Even something as banal as setting priorities for the upcoming year managed to stir up bad blood among the Santa Clara City Council.
At its second and final priority-setting session Wednesday, well-trodden rivalry bubbled to the surface. Former mayoral opponents Vice Mayor Anthony Becker and Mayor Lisa Gillmor faced off on whether to prioritize ethics.
Late in the meeting, each Council member put dots on note cards with potential priorities to indicate their support. Gillmor said it was “disappointing” that there weren’t more dots on the card that listed hiring an ethics consultant.
Taking the comment as “shots fired,” Becker retorted.
“I think ethics are really important, but I think the one who complains about ethics the most might be having the ethical problem themself,” he said.
Prior to that portion of the meeting, during public comments, Kirk Vartan, a San Jose resident with the cryptic title of “special advisor to the mayor” on worker cooperatives, called into the meeting to question Becker’s ethics.
Vartan’s comments were in response to Becker’s claim early in the meeting that he would like the meeting to be about priorities and not about “special interests.” Saying Becker “continues to show his special interests,” Vartan all but demanded that Becker explain his recent change in attorney.
The switch, Vartan said, looks suspicious, giving the impression that someone hired an attorney for Becker that he was previously unable to afford.
“I am not saying that is what happened, but that is what it looks like. It looks like a gift of some kind was given either in-kind or directly to pay for this attorney,” Vartan said.
The Meaning Of The Word “Priority”
But it wasn’t all bickering. Becker joined Gillmor and her political ally Council Member Kathy Watanabe in bemoaning that several projects they feel are important did not see wider Council support.
Becker said some pet issues, in his case a policy about data centers and installing rainbow crosswalks, should be “considered in a different pile.”
For Watanabe and Gillmor, it was getting the northside station operating. Even though Gillmor and Watanabe seemed to be on the same page as Becker, there was still an undercurrent of derision toward Council members who didn’t support their priorities.
“Just because it only had two votes — you can guess who the two are — just because it had two votes, does not mean we should discard that, because the safety of our northside…is important,” Gillmor said. “So, I am not ready to give up on that just because a majority of this council doesn’t think that is important enough to put on here.”
Refusing to accept wider consensus was also a theme at the previous priority-setting session. During that session, the Council focused much time discussing topics that the City-commissioned survey showed were not high priority for residents.
Council Members Suds Jain and Raj Chahal took a different attitude in the face of being in the minority, saying they “trust the process,” even if it left some items they are passionate about on the cutting room floor.
Others who didn’t vote for particular priorities said they saw them as a component of a larger undertaking.
For instance, in regard to the northside station, Council Member Kevin Park said he saw that as falling under the larger umbrella of expanding emergency services. He said he would prefer to allocate money to particular departments, such as the police department, and let those departments decide how to best use it.
He also acknowledged that setting priorities means excluding many important things.
“If the priorities bump the other priorities you had, then they are priorities, but if they don’t, we have to understand what the word ‘priority’ means,” he said.
City Manager Jovan Grogan told the Council that just because something didn’t make it into the top priorities doesn’t mean City employees will no longer pursue it. Some items will come back to the Council as part of the broader budget discussion, he said.
Again, he implored the Council to be cognizant of funding and City employees’ time, saying adding to or amending the list makes it difficult for them to complete it.
Broader Consensus
For all the back-and-forth, many of the priorities set at the meeting fall into several large buckets. Topics that popped up repeatedly and took many different forms were reducing spending, infrastructure improvements, homeless services, economic development and affordable housing.
Julia Novak, a consultant Raftelis moderating the session, said the Council did well to focus its priorities, culling the list and nesting other projects into broader categories.
“I knew there was [sic] some things you agreed on. I also know there is strong disagreement sometimes,” she said. “This is really amazing…about half of the things you said were priorities, individually, became shared priorities of the entire governing body.”
Although many priorities were specific, many fell under the larger umbrella of a few basic concerns. While many specific projects didn’t get the attention some felt they deserved, they are likely to fall into one of the larger buckets.
For instance, a new clubhouse for the Santa Clara Lawn Bowlers has been in discussion for many years, and while it is not likely to be a priority, it does fall under the larger category of expanding city amenities, specifically those related to parks and recreation.
One public member, Vikas Guptas, who is also a parks and recreation commissioner for the City, disagreed with the assessment that the aforementioned priorities were those of the Council and a “vocal minority.”
“Sports and recreation continue to be top priorities, even though the survey didn’t reflect it,” he said.
Infrastructure repeatedly reared its head. Some projects, such as replacing the George Haines International Swim Center (ISC)—one of those hot topics among public commenters—fall into two broad categories: infrastructure and sports and recreation.
Several public commenters mentioned addressing the City’s $600 million capital project needs. The Council has been vocal about its intent to pursue a bond measure later this year to raise the money to cover those costs. Some found the issue quite pressing.
Mario Bouza, a Planning Commissioner and former Council candidate, implored the Council to focus on getting spending under control so it could address these needs.
“If we saw the wreck coming, why didn’t we try to stop this? One of the things we got [sic] to do is, let’s tighten our belts a little bit, put priorities on the things in the infrastructure of the City that needs to be done,” he said. “Other little programs like bike lanes or making Pruneridge a two-lane road, road diets and so on, let’s just put a priority on things to fix Santa Clara up first and just go from there.”
During a second round of public comments, many spoke in favor of the Council prioritizing reinvigorating the downtown as well as reopening the ISC.
Grogan said his office was seeking consensus from the Council, something he said seems to have been achieved. His office will prepare a report outlining each of the Council’s priorities and a timeline for various projects within those priorities, acknowledging that some will likely take several years to complete.
