WEBVTT 1 00:00:07.270 --> 00:00:20.070 On this week's episode: the council steers its study of more housing in single-family neighborhoods toward transit, accepts the police auditor's annual report, and turns back an appeal over a North San Jose data center. 2 00:00:23.414 --> 00:00:29.774 Ten council districts, nearly a million people. Here's your weekly debrief from San Jose City Hall. 3 00:00:30.534 --> 00:00:37.574 Tuesday's City Council meeting opened with music: an invocation by the Union Middle School student jazz combo. 4 00:00:37.574 --> 00:00:50.889 Then came recognitions. One was a commendation for a resident who is a hundred and two years old. She was a Rosie the Riveter who supported the war effort in World War Two, and she has lived in San Jose since the early nineteen-fifties. 5 00:00:50.889 --> 00:01:00.979 The council also marked Disability Employment Awareness Month by honoring a nonprofit pop-up cafe that creates job pathways for neurodivergent adults. 6 00:01:00.979 --> 00:01:06.734 This episode was produced with AI from the public recording of the meeting. Links to the source are in the show notes. 7 00:01:10.317 --> 00:01:20.157 Our top story: what the city's long-range planners will work on through December twenty twenty-seven, and how far to open single-family neighborhoods to more housing. 8 00:01:20.157 --> 00:01:31.642 Planning staff told the council they're at about a hundred and thirty percent of capacity, mostly because of state housing mandates. So work the council has asked for, like a study of the Coyote corridor, keeps getting pushed back. 9 00:01:31.642 --> 00:01:45.897 The central issue was missing middle housing in single-family neighborhoods. The city's state-certified housing element commits it to that. In August, the council told staff to study sixteen, twenty-four and thirty-two units per acre. 10 00:01:45.897 --> 00:01:48.297 And two memos wanted to change that? 11 00:01:48.297 --> 00:02:09.397 One came from Mayor Matt Mahan, Vice Mayor Pam Foley and three councilmembers. It asked for tiered densities, higher closer to frequent transit, and added childcare policy work. The other came from Councilmembers Domingo Candelas, George Casey, Peter Ortiz and David Cohen. It sought to keep current densities where transit is limited. 12 00:02:09.397 --> 00:02:22.962 Staff warned that leaving out high-resource areas could put the housing element at risk with the state housing department. Losing certification would reopen the builder's remedy, which lets qualifying projects bypass the city's general plan and zoning. 13 00:02:22.962 --> 00:02:44.252 Casey argued that if transit access justifies the tiers, areas far from transit should stay at current density, and that upzoning can't be reversed. Councilmember Rosemary Kamei countered that excluding areas would push density onto other districts. A councilmember stressed that the council was approving an analysis of density, not any density itself. 14 00:02:44.252 --> 00:03:05.987 About two dozen people spoke. About ten family childcare providers and parent advocates asked for the childcare work. About seven speakers opposed higher densities in single-family neighborhoods, citing trees, parking, traffic and privacy. A housing advocacy group urged thirty-two units per acre in single-family zones citywide. 15 00:03:05.987 --> 00:03:26.962 A substitute motion that would have added the second memo failed. The mayor's memo then passed nine to two, with Candelas and Casey voting no. It asks staff to return as soon as possible. It adds consideration of keeping current densities on sites in fire hazard zones, and Councilmember Bien Doan's request for research on local land-use control. 16 00:03:26.962 --> 00:03:34.837 Mahan said council members are seeking a meeting with the state housing department, and that a final vote on the approach is expected by December twenty twenty-seven. 17 00:03:38.181 --> 00:03:49.381 Our next story is police oversight. On Tuesday, the Independent Police Auditor's office presented its review of twenty twenty-five, with twelve policy recommendations. 18 00:03:49.381 --> 00:03:50.946 What did the numbers show? 19 00:03:50.946 --> 00:04:08.061 The office audited three hundred thirty internal affairs investigations, its most ever. Procedural complaints rose fifty-eight percent and bias-based policing allegations rose forty percent. The office cautioned that allegations aren't findings of misconduct. 20 00:04:08.061 --> 00:04:09.501 And the recommendations? 21 00:04:09.501 --> 00:04:32.631 Among them: limit license plate reader data to approved department systems, notify people when police lose or damage their property, and give the auditor its reports on shootings and serious injuries within thirty days of finishing them. The department said it agrees with all twelve, at least in part, and expects to finish putting them in place by February twenty twenty-seven. 22 00:04:32.631 --> 00:04:54.306 About ten people spoke, and most focused on the Flock license plate cameras. They pointed to a recent case in which an officer misused that data involving a domestic violence survivor. Several urged cancelling the Flock contract and an independent audit of the system. A local NAACP leader asked for stronger powers for the auditor, including subpoena power. 23 00:04:54.306 --> 00:05:13.361 Mayor Matt Mahan, chairing the meeting, said the officer in that case immediately lost his job. He listed steps the council has taken, including deleting the data every thirty days and random audits of searches. He also said he's working with state legislators on a bill to make misuse of the data a crime. 24 00:05:13.361 --> 00:05:20.061 The council accepted both reports unanimously. Mahan said he'll bring forward a nominee for the next permanent auditor later this year. 25 00:05:23.405 --> 00:05:41.050 Our third story is data centers. On Tuesday, the council heard an appeal over three hundred Holger Way in North San Jose. A permit there allows a data center use of up to twenty megawatts inside an existing building, with no exterior changes. The tenant is NVIDIA, which uses the building for chip testing. 26 00:05:41.050 --> 00:05:54.195 The appellant, Citizens for Responsible Industry, argued that the project leaves out generators and cooling. It pointed to a separate air district application for a diesel backup generator and asked for a full environmental impact report. 27 00:05:54.195 --> 00:06:14.660 Staff said any new exterior equipment would need a new permit and new environmental review. Eight people spoke in public comment, and six of them backed the appeal or asked for a delay, citing emissions, noise, water use and notice. The council denied the appeal nine to nothing. Vice Mayor Foley recused herself, and Councilmember Peter Ortiz was absent. 28 00:06:14.660 --> 00:06:25.785 Staff said the city's decades-old definition of a data center is the reason this permit was needed at all. New citywide standards are due at the Planning Commission on November eighteenth and at the council on December eighth. 29 00:06:25.785 --> 00:06:43.285 At the commission's retreat on Friday, staff previewed them. One piece is a cap on backup generators of twenty-five hours a year, compared with the air district's fifty. Staff also proposed sending appeals of data center permits straight to the council, skipping the commission. Here's a commissioner on that. 30 00:06:43.935 --> 00:07:00.005 So if you're taking us out of the process, then that's one less opportunity for the residents to have input on the process. So normally the process would come to us and then go to the council. 31 00:07:00.910 --> 00:07:25.390 Staff explained that today, an appeal of one of those permits ends at the commission. The change would send it to the council instead, which staff said responds to residents who want the council to decide controversial data center cases. The retreat's only public speaker, from the local Sierra Club chapter, said community feedback has found the standards inadequate, and asked that data center projects go to the council by default. 32 00:07:28.733 --> 00:07:32.093 Now a few shorter items from around City Hall. 33 00:07:32.093 --> 00:07:50.548 The council unanimously accepted the City Manager's annual report, with Councilmember Pamela Campos absent. The general fund ended almost exactly on budget, and seven point one million dollars goes back into the budget stabilization reserve. That reserve will be about thirty million dollars, against a target of about a hundred million. 34 00:07:50.548 --> 00:08:12.338 The council unanimously denied two appeals of a two-hundred-seventy-six-unit apartment building at West San Carlos Street and Gifford Avenue, with Councilmember Ortiz recused. Labor groups argued the building may top eighty-five feet, the height at which state law requires labor standards. Staff added a condition to verify the height before a building permit is issued. 35 00:08:12.338 --> 00:08:33.313 The council also voted to give up part of Spring Street, once the utilities there are moved, for Columbus Park, a planned lighted soccer complex on a former encampment site, expected to open in summer twenty twenty-eight. And it let BASIS Independent Schools keep pursuing a plan to turn a vacant Race Street office building into a private high school for up to eight hundred students. 36 00:08:33.313 --> 00:08:47.268 Two weeks ago we told you the council put off its Civil Service Commission interviews. On Tuesday it voted by paper ballot. A software company executive won the full term over the incumbent, six to four, and the other seat was filled ten to nothing. 37 00:08:47.268 --> 00:08:57.853 And at the Planning Commission retreat, staff said none of the eight approved builder's remedy projects, which total six hundred ninety-seven units, has broken ground yet. 38 00:09:01.197 --> 00:09:24.882 Before we go, a look at what's ahead. Next Tuesday, October twenty-seventh, the council is scheduled to consider renaming Plaza de César Chávez to Plaza de San José, the name staff recommend after a community engagement process. Also on the agenda: three-year contracts with unions representing city workers, and a phased ban on using drinking water to irrigate nonfunctional turf. 39 00:09:24.882 --> 00:09:43.397 On Wednesday, October twenty-eighth, the Planning Commission hears an appeal of a permit for a recycling facility on South Seventh Street. The permit would raise its daily debris capacity from just under a hundred seventy-five tons to two thousand four hundred fifty-one, and let it run around the clock except on holidays. 40 00:09:47.301 --> 00:09:53.061 Hear something we got wrong? There's a link on this episode's page to report it, and corrections are read on air. 41 00:09:53.061 --> 00:09:56.741 That's the news from City Hall. See you after the next meeting.