WEBVTT 1 00:00:07.110 --> 00:00:20.990 On this week's episode: the City Council and the Valley Water board meet jointly ahead of a strong El Niño winter, and the council asks for a ranked list of flood hotspots. Plus a quick update on Anderson Dam and Coyote Creek. 2 00:00:24.334 --> 00:00:30.694 Ten council districts, nearly a million people. Here's your weekly debrief from San Jose City Hall. 3 00:00:31.614 --> 00:00:47.349 San Jose and flooding go back a long way. The settlement this city grew from, the Pueblo de San José, moved south to higher ground in the 1790s, after floods from the Guadalupe River. Its new spot is around what's now Plaza de César Chávez. 4 00:00:47.349 --> 00:00:57.829 And this week the council talked about floods somewhere other than City Hall. On Tuesday it held a special joint meeting with the Valley Water board, at Valley Water's headquarters. 5 00:00:57.829 --> 00:01:13.884 The Valley Water board chair said the two bodies first met jointly in 2002 and have met every year since, and put this at about their twenty-fourth meeting. Mayor Matt Mahan joined remotely. The city clerk said that was allowed under the open-meetings law's just-cause rules. 6 00:01:13.884 --> 00:01:23.009 The mayor's message was that people who spot a blocked creek shouldn't have to figure out which agency owns it. He called for clear roles between the agencies. 7 00:01:23.009 --> 00:01:29.174 This episode was produced with AI from the public recording of the meeting. Links to the source are in the show notes. 8 00:01:32.517 --> 00:01:39.637 Our top story this week: getting ready for a wet winter, and sorting out who looks after which creek. 9 00:01:39.637 --> 00:01:49.262 Quick refresher first. Valley Water isn't part of the city. It's a separate countywide district that handles flood protection and streams. So who owns the creeks? 10 00:01:49.262 --> 00:02:16.812 It's a patchwork, Valley Water staff said. The county has about eight hundred miles of waterways. Valley Water owns or manages about three hundred fifty miles of them, and maintains the roughly one hundred eighty-five miles where it built flood projects. Private owners have to maintain their own land. Valley Water staff also said a stronger-than-normal El Niño doesn't necessarily mean flooding here, but all the national attention is a chance to educate people. 11 00:02:16.812 --> 00:02:18.492 And what does the city do? 12 00:02:18.492 --> 00:02:36.057 The city gets storm sewers ready, watches the weather and creek debris, clears streets, closes roads and helps with recovery. City staff said the joint emergency action plan, written with Valley Water after the 2017 flood, has been tested in twelve storms and gets updated every year. 13 00:02:36.057 --> 00:02:38.377 What should residents know right now? 14 00:02:38.377 --> 00:03:07.507 Valley Water's yearly multilingual flood awareness campaign was set to launch two days after the meeting. Its winter preparedness workshop is October twenty-ninth. It runs five sandbag sites around the county. Two San Jose sites have webcams, so you can check online for sandbags before you go, and staff said the sites will be stocked before storms arrive. One more reminder from Valley Water staff: a flood insurance policy takes thirty days to kick in, and the federal site is floodsmart dot gov. 15 00:03:07.507 --> 00:03:09.667 What did the public have to say? 16 00:03:09.667 --> 00:03:40.002 Five people spoke on this item. One asked how creek blockages get cleared during storms. Another argued that the utility fees residents pay should prevent flooding. An advocate for unhoused people asked about storm outreach, flyers, shelters and rides, especially for seniors. And two trail users asked for faster mud cleanup and advance warnings at flooded Guadalupe River Trail underpasses. One of them said the underpasses stayed flooded about seventy days in both 2017 and 2023. 17 00:03:40.002 --> 00:03:41.362 And the officials? 18 00:03:41.362 --> 00:04:03.567 Mayor Mahan asked whether the agencies had done a full risk assessment ranking the top hotspots. Valley Water staff said it inspects its own waterways every year, but has no program to inspect all eight hundred miles, and rules on natural channels limit what it can do. City staff acknowledged the city has historically relied on Valley Water to tell it about risk in the waterways. 19 00:04:03.567 --> 00:04:05.567 Did anything specific come up? 20 00:04:05.567 --> 00:04:34.237 A councilmember asked about Penitencia Creek on the East Side. On Upper Penitencia, city staff said the city will team up with Valley Water to remove a fallen tree, with the paperwork underway and no date given. Clearing an encampment under a bridge is about two weeks out. City staff said they're offering outreach and housing resources to the person living there. The councilmember noted there's no concrete housing destination yet. Valley Water staff said it has asked the governor to waive permitting rules there so it can remove sediment. 21 00:04:34.237 --> 00:04:36.157 And the trail underpasses? 22 00:04:36.157 --> 00:04:55.267 City staff said cleaning them isn't a separate item in the plan, but the city will add it to its post-storm list. Later on, a Valley Water board member urged the city to stop allowing building in floodplains. A councilmember said that probably wasn't part of the council's current general plan review, but could come up in the coming housing element and the next general plan. 23 00:04:55.267 --> 00:04:57.267 So what did the council decide? 24 00:04:57.267 --> 00:05:32.177 It directed city staff to work with Valley Water and report back, ideally in a joint presentation and ideally before the rainy season. The report is to rank flood hotspots along what the mayor called roughly one hundred forty miles of waterways in the city, lay out plans for the high-risk sites, and give residents a way to report problems. Over the longer term, city staff are to work with Valley Water on strategies to cut flood risk and spell out each agency's role. The motion passed. Vice Mayor Foley, who was presiding, announced that it carried but gave no tally, and not every member's answer could be heard. 25 00:05:32.177 --> 00:05:33.937 Did Valley Water sign on? 26 00:05:33.937 --> 00:06:09.357 Its board chair said the board could direct its staff to work with the city on the motion. One Valley Water director also suggested a joint team to chase federal and state emergency money. And near the end of the meeting, two more residents spoke about Coyote Creek. One presented a petition asking the agencies to act on blockages, and said volunteers had counted at least nine major wood blockages on a three-quarter-mile stretch between the Williams Street Bridge and Interstate 280. The other, a creekside property owner, said they'd paid to clear debris from the creek, but it's still sitting on the bank, because Valley Water told them it was the city's problem. 27 00:06:12.861 --> 00:06:15.581 Now some shorter items from the same meeting. 28 00:06:15.581 --> 00:06:39.811 Time was running short, so the Anderson Dam and Coyote Creek update got about two minutes. Valley Water staff said the Anderson Dam tunnel is done and being tested, and it can run this winter along with the finished first phase of the Coyote Creek flood project. Construction on the dam's seismic retrofit and the creek's second phase is just getting started. This was a report only, with no vote. 29 00:06:39.811 --> 00:06:50.131 An update on Pure Water Silicon Valley, a project to purify recycled water for drinking, was put off to the next joint meeting without a presentation, because time ran out. 30 00:06:50.131 --> 00:07:02.061 And councilmembers presented a commendation, also signed by the mayor, to the Valley Water board chair. The chair is retiring after more than three decades on the board, and started the yearly joint meetings with the city. 31 00:07:05.405 --> 00:07:07.725 Before we go, here's what's ahead. 32 00:07:07.725 --> 00:07:26.190 The City Council meets next Tuesday, October twentieth. Final adoption of the delivery robot rules we covered last week is on the consent calendar. The agenda also has the City Manager's annual report with budget adjustments, the Independent Police Auditor's 2025 year-end report, and interviews for the Civil Service Commission. 33 00:07:26.190 --> 00:07:49.445 Also on the agenda: setting priorities for the city's planning work plan, with two memos, one from the Mayor and four councilmembers and one from four other councilmembers. And there are two appeal hearings. One is over an eight-story building with two hundred seventy-six homes at 470 West San Carlos Street. The other is over a data center in an existing building at 300 Holger Way. 34 00:07:52.948 --> 00:08:01.628 This show is made by AI from the public recordings. If you spot an error, use the link on the episode's page, and we'll read corrections on air. 35 00:08:01.628 --> 00:08:05.308 That's the news from City Hall. See you after the next meeting.