An extraordinary report on local misbehavior
This column was produced by Zócalo Public Square and Democracy Local. Photo: Santa Clara City Hall via Wikimedia, CC BY-SA 3.0
During a Santa Clara City Council meeting last year, Councilmember Kevin Park gestured to a local business owner in the audience and started reading aloud from the illustrated book All My Friends Are Dead, about a dinosaur who’s still around, even though the other dinosaurs are extinct.
But Park altered the text to read “All My Friends Are Termed Out.” The message was menacing. The business owner was deeply engaged with the city and once had many allies on the council. But Park was reminding this man that Park and the current council majority disliked him and that his political allies had left, or would soon leave, the council. Park’s implied threat: Who would protect the business owner moving forward?
Conflict is all too common at city council meetings in California and elsewhere. The council in our state’s largest city, Los Angeles, was so discredited by federal corruption investigations and a racist tape that your columnist suggested that it be disbanded. But it may be hard to top Santa Clara’s council for its rudeness and incompetence.
That, at least, is the conclusion of an extraordinary public document on the council, produced in June by the Santa Clara County Civil Grand Jury, which includes an account of Park’s dramatic reading. In California, such grand juries of regular citizens convene for a year to investigate local government. The Santa Clara grand jury’s report, titled “Irreconcilable Differences,” offers dozens of examples of just how nasty things can get in our city halls.
This report, based on 40 interviews and reviews of four years of council meetings, finds that “several Councilmembers have turned public meetings into spectacles by displaying abusive and belittling behavior from the dais towards members of the public; by political grandstanding, pontificating, and digressing from City business; by exhibiting a serious misunderstanding of parliamentary procedures; and by performing outlandish antics, such as reading from a satirical cartoon book.”
Much of this nasty political football is the product of actual football. The San Francisco 49ers relocated to a new home stadium in Santa Clara in 2014. Hopes were high that the team would boost the finances and spirits of this city of 129,000.
Instead, the 49ers, while winning on the field, have been the local franchise from hell, angering many city residents and officials. The stadium is an uninspiring and undistinguished venue. The team’s promises that the building would be paid for privately proved untrue; the project required a new hotel tax and a public entity to take on $600 million in construction loans. There have also been disputes about traffic, a local soccer field that the 49ers used for parking, and the team’s financial disclosures to the city.
The 49ers responded to fierce local criticism first with litigation, then by spending millions to unseat council members who didn’t toe the line. The 49ers came to control a council majority that is known locally as the “49er Five.” But the team’s power in City Hall has poisoned relationships between the council and community members, city staff, and the mayor, who remains a critic of the team.
The new grand jury report is only the latest documentation of the awful dynamic. Two years previously, the Santa Clara County Civil Grand Jury released a report, “Unsportsmanlike Conduct,” criticizing the council’s “lack of transparency, unethical behavior, and a lack of fiduciary responsibility regarding the Stadium.” Back then, the jury identified “repeated instances of councilmembers behaving acrimoniously and disrespectfully toward each other, City staff and the public… causing severe dysfunction in the City governance.”
Typically, when a county grand jury issues a report about a city, a city council will respond substantively, accepting some criticism and pushing back on others. But the Santa Clara City Council rejected the findings in their entirety, and attacked the 2022 grand jury in conspiratorial tones. They ignored constructive suggestions, like creating a strong ethics committee to oversee the council (there is an ethics committee now, but the report says it is toothless).
One pro-49ers councilmember, Anthony Becker, reportedly leaked the grand jury report to the 49ers before its release. In 2023, Becker was indicted for the leak and lying about it; the case is still pending.
Since then, the council’s behavior has gotten worse, the 2024 grand jury report found. Arguments about small things are never-ending; on one occasion, the council spent two hours arguing over whether the mayor could send a note on city letterhead. The new grand jury report claims that the council can’t follow the most basic rules of order. They ignore the gavel when the mayor tries to quiet council members and move on with the agenda.
The report questions whether councilmembers actually know the basics of governance or public meetings—or ignore them. Councilmember Park regularly speaks about items not on the agenda and interrupts votes by speaking after the closing of discussion. Councilmember Becker, who has remained in office even as he is prosecuted, makes motions before agenda items have been discussed or deliberated. And Councilmember Raj Chahal abstains from votes without legal basis, the report says
The council members spend so much time fighting and snickering that they seem confused about the actual business. In an August 2022 meeting depicted by the grand jury, city staff presented council members with four options for replacing a collapsed concrete wall that had been damaged by city trees. Staff had spent a year meeting with residents to come up with the plans. But the council, even after hours of briefing and discussion, was too confused to choose an option. With no path forward, the city manager and city attorney at the time instructed residents to file a claim against the city; the eventual settlement cost more than options negotiated by city staff.
Polls show the public has soured on the council and the city. And with good reason. While Santa Clara’s budget goes into deficit and its infrastructure languishes (the city is decades behind on capital improvements and a swim center was closed for safety reasons), the council is consumed by argument. A favorite tactic of the 49er Five, and their critics, is to investigate each other by filing Public Records Act requests, seeking records of their opponents’ conversations and communications. In this paper war, the city has received as many as 90 public record requests in one day, the grand jury found.
Councilmembers hurled unfounded accusations at the police chief and his family, then asked voters to change the position, currently elected, to a council-appointed post. Last year, voters rejected the change, choosing the chief over the council.
The grand jury blames the constant council conflict for long and exhausting meetings that extend well past midnight, low morale among city employees, and the discouragement of volunteerism and public participation among the general public. Its reports recommend that councilmembers attend trainings and establish an independent ethics commission.
Some councilmembers have suggested the grand jury findings are political, or aimed at the 49ers. But the council has said it will respond to the report by September 10.
Will they change their behavior? Don’t hold your breath. Indeed, the most damning of the new report’s findings is its recitation of all the residents who have asked the council to examine its own behavior and work to rebuild trust.
The council ignores these requests, the grand jury report found.
“Under current rules,” says the report, “Councilmembers have the sole authority to examine and police their behavior, a task they have proven themselves unwilling to do.”
