San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan’s negative response to the city’s new labor agreement is misguided and will ultimately cost him politically. Leading the city isn’t easy, and offending and diminishing your workforce leads to toxic results. The mayor complains that “service cuts” will have to take place as a result of paying city workers compensation...
Dewan: Our students need safe routes to school
As the new school year is underway, families are making decisions about travel to and from school. More and more families are considering options for their children to walk or ride a bike to school. The Safe Routes Partnership, a national group, offers ideas for communities to use in planning and preparing safer routes to...
Editorial: San Jose mayor needs to go all-in on addressing homelessness
San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan began his first term with an optimistic lens on resolving homelessness in the city. Eight months later his position has hardened. The mayor has confronted reality in a city where 89% of the population wants the homeless problem to disappear. Solutions are not happening fast enough for Mahan. After homeless people...
Bramson: Calling the question on criminalization
Sometimes, when things get bleak, we need to look back to move forward. In 1939, John Steinbeck published “The Grapes of Wrath.” Set during the Great Depression, the story follows the Joad family, Oklahoma farmers who were forced to leave their land due to economic hardships. A few years earlier and across the pond in...
Op-ed: How to help San Jose’s food trucks flourish
Since Nov. 2018, Veggielution has worked with seven low-income immigrant street food cart entrepreneurs to explore a new model of community engagement and economic opportunity. These mobile food vendors receive technical assistance workshops, secured tax identification numbers, city business licenses, and food handler’s certificates. Veggielution in 2019 partnered with San Jose’s Office of Economic Development...
Silver Taube: We need to protect employees who speak up for fair workplaces
A persistent misconception among American workers is that employers can only terminate them for good cause. This misconception arises, in part, because in other countries such as Mexico and the Philippines, termination can only be for just cause. In the Philippines, an employer must provide two written notices and a hearing once the employer provides...
Ritchie: Straightening out the canyon
I have a quip that I have used on occasion when found stuck on a vexing matter or facing a difficult client: “I can guide the raft down the river, but I cannot straighten out the canyon.” Obviously, this refers to the fact that certain matters of business physics are not changeable and eventually we...
Mahan: We can reward our workers without punishing our residents
Our city has incredible workers and they deserve a raise. And that is exactly what we have proposed to do—provide a fair raise that helps our city workforce keep up with inflation without requiring the city to cut services, raise taxes or take on any new unfunded debts. We all know times are tough. For...
Philbrick: We must protect our transit infrastructure from cyber threats
In 2008, a teenage boy converted an old TV remote into an infrared transmitter and used it to hack his city’s tram system, tripping switches, redirecting trains, causing thousands of dollars in damage and injuring more than a dozen people. Ten years later, Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) discovered 86% of 1,000 hardware devices supplied...
Yu: Community is key in limiting impacts of weather-related emergencies on older adults
In 2022, California suffered more than 20 states of emergency or major disaster declarations due to weather or natural disasters. The unprecedented series of winter storms that pummeled the state caused power outages ranging from 12 hours to two weeks for more than 7 million Californians and thousands of evacuation orders. We often think about...