Santa Clara County voters have been generous to VTA. Today’s sales tax rate includes four ballot measures — from 1976, 2000, 2008 and 2016 — totaling 1.625%, providing VTA nearly $900 million per year. Now, supporters of Connect Bay Area, a 14-year regional transit measure for the Bay Area, propose adding another 0.5%, giving VTA...

San Jose Unified School District families have spent the past year watching the district make consequential decisions regarding school closures and consolidations that reshaped entire neighborhoods with limited input from the people most affected. For many parents, teachers and community members, that experience has made one thing clear — this Board of Education needs new...

“I am concerned.” “A breach of trust.” This is what we heard from San Jose councilmembers at the recent Rules Committee hearing on the misuse of the city’s Flock license plate reader system. These are appropriate words. But concern is not enough. A San Jose police officer used the department’s Flock system to share a...

I run a grocery store in Santa Clara, and I can tell you exactly what’s happening to families here. Carts are smaller. Shoppers are putting items back at the register. People are choosing between filling the gas tank and filling the fridge. At Arteaga’s, we’ve built our business around this community, serving many Latino and...

Before raising downtown parking rates, San Jose should know whether the additional parking revenue will exceed any resulting loss in downtown economic activity. In crafting the 2026-27 fiscal year budget, City Manager Jennifer Maguire asked each department to provide recommendations on savings to close the $50 million budget deficit. The Department of Transportation (DOT) did...

San Jose touts its Vision Zero pledge to eliminate traffic fatalities. But instead of preserving safe commuter routes, airport and city officials are pushing forward with a permanent closure that will force cyclists into dangerous, high-speed traffic. Early this year in April, San Jose Mineta International Airport (SJC) posted 30-day notices announcing the permanent closure...

When San Jose selects its next director of Parks, Recreation and Neighborhood Services, it should conduct an open, competitive national recruitment — not presume the position will be filled from within the department. Qualified internal candidates who have demonstrated success in change management and possess relevant operational skills should be encouraged to apply and be...

Baby Boomers have spent their lives challenging the status quo. They reshaped our workplaces, families, culture and expectations for how we live. Now, as this generation ages, we face a question we have spent far less time considering: Have we built a system that allows people to grow older the way they actually want to?...

Cancer is on the rise in young people in the Bay Area. Data from the Greater Bay Area Cancer Registry shows that the rates of cancer in people under the age of 50 in the Bay Area has been on the upswing since 2018, increasing about 12% between 2018 and 2023. This alarming trend mirrors...

Every Labor Day, we remember the fights that built the modern workplace: the eight-hour day, the weekend, the right to organize. This year, we’re writing the next chapter: to establish workers’ rights to shape how emerging technology, including artificial intelligence, gets deployed on the job. Technology has always been part of work. At its best,...