Councilmember Kelly Ramirez’s July 1 Guest View was titled “Uninformed Criticism of Data Center Plan is Misleading.” As a former Planning Commissioner, she should know the difference between criticism and documentation.
What she published wasn’t correction; it was misinformation from an elected official who, on her own recorded admission, decides which constituents deserve a response.
On funding: Ramirez wrote that “AWS will build, at their cost, all infrastructure to serve the data center independently from the rest of the demand in the area.” I contacted Valley Water directly. Public Information Representative Jose Villarreal confirmed: “SCRWP Project 1C funded by VW Utility Enterprise Fund. Amazon did not provide funding. The enterprise Fund receives its funding from rate payers.”
Valley Water’s own Board File 25-0665, dated Sept. 23, 2025, states the $3.76 million Phase 1C construction contract is funded by the Water Utility Enterprise Fund, Fund 61, with 100% of the costs allocated to Zone W-5, the zone covering Gilroy, San Martin and Morgan Hill. Not Amazon. Ratepayers.
That matters because California’s Constitution, Article XIII D, Section 6(b)(4), adopted by voters as Proposition 218, is explicit: “No fee or charge may be imposed for a service unless that service is actually used by, or immediately available to, the owner of the property in question. Fees or charges based on potential or future use of a service are not permitted.”
Potable-only ratepayers in Zone W-5 are funding recycled water infrastructure they cannot use, for a private company’s benefit, with no rate segregation and no majority-protest process. If Ramirez didn’t know this before writing that AWS pays “at their cost,” she should have found out before publishing. If she knew and wrote it anyway, that is a different problem entirely.
Ramirez also pointed to the city’s transparency record. Here is a fact she left out: the AKEL Engineering Final Technical Memorandum, the document the City’s own Water Supply Assessment cites as the technical basis for the data center’s water adequacy findings, has now been requested seven separate times through formal Public Records Act requests and public council comment. The city still has not produced it.
That is not a transparency record to be proud of. It is an open records violation in progress.
And on the subject of transparency: at the very meeting Ramirez cites as evidence of good process, she said this, on the public record, at the June 15 council meeting: “If you sent me an email demanding termination of staff or provided any disrespectful comment, you did not get a response from me. I deleted your email. You do not warrant a response.”
Constituent communications to an elected official about city business are public records. An elected official does not get to unilaterally decide which ones “warrant” preservation based on her own read of their tone. If Ramirez wants to talk about who is uninformed, she might start with an honest accounting of her own conduct.
Gilroy residents do not need a lecture from a councilmember about doing their homework. We need a council that tells the truth about who is paying for what, produces the documents it is legally required to produce and does not decide unilaterally whose emails are worth keeping. Ms. Ramirez asked us not to let others do our thinking for us. I agree. That is exactly why I checked her facts myself, and why residents deserve to see what I found.
Georgine Scott-Codiga
Gilroy
