{"id":456553,"date":"2026-09-07T21:10:47","date_gmt":"2026-09-07T21:10:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/456553\/"},"modified":"2026-09-07T21:10:47","modified_gmt":"2026-09-07T21:10:47","slug":"san-jose-city-council-hosts-community-listening-session-for-data-center-regulation-el-estoque","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/456553\/","title":{"rendered":"San Jose City Council hosts community listening session for data center regulation \u2013 El Estoque"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over 100 San Jose residents<\/a> recently contested data center implementation at a community listening session, calling for a temporary halt on data center activity in a meeting held at San Jose City Hall on Wednesday, Aug. 19. The meeting was the first listening session inviting residents to give feedback on future data center regulation. Amid rising debate over the environmental and public health impacts<\/a> of data centers, residents cited both statistics and personal experiences with public health.<\/p>\n

San Jose currently has 57 data center<\/a> sites, with several more<\/a> applications being reviewed for future consideration. While private developers build the centers, Deputy City Manager Manuel Pineda says the city evaluates proposed projects. Although the City Council ultimately makes the final decisions based on city policy, residents are able to provide their respective input for the data centers.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe wanted to make sure that we came up with standards that put it all in one place so it\u2019s easier for the community to understand and follow,\u201d Pineda said. \u201cWe\u2019re really going to listen to people, to their concerns, their feedback, what they would be looking for in standards \u2014 even beyond what we do today.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lack of inclusion of Residents in Decision-Making<\/p>\n

Many residents believe that the city has not provided sufficient opportunities to voice their concerns. Lori Katcher, who spoke at the meeting and is a staff organizer for her local Showing Up for Racial Justice<\/a> chapter, points out how residents were only given 60 seconds to speak. She says due to the high turnout, attendees who weren\u2019t speaking were redirected to an overflow room, which made her question the sincerity of the city\u2019s outreach.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt absolutely matters that residents be given a chance, and it needs to be more than tonight,\u201d Katcher said. \u201cIt\u2019s obvious the administration wasn\u2019t prepared for how many people were going to show up, which concerns me a little bit. Are they aware or not of the realities of the concerns of everyday people in San Jose and Santa Clara County? If you\u2019re not prepared to receive the community in appropriate ways, then do you really want their input?\u201d<\/p>\n

Cousins Jariah Jaug and Althea Lanh, lifelong residents of San Jose who live near data centers, agree with Katcher\u2019s sentiment. While both approve of San Jose\u2019s public outreach, Jaug and Lanh believe there is room for improvement. Jaug notes that most city council meetings or information sessions took place during weekdays, making it difficult for people who work at that time to attend despite being passionate about the issue.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThey were approving data centers around four or five years ago, and they\u2019ve never had public comments like this,\u201d Jaug said. \u201cIt\u2019s a little too late, but I\u2019m happy they\u2019re finally doing it. The city staff is trying their best, and this is something new and unique to them. This is just such a controversial issue. They don\u2019t know how to handle this amount of public engagement.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Concerns Regarding Environmental Impact\u00a0<\/p>\n

Among many reasons why data centers remain a controversial issue, rising electricity bills, endangerment of water supplies and air pollution rank highest<\/a>. Currently, decisions about where to implement data centers depend on direct access to power grids and immediate water supplies<\/a>, rendering neighborhoods ideal.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo me, it seems like the potential and the impact of these data centers in our communities deserve so much more community input,\u201d Katcher said. \u201cWe\u2019re the ones that are going to be living here. We\u2019re going to be the ones living with the water, the air, the sound, the noise, not to mention the animals and the environment around us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lanh wishes San Jose dedicated more resources and funding to other areas of focus rather than on data centers. For example, she recognizes that affordable housing is a main area of concern for many San Jose residents, with San Jose being ranked the least affordable city for first-time buyers<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe should be using our time and resources to be doing other things versus spending all this time on making data centers,\u201d Lanh said. \u201cWe have so much open space and land in the city of San Jose, and so tech corporations are just going to keep coming and squeezing anything out of the city. If that means more data centers, that\u2019s what they\u2019ll do.\u201d<\/p>\n

Data centers across the U.S. Interactive tool courtesy of OpenStreetMap<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Value of Resident Contribution\u00a0<\/p>\n

Pineda, who previously hosted many community meetings while acting as deputy director for the Department of Transportation<\/a> in San Jose, emphasizes the value of input from residents. He explains how residents can be helpful in the decision-making process because their experience allows them to offer feedback that can\u2019t be fully recognized from non-community members.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cOne thing I always acknowledge is that the residents are the experts in their community, because even though I lived here most of my life, I am not in their community 24\/7 like they are,\u201d Pineda said. \u201cI want to make sure that I\u2019m listening to them intently because they might be seeing something that I might not. They\u2019re going to have that day-to-day life experience that I don\u2019t have.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ellina Yin, CEO and founder of civic-tech nonprofit, Dreaming Collaborative,<\/a> works specifically on making civic participation easier to understand, giving residents an opportunity to make the impact that Pineda values. They attend meetings such as the San Jose listening sessions and translate that into civic education for people who may be unfamiliar with public comment or meeting agendas. Yin believes that public feedback is critical and impactful, recognizing that the concerns of residents are not necessarily based on an anti-technology mindset, but rather geared toward ensuring a healthy quality of life for the city.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Moving Forward<\/p>\n

Going forward, Pineda explains the council will synthesize the comments they receive to decide which suggestions to incorporate. He adds that they will host small group discussions to gather more perspectives before his team ultimately develops the standards and presents them to the council in December. One suggestion from a citizen at the meeting that has already been implemented \u2014 the council is expanding the total group discussion capacity from 32 to 64 people. Despite this, Yin and Katcher are still frustrated with the limited opportunities for resident input, since 64 voices still represent only a fraction of a population of about a million.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe reason we got the community listening session was that people have been using their one to two minutes for the past six months demanding something, and now it\u2019s here,\u201d Yin said. \u201cThey\u2019re only doing this because we have been organizing, but it\u2019s still a real opportunity to negotiate as much as we can, and, like the woman who said, we want more meetings, and we now have 64. It\u2019s still not enough, but it\u2019s more than what we had before her comment.\u201d<\/p>\n

To Yin, the future of San Jose relies on the community, where every input, regardless of background, can effect change. Yin believes that elected officials have the opportunity to treat community listening sessions with more reverence and dignity, while listening to the hundreds of people who advocate for change. She also acknowledges the privilege that San Jose and California residents have, noting that some states don\u2019t allow constituents to even view the items on meeting agendas.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf I choose to believe that these meetings don\u2019t matter, then the fate of San Jose and all these data centers is sealed: \u2018it\u2019s coming and there\u2019s nothing we can do,\u2019\u201d Yin said. \u201cIf I choose to believe that this process might yield something different, then I don\u2019t know what that \u2018different\u2019 is, but it\u2019s not the same as that sealed fate. It\u2019s important for you to believe that your participation matters, and then having elected representatives treat that participation with seriousness. You can absolutely change the outcome and the fate of your community.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\"Residents
\n <\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tMore than 100 community members attended the session to listen and provide input, with several others in an “overflow” room, watching the live zoom recording. Photo | Radhika Dharmapurikar \t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Over 100 San Jose residents recently contested data center implementation at a community listening session, calling for a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":456554,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[88,90,89],"class_list":["post-456553","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-jose","tag-san-jose","tag-san-jose-headlines","tag-san-jose-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/456553","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=456553"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/456553\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/456554"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=456553"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=456553"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=456553"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}