Sunday Night at the Movies

There was a spirited crowd at Peterson Middle School on Wednesday night, eager to learn more about the most important City-wide initiative of the century -- Measure J, the Stadium Subsidy.

And, learn they did. Kolstad & Kennedy covered topics as varied as the technical minutia of redevelopment law, school financing, game-day public safety measures and the stadium's potential impact on our perilously overdrawn City budget.

They even discussed campaign finance reform:



While we were not able to capture every moment of the evening's proceedings, we have posted as much as we could on youtube, where you will find discussions on:

• Stadium jobs
• Traffic
• School funding
• Taxes
  
• Economy & economic stimulus
  
• Public safety
• Stadium financing
  

Sit back, grab a bag of popcorn & let the good times roll!

A fun-filled summer evening

Tonight's City Council meeting might not be quite as much fun as a trip to an amusement park, but it's likely to be a whole other kind of wild ride.

This evening, the City Council will consider two reports related to the proposal to provide nearly $300,000,000 in public assets to help build a stadium for the San Francisco 49ers.

What are the items on tonight's agenda?:

1. In April, the City Council authorized spending $200,000 on consultants to provide analysis of the proposal. At the meeting tonight, City staff will recommended that the City Council authorize spending an additional $115,000 for consulting services.

2. The City Council will review KMA's report on developing an additional 11 acres to the east and west of Centennial Boulevard along Stars and Stripes Drive for the potential purpose of raising money to pay for the stadium.

The agenda is available here:

http://cityclerkdatabase.ci.santa-clara.ca.us/wx/pubhtml/pubhtml/3009.html

You can open the specific reports on these two items from the online agenda.

What can you do?:

1. Attend the City Council meeting on TONIGHT at 7pm and speak out! Speakers will probably be limited to 2 minutes each.

2. Call the Santa Clara City Council at

(408) 615-2250

3. Write a Letter to:

Patricia M. Mahan, Mayor
City Hall
1500 Warburton Avenue
Santa Clara, CA 95050

4. Send an email to:

MayorandCouncil@ci.santa-clara.ca.us

5. Spread the word! Tell your neighbors and friends and encourage them to get involved!

"A gift of public funds"

City Council voted last week to foot the entire bill for repairing the streets in the South of Forest neighborhood. It was a difficult decision for some Councilmembers. Besides the fairness issue, there are the ever-present concerns about fiscal health.

Fairness is an issue because there are similarly-annexed neighborhoods that had to pay for their own improvements. Fiscal health is a concern because the City has been running pretty lean since the recession of 2002.

Understandably, many public figures voiced strong opinions, on both sides. "Simply put, this is a gift of public funds," said former Mayor Bill Gissler.

What's remarkable is that there may be an even bigger gift of public funds going out on Santa Clara's next sleigh. Yet we have not seen anywhere near the same kind of outrage, from any public figure, elected or otherwise.

In fact, it's quite the opposite. Many have been very willing to fall on their swords to fawn over the would-be beneficiaries of this gift. By the way, the reindeers are headed for Ohio, because these lucky boys and girls are not even Santa Clara residents!

Exactly how big a load is Rudolph hauling? Here's a comparison to bring it home.

Joe Average is just getting by. His savings are cleaned out. He was maxed out on his credit cards a couple of years ago, but he just managed to pay that off with careful budgeting. Still, Joe and his family are pretty much going hand-to-mouth on their annual income of $70,000. Joe's wife needs to replace her 1983 Dodge Omni. Joe buys her a 3-year-old Dodge Neon for $8,000. He has to take out a loan, because he doesn't have that much cash. Credit counseling will probably frown on that, but hey, it's either that or she can't get to her job. Then Joe buys for himself a brand new Ferrari F430 for $178,000, on credit.

You think that's far-fetched? This comparison is not at all hypothetical. Joe's salary is the same as the median income in Santa Clara. Joe Average can easily be our City.

Santa Clara is just barely running a surplus, and the forecast is for zero surplus by 2012 ¹. We had a budget deficit from 2003 to 2006. The General Fund Reserves are low. There is a hiring freeze on 30 staff positions ². The SOFNA repairs cost $15M. City Council bit the bullet and committed to spending that money, even though it would probably mean deficit spending. Now the stadium proponents want Santa Clara to spend $297M to build a ballpark that will sit empty 11 months out of the year.

Look at the numbers in comparison:

• The Neon for Joe's wife costs about 1/8 of their annual income. The SOFNA repairs cost about 1/8 of the City's annual revenues.
• Joe's Ferrari costs about 20 times more than his wife's Neon. The stadium will cost 20 times more than the SOFNA repairs.
• Joe's Ferrari costs 2.5 times their annual income. The stadium will cost 2.5 times the City's annual revenues.
• Ferrari parts and labor are ... well, you don't want to know. The stadium operating costs are ... well, "Trust us" said the 49ers.

So which is the more outrageous "gift of public funds?"


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¹ City Council meeting minutes, May 15, 2007, section 4: Special Order of Business, item E: Joint Study Session on the Proposed Five-Year Financial plan for 2008-09 through 2012-13 and Proposed Capital Improvement Project Budget for FY 2007-08. Report, page 8 of 18.

² Ibid, page 4 of 18.

Priorities? Duh! What priorities?

For years, the streets in Santa Clara's South of Forest neighborhood have been a wreck. The city apparently has trouble scraping up the $15 million to fix this. Yet some Councilmembers are now enthusiastic about spending 20 times that amount to subsidize a stadium.

This was illustrated in stark contrast at the City Council meeting Tuesday night. In an impressive display of civic involvement, the South of Forest Neighborhood Association (SOFNA) presented a request to City Council to fix their streets.

Santa Clara or Sarajevo?

The South of Forest neighborhood has some of the most gruesome pavement seen anywhere since the war in the Balkans. Here are some of the pictures shown to City Council.

The hazards are very real. Here is what happens when kids ride their bicycles on these streets.

The residents of South of Forest are understandably very upset about this. They would like the city to fix their streets, and soon.

Compare their request to the proposed stadium.

• The cost of street repairs is $15 million.
• The city's share of the stadium costs has been estimated to be around $297 million.

• The repaired streets will be available for enjoyment 24x7, 365 days a year.
• The stadium would only be in use about 30 days a year. The rest of the time, well, it would be just as attractive to drug dealers as Candlestick or the Oakland Coliseum.

• The SOFNA request got loud proclamations of sympathy from the entire Council. Councilmembers Moore and Caserta both talked of precinct walking in that neighborhood during their campaign. A member of the audience addressed Council afterwards, and pointedly wondered where have Messrs. Moore and Caserta been in the 3 years since the election.
• The stadium, on the other hand, got this unabashed endorsement from Mr. Moore: "We're going to bring the ball all the way down the field and score on this one." (KPIX TV)

Misplaced priorities? You decide.

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Here is a copy of SOFNA's presentation to City Council (982 KB.)