I'm gonna call today's meeting of the rules and open government committee to order.

Can we start with roll call, please?

Candelas here.

The one here fully here.

Come here, Cohen.

Here.

We have a quorum.

Okay, we're going to start by reviewing our agenda for Tuesday, the Tuesday, June 2nd council meeting, which is scheduled for uh 9 30 closed session, 1 30 regular session, and consent starts on page five.

Continues on pages six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, and ends on page twelve.

Section three, we have an item to reinstate remote participation at council meetings and a public hearing on recorded liens for sidewalk repairs.

Section five, round nine of affordable housing and sustainable communities grant funding.

Section six, the public hearing on sewer service and use rate charges, public hearing on residential garbage and recycling services, and the public hearing on municipal water recycling and recycled water rates and charges.

And then a public hearing resolution approving the Muni Water Systems Contingency Plan and Urban Water Management Plan.

Section 8 establishment of the East Village bid and a public hearing on the Tully Road East Ridge bid and a public hearing on the Monterey Corridor bid.

And section nine, our successor agency to the redevelopment agency, and we have one item for land use consent.

Any public comment.

Thank you.

I hope everybody had a nice weekend.

Um I was looking at the agenda.

It took a lot of us advocating and calling and calling and calling and calling and calling.

And I'm glad that it's brought back.

I sent some information to the clerk about um ways to keep the people who caused all this stopping in the first place.

And I know with the new software, hopefully that'll be make it easier for her.

I know they're limited, and um, I'm just gonna offer a public apology to anybody if they call back because I think what they said to all of you, especially to people of the Jewish faith, Mr.

Cohen.

I know you went through some things.

It's not okay, and they need to be held accountable.

There's some way to track them down.

Thank you.

Back to the committee, move approval with the ad sheet second.

All right, we have a motion to second.

I don't see any hands, so let's vote.

Okay, that motion carries five zero, and we're on to our first review of the June 9th council meeting, which is scheduled as usual for 9:30 closed session and 1.30 regular session.

Consent is pages five and six, section three.

We have the uh mayor's June budget message, the approval of operating capital budgets, um, schedule and schedule of fees and charges, and we have actions related to the wastewater facility security and access control, and that is it.

Public comment, no public comment.

Okay, second.

All right, we have a motion and a second on the uh June 9th agenda.

Let's vote.

Motion carries 5-0, and now we're on to our consent calendar.

We have two items on consent.

Do we have public comment on consent?

Brian.

On consent item number two.

There was something about um donations.

I have um several computers and stuff.

I don't know if this is the appropriate place to talk about it, but they're pretty nice machines, and I'd like to be able to donate them.

I don't know if the library.

If somebody could help me out with that, I've tried calling and leaving messages, but people.

I haven't heard anything back, so that's why I came here to talk about it.

Thank you.

Back to the committee.

It's okay.

Second.

Alright, we have a motion and a second on consent.

So let's vote.

Okay, that motion carries.

Oh, not yet.

I'm getting ahead of myself.

Motion carries five zero.

Okay, we're on to item C1.

First of two um memos to consider.

The first is a um memo on ranked choice voting for vacancies, co-authored by myself, Councilmember Kamei, Councilmember Kehi, and Councilmember Tordillos.

Uh, just to briefly um give an overview of the thoughts here.

Um, last time we had a vacancy and we were discussing district three.

There were people who actually said, can't we do a ranked choice voting one step in order to save money?

Um, and the charter does not allow us to even consider that option.

So a charter amendment needs to needs to occur in order to allow for the council to have that as an option for um election special elections moving forward, and that's what this memo requests.

Um, I will start with public comment.

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

Gabby, Tom, Vicky, and Jordan.

Good afternoon, council members Joan Kamei, uh Cohen, Foley and Candelas and City staff.

My name is Gabby Chavez Lopez, and I'm the executive director of the Latina Coalition of Silicon Valley.

Since 2021, our organization has supported ranked choice voting and for decades has worked extensively to help remove barriers for civic participation and access for Latinas and working families across San Jose through voter engagement leadership and workforce development and community education.

I also experienced the district three special election personally, and I saw firsthand the amount of time, energy, and public resources required for a second runoff election.

I want to emphasize that this proposal does not limit the city's options, it expands them.

This simply gives San Jose another tool to fill vacancies in a more cost-effective and community-centered way when appropriate.

The recent district three runoff cost taxpayers roughly 3.6 million, the runoff alone 1.5 million, and ranked choice voting could significantly reduce those costs while still ensuring voters have a meaningful voice in the process.

At a time when communities are asking for investments in housing, youth, parks, and public safety, we should be open to tools that save public dollars.

I also want to address concerns about communities of color.

This data shows strong support for ranked choice voting among Latino immigrant and black voters because it gives voters the opportunity to fully express their preferences along a spectrum of candidates rather than feeling forced in an all or nothing choice.

Most importantly, this proposal is not a mandate.

It does not eliminate appointments or traditional elections.

It simply gives the council the flexibility and allows San Jose voters themselves to decide whether they should become an option.

This should become an option moving forward.

So I respectfully ask you to vote yes to advance this measure so that the people of San Jose can weigh in.

Thank you so much.

Hello, I'm Tom Sharon.

I am a co-founder and the president of a group called the California Ranked Choice Voting Coalition, and obviously we're focused on one thing, and that's across the state.

And I also happen to live very nearby in Milpitas and lived for about a decade in San Jose in Japan town.

So I have a very personal interest in this as well.

And you know, there are a number of people that are very passionate about this reform, and for good reason, right?

It has so many benefits.

There's a lot of popularity of this reform across the country and here in California.

But in San Jose's case, for this specific instance, it is a common sense dollars and cents argument first and foremost to adopt this for special elections.

And as Gabby alluded to, special elec elections are expensive, but they're democratic, right?

So there's a good reason to do it.

You want majority winners.

If you can avoid spending the money for a runoff, runoff is about a million and a half dollars, as as exemplified in D3 last year, whereas the implementation cost to run ranked choice voting is a few hundred thousand dollars, and uh to put it on the ballot will cost $500, $600,000 probably, but all of that still adds up to less than a single runoff election.

And that these costs are things that will pay off for years and years.

Uh you know, the city runs special elections every five, six years on average, so there is significant cost savings available to the city to make this move.

Thank you.

Good afternoon.

Can y'all hear me?

Cool call.

Uh my name's Vicky Muller Alveira, I live in South San Jose, and I support ranked choice voting.

So it saves a lot of money.

So but I already said that.

Um, but it gives voters more choice.

You know, I mean, a lot of times you you vote for, you know, you're the lesser of whatever, or you, you know, you don't like any of the the um your choices, and you're stuck just kind of um putting your voice aside and voting somebody else's choice, you know.

That's how a lot of people feel, and this we're seeing a lot of this lately in elections, and I'm just I just feel like um it gives us more, it gives people more of a voice and therefore more buy-in.

And um, I do a lot of uh getting out the vote, and people just I I get it it hurts my heart when people say I don't vote because you know my voice isn't heard, you know, so it gives us a chance to you know hear more voices.

Thank you so much.

Jordan Muldell, District Three, also speaking in support of this proposal, um, for all of the reasons that have been stated so far.

Um, additionally, I think it's just superior to what we have now, just straight up better than a top two jungle primary.

Um if you haven't ever gone down the Wikipedia rabbit hole of reading about different voting methods and all of their upsides and downsides, um, there's no perfect voting method for electing a single person in a pool of three or more people.

Um, so yes, there are some issues with ranked choice voting, uh, mathematically speaking.

Um, but every system has that, and I think we're we've seen recently the issues with the top two primary system.

Um, again, I think ranked choice voting in one election is going to be superior in basically every scenario uh compared to what we have now.

So even if you have misgivings about ranked choice voting, I still think it's worth voting yes on this proposal.

That being said, I don't think the proposal goes far enough.

I think it's still gonna be confusing if, oh, this election is ranked choice voting for my council member, but then the next election for my council member is top two primary.

Um, and you know, it's also just gonna be every time there's a vacancy on the council, it's a stressful time to figure out what to do.

And I think on top of all the other things that council has to decide when there's a vacancy, having to make a decision between two voting methods is just another unnecessary stress to place upon the council and the public.

I think it would make more sense just to put uh as a ballot measure do you want ranked choice voting for uh vacancy elections?

Just that's it.

And I'd prefer it to do it for all council elections, not just special elections.

Thank you.

Back to the committee.

Okay, thank you so much for public comment.

And now we'll start with Vice Mayor Foley.

Thank you.

Thank you to my colleagues for bringing this issue forward.

Uh it's a potential that this could happen this year, we don't know um i what the first question I have is do we need to do a workload analysis on this particular issue, Lee?

Or Kevin or whoever.

No, not an official one.

And since this is basically work directed at the city attorney and city clerk, it's probably better for Kevin to answer.

Thank you.

Kevin Fisher, assistant city attorney.

If the rules committee approves, our office is essentially done already done the work for this we uh did some work on this back in 2022 um when the it was being considered previously so the city attorney if the rules committee approves will we'll move it on to the full council with the uh draft resolution and charter uh measure so we we would not need a workload analysis and we would be looking at coming back on June 23rd okay so you're saying when this comes to council you'll come complete with the resolution to put it on the ballot is that what you're saying yes.

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

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

I I appreciate that I I don't like to be motivated by time pressure good policy should be thoughtful and not be motivated by the next election cycle having said that I've been on the council for appointments to fill vacancies and for uh special elections that not only resulted in uh a high cost to the city but also a high cost to the candidates um running a special election particularly in D3 where uh it was so such a close primary election was very difficult and and expensive um so I'm I'm going to make the motion to move this to council um but I have some concerns and some of the concerns I have is the cost that it's gonna cost us to put this on the ballot as it relates as we're looking at the budget where's that money coming from where's the the um out of what pot is the general fund these funds coming out of to take 600 or whatever it is to put this on the ballot coming from Lee want to address sure so that'll come out of our uh elections appropriation and I'm forgetting the exact name Tony can go over it we typically budget for at least one ballot measure to move forward in any given election cycle outside of the council elections because of issues like this so um the council will not be put in a position of needing to cut another proposal to fund this it's already baked into the proposed budget and the existing budget that you're in okay that's good to hear thank you so I made the motion to approve this item second okay we have two seconds I now we'll go to council member come thank you.

Since I've been on council which I'm entering this is my fourth year entering fourth year um there have been uh several vacancies and I know that it's been very very costly not just to the city but also to the candidate and it's uh great to be able to have uh an option should we should the council decide to move forward with this so I am in support of uh the motion and uh look forward to the information from the city attorney's office.

Okay, I don't see any other hands, so let's move on to a vote on this item.

Okay, that motion carries 5-0.

Thanks, everyone.

And now we're on to our final item, which is our uh data center uniform standards memo.

I co-authored along with Mayor, Councilmember candelas, and council member ortiz.

I'm gonna let council member candelis uh give a brief introduction before we go to public comment.

Uh thank you, Chair.

Uh no, I I I appreciate uh the collaboration of of those in our Brown Act, um, including the mayor uh yourself and council member Ortiz.

Um look, the the the purpose of our memorandum is to essentially set some guardrails or a set of uniform standards uh for these potential projects occurring in our city.

Um some concerns we've had uh in the past from from our community uh range from those concerns around our water usage, what this means for our energy consumptions, our air quality for um for those people who are in our community who have um who have real concerns based on what is happening in other places.

Um, and so uh this is this is our attempt to have some guardrails and codify some conversations uh to the to the administration uh to kind of uh flush out and and and essentially give our community a little bit of reassurance um to to the steps that we're taking with regards to those environmental uh concerns, which are very real, um, and and at the same time also um you know being being pragmatic of how we are approaching the development of these uh data centers, making sure that we are working with our labor unions to make sure that we're we're we're we're uh thorough in our labor standards to make sure that we are uh if if we are moving forward with the concerns available that we are uh emphasizing strong labor standards and and things that uh ensure that we have pathways for folks to enter the the skilled uh trades for our for the future of our workforce.

And so uh I I appreciate uh the opportunity to work on this and and uh uh will uh would would urge my colleagues to move forward uh with uh I believe it's a workload analysis and uh and and have a conversation, a more robust conversation in the coming weeks.

Thank you.

And with that, I'll move uh approval of this item.

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

I currently have eight speaker cards.

I say call your names, please go ahead and make your way to the podium.

I'm gonna call the first set.

Brian, Dash, Vanessa, and Will.

Thank you for putting this on the agenda.

Um I hope the guardrails hold because there's a big desire to cut loose people and get the machine to do it.

And um that's seen with a passion, it's almost a sacrament now, which is sad because machines are machines.

Even when you talk, and I use AI a lot.

Even when you talk to AI, it says I'm just at this, even though even it knows that it doesn't replace people, but the people that control those uh data centers, they don't know that, um, which is sad.

Plus what it does to the environment, what it does to water, and maybe eventually we'll get to the point where we can find a way to defeat entropy, and it doesn't have to be cool like that.

So I'd hopefully uh when you have these more robust discussions, you include all of that in there.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, Chair Cohen and Council members.

My name is Vanessa Tappia, and I'm an organizer with the South Bay Labor Council, representing more than a hundred thousand workers and their families.

And we support the city creating standards for data center development, but those standards shouldn't stop at environmental impacts.

They should also include strong labor standards.

The workers building and operating this facilities are on the front lines of these projects, which is why it is critical that these data centers are built by skilled, trained union workers.

Project labor agreements and the labor standards included in SB 887 help ensure that these projects are built safely, responsibly, and with good local jobs.

San Jose has a chance to set the standard nationally by showing that growth and innovation go hand in hand with protecting workers in our communities.

Thank you.

Hello, my name is Dasha Leeds, D3 resident and conservation coordinator for the Sierra Club Loma Prieta chapter.

Uh right now, the city is operating from a deficit of public trust on this issue.

Uh Albiza residents, for example, were not engaged meaningfully regarding the massive power line running through their community or regarding the data center proposal for the 159 acres of open space in Elviso.

On April 21st, we learned that the city has 34 data center projects in its development pipeline.

After hundreds of letters, 20 public comments in chamber expressing concerns with data centers and asking for more transparency.

We still don't know what parcels are being considered for these projects or what communities will be affected.

We know that the city is having frequent behind the scenes conversations with the data center companies, but not with community members.

And we don't know if the city has signed any non-disclosure agreements with these companies.

You've heard the community speak out in April for more transparency, and presumably the city has the power to make all of this information publicly available.

So we're concerned that the city hasn't exercised its power to do so in this case.

So it's really difficult for us to trust the city to create adequate standards when it won't act meaningfully on this front.

We're concerned that the memo doesn't direct the city manager to consult community members, environmental groups, and experts when creating these standards.

The community does need to be meaningfully engaged and involved in these standards from day one.

Otherwise, what is stopping this from being yet another rubber stamp for the AI data center industry?

So we do hope that this item moves forward, but with additional safeguards.

Uh, we ask you that implement the six requests outlined in Alana Yin's letter.

Uh number one, including quantitative thresholds, two, making a public dashboard for all data center projects in the pipeline.

Three, suspending the execution of any new data center agreements while these standards are still being finished.

Four mandating both cumulative and project by project environmental analysis.

Five, ensuring that the stakeholder process for these standards includes extensive community engagement, including neighborhood associations.

Thank you, that's your time.

Calling the next set of names as well, Emmanuel, Jordan, and Doug.

Good evening, Chair Cohen, members of the council.

Appreciate the opportunity today.

This is representative for IBW Local 332.

I'm definitely speaking in favor.

We wanted to make sure that we incorporated labor standards with these environmental concerns.

Not only do our members build these projects, but they also live in the community.

So it's rightfully so to consider the environmental impacts, such as to water.

A lot of times when these reports are are viewed, they're not necessarily viewed in here and how they're built here in Santa Clara County.

A lot of times it's viewed overall or over a broad area or outside of this area.

Water is definitely a precious resource to all of us, and these things can be built either without water or air cooled or uh loops closed systems.

So there's ways for them to be built in a responsible manner.

We have to also consider that construction is one of the most lethal industries there is.

Fatalities are very high.

So speaking in favor, and just want to make sure you guys.

Thank you, that's your time.

Jordan Moldale, District Three.

Um, I'm supportive of the proposal on the table.

I also agree with everything that's been said by the previous speakers about needing to move beyond what is written in the current memo.

Uh, I just want to address one additional thing, which is that you know, we've said that each individual data center project will have to go through its own environmental clearance, which means you know, finding out if it has uh any significant impacts and mitigating them.

Uh, but you know, there might be certain dimensions of impact where an individual data center is not found to have a significant impact, and so they don't have to do mitigation.

But as we've heard, the city plans to build 30 plus data centers around the city, um, and an aggregate that could have some very significant impacts.

And so I'd like to repeat, I don't I haven't heard it said at this meeting yet, but I do know that it's been called out in previous meetings on this topic.

I think there really needs to be uh an EIR study of the aggregate effects of the 30 data centers that the city is trying to build.

Um, and if we don't do that, I don't really feel like there's any guarantee that when we build these 30 data centers that we are gonna be better off even if every individual project looks good on paper.

Thank you.

Hello, Chairman uh Cohen and Council members.

My name is Emanuel Zendijas, and I'm a business rep for local 104 sheet metal union.

I'm here representing my uh members.

Uh a little bit of my background.

I have worked in data centers in a nearby city, uh Santa Clara, and uh it gives our workers uh a place to work and commute in a local area.

Um, like I said, I was born and raised here.

I would love to see this bill pass or at least the labor friendly uh regulations, and I encourage you respectfully to try to pass uh SB 887.

Um this is just we need to have this.

Uh they are under I understand they have environmental um concerns, but with these environmental concerns, we could go air cooled.

And local 104 would love to have that type of work 100%, and we are willing and able to provide uh provide that workforce.

Um we need to have those environmental standards.

I 100% agree, but we also need to have those labor standards, and I encourage you guys to support this.

I appreciate it, thank you.

I'd also like to call Chris and Alina.

Please go ahead and you make your way to the podium.

Good afternoon, Chair Cohen, Council members.

My name's Doug Block.

I'm with the Silicon Valley MEPS, which includes IBEW, sheet metal workers, the plumbers and pipe fitters local 393, and the Sprinkler Fitters 483.

And together, we are the largest affiliates of the Santa Clara and San Benito Building Trades Council.

I want to thank the memo authors.

We support a policy to create uniform standards for data centers, not only on environmental, but also labor and community benefits.

Our unions have long been building data centers in Silicon Valley.

Our members are on the front lines of these projects, and San Jose is actually a national leader in this space.

These standards will help you stay ahead of the curve on these important issues.

I want to thank Chair Cohen and remind the committee members that San Jose was actually the first city in the United States to require workforce and community benefits agreements as a condition of approval on a data center project when you pass the exclusive negotiating agreement with ProLodges under a memo that the Chair Cohen wrote.

This memo references SB 887, which is a building trades backed bill, which includes environmental, includes community benefits, includes labor standards as well.

And so we urge the council as you explore this to use the current version of language that's in that bill on the labor and community benefits standards and bring it over along with the guardrails and environmental safeguards into a policy.

Thank you.

Hello to the committee.

So I wanted to share that Santa Clara University recently did a study of first of its kind of water and data centers in the state of California.

And their conclusion was after reaching out to every single water district in California that holds data centers asking for actual distribution numbers of how much water is actually used by data centers.

They could not have the answers from the water districts.

So there's publicly available information about water usage in planning, so showing how much the data center expects to use.

But once the data center is in operation, there are no publicly available numbers.

And so I want to ask the committee and the councils, what numbers are you basing your decisions off when you're saying that our water infrastructure and how much water they're going to use is going to be fine.

Additionally, the memo states that City of Santa Clara has roughly 60 data centers and in fiscal year 2025 produced 45 million dollars in general fund.

That's around 750,000 per data center.

While the memo also states that in San Jose, one data center we can expect seven million dollars.

I don't understand the math of that.

So what kind of data centers are you building when one can produce seven million, but in Santa Clara, 60 is producing 750,000 each.

Additionally, you should know that Santa Clara has its own municipal utility district, Silicon Valley Power, giving it direct revenue stream from electricity sales at San Jose served by PG<unk>E cannot replicate.

So again, where is your math?

Additionally, I've spoken to several realtors, and they have all shared from their experience that all of the values around the home values around data centers will lose, will go down.

And so are you calculating the loss revenue in value property tax?

And so there's a lot of economic benefits promised, but a lot of it is unproven.

There's no math, so I'm really asking you to be transparent and to also check out the letter that we send.

Thank you.

Good afternoon.

My name is Christopher Pop.

I'm a business representative for IBEW 332.

So I've heard the mention of the uh the environmental protections for our water and our power and our air, and I am all completely in favor of those.

But I am here to also speak in favor of attaching the strong and robust uh labor standards to the process of approval of the data center projects within the city of San Jose.

Uh the labor protections will ensure that these projects aren't just built under the idea of a race to the bottom with wages and instead support living wages and standards for the for the workers that are skilled and trained and working and living within our communities.

Um attaching these labor protections will protect our community members and neighbors to make sure that when they build these projects, they're getting a wage that also allows them to live within the areas that these projects are being built.

Um I'm sure I don't need to remind you that this is one of the most expensive areas to live, and you know, allowing construction projects like these to have a streamlined process when they could end up exacerbating any forms of poverty within our communities without strong labor standards doesn't make sense at all.

Uh and it, you know, this this is a simple ask to please ensure that our neighbors and our family members who use their efforts and their skills and their knowledge to build the city that we live in are able to continue to live here.

Thank you.

Back to the committee.

Thank you, and I want to thank everyone from the public for coming out to talk about this important issue.

Um, just I'll just say that you know, while I've been um sharing with many of my colleagues around the state about how um we in San Jose are doing this right, and we have willing partners in the industry who are following strict standards, doing it right shouldn't be about trusting us or trusting our partners that we're doing it right.

It should be there should be a codified set of standards that are are required to be followed um and I and I think we can get there with standards that that make sense that protect our uh labor partners and also protect our environment in the city of San Jose and protect our ratepayers um and as long as those standards include using uh San Jose clean energy as a power provider then actually San Jose does have revenue and pro uh benefits from selling the power to data center customers.

So move on to the rest of the committee for comments and start with Councilmember Kamei.

Thank you so much and I'd like to thank all the excuse me all the speakers who came out to give your uh perspective on this very important issue.

I also want to thank my colleagues for uh bringing this forward.

Uh this is something that I think more and more is uh gaining interest and and uh certainly we uh need to have community involvement in this uh in this uh very important issue my question for uh those here who are part of the committee is is the ins intent to create a council policy that will go to council or would this be standards that we're delegating the authority to the city manager because that would be taken into consideration under the uh workload analysis my expectation is that the council will weigh in on those standards at at the point at which they are formulated by staff that at least that's how I was in anticipating it so we have the chance at that point to add or adjust through our memo process if there's things that we don't think were covered by that by that policy.

So the timeline for this would be to come back to the committee in what couple weeks with the workload analysis and then have a few months to come back to council with or some period of time to come back to council with those standards.

Yeah I think we'll probably need two weeks on the workload analysis.

I don't think whether it's an administrative policy or a council policy we'll sway that workload analysis either way.

Um the council policy is just you know there's noticing an additional step to approve it but the actual work behind setting you know those guidelines guardrails as well as any you know uh collaboration uh with stakeholders would all be relatively the same either path and the good I'm sorry as we say on top of that the good news is that the committee's been um the TNE committee and others have been talking this conversation uh uh with staff regularly and I think staff has uh well on its way to preparing some of these standards and understanding what has to be included in the standards okay I guess I I wasn't I wasn't sure whether this would be an administrative policy or a council policy because the threshold for council policy is a little bit higher and so um thinking that this is so important uh I mean it's gonna be with us for quite a while um uh I guess as long as it comes to council for review that would be that would be great.

So thank you for that clarification.

Okay I don't I don't see any other hands.

I'm just gonna make one other comment about this too which is one of the concerns that I've had about codifying a set of standards with too much detail is that technology is improving very rapidly and so that we don't want to necessarily codify a standard that actually allows uh a company to use a less current standard or something less stringent than they could otherwise do.

So we want standards that are are guardrails but are not necessarily specific to the point at which somebody could come in and do less than the current state of the art.

So that's that's the challenge that we're walking here and one of the reasons why we've been taking some time to figure out the way to do this is that we want to have standards.

We want to make sure people understand that we're holding people to certain standards but we also want companies to come to us and say hey we have an even better way of doing this that's even better for the environment than the standards were a year ago when you approved them so that that I just want that to be out there as well.

Yeah.

The you may have had conversations at the TNE committee but you know some of the speakers brought up the labor standards as well as community benefits.

I think that's something worth looking into as well.

For sure.

Thank you.

Okay.

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

And that brings us to open forum.

Brian and Jordan.

I hope everybody had a white a nice weekend.

Memorial day is something to take very seriously.

And have fun with your family too.

I had a long, but I'm not going to do that.

The oligarchy effect.

Political scientist data.

Galenes and Page demonstrates that preferences for the bottom 90% of income earners have statistically near zero effect on public policy.

Well, the wealthy elites heavily dictates become laws.

Now I think that's a little bit too much, but I spent time studying and writing.

So I tried to make it short, but it is almost impossible for a regular citizen to have the same impact as somebody who's a lobbyist or somebody who's rich.

It just is.

Back to the committee.

Alright, thank you.

We are adjourned at 2 45 p.m.