Milestones – A Christmas to Remember! – Opinion

Merry Christmas Santa Clara and to all of our readers who subscribe to the Weekly and/or follow us online at the Silicon Valley Voice.

A subscription to the Weekly does make a terrific Christmas present to any friend or relative who lives in Santa Clara. We appreciate our many subscribers and say “thank you” for giving us many good reasons to publish, print, and distribute City news, politics, sports, events, nonprofit activities and special interest stories.

Your readership and support make changes happen. Your vote in last year’s elections was a vote of confidence in our publications, which report the news with honesty and integrity.

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As you most likely have noticed, we do not have to “invent” the news in this City. As we reflect over the past few years, we not only had COVID to deal with, but a prior City Council that operated in an information vacuum of misdirection and malfeasance, creating a cluster of chaos and confusion.

Thanks to you, our readers, who “got it” in 2020, and installed three new City Council members: Anthony Becker, Suds Jain and Kevin Park. With existing Council Members Raj Chahal and Karen Hardy, they began the street-sweeping saga of sanitizing the City.

The termination of former City Attorney Brian Doyle was a brave and courageous act, for which Santa Clara can be appreciative. This chosen disciple of Mayor Lisa Gillmor was personally responsible for reprehensible legal decisions and dubious actions, costing Santa Clara millions.

Then we come to City Manager Deanna Santana who, with the support of Mayor Gillmor, has managed to garner for herself a compensation package of nearly $800,000 annually. The new Council is hesitating and debating over increasing her compensation even though her contract is tied to bargaining Unit 9, which is scheduled for a raise.

Interesting that Mayor Gillmor denied a raise to former Police Chief Mike Sellers when his contract was tied to the same bargaining unit. Based on precedent, Santana could and should be denied as well. We hear rumors she has threatened to sue the city if she doesn’t get her increased payday.

If Santana does sue, a good suggestion would be for the Council to hire attorney Ren Nosky as independent council. Nosky was the first employee Mayor Gillmor forced out of Santa Clara when she was appointed Mayor.

Nosky did a great job for our City, is highly skilled in handling public entity activities, and has been doing high-level, demanding detail work for numerous cities since his departure from Santa Clara.

Stay tuned to the Santa Clara Weekly for the next chapter. It is going to be a great year for Santa Clara.

Merry Christmas to you and yours.

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