Is Santa Clara Moving in the Right Direction?
87%
40%
The City of Santa Clara once led California in local government ethics.
The Santa Clara Code of Ethics & Values, adopted in 2000, and the programs that supported it were groundbreaking, award-winning, and nationally recognized.
The programs started because the people said, "Enough!"
Enough of the win-at-all-costs, crush-the-competition City Council campaigns — and the dysfunction that too often followed them onto the Council dais.
In 2008, ten years into the program, 87% of residents said the City was going in the right direction.
By 2024, that number had dropped by more than half — to 40%.
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1. What's At Stake for Santa Clara
The dramatic increase—from 13% in 2008 to 60% in 2024— in the number of people who believe Santa Clara is going in the wrong direction didn't happen by accident.
Over the past decade, the ethics infrastructure that once made Santa Clara a national model — Council and Staff shared ownership, the tone at the top, the award-winning Code of Ethics & Values, Behavioral Standards, the training programs, its on-call ethics consultant, its Vote Ethics initiative — all of it was dismantled, weakened, or allowed to wither. None of it required a public vote to undo.
What's at stake now is whether that infrastructure gets rebuilt — and in the City Charter where future councils can't quietly dismantle it again — or whether the next decade looks like the last one.
That choice comes down to four specific decisions, all of them in motion right now — and all of them needing to change direction.
Four Important Decisions Now Underway
Within the next few months, Santa Clara will make four decisions that will shape how this City is governed for a generation.
Santa Clara is not simply failing to address ethics and public trust issues. It has structured its decision-making to reduce at-our-best ethics to legal compliance, limit meaningful public input, and present incomplete reforms as comprehensive solutions, while at the same time considering the potential transfer to the 49ers of full-year operational control of Levi's Stadium — and all of its revenue — for at least the next 27 years.
Here's where these decisions stand as of the beginning of May, 2026:
- CITY CHARTER:
The City Charter Review excludes the Stadium Authority altogether, and leaves the public ethics infrastructure and meaningful public engagement to the discretion of this Council and Senior Staff — who ignore ethics and are close to completing a decade-long dismantling of the City's award-winning ethics programs. - ETHICS CODE:
The City is gutting the ground-breaking Santa Clara Code of Ethics & Values and replacing it with a follow-the-law compliance code — the kind Santa Clara rejected 25 years ago — written only for the seven Council members, drafted in secret over two years, with no review of current codes, and zero public input. The longest section focuses on the relationship between Council and Staff — which reveals exactly who and what they think ethics is for. - ETHICS OVERSIGHT:
After rejecting the Civil Grand Jury's call for an independent ethics commission twice in 2022, the City is studying it again — using a process designed by staff, run by an employment lawyer with no values-based ethics or commission experience, and reviewed by the same three Council members who rejected it before.This is political theater, not serious studies.
If the Charter Review Committee embeds public trust protections in the Charter, an independent ethics commission is the strongest safeguard.
If it does not, the public may need to take the initiative to establish the best-practices independent ethics commission neither the Council nor the staff will.
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STADIUM GIVE-AWAY:
This year, a 49ers-PAC-backed Council majority — sitting as the Stadium Authority Board — will decide whether to exercise the "put right" clause in the Stadium Lease Agreement.
The clause gives the 49ers full year-round operational control of Levi's Stadium, including all Non-NFL event revenue, naming rights, parking, and concession revenues, for at least the next 27 years.
Public revenues built the stadium and have paid down almost $450M of stadium debt. Under the contract's formula, the 49ers' payment for the "put right" may equal zero.
These decisions are already in motion, and the people making them are not waiting for residents to catch up.
Except for the Charter Review, staff has designed the decision-making so Council and staff workgroups have already shaped the outcomes before the public is asked for input.
Little is being said publicly about Levi's Stadium, even though the "Put Right" has been in the Lease Agreement for 13 years.
Three Civil Grand Jury Reports in three years have documented Santa Clara's ethics and governance failures.
City government has continued down the same path it's been on for ten years.
Can this City move in the right direction? Only if the people of Santa Clara insist, persist, and prevail.
If not, the City will continue on a path that leads inevitably to:
Politics without principle.
Government without ethics.
A city without public trust.
2. Two Minute Summary
Santa Clara is about to make four decisions that will shape how this City is governed for a generation.
Those decisions involve the City Charter, the Ethics Code, Ethics Oversight, and the future of Levi’s Stadium.
Taken together, they will determine whether Santa Clara restores ethical leadership and rebuilds public trust—or continues down a path where ethics is treated as optional, public input comes too late to matter, and major decisions are made without asking two critically important questions:
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The Ethics Question: Why, if at all, is this the right thing to do for the people?
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The Public Trust Question: How, if at all, will this decision build the public's trust that their government puts the people's best interests above all others?
These decisions are already underway. In most cases, the key choices are being shaped before the public has been invited to weigh in.
One of those decisions could transfer full operational control of Levi’s Stadium—and all of its revenue—to the 49ers for at least the next 27 years, with little or no return to the public.
This is not a routine policy moment. It is a test of what kind of city Santa Clara will be—and whose interests its government will serve.
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3. Levi's Stadium Changed Everything
In 2009, Santa Clara reached an agreement to bring the 49ers to town.
In 2010, voters approved Measure J — 14,628 to 10,505, in a city of 116,000 — to build a new stadium.
The 49ers spent $4.3 million promoting the measure.
A new Stadium Authority, separate and distinct from the City, was created to own, build, and run what became Levi's Stadium on behalf of the people of Santa Clara.
People were told that the Stadium Authority, as a separate entity, would be better able to protect — and contribute to — the City's general fund.
Since 2011, the City Council, City Manager, and City Attorney also serve as the Santa Clara Stadium Authority (SCSA) Board, Executive Director, and Agency Counsel.
Other City staff also have Stadium Authority positions.
The Stadium Authority reimburses the City for their time.
The Council and the Stadium Authority meet concurrently: Same people. Same room. Same agenda document — different agenda.
Confused? Welcome to Santa Clara City Government. We'll discuss Santa Clara's decision-makers throughout this site. It's important to know the key players and what they are up to. Let's do a little test — no wrong answers. Please play along.
So, it's a Tuesday night at Santa Clara City Hall. You find this meeting underway. What are you looking at? (Click one button. No answers are recorded.)
4. Which Santa Clara City Government Group Is This?
5. When We Talk About "Government"
On this site, "government" means the people making decisions on behalf of the public — the City Council, Commissioners, City Manager, City Attorney, and other senior officials, acting as individuals and as the city organization.
In Santa Clara, those same individuals act as the City Council at one moment and the Stadium Authority at the next. Understanding who is acting, and under which set of responsibilities, is essential to understanding how Santa Clara is governed today.
When government becomes complicated and distant — when residents can no longer tell who is deciding what — trust erodes. People start to feel that city government is something done to them, rather than by them and for them.
It doesn't have to feel that way.
Good government should feel like a group of neighbors — first among equals, supported by professional staff — making decisions with the wisdom, experience, and moral maturity to do the right thing. Independent. Impartial. Accountable to the people. Trust grows when government decisions align, in practical ways, with the city's core values.
Does that sound like a pipe-dream? It isn't. From 2002 to 2014, every Santa Clara City Council renewed this pledge every two years as part of the Campaign Ethics Program:
Did the Council follow through? During elections, when everyone was watching — for the most part, yes. But the same Council, in the same years, was making the long-term stadium decisions the Civil Grand Jury later documented in Outplayed — decisions that were not in Santa Clara's long-term best interests.
The promise was real. The follow-through between elections wasn't — ethics and values were no longer City priorities. That's why Dr. Shanks left after the 2014 election.
The current City Council has a track record of ethically questionable decisions, which we explore below. It is difficult to imagine them ever making a Council of Trust promise, much less trying to live it.
6. It Worked.. Until It Didn't
For more than a decade, Santa Clara’s ethics program worked.
It worked because it was built around two clear goals:
- earning public trust
- creating a high-functioning, ethical workplace
The Code of Ethics & Values defined what ethical leadership looked like in practice — not just in theory — and applied to everyone in City service.
The City defined ethics simply: Ethics is how the City organization, its officials, and its staff act when they are at their best earning the public's trust. The Code prescribed how City government--and all its officials and staff--ought to act every day to earn public trust.
Public trust meant one thing: The people's confident reliance that their government works hard, in public and in private, solely to advance the best interests of the people of Santa Clara--never putting personal, private, or special relationships ahead of the people's needs.
To earn that trust, the City organization committed to a set of practical ethics skills: identifying who had the most to gain or lose from a decision, recognizing ethics issues, testing decisions against good governance guiding principles before making a final decision, acting with courage, and communicating the ethics reasons behind decisions.
If the City made an ethics mistake, the City would focus on the stumbling block and the skills needed to overcome it, so that the City didn't keep making the same mistake.
Strong leadership, ongoing training, on-call advice, and an engaged public made the ethics standards real and part of everyone's job responsibilities.
Was it perfect? No, public ethics, like personal ethics, is a work in progress and has no sunset date.
The League of California Cities called Santa Clara's Code of Ethics & Values "groundbreaking" and turned its development process into a statewide guide.
The League awarded the City two Helen Putnam Awards for Excellence, including the Grand Prize--the first time Santa Clara had received that honor.
Unesco recognized Vote Ethics as one of two model campaign programs in the world. These were just a few of the Ethics Program's accomplishments.
The program worked because City government made ethics and public trust priorities, and made the program an "all hands" effort across the organization.
Then it didn't.
Beginning around 2008 — and accelerating after long-time City Manager (CM) Jennifer Sparacino and her Deputy CM Carol McCarthy retired in 2012 — priorities changed.
The program wasn't ended by a single decision.
The dismantling began under a Council so determined to build the stadium that there was very little time or attention left for anything else.
That dismantling continued across different City Councils from 2017 to today. By 2018, the City effectively removed "ethics" from the City budget where it had been for at least 20 years.
The dismantling of ethics programs left only the Code of Ethics & Values and the Behavioral Standards on the City's website, universally ignored, with no oversight, and no accountability.
All of that without a public hearing. Without explanation.
By the time most residents noticed, there was little left to save — but a great deal of public trust to rebuild.
7. What Changed -- and Why It Matters
Taking Ethics for Granted
Santa Clara began dismantling its ethics program in large part because successive City Councils took it for granted.
They forgot how much work it had taken to build a program whose primary purpose was to earn the public's trust by promoting and maintaining the highest standards of public ethics.
When the 49ers came to town, they bedazzled the Council with celebrity, possibility, and the promise of new revenue.
Some members of the Council became so committed to the stadium that they often sounded more like 49er employees than representatives of the public. The current Council has not broken from that pattern — it has deepened it.
City priorities shifted — and when ethics and public trust were no longer among them, Dr. Shanks left after the 2014 election. He had been the City's on-call ethics consultant for 17 years.
But calling it a shift in priorities does not honor the full truth.
Ethics Never Made It Through the Gate
The 49ers announced their plans to build in Santa Clara in 2006. By 2009, negotiations were well underway — a full year before voters approved the Stadium with Measure J.
Dr. Shanks had grown increasingly concerned about the ethics issues surfacing throughout those discussions. He believed the Council was ignoring most of them.
So in 2009 — and again in 2010 and 2011 — he submitted proposals to Senior Staff for a special initiative: an Ethics Impact Report, to be produced each time staff brought a Council recommendation involving the 49ers.
The proposal called for training staff to identify ethics, core values, and public trust issues as they emerged in ongoing negotiations, and to suggest ways those concerns might be addressed.
Staff would not be asked to make decisions — they would flag areas of concern. Not to block the stadium, but to protect public trust and assure ethics problems and solutions were part of the Council's deliberations.
As Dr. Shanks wrote at the time: "Few City decisions have as much potential impact on the public's trust as the decision about the 49ers new stadium."
The proposal was rejected in 2009, and again in 2010 and 2011 — without public discussion, behind closed doors.
A Decision "Someone" Made
In retrospect, those rejections reveal something more troubling than political intrigue.
At some point in those early negotiations — whether the decision was made by Council, Senior Staff, the 49ers' representatives, or their consultants and lawyers — someone or some group chose to exclude ethics analysis from the stadium process entirely.
It was not an oversight.
The proposals were specific, concrete, and submitted multiple times.
They were rejected.
The Stadium Authority: A World Without Ethics
Those decisions had consequences that compounded over time.
Contracts negotiated without ethics guardrails were predictably less fair, less transparent, less beneficial, and less protective of the public's interests and the City's fiduciary duties.
The Stadium Authority was designed as a separate and distinct legal entity to protect the General Fund and the City from Stadium losses.
It was not meant to exempt the Stadium Authority, the Stadium, the Tenant, or the Tenant's owners from the ethics requirements the City imposes on itself, its vendors, contractors, and lobbyists.
It also does not remove the fiduciary duties the Stadium Authority, like the City Council, is sworn to uphold: the duties of care in all transactions, loyalty to the public, impartiality, transparency, accountability, and responsibility for the public trust.
What has emerged, especially since 2020 and the 49ers dominance of the City's elections, was less a civic institution than what appears to be its own world, operating by a different code or no code.
A world where:
- Winning is the only standard that matters
- The Council majority "votes in a manner that is favorable to the Team," Civil Grand Jury 2022, 5
- Confidentiality serves power rather than the public
- Success is measured by the 49ers' bottom line
- Transparency is blocked by 49er claims of "proprietary information"
- Accountability is treated as an obstacle, not an obligation or an opportunity.
The Pull Toward Chaos
The danger now is to Santa Clara's governance system as a whole.
Every city government decision involves ethics. That's because every decision will impact residents' lives for better or worse. Failure to consider ethics issues in decision-making is a failure of city government's fiduciary duties to the people of Santa Clara.
Ethics requires constant attention and practice. Every action either advances ethics and public trust or detracts from them. One bad decision is not balanced by the next good decision. Without that attention, ethical standards erode.
Santa Clara stopped paying attention to ethics and public trust.
The Stadium Authority became ground zero. The same seven people serve on both the City Council and the Stadium Authority Board. On the Council, they're supposed to follow ethics rules. At the Stadium Authority, there are no ethics rules at all.
You can't follow ethics rules on Tuesday and ignore them on Thursday and expect Tuesday's good habits to stick. The Thursday habits take over.
The ethics vacuum at the Stadium Authority doesn't stay contained there. It pulls against the standards that should govern the rest of City Hall. The world without ethics at the Stadium migrated to City Hall.
After years of neglect, the City lost the ability to recognize when it was confronting major ethical issues—and lost the tools and expertise needed to resolve them, if someone noticed.
When the California Voting Rights Act lawsuit hit in 2017, the City had no ethics consultation built into its decision-making—and no one on staff to help officials navigate the ethical dimensions of the choices they faced.
Over time, those skills had atrophied.
The result: $5 million in preventable costs; damage to the relationship with Asian Americans, now the majority in Santa Clara; and City Council irreconcilable differences the Civil Grand Jury identified in 2024, a carry-over from the lawsuit.
These are not just past failures.
They define the historical context and culture in which the City is making decisions today.
8. Four Decisions About the City's Future
The four "defining moment" decisions introduced at the beginning of this page are now moving forward. Together, they will determine how Santa Clara is governed—and whether ethical leadership and public trust flourish or continue to erode.
The City is approaching these as if each decision stands on its own, separate and distinct from the others. They do not.
Taken together, they form a single test of the City's priorities and direction. They tell the world who we are, what we value as a city government, and whose interests we serve.
They are decisions about power and accountability, rights and duties, benefits and burdens, leadership and the common good, and whose interests come first—and whose come last.
a. The City Charter
Will the Charter embed best practices for ethics infrastructure—including a values-based Code of Ethics, Behavioral Standards, ongoing training, an independent Ethics Commission structured to succeed, and meaningful public engagement for decisions impacting public trust—and apply these standards equally to the City and the Stadium Authority?
Or will these protections be left to the discretion of the City Council—and exclude the Stadium Authority altogether—leaving the City without a sustainable, complete, and enforceable framework for ethical leadership, good governance, and public trust?
b. The Ethics Code
Will Santa Clara restore and strengthen its values-based Code of Ethics & Values—promoting the highest standards of public ethics—and apply it to political candidates and everyone involved in City Goverment, the Stadium Authority and other Authorities, and public/private partnerships?
Or gut it and replace it with a minimal follow-the-law compliance code—or none at all—leaving City officials, city staff, the Stadium Authority and other Authorities without meaningful standards for ethical leadership? And leaving the public with no clear criteria to hold their city government, including the Stadium Authority, accountable for public trust.
c. The Independent Ethics Commission
Will the City create an Independent Ethics Commission with full authority over both the City organization and the Stadium Authority, with real independence from City Council appointees, resources, staffing and best practices to succeed with ethics and public trust training, advice, investigation, enforcement, and oversight?
Or, having completed a questionable study with no meaningful public input, will it establish a weak body, an ethics "program" under Council Control—or continue with no meaningful oversight or accountability at all?
d. The 27-Year Stadium "Give Away"
A one-time Stadium "put right" decision to transfer operational control to the 49ers—for both NFL and non-NFL events—and give the 49ers all the revenue from all sources for the next 27 years.
Will the 49er-PAC majority approve what the team wants or get independent analysis of benefits and liabilities and decide for the people? Is it true that the 49ers could wind up paying the City nothing?
Everyone is invited to read this proposal, which has been hiding in plain sight in the Stadium Lease (chapter 5) for 13 years.
9. The Public Has a Right to Know
For the past several months we have studied the City's current approach to these four decisions. What we found concerned us.
At the very least, the people of Santa Clara deserve answers to these questions:
One question sits above all the others: Do the Santa Clara City Council and senior staff agree with former Palo Alto City Manager Jim Keene, who said in 2008: "Building and sustaining an ethical organization is one of the key responsibilities of public sector leaders. It is the obligation of the City leadership to cultivate an organization where ethical behavior is encouraged, identified, rewarded, and sustained"?
If they don't, why is the City wasting time and money on replacing the ethics code, studying an independent ethics commission, creating a City Charter they've constrained so much that it does not address all the needs of today's residents or City, and allowing these decision makers, five of whom owe their election to the Team, to determine if they will transfer operational control of the Stadium to the Team — along with all of its revenue — for the next 27 years?
If they agree to these responsibilities, here are ten important questions whose answers can begin to rebuild public trust.
- Why take on four defining moment projects in the same year the City is hosting the Super Bowl and FIFA World Cup matches and managing a hundred million dollars in infrastructure — and treat them as separate, uncoordinated efforts, when together they have the power to revive ethical leadership and rebuild public trust for a decade?
- Except for the Charter Review, why is public input invited only the end of each initiative, after the Council and staff have already made the substantive decisions? This is the illusion of choice.
- Why is the Stadium Authority — where half the Council's responsibilities sit, and where many current ethical issues live — excluded from the Charter Review, the replacement ethics code, and any Independent Ethics Commission?
Charter Review
- Why not embed the independent ethics commission, the values-based Ethics Code and the rest of the ethics infrastructure, public engagement, and public trust protections in the Charter itself instead of leaving them to the discretion of this and future Councils — who have dismantled the ethics program, may feel more allegiance to private or special interests than to the public, and who have told the public that there are currently more than enough ways to hold the Council accountable?
Ethics Code
- Why did staff change the consultant's scope of work from a review of existing ethics documents — which is what the Council approved — to a replacement of the ethics code without ever returning to the Council for a public vote?
- Why not build on the consensus core values, the Code of Ethics & Values, and the Behavioral Standards, updating them to include the Stadium Authority, independent expenditures, conflicts or apparent conflicts between Stadium Authority and City Council roles, and other modern problems?
- Why does the replacement Code apply only to the City Council — exempting staff, boards, commissions, and the Stadium Authority, where many of the City's documented ethical failures live? Or does the City expect that these groups will continue to be accountable to the current Code?
The Independent Ethics Commission
- Why hire the same consultant who is rewriting the Ethics Code — and who has no experience with independent ethics commissions — to conduct the study of independent ethics commissions, an ethics "program," or "other ways" to do oversight?
- Why has no one answered the questions and objections the Council voiced when it rejected the Commission in January and again in July 2023 — objections that are easily answered online. Local Government Ethics Programs by Robert Wechsler is particularly helpful. See Chapter 9. (Caution: this document is over 1000 pages long.)
Stadium Authority "Put Right"
- Why has the Stadium Authority not begun public discussion of the Stadium Put Right — the terms, the financial arrangements, the decision-making process, the consultants and lawyers the City will use — to show that it is exercising care, loyalty, impartiality, and building public trust?
Will the Council majority vote against getting independent assessment of what the City gains and loses? Will a decision of this magnitude be made in a closed session with "no reportable action," and signed the next day, as it was with settlements in the past?
The people of Santa Clara are entitled to ask— and entitled to know.
10. Ethical Leadership Can Start Today
Even without a functioning ethics program—and despite a pattern of ignoring ethics or treating it as a political tool—the City can begin restoring ethical leadership and public trust immediately.
We do not need to wait for a new City Charter, a new ethics code, or new accountability.
The City needs to do one thing consistently—and do it well:
Add two questions to every decision-making process, and answer them clearly, honestly, and publicly.
These are the core questions of ethical decision-making.They can be asked at every stage of a decision—to test whether an action meets both the ethics standards and the public trust standard before it moves forward.
11. A Vision All Can Share
A New Direction
At an earlier moment in its history, the City made a deliberate decision to become the most ethical city in California. It built a values-based system, committed to ethical decision-making, and earned the public’s trust.
Today, the City must decide what kind of city it will be .
Lasting change does not happen through isolated reforms. It happens when people come together around a clear vision of who they are and what they are trying to build.
Santa Clara now has the opportunity to set a new direction and adopt a vision all can share.
We propose that Santa Clara becomes California's first City of Trust.
In a City of Trust, ethical leadership, good governance, and public trust are not aspirations, but are built into the culture of City Hall—where ethical decision-making is the norm, public trust is at the center of governance, and the people’s best interests are consistently identified and advanced.
What a City of Trust Looks Like in Practice
A City of Trust is built on a few essential commitments:
- Decisions are guided by shared core values and ethical decision-making
- Independent oversight and real accountability ensure the public’s interests come first
- Public participation is meaningful—people are heard and their input actually shapes decisions
- Leadership sets the tone at the top, building a culture of integrity and trust
- Ethics is taken seriously across the organization—so that doing the right thing is expected, supported, part of everyday life, recognized, and reinforced at every level.
In a City of Trust, these commitments are built into the organization’s systems, expectations, and culture—making it easier to do the right thing and harder for the wrong thing to go unnoticed or persist.
See a detailed list of City of Trust commitments.
12. The Track Record
A City of Trust does not emerge on its own. It requires an informed public, sustained attention, and a clear, shared vision of where the community wants the City to go.
But an informed and engaged public is only part of the equation. For that vision to take hold, it must be recognized and acted on by the people making decisions.
If residents are moving in one direction and City leadership continues in another, the result is not progress—it is conflict. A gap opens between what the community wants and how the City is governed. That gap has to be addressed.
Recent decisions—and the City’s responses to three Grand Jury reports—point to a consistent pattern: when concerns are raised, the response is not course correction, but to dig in and double down.
This is not a question of isolated decisions, but of how criticism is handled—and whether it leads to change.
Public trust depends not only on what officials intend, but on how their actions are perceived. The public does not see public officials as they see themselves. It sees decisions, statements, and outcomes—and draws conclusions from them.
In this case, criticism has not led to reflection or change. Recommendations from the Civil Grand Jury have been rejected, minimized, or delayed. Public input has been narrowed or scheduled late in the process. Opportunities for meaningful engagement are few and far between.
Denial, delay, incremental adjustments, and the promise to do something have too often taken the place of action and meaningful change.
That has led to a track record of decisions that raise ethics and public trust questions.
How would these decisions have changed if Council and Senior Staff included the two core ethics and public trust questions in their deliberations. Keep these two questions in mind as you read over the Council's track record:.
Why, if at all, was this the right thing to do for the people—and how, if at all, did this decision strengthen public trust?
For more details, click on the plus sign to the left of each of the topics below. Click on the minus sign to close the detail.
1. A Council Majority Elected with Team Money...Now Voting for the Team
49er-funded PACs have spent over $10 million in the three City Council elections since 2020.
The result?
Five of seven seats—a supermajority on both the City Council and the Stadium Authority—were elected with extraordinary levels of “independent expenditure” funding.
By law, PACs affiliated with the 49ers can spend unlimited amounts on local election campaign expenses—as long as they do not coordinate with the candidate or the campaign.
How much money are we talking about?
In 2022, most district candidates agreed to the City’s voluntary campaign spending cap:
About $26,000 per candidate.
At the same time, 49er-funded PACs spent:
Raj Chahal = $1,082,471
$687,939 (supporting) + $394,532 (opposing)
Karen Hardy = $1,125,072
$684,103 (supporting) + $440,969 (opposing)
One side spends about $26,000.
The other spends over $1 million.
Yet both can claim they followed the rules.
Why?
Because independent expenditures don’t count toward the cap. Only direct contributions to candidates do.
What does this mean in practice?
Let's think about this in 2026 when three seats will be open because Mayor Gillmor, Mr. Chahal, and Ms. Hardy will all "term out" (meaning they've reached the end of their service time, unless Mr. Chahal or Ms. Hardy decide to run for mayor).
Imagine you are the opponent of one of the 49er PAC-backed candidates in 2026. What does a candidate-controlled $29,000 campaign ( approved by Council on April 7, 2026) look like?
What kind of a campaign can the 49ers conduct for $1,000,000 supporting your opponent?
See our analysis. Is that a "race" at all?
"What can we do?" Mr Jain says to Dr. Shanks. "Nothing until they change Citizens United." He's referring to the 2010 Supreme Court ruling that companies were people and they had first amendment rights to spend as much as they wanted on independent expenditures.
But law is the minimum standard.
Ethical leadership requires more: decisions and conduct that earn and maintain public trust.
Public trust rests on two basic pillars:
1. Loyalty to the public: Officials must act in the best interests of the community—above all others.
2. Fairness: Government must treat people equitably and ensure a level playing field.
The 49er-Pac's actions over the past three elections have led many residents to question whether an official can remain fully independent when their election depended on that level of outside support?
This is compounded by the 50 (Mr. Chahal) to 77 meetings (Mr. Park) the new majority had--in groups of two or three--with 49er lobbyists in 2021 and 2022. The Council said that they needed this many meetings to understand the complexities of the contracts and relationship.
That may have been true, but the 49ers' representatives were also lobbying the new majority, explaining how the Stadium and the contracts worked from their perspective, pointing out 49er problems with the City Manager and City Attorney, and establishing the personal relationships that accompany that many meetings over two years.
The 2022 Civil Grand Jury found that the Council majority
“can—and do—vote in a manner favorable to the Team."
Further, the Civil Grand Jury "... finds that the City Council Voting Bloc has displayed unacceptable behavior by aligning themselves with ManCo and putting the interest of the 49ers ahead of the interest of the citizenry of the City. By aligning itself with ManCo, the City Council Voting Bloc has effectively breached its duties to the City" (SCCCGJ 2022, p. 20).
This behavior has continued since then. Week after week, residents see the Stadium Authority make decisions that appear aligned with the 49ers’ interests. Instead of discussing and resolving the conflict of interest the majority has, there has only been silence--from the Council, the Manager, and the City Attorney.
Robert Wechsler, one of the most reknowned of the City ethicists, describes exactly the problem Santa Clara faces:
"From the point of view of citizens, when an official has a conflict, does not disclose it, and does not withdraw from participating in the matter, he may purport to be acting as an official, but if it comes out, he will be seen as being a concealed agent of whoever it is he has a special relationship with. He will be seen as selfish and untrustworthy. And, more important, the government that does not insist on him dealing responsibly with his conflict will be seen as a bunch of people who are in it for themselves and their family and friends."
2. Campaign "Limits" That Unfairly Limit One Side
Almost all candidates running for election in Santa Clara agree to spend no more than about $29,000 on their campaigns. Candidates get some incentives to join the program and stay within limits.
But here's the problem: independent expenditures don't count toward the spending cap.
That's what the 49er PACs spend their money on.
It's legal for them to spend as much as they like — and the 49er-PAC-supported candidates can still claim "I didn't take any special interest money" and "I didn't spend more than $29,000."
It's like a college student who tells his parents he stayed within his budget that semester, but fails to mention his fairy godmother who spent twenty times that on things she figured he needed.
The only people the voluntary campaign cap hurts are opponents of the 49er candidates.
They are caught between a rock and a hard place: if they don't accept the cap, they get dinged in public opinion; if they do accept the cap, they get dinged throughout the campaign by the unlimited 49er spending.
On April 7, 2026, the Council approved the new caps for the 2026 election — $29,570 for district races and $55,890 for the mayor's City-wide race — on the consent calendar. No discussion. No one pulled the item.
No one asked the obvious question: has anyone realized this program, which once leveled the field, has turned into one that does positive harm to 49er PAC opponents, while the PAC-backed candidates can — and have — patted themselves on the back for "not taking special interest money"?
The agenda packet for that vote included a memo from the City Attorney explaining the Levine Act, which forbids anyone who took $500 from a donor with business before the City from voting on that donor's matter without recusing and leaving the room. The memo made no mention of Santa Clara's current situation — because the City has adopted the narrow view that the Levine Act does not apply when the money comes through a PAC instead of directly to the candidate.
This is what makes the failure institutional rather than personal. Multiple staff prepared the item, placed it on the agenda, put it on the consent calendar, and attached a Levine Act memo. All Councilmembers voted yes. Nobody — at any step — said this program no longer does what it was designed to do, and should have been canceled after 2020 and certainly before 2022 and 2024. That's it's continuing into 2026 is indefensible.
Trust requires honesty in how elections are conducted. What we see here instead is a program that misleads voters, harms candidates who follow it, and gets renewed every cycle without a single question asked.
3. No Plan to Protect Self-Government
Self-government is a fundamental principle of democracy It means residents — not a single powerful corporation — decide who governs, what information voters receive, and whose interests City Hall serves. For three consecutive elections, 49er-funded PACs have spent over $10 million to secure five of seven Council and Stadium Authority Board seats.
What has happened to self-governance in Santa Clara?
The 2026 election raises the stakes considerably. Three seats are open — Mayor, and the seats held by Councilmembers Hardy and Chahal — because all three incumbents are termed out.
Mayor Gillmor and Councilmember Cox are the only members of this Council who have publicly questioned 49er deals and contracts. The 49ers will almost certainly want that mayor's seat — and they will want to hold Districts 2 and 3 to keep their 5-2 majority intact. That could reduce the number of critical voices to one.
Here is what their money can do. In 2018, before the PAC spending began, Mayor Gillmor beat Mr. Becker 74% to 26% — a landslide by any measure.
In 2022, the 49ers spent $2.4 million on the same candidate, in the same race, against the same incumbent — aided by endorsements and favorable coverage from the three newspapers that consistently align with 49er interests: the Mercury News, the Silicon Valley Voice, and the San Jose Spotlight.
Becker lost by 776 votes. A 48-point margin nearly erased. With a candidate later convicted of felony perjury for leaking a negative Civil Grand Jury report to the team when the report was still confidential.
Then he lied about the leak under oath.
Now there is no incumbent to overcome. The Levi's Stadium lease runs through 2074. Between now and then there are 25 elections. This is the fourth one. There is no plan to protect self-government.
How can the City protect self-government from a known threat? So far, the City's response has been silence. No discussion. No study sessions. The City trains for all sorts of unknown threats: earthquakes, wildfires. But it does nothing when public trust is on the line?
Trust requires protecting the integrity of elections before the damage is done, not after.
NOTE: Share your thoughts about what the City or anyone can do to make sure voters' voices are heard. That's the topic of our first forum. You need to be member of the Public Trust Now Community to participate. Check the Join Public Trust Partners information on Engage in the menu up above. Once you get an email from Dr. Shanks verifying that you are a real person, you are welcome to post in the Forum--also accessible from the top menu.
4. Independent Voices Removed--and Not Replaced
The 49ers had made clear what they wanted.
The 2022 Civil Grand Jury reported that “in April 2021, two of the City Council Voting Bloc admitted that 49ers lobbyists had expressed that they ‘would like to see [the City Attorney] gone.’”
Five months later, in September 2021, the Council voted 5-2 to fire City Attorney Brian Doyle. Doyle had just won a $180 million rent dispute against the team.
Through 2021, members of the Council majority met with 49ers lobbyists at extraordinary frequency — Mr. Jain 44 times, Mr. Becker 37 times, Ms. Hardy 29 times, Mr. Park 27 times, Mr. Chahal 23 times. Their calendars rarely disclosed anything more than “SCSA/49er matters.”
The 49ers were not negotiating with City staff during this period. They were meeting with the elected officials who supervise that staff and orienting them to the Stadium as the 49ers saw it.
In February 2022, City Manager Deanna Santana publicly raised conflict-of-interest concerns surrounding the FIFA event and noted that the City had been unable to obtain information from the 49ers concerning the FIFA contract. Two days later, the same majority fired her, again 5-2.
The City was then left without a permanent City Attorney for 17 months and without a permanent City Manager for 14 months.
The August 2022 settlement was signed during that period, without permanent leadership in either position. The settlement substantially adopted terms the 49ers had previously proposed, although one major issue was deferred into a second settlement process.
In Outplayed, the Civil Grand Jury later concluded that past and present Stadium Authority Boards and City Councils had “giv[en] away what little leverage and control they did have in settlement agreements” and had gradually “relinquish[ed] [their] power to the 49ers over the last decade.”
When the City finally hired permanent replacements, it paid both well above what they had been making in their previous positions.
City Manager Jovan Grogan and City Attorney Glen Googins are now in their third year. By any reasonable expectation, that should have been enough time to reset the City Staff’s ethical commitments after three Civil Grand Jury reports, a Council elected with millions in 49ers PAC support, and a settlement signed during the absence of permanent leadership. It has not happened.
A California Public Records Act request last October showed the City Manager had issued no ethics directives to staff — not when he started, not after any of the Grand Jury reports, and not after votes that generated substantial public concern.
At the same time, he signed nondisclosure agreements giving the 49ers and the Bay Area Host Committee authority over the release of information concerning aspects of the City’s own business. The City Attorney signed the same agreement. So did the majority.
Neither the City Manager or the City Attorney has placed the conflict-of-interest concerns created by extensive 49ers PAC spending and repeated Council decisions favorable to the tenant on a Council agenda for public discussion. Both also approved the April 7, 2026 voluntary campaign expenditure caps and placing them on the consent calendar.
During state-required ethics training in October 2023, City Attorney Googins presented a slide advising officials to avoid even the appearance of impropriety. But the same slide then suggested that officials need not step aside if they personally felt they were not being influenced by private interests.
That tension — “here is the ethics principle; now ignore it” — reflects a broader problem in Santa Clara’s ethics environment. The City still displays its award-winning Code of Ethics & Values on its website and the Good Governance Guiding Principles are on the wall behind Mr. Googins whenever the camera cuts to him during Council Meetings, but there is little evidence the City consistently connects major decisions to ethical governance principles or public trust standards.
The same pattern appeared in the City’s ethics reform process. In July 2023, the Council approved hiring an ethics consultant through the City’s formal RFP process. Staff waiting eight months, and then bypassed the City's regular RFQ process, and instead sent an informal RFQ to law seven firms, not ethics specialists.
The eventual result was that the City’s award-winning values-based ethics code was assigned to an employment defense law firm with no demonstrated expertise in values-based ethics systems or independent ethics commissions.
The firings of the previous City Manager and City Attorney sent a message throughout the organization. Whether intentional or not, the continuing silence of their successors on many ethics and public trust concerns risks reinforcing that message: that challenging the prevailing political environment may carry professional consequences, while accommodation may be safer.
5. "Innocent Until Proven Guilty" Still Destroys Public Trust
In October 2022, Councilmember Anthony Becker leaked a confidential Civil Grand Jury report — Unsportsmanlike Conduct — to the 49ers’ top lobbyist, Rahul Chandhok. The report was sharply critical of the Council majority’s relationship with the team.
The leak gave the 49ers’ crisis communication operation several days to get its message out before the report became public. The team, the Council majority, and their newspaper allies attacked the report as politically motivated and disputed its methodology.
The District Attorney opened an investigation. Rahul Chandhok later received immunity and testified that Becker leaked the report to him and to the Silicon Valley Voice. Becker denied leaking the report under oath.
In April 2023, Becker was indicted on felony perjury and misdemeanor failure to perform duty charges. He refused to resign and waived his right to a speedy trial.
The Council majority nevertheless made him Vice Mayor and allowed him to continue voting on all 49ers-related matters for another 20 months while awaiting trial, citing the legal principle of “innocent until proven guilty.”
But public trust asks a different question: whether a Councilmember so politically and financially tied to the tenant could reasonably be perceived as exercising independent judgment on matters involving that tenant.
Three months after Becker’s indictment, the Council held its last substantive ethics discussion — a 90-minute conversation late in the evening with little public participation. The discussion centered on whether to approve an independent ethics commission, which the Council majority had previously rejected. During that discussion, Becker argued against the commission, saying it would “just be used as a political weapon.”
Becker lost reelection on November 5, 2024. His trial began the next day. In December 2024, after remaining on the Council and voting for the team's interests for 20 months, Becker was convicted of felony perjury and a misdemeanor for failing to perform his duty. The jury deliberated less than three hours. He resigned the following day, with 11 days remaining in his term.
The 49ers had spent more than $3 million supporting his campaigns. After his conviction, Becker reportedly told his probation officer the case was “about politics.”
The District Attorney responded:
“Some may have grown used to public officials lying. Committing perjury to the civil grand jury is not a white lie, an exaggeration, or politics. It is a crime and a serious abuse of the public trust.”
At a minimum, Becker could have recused himself from 49ers-related matters after indictment in order to protect public confidence in the integrity and independence of City decisions. Instead, the Council majority made him Vice Mayor and allowed him to continue participating in every major 49ers-related decision for another 20 months.
The episode deepened concerns that political loyalty, institutional self-protection, and the City’s relationship with the 49ers had become intertwined in ways that weakened independent judgment and undermined public trust.
6. The Economic Impact Study the City Buried
In Outplayed, the Civil Grand Jury recommended that the City commission its own independent study of Levi’s Stadium’s economic impact over the previous decade because the 49ers’ earlier economic claims were “unverified.”The City delayed acting on the recommendation. But in 2025, the Stadium Authority quietly hired Keyser Marston Associates — an independent economic consulting firm — to conduct a high-level review of the 49ers’ study.
The consultant’s report was not separately presented to the Council or publicly highlighted. Instead, it appeared as an attachment buried within an update to the City’s response to Outplayed.
The consultant raised substantial questions about the 49ers’ analysis, concluding that the study may have understated important categories of business spending while also failing to account for corresponding public costs needed to understand the Stadium’s true net fiscal impact.
Keyser Marston also found that:
*Sales tax estimates in the 49ers study appeared understated by millions of dollars
*Some tax revenues were incorrectly attributed to the County instead of to local jurisdictions, including Santa Clara
*Survey methodology required clarification, and
*Some visitor spending and hotel stay estimates appeared internally inconsistent.
In other words, the City’s own consultant concluded that important parts of the 49ers’ widely promoted economic narrative were inaccurate and required significant further review.
The issue is not that complex economic studies contain inaccuracies. The issue is what government does when evidence complicates a politically useful narrative.
Instead of publicly discussing the consultant’s findings and their implications, the analysis was effectively buried inside a technical response update unlikely to be seen by most residents since it resides on the Civil Grand Jury website.
7. Replacing the Ethics Code with "Just Follow the Law."
Twenty-five years ago, Santa Clara built a Code of Ethics & Values that became a state model. It was developed openly with residents over two years. It established eight core values, twenty-nine behavioral indicators, and applied to elected officials, appointed officials, commissioners, and staff alike. Companion behavioral standards allowed residents to evaluate officials against specific conduct expectations.The code earned national recognition and helped define Santa Clara as a City that took ethics and public trust seriously.
Then, behind closed doors, the City began replacing it.
The public was never asked whether the code should be replaced rather than improved. The process was not publicly announced, no drafts were shared with residents, and no meaningful public input was sought.
In July 2023, the Council approved hiring a consultant to review the City’s ethics documents through the formal RFP process. Instead, after eight months of delay, staff issued an informal RFQ directed primarily to law firms and no recognized ethics specialists.
The contract ultimately went to Liebert Cassidy Whitmore, an employment defense firm the City had used before. The firm then spent a year working largely outside public view before presenting its proposal in March 2025 at a weekday morning Governance & Ethics Committee meeting that typically draws little public participation.
The replacement proposal dramatically narrows the City’s ethics framework:
*It applies only to the City Council
*It eliminates the behavioral indicators
*It reduces eight core values to six
*It does not apply to the Stadium Authority and
*It replaces the original code’s values-based approach with a much narrower compliance-oriented standard centered largely on obeying the law.
The City is trying to replace the values-based "at our best" approach with a rules-based "follow the law" compliance code--the same type of Code the City rejected 25 years ago because it provided no help in complex decision-making situations.
The original code treated following the law as the floor, not the ceiling. The replacement effectively turns the floor into the ceiling while excluding much of City government — including the entity managing a billion-dollar public asset.
How the City handled records requests concerning the rewrite reinforced those concerns. A request seeking documents showing how a “review” of the ethics documents became a “replacement” of the ethics code was repeatedly delayed before being closed without producing the communications that would explain the decision-making process.
Twenty-five years ago, Santa Clara residents helped create a nationally recognized ethics system designed to ask government to be at its best. The City is now replacing it with a far narrower system focused primarily on legal compliance.
That is not simply a revision. It is a fundamental change in the City’s understanding of public ethics.
8. Running a Billion-Dollar Public Asset as An 'Ethics Free Zone.'
Levi’s Stadium is a $1.3 billion public asset generating hundreds of millions of dollars in annual revenue.The Stadium Authority that governs it has never adopted its own ethics code.
Over the past decade, three Civil Grand Jury reports have recommended ethics and governance reforms related to Stadium Authority operations. Those recommendations have largely not been implemented.
The same five Council members who repeatedly vote together on 49ers-related matters on the City Council also control the Stadium Authority Board.
A City seriously committed to public trust would apply strong ethical standards and independent oversight to the governance of a billion-dollar public asset. It would include meaningful governance protections in the Charter Review process and recognize that concentrated financial, political, and institutional pressures require stronger safeguards, not weaker ones.
Instead, Santa Clara continues to operate the Stadium Authority with few meaningful ethical guardrails. The same conflicts persist. The same major decisions are made behind closed doors. And the same 5-2 voting pattern continues on many of the Stadium’s most consequential issues.
9. Rewriting the Charter--But Excluding the Stadium Authority
The City is conducting its first comprehensive Charter Review in years. But the Stadium Authority — which manages Levi’s Stadium, a $1.3 billion public asset generating hundreds of millions of dollars in annual revenue — has been excluded from the review’s scope because it was established as a Joint Powers Authority, separate and distinct from the City.
That omission matters because three Civil Grand Jury reports identified governance and public trust failures connected to Stadium Authority operations. Over more than a decade, the Authority has operated without its own ethics code, without independent oversight, and without many of the safeguards normally associated with managing a major public asset.
The same five Council members who repeatedly vote together on 49ers-related matters on the City Council also control the Stadium Authority Board.
A comprehensive Charter Review would examine whether Santa Clara’s current governance structure adequately protects public accountability, independent oversight, ethical decision-making, and self-governance in the operation of the Stadium Authority.
Instead, the Charter Review largely bypasses the entity at the center of the City’s most significant governance controversies.
A Charter Review that avoids the Stadium Authority risks addressing the symptoms of Santa Clara’s governance problems while leaving the underlying structure unchanged.
That will create more confusion than dealing with the Stadium Authority in the same document that is describing the duties of the City Council, City Manager, City Attorney, and the rest. When half of someone's job is not included in the job description that document is incomplete. Should the voters approve an incomplete document?
10. Failing to Protect Ethics & Public Trust Programs
Over the past 14 years, successive Councils have steadily weakened Santa Clara’s nationally recognized ethics and public trust infrastructure — without a public vote, without sustained public discussion, and often without clearly explaining what was being changed or eliminated.
During that same period, resident confidence in City government reportedly fell from 87% to roughly 40%.
The City’s ethics code, behavioral standards, ethics training culture, campaign ethics efforts, independent ethics expertise, and broader public trust infrastructure were gradually reduced, weakened, ignored, or allowed to become largely symbolic rather than operational.
None of those systems were protected structurally. A Council majority could weaken or eliminate them administratively, budgetarily, or politically without voter approval.
That is the larger governance problem.
Ethics and public trust systems are not supposed to depend entirely on whether current political leaders personally value them. Their purpose is to help governments manage conflicts of interest, institutional pressures, bias, self-protection, and difficult public decisions before they become crises.
A City seriously committed to public trust would protect core ethics infrastructure at the structural level. That could include:
a values-based ethics code applying across City government, including the Stadium Authority and major public/private partnerships
regular ethics and public trust training
access to independent ethics expertise and advice
stable funding and long-term development planning
meaningful public engagement
and an independent ethics or public trust commission with adequate authority, staffing, investigative powers, and enforcement mechanisms
Instead, Santa Clara is moving in the opposite direction.
The current ethics rewrite narrows ethics primarily to legal compliance, reduces coverage, eliminates behavioral standards, excludes the Stadium Authority, and weakens many of the values-based elements that once made Santa Clara a model for ethical local government.
The issue is not simply whether individual officials are ethical people. The issue is whether the City is building — or dismantling — the systems needed to preserve ethical governance and public trust over time.
Without meaningful structural protections, each new Council majority can continue reshaping the City’s ethics environment according to immediate political interests rather than long-term public trust principles.
That is how a City gradually moves from practicing ethical self-governance to practicing politics without principle, government without meaningful accountability, and ultimately, a City without trust.
DEVELOPER MODE
End
13. See for Yourself
These ten ethically questionable decisions form part of the track record this Council brings with it as it makes decisions about the City's future.
Researchers who study governance and group decision-making often evaluate not just the outcome of a public decision, but how the decision is made: who leads, who follows, how conflict is expressed, how alliances operate, who is treated with respect, whether ethical questions are raised, whether dissent is welcomed, how people who disagree with the Council are respected (or not), whether accountability systems are treated seriously, and whether anyone appears primarily concerned with earning the public’s trust.
They also look at the relationships between policy makers and staff. Is the staff treated with respect? Does the staff make independent recommendations, prepare the Council for informed decision-making, provide important documents ahead of time, step in when the discussion veers off track or into ad hominem attacks?
The July 11, 2023 City Council meeting allows readers to observe all these dynamics as a major public decision unfolds in real time. The meeting also offers insight into the personalities and governing styles of the individuals involved.
Just three months after Councilmember Anthony Becker’s indictment, the City Council reconsidered whether to establish an independent ethics commission, a recommendation made by the Santa Clara County Civil Grand Jury in Unsportsmanlike Conduct (October 2022).
The debate lasted roughly 90 minutes near the end of a six-hour meeting. Only the Council and senior staff remained in Council Chambers. No media covered it.
The City Manager made no recommendation — an extremely rare occurrence for a major policy issue involving ethics and public trust. The agenda packet included almost no background information relevant to the discussion.
By 2023, Santa Clara no longer had an active ethics program in any meaningful sense. After Dr. Shanks left in early 2015, the City never restored the Ethics & Values Program or rebuilt the broader ethics infrastructure that had previously existed. It did offer a "Democracy Santa Clara" program during the 2016 election, but that did not focus on ethics or public trust.
As you watch or read, pay attention not only to the arguments themselves, but to what the discussion reveals about leadership, accountability, political relationships, and public trust.
Ask yourself:
- Did anyone seem primarily concerned with earning the public’s trust?
- Did the Council appear focused on doing the right thing for the public — or on something else?
Watch the meeting or read the transcript. Draw your own conclusions.
14. What This Website Promises
After looking at the record and how this Council makes decisions, a reasonable person might wonder how the City will ever change direction?
This site is built on the premise that change in Santa Clara is still possible—but only if people are informed, pay attention, and move together.
If the City has any chance of becoming a City of Trust, it will not happen by accident. It will happen because people decided where they wanted their City to go—and worked together to move it in that direction.
Public Trust Now exists to support that effort.
This site is designed to make sure that:
- What is happening is visible
- What just happened is not forgotten
- What is about to happen does not go unnoticed
- Patterns and principles are identified.
So that nothing gets lost—and no one has to figure it out alone.
There is currently no place where residents can see the full picture of what is happening in Santa Clara, much less talk with others across the City about it. That gap matters. Without shared information and shared understanding, people remain isolated—and nothing changes.
This site is meant to alter that.
For this to work as well as it can, the site and the community must become partners. As we move forward, here is what this site promises:
We will be fact-based.
Our work is grounded in publicly available records. We follow the evidence, and we correct errors when we make them.
We will cover what matters.
We will post regularly on key decisions affecting governance, ethics, and public trust—so residents know what is happening, what just happened, and what is coming next.
We will explain what documents mean—not just what they say.
Reports, contracts, transcripts, and public records—translated into plain language and analyzed for their real-world impact.
We will make the process visible.
How decisions are made matters as much as the decisions themselves. We will track both.
We will create space for real dialogue.
A healthy city requires people to hear each other, not just speak at meetings. This site will provide a place for that to happen.
We will not tell you what to think.
We will help you understand what to think about, how to think it through, and how to turn that understanding into effective action.
We will be nonpartisan, but we will advocate for ethical leadership and public trust.
We will be equal opportunity critics, celebrating good behavior and calling out bad wherever we find it. We will call things the way we see them, explaining the facts behind our judgments.
We will be honest about what we don’t know—and rigorous about what we do.
We will welcome your participation.
This effort only works if people engage, share what they know, and help build a clearer picture of what is happening in this City.
15. The Bulldozer Is in Your Front Yard
Twenty-five years ago, a longtime Santa Clara resident pulled Dr. Shanks aside after an Ethics Ordinance Committee meeting.
The resident wanted to warn Dr. Shanks about public participation in the City.
“You’ve got to understand,” he said. “Santa Clara residents won’t respond to City Hall unless there’s a bulldozer with the City’s name on it in their front yard. It’s already knocked down the fence and it’s on its way to the front door. Then they’ll respond.”
After months of documenting what is actually happening in Santa Clara, we believe that moment has arrived.
The bulldozer has already knocked down the fence.
It is on its way to the front door.
There is no time to lose.
The people are the only force with the political power to change a city’s direction.
Thomas Jefferson understood what this moment requires:
—Thomas Jefferson, 1789
Article II Section 1 of California's Constitution makes it law:
Now is the moment to act.
Cities change when enough people begin paying attention, asking questions, speaking up, and refusing to accept local government conduct that weakens public trust.
Real accountability does not begin inside City Hall.
It begins when residents look at their city and decide, "We can do better."
Santa Clara can become a City of Trust.
But only if the people who live here, work here, or care about the City choose to build it together—and challenge City officials to show real political leadership, which, author Jim Wallis remind us, "...offers to take people to where, in their best selves, they really want to go" (Jim Wallis, The Soul of Politics.)
Join the Public Trust Partners community.
Add your voice.
Work with your neighbors.
Work with this site.
Help create the City of Trust.