoping to hear about. But obviously, it's what you want to comment on. This section is supposed to be related to community benefits, public engagement, and project design, if there's anything specific to that. But of course, we're open to any comments. I will note as well that, as Erica mentioned, we wanted to have the small group sessions, because that way you can also spend a lot more time on specific subjects. based on the interest, we can increase the number of those small group sessions. That is not an issue. And part of the process, too, is to determine if additional large community meetings will be needed as well. So we will be looking at all of that as we go through this process. And that's why we're here, to hear your comments. This section is regarding community benefits, public engagement, and project design. But anything you want to comment on, of course, we'll take. And I will note, if there's people who haven't spoken yet, please let them go first. And then if there's an opportunity and you want to speak and you already spoke on the first subject and want to say something new regarding this one, please let people who haven't spoken after they had their opportunity. So really appreciate your time. Thank you.

OK, we're going to go to the far side of the room first.

Awesome. I'll try to switch gears real quick and talk about project design. My name is Sarah Friedman. I'm with an entity called the Better Data Center Project that studies data centers across the country and I'm a multi-generational resident. I just want to add it's really hard to talk about community benefits when you're also talking about environmental harms. There was a reference up about the role of the Bay Area Quality Management District in permitting these projects. The Bay Area Quality Management District has repeatedly raised concerns with permitting diesel generators in the neighborhood of Alviso, which is a community with a high existing air quality burden. scores really high on CalEnviro's environmental justice screen so as we think about you know all the the benefits and the jobs also think about what it means for the people living in Alviso who are repeatedly bearing these burdens and environmental injustices as well as what it means for other land uses in San Jose which could move forward thank you thank you

Hi, everyone. My name is Dasha Leeds. I live in San Jose. I'm with the Sierra Club Loma Prieta chapter. The absolute best form that these standards could take is a moratorium, because any other form of standards will fundamentally fail to protect us from the harms of AI data centers. So for example, by California law, utility data is private. So energy use, water use, the public can't verify that. So we just have to trust the companies. We just have to trust the city that they're adhering to the standards. But we can't verify it according to law. Infrasound, for example, sound below 40 hertz that affects our bodies, that we feel even though we can't hear it, that penetrates through solid barriers. So there's nothing that they can build that's going to stop infrasound from coming into our communities. The only way to stop infrasound is to stop building the things that produce infrasound. diesel backup generators as well. There's loopholes that allow them to run them way more than we think they're going to, which release carcinogens and toxicity into our community. And a lot of times the city doesn't even know if a data center is going to be AI or not when they permit it to be built. And when these chips get replaced, that also changes the environmental footprint. So there's really the best form that we have here is a prohibition.

I'm sorry to cut you off, Dash. Thank you.

We'll go to this side. Hi, my name is Noelle Andrade. I live in San Jose. I'd like to take this time to make the connection that I haven't heard yet between data centers, AI technology and mass surveillance and anti-immigrant use of AI. So San Jose cannot claim to be an immigrant welcoming city when it empowers ICE to use data centers that are the powerhouses of AI technology used to mass surveil, detain, and deport immigrants. You cannot claim to the public that you do not collaborate with ICE if you're ground zero for the powerhouses of this technology. One of the most recognizable tech tools we've seen federal immigration agents use is a facial recognition app called Mobile Fortify. They've scanned thousands of immigrants' and protesters' faces. DHS has publicly disclosed that it uses more than 10 AI-enabled facial recognition tools. This kind of street level surveillance raises questions about consent and whether a warrant was obtained. How many times have we seen ICE agents snap pictures of us and download it into a system? AI stands for anti-immigrant as well as artificial intelligence.

Good evening. My name is Frances Hebert and I'm the president of the Oak Grove School District. I'm also a member of the District 2 Neighborhood Leadership Council but I'm speaking today as a resident. I'm on the community benefits. Our education community has not been consulted. Unfortunately we have four applications just within my school district that will impact my families and my students and my schools. out in South San Jose and we've had no say so. And the most concerning one is at Hitachi where we just approved a land use split to allow for a data center that's right next to our community right next to a park that the children are playing at. And we actually at one point was supposed to be a community center for District 2. And so we're going the wrong way. I believe we need to have a moratorium and talk about over concentration within our community. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good evening. My name is Nora Carino, and I'm a District 8 resident and a member of Silicon Valley Youth Climate Action. I'm here to ask for a pause on data center approvals until the draft standards called for by the memo are developed, released for public comment, and adopted. We need transparency and community input before moving forward. When power fails, backup generators will be relied on, which can emit as much pollution as 2.5 times the amount of pollution of 13,000 gas cars. Harmful pollution will be going directly into our neighborhoods and exasperating respiratory illnesses and other chronic issues, which can be especially bad for the children and elders of our community and is definitely not sustainable for future generations. We need to protect our community, so we ask that a plan is made to generate this electricity and that the electricity is 100% carbon-free, ensuring that data centers don't overload the grid and drive up utility rates for San Jose residents. Please continue coordination with the Planning and Energy Department to ensure that the electricity is 100% carbon-free. A rushed three-month timeline. Thank you. Go ahead.

I'm Lyndon Shea, and I worked for the city for 25 years. I've lived in San Jose for 24 years. And in terms of public engagement, I was chagrined to get here and find that one, the elevator to get into chambers is still not working. It wasn't working yesterday. Two, you put us in the wing, which, you know, when you're saying that you want public engagement, it feels sort of disingenuous to then cram us all in here. So it doesn't feel like you really want our input. Two, in terms of project design, when you're assessing these things for water, make sure it's real water and not paper water, if you know what I mean, that it's actual water resources. And then is this industry, which seems like it's not necessarily viable yet, what if it goes belly up too? What about end of life management for these centers?

I'm so sorry to cut you off at the end of your time.

Thank you.

Go ahead.

Good evening. My name is Shani Kleinhouse. I'm the environmental advocate for the Santa Clara Valley Bird Alliance and we protect the birds and the habitat they live in. We have we add our voice to the request to pause developing or approving data centers until after these standards are complete. We have specific concerns with any data centers near Elvisa, where the burrowing owls live, they rely on sound to find their prey, or data centers near rivers and creeks. One of the potential things, since we're asked about benefits, A setback that could be used by the community would be a good thing. If you set a setback from the development itself, you can have uses there that serve the community and you also have a buffer in case something goes wrong and you discover things you haven't before. And lastly, I want to say that the current noise...

I'm so sorry to cut you off, but that's your time. Thank you so much.

Hello everyone. My name is Marcos Espinoza. I'm the president of Alviso in Action. I just want to shout out to everyone that's mentioned the small town of Alviso and the major impact that these data centers will present to it. I just want to say to the city and council members that one easy step we could take towards these data centers is to require a full EIR on each project that's proposed to the city. Even large energy user projects as well should be required to use a full IAR that's up to date and that's new and not from, you know, 2000. The next thing I would want to say is, you know, there's only one Google. And for any publicly voted in politician, there's thousands of us. So thank you.

Good evening, everyone. My name is Vince Agru and I represent nearly a thousand folks with the Sheet Metal Workers Local 104. We're the decarbonization union. We're really proud to do it. We want to express some concerns and we appreciate this tonight. You know, there are existing data centers in San Jose and we want to make sure our members test and balance systems and we want to make sure that these systems are running as efficiently as possible. I want to point everyone to SB 887 Padilla as what I think is a model and has been brought forth by a variety of prominent environmental groups in the state of California. I do not know if this governor is going to sign that, but that has a robust list of community benefits, and I think San Jose should be looking at that as a beacon of success. And the final thing I'll say is data centers, these folks have a ton of money. We should be looking at the most robust community benefits possible that include project labor agreements, not just for large projects, but for small projects as well. We don't want out-of-state contractors building these things that they are going to get built.

Really appreciate your time. Thank you.

Hello, City Council. My name is Ace, and I'm a 17-year-old disabled student at Silver Creek High School here with the San Jose Youth Climate Action Team. One of my conditions, postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome, makes me struggle with extreme heat intolerance. I use a cane daily because high temperatures cause me dizziness, nausea, and fainting, and worse is my chronic knee injury. I am one of 55,000 disabled people in San Jose who would be negatively affected by data centers. A primary material in data center construction is concrete, which holds immense amounts of heat and contributes to temperatures rising around data centers by up to 16 degrees Fahrenheit. People who can't regulate their body temperature well are especially vulnerable to this, and outdoor workers, even regardless of age or health, are likely to experience consequences like exertional heat stroke from extreme heat exposure. For the sake of children, the elderly, and disabled teens like me, I urge you to please pause and listen to community opinions past December. Building data centers is consequential for us all. Thank you for your time.

Go ahead.

Good evening. My name is Ricardo Miranda. I'm an Eastside San Jose resident. And to be honest, I'm sort of confused as to why you're requesting public input when you can see all the negative impacts that data centers have across the nation. More Perfect Union, a nonprofit advocacy organization dedicated to helping working class people, uncovered last year that the introduction of data centers resulted in rate payers seeing increases in their electricity bill. The same testimony has been given from the Environmental and Energy Study Institute, another nonprofit organization, as well as the Environmental and Energy Law Program at Harvard Law School. To quote Miguel ,, a project manager for the Environmental and Energy Study Institute, in states with a high concentration of data centers like Virginia, electricity prices have increased by up to 267% over the last five years. This figure comes from a Bloomberg article published on September 29, 2025. I can only imagine how the electricity prices have changed since. Despite rising electricity costs, data centers- I'm so sorry to cut you off, but that's your time. Thank you. Sure. If I can just ask one last question just to you guys. Are you willing to burden the residents of San Jose even more than they already have been by the likes of PG&E to satisfy the multi-trillion dollar industry?

Good evening my name is Doug Block I'm with the Silicon Valley maps where the mechanical crafts of the building trades union. Our members have been on the front lines of these data centers for over a decade building and maintaining them. And as we look at this question that communities across the United States are struggling with which is can responsible data center development happen. We were out there from the very beginning pushing this city to adopt strong community benefit labor environmental and transparency standards for data center projects. If we're going to build them in San Jose let's make sure we do it right. Thank you.

Hello my name is Virgil Sriram. I'm a 17 year old student at Silver Creek High School and I am here with the San Jose Action Team of SWYCA. I am very fortunate to have the time, the money, and the resources it takes to come out here today for the two hours so I can share why I believe these data centers shouldn't be built without more transparency and longer time listening to the community input. I know there are people in my community who cannot afford to do this. Tech corporations are already using zoning practices targeting lower income communities. Often those most affected are disadvantaged people of color. These are the same people who will be most impacted by the data centers we plan to build. Three months of listening to community input is not enough. to get a wide array of perspectives. Please consider pushing the date back to December. I also ask that you mandate complete transparency from the companies about these buildings that will be affecting us. We must be informed about the cost, even if this is for the best interest of the community. Thank you.

Hello, everyone. My name is Jariah Haug. I'm a lifelong District 4 resident speaking on myself today. And I am saying that the best community benefit is a moratorium on these data centers until we find and figure out a way that we can responsibly build them. There should be a cap on water consumption, and all of them should have closed-loop systems. There should be a cap on energy consumption and generation of these data centers. And if there's a rolling blackout, they should be the first to turn off. There should be multiple EIRs every year, not just when they're first accepted. EIRs every single year seeing their water consumption, their decibels year after year, and also corporations aren't reliable for community benefits package. We should tax them instead and use that revenue for childcare and affordable housing. We really need to make sure that these data centers are not just taking away energy and water for us. It should work for everyone. And until we can figure out a way we do that, we need to stop the approval of all of them. Thank you.

Hello, everyone. My name is Aureliano Ochoa, and I'm representing the Heat and Frost Insulators Local 16. And we are an energy conservation specialist. If we get to build this, we will make sure it will be built to the higher standards. I know this is a big concern for everyone, but as a tradesman, when I look at a data center, I see a good family sustaining union jobs. These projects create hundreds of thousands of hours for skilled local people. jobs with union wages, health care, pensions, and local apprenticeship programs to give young people in our communities a real career path. Beyond the jobs, this project is bringing a strong tax base to San Jose, generating revenue that supports our city, services, parks, and public safety without putting a strain on local schools. I know this is hard for everyone, but I know we all can work together, and it's possible we're looking to these things be built under PLA so we can bring our people and give the opportunity we just told you about.

Thank you so much for your time.

And hopefully we can work all together and bring a solution for everyone.

Thank you. Go ahead.

We can build that too. Please, let's be respectful of other people's comments. If you want to cheer for somebody, yes, but let's not, you know, jeer against somebody's comments. Thank you.

Go ahead.

good evening my name is mitch austin and i've been in san jose my entire life 35 years i'm fifth generation santa clara county resident my family's been here for 120 years in san jose california my great grandfather worked with ibw 332 as an inside wireman back in the orchards and the canneries over 90 years ago. My father worked at Applied Materials Building 1 50 years ago, because that was the time, that was the era. Today, I work at a data center in San Jose, California, and I work safe at a data center in San Jose, California with IBW Local 332. It allows me the opportunity to provide for my family, give healthcare to my daughter who's two years old, and also get properly educated to safe conditions. There needs to be constraints with project labor agreements, there needs to be awareness, it needs to be transparent, and it needs to be strong union housed families in here, this local. Keep it in Santa Clara County, keep leading the charge. Just like we did in 1996 with Exodus, the first data center.

Thank you.

Hello my name is Althea Lane Haug and I've been a lifelong resident of San Jose for pretty much almost all my life and my family has been here since the 80s and I'm just really concerned about especially the data centers that's currently being built on Fortune Drive and Trains Road Boulevard and I worry about the environmental impact because it's in close proximity to all these townhouses and condos and it's literally just a couple blocks from an elementary school. And I worry about how it affects not only my family my friends and neighbors and anyone who's my parents age who are reaching retirement. And I just also worry about future generations. And I think that we should rein in on these data centers and make sure that our resources like clean water energy won't be affected and that the air won't be polluted. Thank you.

Hi my name is Crystal I'm a resident of District 10 and one of the first things that has to be considered in environmental review is the impact of not doing the project. And I don't think you've convinced people that we need them. First of all it sounds nice that you're asking us for input on how to create standards for these. But data centers are new. And we're all hearing about the negative effects in other communities and we're trying to bring up those concerns but there's really no way that we can understand at this early point in time what the full impacts of one of these centers are let alone dozens or more that are planned throughout the city and the region. So the idea that we can come up with comprehensive standards in just a few months I think is ridiculous. We need a moratorium. I believe it's really going to be years before we actually understand the full impacts of these centers on communities.

Thank you.

Good evening. My name is my name is Will Smith with IBEW local 3 3 2 27 year member. I've worked on data centers I probably built over a dozen data centers in my career and that's allowed me to help provide for my six children as well as my two grandkids. I've put a child through college. One just graduated from UC Davis this year and the year before that I'm blessed to have a daughter that graduated from UC San Diego. These create real good jobs for the community and I'm It's wonderful that we have the opportunity to try to shape these things because I do live in San Jose. I have grandkids that live here in San Jose. I have kids that live here in San Jose. So the last thing I want is the environmental impacts to suffer for people here in San Jose. That is the last thing I want. We can make sure we build these things responsibly, make sure we hold these developers accountable, so that way they build them safe, they build them with good union jobs, and they make sure they give back community benefits, including a ton of taxes.

I'm so sorry to cut you off well thank you.

Good evening I'm a public health student and a lifelong downtown resident and I support a data center moratorium until strict genuinely enforceable environmental regulations are created and if utility confidentiality agreements prevent that then the moratorium should continue. Of the three proposals in San Jose alone, all of them include massive residential components, one with more than a thousand units. But how does the city propose to mitigate the public health impacts of natural gas and diesel generators, toxic water pollutants, including PFAS being created literally on the same block as these residences? fire risk from stored diesel, natural gas, or backup batteries, the urban heat island effect from evaporating water, noise pollution in a close urban space, asthma causing pollution from fuel cells that the city has still not banned data centers from using. And to return to San Jose's own stated priorities, data centers emit greenhouse gases that would set our city's climate goals back more than we are ever likely to make up at a time when we are failing on almost every metric. Thank you so much.

Hello, I bought my first home in District 3 recently and every day I am concerned that I'll hear that a new data center will be approved in my neighborhood. And I feel for my fellow residents who have already heard similar news and who know that only physical, mental, and financial pain awaits them. I understand that it is important to find new sources of tax revenue for the city, but the avenue with which to do so is not by rushing to jump on this bandwagon. These big tech companies want us to rush, to get swept up in the AI bubble, and to compete to attract their business. But it is not business that is good for San Jose. This business revenue is not going to stay local. These are not going to support our communities. We already know about the immense negative impact on our local environment. New research and case studies are always coming out about new ways that this is contaminating and hurting residents, and time will only tell on the long-term health impacts on our community and on our children. I'm sorry to cut you off.

That's your time. Thank you.

Good evening. My name is Peter Seberg, and I am the business manager of IBW Local 332. We represent several thousand hardworking men and women in the construction electrical trades. They make their living over 30, 40 years building these projects and many like these here in this city and surrounding communities. And while these projects bring a lot of very well-paying jobs with great benefits that allow us to raise our families here in this very expensive area, there are a lot of valid concerns. And I want to applaud the city and the council and the mayor and staff to take these extra efforts and be leading the way here in the Bay Area to look at extra measures and stronger protections for how these projects are gonna be built. So I do wanna encourage the city, take a very strong approach with these developers. The owners do have the money to contribute to the city, the parks, the schools, our apprenticeship programs, and the development for our youth to get in some great construction career trades. Thank you.

Thank you, Pete. Go ahead. Good evening, I'm D3 resident Rome Hamner, and I'm here to add my voice to those asking the city to put a moratorium on accepting and processing new data center proposals until the uniform standards and best practices for data centers are approved. If I read the slides at the top of the meeting correctly, there are two developer round tables before there is another community input meeting. If I did read that correctly, then that fact would speak volumes about which interests are currently being prioritized. I respectfully ask the city to pause accepting and processing new data center proposals until after the uniform standards and best practices have a full public input process and are approved by the community. Thank you.

Eric Negomir Good evening. Eric Negomir here with the Silicon Valley Leadership Group and thank you all for being here and holding this session. We appreciate the tradition of Silicon Valley and San Jose in particular is the beating heart of American innovation. And we are committed to seeing that tradition continue and grow into the future and do so in a responsible way. And data centers are an integral piece of our technology future, and it is upon us to make this progress in a way that is sustainable, that is responsible, and that serves all of the members of our community. So thank you for your time, for being here, and we look forward to partnering with you to advance this important work and welcome the future.

Good evening. Good evening. My name is Vanessa Lemos Tapia and I'm speaking today on behalf of the South Bay Labor Council and we support a community driven process for data center developments here in San Jose. This city should establish the high standards with and for workers residents and impacted communities. For labor, that means good union jobs and healthy communities, prevailing wages, apprenticeship programs and pathways, local hire, strong safety standards, and responsible contractors. It also means protecting our community through responsible water and energy use, strong environmental standards, and ensuring working families and small businesses don't subsidize these projects. And because data centers generate tremendous economic value, San Jose and its residents should share in that value through meaningful, ongoing revenue for critical public services. Above all, these standards should be transparent, measurable, and enforceable. Thank you.

Thank you. I just want to ask, if you're standing in line and you have already spoken, if you wouldn't mind letting the people who haven't spoken just come up to the mic in front of you. I see some faces that haven't yet. Go ahead.

Good evening, my name is Peter Leroux Munoz representing the Bay Area Council. I want to begin my very short comments building off of what Mr. William Smith mentioned about the tax revenue. It's very important that we ground any discussion in facts. And a typical modern data center generates between $3 million and $7 million annually in city property and utility users tax. And unlike housing or commercial office space, data centers tax revenue is placed with zero operational demand on city schools, parks, or other resources that the city may need to otherwise deploy in other areas. That revenue flows directly to the general fund. So when we are talking about other important good things, affordable housing, parks, libraries, those come with real costs. and data centers help to provide a means of economic resilience for the city. The rate affordability, that is a community benefit by the way,

Excuse me, excuse me, excuse me. Let's respect everybody's time, please. We have a lot of speakers here. Let's respect everybody's time. Let's be fair. Everybody gets their time to say their thoughts. Thank you. Rate affordability.

You are out of time.

Yeah, you are out of time. Am I out of time responding to that? Yeah, yeah. There were like two seconds left.

Rate affordability is also something that is critical to the community.

You are out of time.

And that is something that is driven down by...

Thank you.

So excuse me a second please everybody. One thing I ask right we will take everybody's comments I think you are out of time. There was like two or three seconds left. We'll take everybody's comments and we still have time and people who have spoken already will be able to come up and speak again. I think that even if you disagree with someone, let's give everybody the opportunity to have their time to speak, and certainly when you come up, you can speak as well even if you disagree with it. No, did he or did he not say he was from the mayor's office? No. No, he's- Okay, he wasn't, I apologize. He's not from the mayor, okay. I apologize. I take that back. Okay, thank you very much. So we are we are so just once again right we still have time. Let's just respect the time. Let's let's give everybody a minute. We'll get started again and that way we don't lose more time where people can take to actually speak and give us comments. Thank you.

Go ahead. Hello, all. I'm 25 years old, and I've worked in both the psychiatric and education fields. I'm deeply concerned about the widespread use of AI. Overall, generative AI is a fad. AI fuels the anti-intellectualism movement and is linked to decreases in self-confidence and resiliency, especially among youth. I worry for my students every day. I've conducted early psychosis research and given what I know about psychosis, I worry when reading about how chat bots have worsened psychosis episodes that people experienced and even inspired some of them to die by suicide. Overall, generative AI exists due to the theft of intellectual property of creators. Please think of the youth who will inherit this earth. Here in Silicon Valley, as a hub of technological advancements, we can lead the way and prioritize the humane use of our land. Please advocate for us. Stop the data centers from being built. Thank you.

Yes, my name is Elena Churchill. I'm a long-time resident of Malpitas. I'm a caretaker to three disabled senior citizens. One, a Vietnam vet in a wheelchair, another bedridden completely that needs total patient care including all meals cooked, et cetera, et cetera. I'm here to call out our dirty politicians. I have been dealing with Apple selling hacked counterfeit products and the assistant district attorney not pressing charges. Cyber security, if the government cannot make cyber security a safety for the people, then it can't be done. Data centers are proven to be destructive to our communities, not a positive. This isn't a positive for the people, and the people need to really be aware. You don't see Mayor Matt Mahon anymore. He left when he saw me. For an entire year, I have been calling him out on Apple headquarters and Apple in Pam Foley's district selling counterfeit, hacked products that are not being prosecuted. Thank you for your time. Thank you.

Hello, I would like to remind everybody that the data centers that everybody is concerned about are new. They're AI data centers. They are not the traditional data centers we think about. They are loud, they are bright, they use a lot of water, and they use a lot of energy. This is what people are concerned about. And we don't know what might happen when the AI businessmen who build these data centers decide to close shop and San Jose is left with empty, expensive buildings. Please support a moratorium.

Thank you. Thank you, we're gonna go with the people who haven't talked, perfect, thanks, go ahead.

Lots of discussion this evening about the dangers of data centers, but we're not speaking about the threat of AI itself. In the last few months, word has leaked out that AI has gotten out of the control of the developers and has the capability of creating new viruses, developing autonomous weapons, and other very dangerous situations. We need to completely halt the data centers in order to stop AI, not just develop some standards. Thank you.

My name is Rick Mandel and I'm in favor of the moratorium because until we understand where we've been we really can't move forward unless we shortchange ourselves like for instance in the old days they oversubscribed the use of the Colorado River and now seven states are paying for it right now. It's just like when I consider cooking a meal I have to make sure I have all my ingredients my cooking equipment and the process down. So too should San Jose do the same with their desire to build and approve data centers. Thank you.

Thank you. Go ahead, at the end.

Hi, my name is Dr. Tammy Truong and I work for the Santa Clara Public Health Department and I'm proud to serve our community. I immigrated and grew up in San Jose since I was five years old. I'm here to speak for myself and the future of my nine and six year old children. I ask for a pause in data center development. According to the American Lung Association, global cases of COPD are projected to approach over 600 million by 2050, a 23% increase from 2020. My husband is an emergency department nurse, And I hear firsthand how our healthcare system is already overburdened. Imagine how many unnecessary emergency department admissions there will be because of the negative effects of healthcare on data center causes. And for the families who can't pay for those healthcare bills, who pays for those healthcare bills? Us, the taxpayers.

Thank you. Thank you for your comments. Go ahead. Yeah we'll do you again. They've spoken once already. Let me restart the timer. Oh, it's, go ahead.

Hi, my name is Larry Bosch. I'm a almost 40-year resident of District 2, and I'm a retired lawyer. I was curious about how the process goes for some of these approvals for planning the data centers. So I looked into the project for 300 Holger Way, And I found out that it skated through without any real public review other than the planning, building, and code enforcement department. And that was because it generally fit into the projections of the general plan that was adopted like 10 years ago before data centers were even thought of, I guess. So the zoning in that particular area was IP Industrial Park, which meant that it didn't have to go to the city council. There was no appeal process.

I'm so sorry to cut you off, but that's your time. Thank you. I'm just looking. Ma'am, have you spoken yet? Why don't you go ahead?

Hi, my name's Rachel. I'm a resident of district, the third district. I actually relocated to San Jose about eight months ago. I'm originally from the southeast. And what I'm trying to figure out also because I've worked in the energy sector for the last decade and so I understand how these data centers are built and I also understand how they're maintained and operated over time. I'm just trying to figure out as a project manager, typically we provide an estimated ROI to the client to showcase why the said project is beneficial. So where is the return on the investment for the residents who are going to be carrying the burden of the grid? I don't think you have any other choice but to put it in a moratorium because you have no case right now about why we should want it.

Thank you so much for your comments. Is there anybody else that hasn't spoken that would like to speak before we go to the... Okay, all right. Go ahead, ma'am.

Many people in the industry are very aware of the concept of phantom or ghost data centers or fake data centers. There is severe overbuild. Average enterprise and colocation data centers have a 5% GPU utilization rate. hyperscale centers, it's about 65%. They are massively overbuilt and the reason they are massively overbuilt are their placeholders. They are getting in while the getting is good and they're getting all kinds of quote unquote incentives by any means necessary. A moratorium that is in the most basic financial safety FOR ANY CITY NEEDS TO BE THROUGH THE END OF 2027 Q1 OF 2028.

THERE IS EXTENSIVE I'M SO SORRY TO CUT YOU OFF THAT'S YOUR TIME BUT MAYBE YOU CAN GO BACK TO THE END OF THE LINE OKAY WE'LL GO OVER HERE ONE SECOND GO AHEAD

Yeah, once again, all the opinions are my own. We don't live in Alabama or Arizona. We live in San Jose, California. All these big, you guys need to listen to me really carefully. We know that the mayor isn't even in charge anymore. It's the big CEOs. They should be right in front of us right now. It's a 40 minute drive at most. All the big CEOs of these companies, they live down the street. They're going to they're about to put this data center right there. They don't care about it because they've never lived our experience. They don't know what it's like to be from the bay from San Jose. Like next time I hope because I bet the mayor has everyone's cell phone on speed dial maybe have them come up here because there's the ones that making all the decisions they're going to make the final decision anyways. It just feels like yeah we're all telling you something and it just going into a black hole. So thank you.

Thank you.

So we do have the last 15 minutes for public comment. Obviously, the comment has been pretty flexible throughout, but we want to make sure we do those 15 minutes as well. If you haven't already spoken, this is your opportunity to speak again. We'll keep it to one minute as well. And before I continue, I just did want to acknowledge that Council Member Campos is here as well. And she's been here for the meeting. I apologize for missing you earlier, Council Member Campos, listening to the public comment. So please continue.

Thank you. So I'm going to talk about two things. It's in Santa Teresa, we have two massive data centers. There's one on Almaden that was discussed at council last night. Another one on, do you want me to start again? Okay. I used to work at the one on Bailey Avenue. It was massively powerful, and the reason it had to be so powerful is that I had to be able to recreate any kind of bug that occurred at one of our clients, like Federal Express, an airline, like American, or whatever. They were water-cooled. IBM paid for all the infrastructure. You can see the power lines. We know what's out there. The other thing I want to close off with is what's going to happen if we don't allow them to be here. XAI, SpaceX have built a two gigawatt data center in Memphis. That's the entire capacity of San Jose. Google are paying them $920 million a year for 20 years, and Tropics are paying them $1.2 billion a year. That's money that should be coming to San Jose. Thank you.

Thank you so much for your comment. Go ahead.

So I want to address a few things. First of all, the amount of money that these are going to generate for the city of San Jose. I want to remind you again that the maximum business tax in San Jose is capped at $190,000, period. Yes, if someone's going to make millions and millions of dollars, it isn't going to be us. The other thing I want to highlight is I want to address the issue of labor. We're about to build enormous multi-story buildings in the city of San Jose. What else could you put on there? How about homes? Do those need labor? Do those need good union electricians and plumbers and builders? Absolutely. Why aren't we using those huge pieces of property to build the things that we already know we need and have huge public benefit? So thanks.

Thank you.

And just one clarification because I know it's come up a couple of times. From a revenue generation perspective, and I did say that this beginning very lightly because that's not why we're here today, but it's come up a couple of times. The biggest source from a data center is actually the utility usage tax, which depend-

Is that is the utility users tax?

It's not. Yeah, that's the biggest revenue. And depending on the size of the data center, because it's based on how much electricity it uses, it can be three to seven million dollars a year. So just wanted to note that because I know it's the same comments come up a few times. It's not meant to change anyone's perspective or anything just to let you know where when we talk about revenue and you'll see it in some of our other presentations. Obviously, there's property taxes and everything else. But the utility user tax is the big number.

Is there an independent audit of that? Is that publicly available? Is there an independent audit of all of those figures that you guys are telling?

So those numbers come as an estimate. So when we collect utility user tax, it comes from PG&E for the entire city. It's based on how much revenue they get. So if we get 5% off of PG&E gross receipts, that can be calculated based on their usage, their load factor. I'm happy to share with you what that calculation looks like, but it is an estimate.

We will put it on the website, and what we'll do as well is we will share with you the current revenue we collect in utility users tax based on the current energy sales in the city. So that gives you a comparison point as well.

Yeah, I'd appreciate that. I mean, I think for the existing facilities, right, you should have that data. The Equinix facility that's off Great Oaks, you should have that data, right? Just going back to what I was saying as far as the concentration, cumulative review, I think somebody had mentioned this before. A real assessment, not project by project, but corridor by corridor. You have five or six data centers within a mile and a half radius of people's homes. That's a lot of impact to those communities. Timing, clarify whether these standards that you're setting apply to projects in the pipeline as well as projects in the future and existing facilities. If you're setting standards, what good does it do to my daughter who's at Baldwin Elementary half a mile away from the Equinix data center? Third, audited numbers. Again, like we said, audited public reporting and then a seat at the table. You talked about the 32 people that are allowed to join. Expand that and have neighborhood associations have real input, not just the working groups and the trade unions.

Thank you so much. And just to that note, I think you emailed me about the neighborhood association. Yes, I'm happy to come and speak to neighborhood associations. So if there are other neighborhood associations, we're happy to do that. Go ahead. Oh, did you speak already? Okay, go ahead.

Hi, my name's Kyle, I'm a software engineer. I also like facts, so let's talk about a couple facts. I think the first one is that if you're asking the community what they want, I think they're saying no. The other fact is that another gentleman brought up the XAI data center. Elon has built himself some data centers, and I promise you if the ROI on those data centers were so great, he would just use it himself and make all that money. He's not using it, and he's pawning it off to Anthropic. So just, those are some facts, thanks.

Who was in line first. I'll go with you. Let me restart the timer one second.

OK. So I had a question to pose. Maybe I got this wrong but how are we cooling the data centers at the Great Oats area. Is it closed loop water recycled water. Well, I'm part of the district too. Good thing our council members here, Pamela Campos, I'm also part of a neighborhood association. The Great Oaks water, if you can't answer that question, I'm gonna assume that they're using closed loop recycled water. I think that it's false because if you do a simple Google search or a chat GPT search, it'll say that the Great Oaks Water Company does not provide recycled water. So where are we getting recycled water for this cooling system for the current data center?

That's my question.

Thank you.

Go ahead.

I just don't like this. So you brought up the subject of the utility users tax. Last week several of us spent over two hours on the phone waiting to make a comment to the CPUC because PG&E has another rate increase before them right now. And that rate increase is going to cover the infrastructure that they are required to build for the data centers and we the consumer will be paying that fee. That is what PG&E is asking for. So on top of everything else we are going to have increased electricity costs because PG&E will get their rate increase because the CPUC has never seen a PG&E request for a rate increase that they didn't love. So that's on us.

Thank you.

Go ahead, Manny.

I'd like to add a couple more things. First about community benefit agreements. This will only work in combination with really, really, really strong standards and we need to think about what community harms have the potential to be made and what community benefits would most make up for those harms. So one of the things is air pollution. I and a vast majority of San Jose residents will count it as a failure if data centers leave air pollution in our city worse than it has started. So we need to have really strong standards on the air pollution and fund programs that will improve air quality in the communities most burdened by these proposed data centers and already by existing projects with things like rebates for electric home appliances and electric vehicles to clean indoor and outdoor air quality. I'd also like to add that Taking community input, if you listen to the community input, it's a dereliction of duty not to implement a pause. That's the opinion of the vast majority of people here. In every other forum, please take that on. And everyone else here, please stay organized.

Thank you.

Again, Reverend Matthew McHale with First Unitarian Church of San Jose downtown. And I started to talk about energy use. One of the things that I haven't heard today is that we've made a lot of progress in putting more renewable energy on the grid and trying to scale down fossil fuel usage. The building of data centers is undercutting that work dramatically. Fossil fuel plants that have been slated for closure are now getting run back up. Last year, I believe half of all new energy being used was used by data centers. All energy growth came from data centers. Back in 2023, data centers took about 4.5% of all U.S. energy usage. That was 2023. So that was before the exponential growth that we're already starting to see is planning to take off. So this is something we should be deeply concerned about, not just here, but across the country, around the world.

Thank you. Go ahead Roland.

Thank you. So to wrap up on the IBM data centers, they are the absolute gold standard and this is where you have to start when you set up your whatever. And what you've got to do to start with is ask IBM what's your current capacity and then see if you can make it scale, okay, because they've been doing this for 40 years. Now, where's my clock? Okay, now on the comments made about Elon Musk, I respectfully disagree. Right now, Elon Musk is so sick and tired of people blocking out data centers all over the world, he's actually going to launch them into space. And the day he does that, good luck having community benefits, PLAs, or anything else. The only thing that's stopping him right now is the dollar amount per ton of payload. That's the only thing that's stopping him, and he's getting there. Thank you.

Thank you. I see a couple of folks who haven't spoken yet. The person in the red hat. Do you want to go. You haven't spoken yet have you sir.

I have not. Thank you.

OK great. I'm going to let him speak first.

Thank you.

Go ahead sir.

My name is Chuck Carroll I live down near several of the data centers in Blossom Valley and in Santa Teresa area and I'm very concerned about all of this. One of the things that I think that I'll just speak for myself. I feel like from the top of the government down, we're being railroaded these days. And one thing that unites left and right is that we feel that. And I think San Jose has a chance to stand up for regular people and show that we are opposed to this kind of development in a giant rush. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you. Before, and I think we're gonna go there next, I think you were ahead, but before we continue, if you're already in line, we'll finish off with those comments, and then we'll close out after that, so whoever's in line right now, we'll make sure we have the time to let them finish.

And I would like to let the people who haven't spoken yet, if you guys could go to the mic first, go ahead.

Thank you.

I'm Mother Ana Lange Soto from Trinity Episcopal Cathedral here in San Jose. And I must admit to being confused because the question is, do you want to put the standards before things are built and that I don't understand how anyone could say to accept proposals or to build anything before the standards are created. And then of course I've heard that everyone is very concerned about the standards being deep enough. So thank you. Thank you. Go ahead.

I'm answering the doctor's question about water. The new data centers, the good ones, can be built without water, like our company is going to do. There is a technology that chills the chips, so there's no water used. So there are alternatives, and we should be looking at that kind of thing as a requirement, potentially. Certainly like to see this go into the general plan. Also, geothermal, our company could provide about a third of the new power for the data centers. And the final point is, you know, enough is enough. The data centers, just by the hyperscalers, are putting out, will when they're online, 7% of all the pollution. 7% of all the carbon is just coming right now from the big companies that are using gas-fired generation. So I ask you to put that into the general plan, guys, when you get to it. Thank you.

Thank you. I'm sorry. Go ahead. I just want to shout out to Pamela Campos and her staff. They're the only elected officials who were here the entire time. So I think they deserve a shout out. I'll take that time. And then I wanted to say, I come from an area in LA, I hold the booing, that is Sunshine Canyon. Sunshine Canyon was a nuclear dump site. They told people not to worry about it. And now they live in really nice cul-de-sacs that this one's the pancreatic cancer one, this one's the brain cancer one, et cetera. There was a documentary that was done about it. That's why it's so personal to me. Government said not to worry, and all these people are dying. So we can't trust the government. And it's so great to see everybody out here saying, kiss my ass. Like, we are in control, and you need to listen to us, because we don't trust you, and we will hold you accountable. Lastly, it is not solving homelessness when you constantly move them around and around and around, because you won't spend money on them, but you will spend money on your precious data centers.

I'm going to let Will go, and then we'll go to you. Go ahead, Will.

Thank you. Will with IBEW Local 332. I was just in Sacramento lobbying on behalf of, well, multiple bills, but one bill in particular was a Padilla bill, and what the bill is for is to put a tariff on data centers or high-energy consumers so that way those costs aren't imposed onto the consumers. What this tariff will do is ultimately if, I think it's 20 plus megawatts. You're going to pay a tariff because what happens is the consumers pay for the infrastructure. PG&E or the utilities have to pay for all the infrastructure up front, and then they tax us for that infrastructure. And so that tariff would cover all of those expenses, so that way it wouldn't be put on you or me. So I just wanted to put that out there. Hopefully it gets on the governor's desk and it gets signed.

Thank you. Go ahead.

Hello, so a little background on myself. I've been a building consultant since the 90s in Silicon Valley, okay? What I'm hearing from the public is that they're being approved in the wrong locations. San Jose has always been a high-tech center. We've had hazardous materials in all those buildings, and I just think that per the general plan, you should be building them near Alviso, not in Alviso, but near that Do you know where Alviso is, ma'am?

Yes, I know where Alviso is.

Yeah, okay. Well, I don't mean Alviso. I'm talking about the general area where the high-tech center is. I mean, I heard someone say they're building them out in Santa Teresa. Is that true? Yes. I mean, that's crazy. Santa Clara has 50 data centers. In one location.

I'm sorry to cut you off, sir, but that's your time.

Okay. Well, you're welcome.

Go ahead, ma'am. Hi. The reason I got up again, I usually don't do that, is because there was the question about, you know, how are we cooling these? Is it recycled water? Is it our drinking water sources? And there are technologies out there to use less water. Oh, yes. But they are PFAS chemical, forever chemical intensive, and that is one of the major crises in this state that's going to cost us a fortune, that I spend 98 percent of my workday dealing with PFAS in water in an environmental organization. So, you know, we can't really build this better mousetrap. And I think that we do need those those rules intact. But the industry has fought rules to get that information to us. And those rules have not passed in Sacramento. So I wanted to add that to the story because, you know, Again, I ask as a citizen and as a resident, how many of these do we need? We've got them. How much more do we need, and what are the environmental and long-term impacts here? Thank you. Okay, thank you.

Have you spoken, ma'am? You have? Oh, go ahead. Hi. My name is Kate Schroeder. I'm going to just quickly, one of the things that's coming up for me is that the lack of alignment. We have Ro Khanna's, Congressman Ro Khanna's AI Bill of Rights that has not yet been mentioned that we should be aligning with. There's the Padilla Bill that I do not know a lot about, but I'm glad it has been brought up because we need information in the alignment of those kinds of bills that are going out in the state and nationally that we should all be aligned with so that we're all on the same page I think is very important. And the other thing I'd like to bring up quickly is I really appreciate that Ms. Campos was here to listen and listen. I would like to see more of our city council members out and our elected officials out to have more of these listening opportunities. I think it's gonna be very important. And I just really wanna make sure that everybody has a chance to check out Congressman Ro Khanna's AI Bill of Rights. I think it's a very important document that we put out there. Thank you.

Thank you. Go ahead, ma'am.

AI data centers represents the height of extractionism. And since beginning of human history, when has extractionism benefited society as a whole? It always leaves waste and destruction in its wake. Now we're talking about here, maybe we can compensate with community benefits agreements. the people who are most harmed are not going to get anything out of those benefits uh cbas they never do because they're the most disadvantaged they're the the people who get stepped on the most the the if there are community benefits agreement uh whatever benefits will flow to the most privileged anyway so the best data centers are uh the best hyperscale data centers are the ones that don't get built

Thank you. Go ahead.

So the private equity, private credit, shadow banking, $4 trillion debt bubble is real. And I'm talking about what relates to data centers, AI, and those companies like Caterpillar and whatnot that are related. The stock market bubble is real. 47% of the S&P is 10 companies. Data center over build is real. You need to have a moratorium that lasts until Q1, 2028. So when everything goes crazy in either fall or 2027, you have space to move, and you have space to learn what other municipalities are negotiating, like some municipalities have negotiated $168 billion.

So we have our last two speakers for the night. Thank you, coming up.

Hi, Mitch Austin. Once again, I'm employed with IBW Local 332, and I'm grateful and proud of it because we set the standards for these data centers. And one thing that I'd like to thank each and every one of you today is for coming out and participating within your community and your city, because that's very important. And with that comes education, awareness of information. When we're talking about data centers, let's focus on what's going on here in Santa Clara County for the facts. Let's focus on building responsibly, establishing project labor agreements, and building safe work. If you question why data centers are being built, long time ago, we picked apples. Today, you pick this apple. This apple will not exist without your data center, and it will be built here or somewhere else. Keep the jobs here. Be safe.

Please respect the speaker's time. Thank you. OK, Manny, you have the floor.

Hi, I'm a youth representative on our city's climate advisory commission, and I'm obviously not speaking in that capacity now. But in that place, I came in a few months ago and I had some level of concern about data centers. I was not calling for a moratorium or anything like that, but I wanted to find real information about what the impacts would be. So I consulted some people in agencies that I have a lot of respect for, San Jose Clean Energy, career public servants in the city, and the answers to a lot of the really important questions that we had, will this raise our electricity rates? Will this use 100% clean energy? Will it pollute our communities? The answer to all of these has effectively been, we do not know yet. That is not good enough. We need an affirmative and enforceable no. We need the enforcement to make sure that that happens, and we need to get organized to make sure that that happens. So I hope everybody here, if all of us go to the next event, no matter how few of them are, and bring more of us with us, we will be able to achieve a moratorium. We will be able to achieve the strong requirements that we want. So make sure you get in touch with somebody here to stay involved. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you, everyone. I really appreciate your time tonight. I know some of the conversation's not easy. Some of the comments can be difficult for some of the listeners, but I really appreciate you spending the night, the two hours with us today, giving us your feedback, giving us your comments. We're recording the meeting, so we have everything that you said today, and obviously that's gonna be incorporated as we move forward into part of the discussion and the process. I do want to note that we have sign up sheets. If you have not signed up on the way out, please do sign up. I think it would be great for us to have your name. The next step for us from a community perspective is the small group meetings. We did actually the QR codes up on the screen right now. Eric and I already spoke and we're going to increase the size of the small group meetings to be able to have more people in each one based on level of interest and we can add more meetings as well. So we're always open to that. I will note that as part of the small group meetings, really, we want to focus on some of the key questions we asked today about the standards associated with data centers, what kind of water systems, what about generators, what kind of energy requirements they should have, what kind of community benefits they should have. Certainly heard the discussion points throughout the night about many other comments, but as we're trying to frame the discussion and discuss what the options might be and what's really important, that would be really helpful to us as well. So that would be really helpful to us as well. So if you want to sign up as part of those small group sessions, please do sign up and we will continue with our community outreach process. And once again, I really appreciate. Yes, I did hear you for the last two hours. And we have. We have two comments. We do have council direction to proceed with the standards and we'll continue to do so. And we wanna get the feedback that's gonna help us craft the best standards possible. Ultimately, this will have to be, go through full council consideration to see what gets approved and what doesn't get approved. Okay, one final question for the night. Yes, what we're looking for is feedback on community standards. If you would like to give us feedback that you don't want to have any data centers in the city, you have already let us know, you can let us know again, you can email us, you can send us written comments, and obviously you can also join a small group meeting and let us know the same. However, we have a process that we are gonna develop standards and we wanna make them as best as we can with as many community benefits and environmental benefits for the city. Ultimately, that's gonna go through a full council process to see if they're approved or not. That's kind of where we're gonna end up at the end to see what gets approved and what doesn't get approved if the feedback is as many people stated today you don't want any data centers you can also let us know that again but that will not help us develop standards uh that are going to serve the community so so that's really it thank you everybody

So you asked about a moratorium, if there was direction to pursue a moratorium.