Top image: Santa Clara City Hall. Photo: Dvortygirl / CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons

Three of the South Bay’s most consequential governing bodies meet on Tuesday, Oct. 20, and their agendas cover most of what will shape the region over the next decade: electricity and the AI build-out, police surveillance, climate preparedness and federal budget cuts.

Santa Clara: a moratorium returns

The most closely watched item is in Santa Clara. Councilmember Karen Hardy plans to bring back a proposed moratorium focused on new standalone data centers at the council’s Oct. 20 meeting, San José Spotlight reported, after her original request went unheard when the Oct. 6 meeting adjourned at 1 a.m. “I was frustrated that we couldn’t even bring it to a vote,” Hardy said.

At that Oct. 6 meeting, the council unanimously directed staff to prioritize new water and air-quality standards for data centers as part of a broader policy review. The stakes are unusually high for Santa Clara. The city has nearly 60 data centers, which generated about $35 million for the city last year, or almost 10% of its general fund, KQED reported. About 54% of the city’s power is used by data centers.

The city’s municipal utility, Silicon Valley Power, stopped accepting new data center power applications in 2023 while it works through a $450 million infrastructure upgrade that isn’t expected to be finished until 2030, KQED reported. City staff said that pause is not a moratorium, because developers can still seek land-use entitlements. That gap is what worries Councilmember Kevin Park, who said developers stuck waiting for power are “moving forward with land entitlements and other things.” Hardy and Park are both running for mayor.

Santa Clara County: surveillance and storms

The Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors’ Oct. 20 agenda, as summarized by SimpleCity, includes several police technology items:

• A required finding, under the county’s surveillance technology ordinance, that the benefits of forensic data extraction tools outweigh their costs.
• A report on a proposed technology contract with Axon for the Sheriff’s Office.
• The annual surveillance report covering July 2025 through June 2026.

The board will also hear a Caltrain presentation on its “No External Funding Scenario” and its impact on service, and consider a $3 million transfer to begin predevelopment of a jail facility investment plan. The agenda also includes a $13 million appropriation for supportive housing, a County Executive update on state and federal budgets, and the shift of the county’s Primary Care Access Program to a new program called Valley Care, which the South Bay Chronicle examined this week.

San Mateo County: El Niño and a data center ban

In Redwood City, the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors will consider proclaiming a local emergency for the 2026-27 El Niño season for preparedness and planning purposes. The proclamation would put the Department of Emergency Management in charge of response coordination and create an interdepartmental El Niño task force. The same agenda includes a resolution to study a possible countywide ban on new data centers in unincorporated areas, which the South Bay Chronicle covered in depth.

Supervisors will also consider asking the county health officer to inspect detention facilities at San Francisco International Airport, receive the Sheriff’s Office report on immigration detainers and the first-year report of the Office of Labor Standards and Enforcement, and vote on a Measure K grant of up to $125,000 for enhanced traffic enforcement on Highways 84, 35 and 9 west of Interstate 280.

The long view

Taken together, the three agendas show local government’s job changing. Cities and counties are increasingly the ones regulating new technologies: the power demands of AI computing, tools that extract data from phones, and police technology platforms. They are also being asked to plan for a wetter winter and a leaner federal government at the same time.

Santa Clara’s vote is the clearest example. A city that profited from being California’s cheapest place to plug in a server is now asking whether its utility, its water and its residents’ patience have limits, and whether a vote on the question belongs to the council or to the public. Whatever happens Tuesday, the region’s data center policy is no longer being set mainly by its utilities.

Sources: San José Spotlight (Oct. 11, 2026); KQED (Oct. 8, 2026); SimpleCity summary of the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors’ Oct. 20 agenda; DocketCity listing of the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors’ Oct. 20 agenda.