U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Democrat from Vermont and a 2020 presidential candidate, talked health care, prison reform, free college and unseating President Donald Trump during a campaign stop in downtown San Jose on Saturday. “The message of our campaign is us, not me,” Sanders told a crowd of several hundred supporters at San Jose’s Arena...
Amid criticism, Santa Clara County moving ahead on $5M women statue fund
Santa Clara County is starting to dip into $5 million it set aside for monuments that celebrate women, but it’s unclear when the work might come to fruition and some critics say taxpayer dollars shouldn’t be spent on women statues. The idea for the fund sparked while planning an International Women’s Day event last year,...
San Jose political foes join forces against new taxes
Two very unlikely San Jose political leaders joined forces Friday against one common enemy: New taxes. In a memo released late Friday, San Jose Councilmembers Johnny Khamis and Sergio Jimenez — who are often on opposite sides of most social issues — directed city administrators to stop studying placing any new tax measures on the...
San Jose mayor one step closer to suing over overnight trains
In an effort to combat the blaring horns of trains that have been waking San Jose residents from slumber, Mayor Sam Liccardo, along with four of his council colleagues, have signed on to explore legal options against Union Pacific Railroad and consider designating the land along the rail line as public open space. According to...
Rapes in San Jose tripled in ten years; lawmakers want answers
San Jose elected leaders on Thursday called for a series of public hearings to address an alarming rise of reported rapes and sexual assaults in San Jose. All five female members of the San Jose City Council — Magdalena Carrasco, Sylvia Arenas, Dev Davis, Maya Esparza and Pam Foley — gathered in front of San...
San Jose to pay six-figure settlement in traffic death case
San Jose City Hall will shell out a six-figure settlement to the family of a man who was killed while walking near a dark overpass with broken lights — which should’ve been maintained by the city. The settlement, which will be formally approved by the City Council on Tuesday, awards $100,000 to the parents of...
Will Laura’s Law help mentally ill residents in Santa Clara County?
It’s been almost 20 years since Laura Wilcox, a 19-year-old volunteer at a mental health clinic in Northern California, was shot and killed by a mentally ill man who refused treatment. A year later in 2002, California passed “Laura’s Law,” an assisted outpatient treatment program that gives counties the ability to mandate that severely mentally...
Meet the woman who’s fighting to save San Jose’s history
After leaving the job vacant for nearly a decade, San Jose City Hall has hired someone to protect the city’s historical assets or — at the very least — remind the city’s lawmakers that they’re there, especially as the city’s growth explodes amid an economic boom. Juliet Arroyo is the city’s new historic preservation officer....
San Jose lawmakers want to fund nearly 100 new ideas. Here’s a look at some of them.
Nearly 100 ideas are vying for funding in Mayor Sam Liccardo’s new budget, and they include everything from cleaning blight, to installing metal detectors at City Hall and mounting license plate readers on parking enforcement vehicles. Liccardo is scheduled to release his final budget message on May 31, which could include some of the councilmembers’...
San Jose spent nearly $120K on ethics complaints – some of them ‘frivolous’
San Jose last year shelled out more than $117,000 to an outside attorney to investigate ethics complaints against local politicians, a process some lawmakers say is driven by political motives and wastes taxpayer dollars. “The complaints filed against me have been frivolous and politically-motivated, filed by someone who is abusing the process,” said San Jose Councilmember Magdalena...