On Tuesday night the Santa Clara City Council voted to temporarily fund the Convention and Visitors Bureau (CVB) for the next 2 months. For some illogical reason this mayor and council seems hell bent on first destroying the relationship with the 49ers and stadium, and now eliminating the only organization within the City that promotes and sells Santa Clara. The CVB is responsible for selling the City, bringing in revenue through conventions that generate hotel rooms and significant income to local businesses. This CVB team is above reproach, exceeding goals every year and are responsible for bringing in significant revenue to Santa Clara, yet they are denigrated by this mayor and her misguided minions. Santa Clara is not moving forward but into the deja vu of 1994 where money is frivolously wasted on audits that are already done every year on the CVB and accomplish nothing (sound familiar to the Mayor’s audit of the 49ers??).
Obviously, there is a personal vendetta with this mayor against the 49ers and the Chamber of Commerce, and her cronies on the council seem to be pawns following suit with her wishes. This City Council will go down in history as the one that took the city from financially stable in the black to one that is debt ridden and in the red for the first time in recent memory. In just a few days the City will lose the right to purchase the land the Convention Center sits on which is another gambit this council is going to lose. Jerry Brown stole the convention center from this city when he reappropriated redevelopment funding and transferred this to Santa Clara County. The City has the funds available to repurchase the land but apparently this council is not interested, so they will let this slip away and lose control over the convention center which along with the 49ers stadium are the cornerstones of revenue generation in Santa Clara.
As this Council destroys working relationships with the revenue generators, it is time for the voters of Santa Clara to look at the November elections and work towards removing the mayor and those council members that do her bidding. This mayor is not Santa Clara focused but politically motivated by her own ego, personal vendetta and misguided actions.