While busy attacking the San Francisco 49ers, our City forgot to clean up their own house.
Recently you read the headlines “City Council votes to terminate 49ers as managers of Levi’s Stadium.”
The Council cited as one of the major reasons: the 49ers hired a second party subcontractor which failed to pay prevailing wage.
When the 49ers uncovered this oversight, they immediately required the subcontractor to make good and the 49ers paid the $85,000 difference.
Our City Council jumped on this oversight as another bungle by the 49ers, citing this as just another reason the 49ers should be terminated.
Now, the shoe is on the other foot.
Using the same logic our Council should be terminated immediately.
Our City has been in a lawsuit filed from our firefighters union charging that the City failed to pay our firefighters correctly from 2014 through 2018. Four full years! The City did not include unused medical benefits and hazardous duty pay in calculating overtime rates.
This amounted to $1.7 MILLION.
Maybe our firefighters were just tired of waiting to get paid correctly since our City leaders didn’t fix the problem for years. Even after they were notified in 2017. Firefighters waited and waited for our Council to fix the issue. No action!
So, our firefighters took the issue to court.
Interesting the difference here.
As soon as the 49ers discovered their subcontractor had not paid their employees correctly, they fixed the problem immediately.
When our City leaders were notified that they had paid our firefighters incorrectly, they slept on it. Kind of reminds you of the California Voting Rights Act and warning letters the Council ignored for years. That delay cost us MILLIONS!
So, after City leaders sat on the firefighters pay issue so long, the union took it to court.
The City owed our firefighters the money.
Before the case came to trial, the City agreed to settle but didn’t include payment for other employees whos overtime was also miscalculated. Yet another action was filed. Finally, a settlement was approved by a judge this time for $2.7 MILLION.
So, now we have to pay $2.7 MILLION because our Council, City Manager and City Attorney were too busy attacking the 49ers, The Weekly, the Chamber of Commerce or seemingly directing the Charter Review Committee to create a three-district ballot measure for March 2020. Which will cost another bundle.
And now, this same group of Council Members want to run and operate Levi’s Stadium?
If you ran your personal finances the same way our City leaders spend your tax money, you would be in divorce court.
We have come to that. Our citizens have irreconcilable differences with the way our City is being run, or more accurately…not run.
Residents are seriously overdue for a divorce from this Council.
It’s time for a change. The politics in our city has become rancid. It starts with the mayor and continues with her conjoined twins, Debi Davis and Kathy Watanabe. Unfortunately Teresa O’Neil is not far behind. Hoping that our newest members Raj and Karen can begin to clean up the corruption. With the current council majority endorsing Pat Nikolai, it seems things are just going to get worse. The council is not representing the people of Santa Clara anymore. They are representing themselves and whatever hidden agendas they have.