As a former Gilroy Planning Commissioner and current City Council Member, I will not allow Adriana Leongardt’s letter to go unanswered. It is factually wrong, and Gilroy residents deserve better.
First, and foremost, her accusation of Community Development Director Sharon Goei’s breach of public trust is completely false. Ms. Goei is one of the hardest working staff members for the City of Gilroy. She works tirelessly to ensure that she and her team manage building and development projects based on the policies and regulations that the community and the city council have prescribed for her.
Ms. Goei cares about transparency and created a webpage specific to the data center project, and regularly updated it with information as it became available. Ms. Goei followed—to the letter—the approval process based on current codes.
As a planning commissioner, Ms. Leongardt should know this. If she doesn’t, she should not have been serving in that capacity.
Ms. Leongardt claims she has built these facilities. She should produce specific proof that she was in a position to authorize any process of building a data center. Ms. Goei, on the other hand, hired a project manager that successfully led the process of over 40 data centers in Santa Clara County.
This ensured that Gilroy was well represented during this process, asking all the right questions and again moving forward with the best interests of Gilroy at the forefront.
Specific to Gilroy, many of us remember rolling blackouts from insufficient electrical supply. With those memories comes a natural propensity for caution. To that end, the analysis for the Amazon Web Services data center is robust.
With respect to the Gilroy data center, AWS will build—at their cost—all infrastructure to serve the data center independently from the rest of the demand in the area.
Since those days in the 2000s, the statewide power supply scene has changed. The infrastructure is now sized to carry nearly double what the peak demand is. And to fill their part of that demand, Amazon procures power proactively on the market—buying clean green energy through our partner agency, Silicon Valley Clean Energy.
This isn’t by accident—city staff required this as part of the project.
In regard to water usage, this piece of land previously grew peppers and tomatoes, using 70-100 AFY of potable water. The data center will use 23 AFY and once the pipeline from Gilroy’s wastewater treatment plant to the site is complete (expected in 2030), all water used will be completely recyclable.
The construction of this pipeline is being paid for by AWS and the pipeline and related infrastructure will become a public amenity. Any business and farmer along the pipeline will be able to tap into this for their own use. Recycled water isn’t an afterthought.
Ms. Leongardt also claims that Gilroy “could have housed hundreds of families” on that land. Again, I question how Ms. Leongardt served on the planning commission. She should know that the land and area in question has never been zoned residential and that there have never been any plans for infrastructure for housing in that area.
What Ms. Leongardt failed to mention in her letter was the process this developer had to go through in order to receive approval. The developer went through a lengthy and expensive process of environmental approval.
CEQA (California Environmental Quality Act) is the strictest environmental regulatory law in the United States. In fact, going through the CEQA process is why many corporations and developers choose NOT to develop in California.
The community benefits from this project are substantial and documented. In addition to the recycled water infrastructure, AWS has funded the purchase of a fire truck to the tune of $1 million. On an ongoing basis, Gilroy will receive revenue from property taxes, including all equipment which will be upgraded regularly and 5% utility user tax collected annually.
These are significant contributions to the future services you as a resident will receive and the reason that cities plan for a balanced land use—some residential, some commercial, some industrial.
I understand the concern around data centers given the significant amount of attention the media is giving this. But Gilroy has been transparent, has followed development laws and approval processes, and has kept the interest of Gilroy as top priority. In fact, a study by Santa Clara University said that Gilroy was the most transparent city they studied.
The facts in this case are clear—they are publicly documented on the city’s website. Ms. Leongardt has chosen to ignore them. When elected officials and former commissioners reject documented facts in favor of unfounded allegations, they do not serve the community—they mislead it.
Gilroyans deserve better, and I will continue to say so.
If you have doubts, I encourage you to read the city website where documents are available for you to read. Don’t let others do your thinking for you—especially those who haven’t done theirs.
I remain steadfast in my support of staff during this process.
Kelly Ramirez is a Gilroy City Council Member.
