Speaker numbers apply only to this recording.
The Planning Commission held its annual retreat on October 23, 2026, led by Vice Chair Michael Young. The agenda focused heavily on the impact of state housing legislation (Builders' Remedy, SB 79, Density Bonus Law, CEQA changes) on local planning, the status of the Housing Element, and a detailed presentation from the City Manager's office on proposed uniform standards for data center development. Planning Director Chris Burton noted that roughly 90% of the department's work plan is currently dictated by state mandates or defensive measures against them.
Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to the 2026 Planning Commission retreat. My name is Michael Young and the Vice Chair. I'm gonna go ahead and uh call the role. Commissioner or Chair Control is not here. Commissioner Arguayo. Here. Commissioner Bickford is not here. Commissioner Casey here. Commissioner Wynne. Commissioner Bondal. Here. Commissioner Cow. Here. Commissioner Escobar. Commissioner Rosario. And Commissioner Olivario. Okay, so I believe we have a quorum. Yes. Okay. So at this time I'll go ahead and uh turn the agenda over to our planning director, Chris Burton. Thank you, Vice Chair. Good afternoon, everybody. Great to see everyone. Welcome to our planning commission annual retreat. You know, we think this is just such an important time to be able to spend some time, talk a little bit about the work, a lot of the sort of different pieces that are moving right now, and keep you updated on many of the things that are keeping us busy and that will be keeping you busy in the months to come. So I'm just gonna uh just uh take a couple of moments just to sort of talk about kind of how I see the work of the department right now and kind of what's going on. Um, and then you know, we have an agenda that's touching on kind of many of those issues uh throughout the afternoon, so we'll be able to dig into some of the specifics. So much of our work right now is dominated by two things. Um, one is the ever present conversation around data centers, um, which is obviously a national conversation, um, and we have some staff coming in from the city manager's office who've been working uh very hard on bringing forward a new data center policy that you will see in uh next month, I believe, uh at the planning commission on its way to City Council in early December. Um, obviously, this is a very present conversation for a lot of people. Um, there's a lot of concern in the community, um, but we're also balancing that with this is something that's been a part of our sort of economic base for a long time. There are um over, I believe it's what's the number, I think it's 90 data centers throughout the county, 60 of which are in Santa Clara. Um, but there are a fair number in San Jose as uh as a an early planner in the department. Uh there's a couple in the city that I worked on and approved that have got my name on the plans. Um it's something that you know obviously we've been engaged in for a long time. Um, but this is an appropriate time to look at those standards and think differently. There's a an increasing amount of interest, and it's increasingly putting pressure on you know the community and our employment lands, so it's something we're being very thoughtful about. So you'll hear some more about that today. Um, the second thing is really uh the impact of state legislation on our work. Um, and I think it's it's one of the interesting things. Um I mentioned this to some folks yesterday. Um, when I started with the department 20 years ago, um, you know, our main conference room upstairs, we used to sit around that table on a regular basis, and there'd be plan sets and we'd be discussing design and kind of land use in its truest sense with developers and architects and consultants. We spend probably as much or more time sitting around talking with attorneys these days because land use has changed so significantly. Um, in the last five years, there's been over um you know 450 bills um focused on housing, particularly, but really aimed at land use. Um, in this last legislative session, uh uh the legislature took up 1800 bills, 300 of which were focused on planning related issues.