So what’s new in Santa Clara? The first thing that comes to mind is that City Manager Jovan Grogan has brought order to City Council business. If you haven’t been watching or attending City Council meetings, it’s okay. Take my word for it. Council was awake and acting on our behalf when they selected Grogan as City Manager and his most efficient associate, City Attorney Glen Googins.
We also want to thank the SCPD for addressing an issue we mentioned in a previous column. Scott Boulevard had become the after-hours home to hot rod dragsters and wannabe Indianapolis racers. With the SCPD’s vigilance and attention, Scott Boulevard has returned to a more civilized and safer thoroughfare.
Around town, we notice that Silicon Valley Power continues to divert residents’ tax dollars to subsidize 17 EV charging stations. There is no problem with folks who desire an electric vehicle. Good for them. However, it does seem a bit unfair to use rate revenue from residents who own gas-powered vehicles — and who are paying for their own fuel — to directly provide residents funds to buy personal charging stations and electric vehicle owners with free electric charging stations.
While taxpayers, residents and business owners have had many electric rate increases passed their way in the last few years, how is it that special treatment is afforded to a few at ratepayers’ and taxpayers’ expense? Silicon Valley Power was created over a century ago to build energy independence and competitive power for businesses and residents alike. These savings have been historically passed on to our residents and businesses to make Santa Clara even more attractive place to do business.
As residents have witnessed over the past decade, data centers have proliferated in the Santa Clara community. They have ravenous appetites for power, but also create a significant revenue stream for SVP. However, there are restrictions as to how the profits of SVP can assist the city. To use these profits to benefit a select group at the expense of all rate payers just doesn’t justify the decision. On a final note, a big thanks to our City Council members who have used their majority to temper Mayor Gillmor’s out-of-control agenda. One of these current council members will almost certainly become the next Mayor of Santa Clara. There is a lot of talent on this council and several members are capable mayors in the making.
Be assured that Gillmor will run for council when her term as Mayor is up next year.
After all, she has been on the council for 28 of the last 32 years.
Is it possible that this won’t be a slam dunk for her, as elections have been for her the last 15 years?
Previous Milestones:
Milestones – Unrelated Related – Opinion
Milestones – Tax Upon Tax? – Opinion
Milestones – Another Picture – Opinion
The City of Santa Clara, its residents, and businesses have had more than enough of Lisa Gillmor hanging around on the city council.
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With all the negative campaigning and continuous infighting, the City, City Council, and residents should establish a goal of preventing future occurrences of the same problems. To do that, we all must look at the symptoms of such bickering. A good framework to identify these symptoms is a root cause analysis (RCA), which is a problem-solving method used to understand why a problem or event occurred. https://online.hbs.edu/blog/post/root-cause-analysis
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For example, if voters look back at the 2022 incident when Watanabe and Gillmor accused fellow Councilmember Becker of verbal abuse, they will find that an investigator from the law firm Van Dermyden Makus, contracted by the City of Santa Clara, found there was insufficient evidence to support Gillmor and Watanabe’s claims. So, if witnesses were also in the meeting room at the time of alleged abuse occurred, and verified that Becker never verbally abused fellow Councilmembers, why did the City feel it was worth taxpayer money to hire an outside investigator? https://sanjosespotlight.com/santa-clara-official-city-council-cleared-of-verbal-assault-accusations/
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The answer to that question might be found in what Gillmor and Watanabe’s political allies have done with the results of other third-party investigations. The Santa Clara Civil Grand Jury has completed several investigations centered around the City of Santa Clara, but three in particular: Unsportsmanlike Conduct (2022), Irreconcilable Differences (2024), and Outplayed (2024) were particularly politicized. The timing of such reports was suspect, as in 2022 Gillmor faced her biggest mayoral candidacy challenge in decades from Anthony Becker where she barely edged him by just 776 votes (51.34% – 48.66%) and 2024 had four council seats open for election that could have seated a super-majority in favor for Gillmor’s political alliance machine if the campaigns of Satish Chandra, Teresa O’Neill, and David Kertes had succeeded. In both 2022 and 2024, the Santa Clara Police Association’s Political Action Committee spent large sums of money in promoting a slanted version of each Grand Jury Report to paint Gillmor’s opponents as corrupted by the San Francisco 49ers. https://grandjuryreport.com/
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Before 2022 and 2024, there was also the 2018 election season, where a California Voters Rights Act (CVRA) lawsuit received continued pushback from Gillmor and her allies. Despite losing a years-long CVRA lawsuit, Gillmor supported an appeal to try and extinguish the Court’s ruling in favor of district voting. Both the Civil Rights lawsuit and Appeal ultimately cost taxpayers $6,000,000.
1) https://www.svvoice.com/santa-clara-had-7-year-warning-of-voting-rights-lawsuit-that-will-cost-city-millions/
2) https://dhkl.law/cases/wesley-kazuo-mukoyama-v-city-santa-clara/
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As highlighted in #4 of Psychology Today’s 7 Ways to Deal With High-Conflict People, “Realize you will never be able to reason with the unreasonable; in most cases, they are simply unable to because of their personality and emotional immaturity. Letting go of the fantasy and wishful thinking is key.” https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-pulse-of-mental-health/202207/7-ways-to-deal-with-high-conflict-people. In 28 years, there has been constant bickering within the City Council, and just one person has been a constant in the middle of the fighting: Lisa Gillmor. Do residents need to pay tens of thousands of dollars for an entity to conduct a proper RCA? Not, likely not. Should residents avoid electing Gillmor to future public office? Absolutely. If we don’t, the infighting and wasteful spending will probably continue.