EdBoard: Return of Deanna, the Duchess of Dollars and Dimes

Like they say, a bad penny always turns up. Deanna Santana, Santa Clara’s $3.9 million city manager who was dismissed in 2022, has popped up again demanding — what else? — more money.

You may recall that Santana was, and still is, the highest-paid city manager in California history. It wasn’t for nothing that San Jose Inside called her “The South Bay’s Most Prolific Public Mercenary” in 2017.

Santana wants benefits that the city apparently doesn’t think she’s entitled to under her severance agreement for a year’s compensation ($785,000). She has filed a complaint preparatory to filing a lawsuit, claiming that the city didn’t pay her for 13 days of accrued benefits.

Santana first made this claim a year ago, and we have no insight into why the city has, apparently, denied her claim. Regardless of anyone’s opinion about Santana, if the city owes her this money, it should pay her.

But it feels like Santana is looking for more than a few weeks of benefits.

In her complaint, Santana spends as much time making what sounds like a wrongful firing claim. Santana claims she‘s a victim of whistleblower retaliation, discrimination and — of course! — the crafty and calculating conspiracies of the 49ers.

Dismissed city attorney Brian Doyle tried to work this angle in his lawsuit against Santa Clara. You may recall how that went. A judge dismissed his complaint with prejudice and allowed the city to recover its legal fees.

Looking back at Santana’s record, it is not the record of a selfless public servant.

During her time in Santa Clara, Santana never found a problem that wasn’t someone else’s fault. As soon as she was installed, she turned city hall into an ATM for her cronies while she pushed out longtime time city employees and decades of knowledge and experience. Salaries skyrocketed between 2017 and 2020.

She brought in analysts with a proven record of delivering results supporting her pre-determined “narrative.” She was given the job of “proving” that Levi’s Stadium didn’t make money. She identified “money losers” like … hosting high school football games and giving free tickets to the Boy Scouts.

In 2018, she fired the Santa Clara Chamber of Commerce and Visitors Bureau from managing the convention center, a cherished goal of Lisa Gillmor’s since 1993. Convention center revenues plummeted, even before the pandemic.

Lately, the city has been trying to sell naming rights for the center with no luck. Imagine — no takers for naming rights to a convention center that’s across the street from the stadium that will host the Super Bowl and FIFA World Cup in 2026!

The feather in Santana’s cap of mismanagement was provoking a city union to vote for the first strike in city history, after she refused them a raise when every other union — including the one that represented her — received one.

It will be a good day when Santa Clara sees the last of Deanna Santana.