San Jose has reported a steady decline in job vacancies and employee turnover for the last three years, a statistic that city officials say is the result of sweeping efforts to improve employee retention and compensation following an economic downturn in 2012. According to data requested by San José Spotlight, the city had 650 vacancies in...

San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo and Vice Mayor Chappie Jones on Tuesday will implore their City Council colleagues to make no changes to the mayoral election cycle and instead explore alternative ideas to increase voter turnout. Liccardo previously told San José Spotlight that he wouldn’t support an initiative to align the mayoral election year with...

Instead of giving San Jose’s affluent, privileged neighborhoods such as Almaden Valley and Willow Glen the same amount of money as struggling areas such as East San Jose and Meadowfair, five city lawmakers want to make the budget process more equitable. They’re calling for the city’s public funding to be divvied up based on each...

A band of top labor leaders Thursday signed onto a resolution condemning Mayor Sam Liccardo’s push to revise the county’s sanctuary city policy in the wake of the murder of a San Jose woman by an undocumented immigrant. In the resolution, the South Bay AFL-CIO Labor Council executive board, Latinos United for a New America, Human Agenda and...

When Ada Márquez stepped down from San Jose’s most powerful city commission last year, community leaders were hopeful that lawmakers would appoint another person of color from East Side to fill her spot. But that’s not what happened. “The council had a chance to embrace diversity and instead they chose to replace a seat that...

City Attorney Rick Doyle cautioned the council on rejecting the contract extension on the grounds of religious or political beliefs, which could be considered a First Amendment violation. Instead, they opted to reject the extension since Chick-Fil-A is not open on Sundays – one of the airport’s busiest travel days. At the suggestion of Yeager...

Kyra Kazantzis, a senior policy advisor to Mayor Sam Liccardo and a longtime attorney, is the new CEO of the Silicon Valley Council of Nonprofits following Patricia Gardner’s retirement, officials announced Tuesday. “I am thrilled to be joining Silicon Valley Council of Nonprofits and am ready to hit the ground running as CEO of this...

How effective is San Jose at public outreach and community engagement? One Silicon Valley organization says the city could do more, partly by providing food and child care at public governmental meetings. “We’re Silicon Valley. It’s 2019,” said Alex Shoor, co-founder of Catalyze SV, a nonprofit that focuses on sustainable development and growth. “How is...

In an effort to spur San Jose’s dwindling housing supply, lawmakers on Tuesday will consider investing $10 million to flip market-rate apartments into affordable ones and peg 30 percent of any new housing dollars for extremely low-income housing. Housing officials this week will ask the City Council to add those two new priorities to the city’s affordable housing investment plan....

Iola Williams, the first African-American to serve on the San Jose City Council, died Thursday night surrounded by her family in Texas. Williams, who lost a battle with Parkinson’s disease, was 83 years old. In 1979, Williams became the first African-American lawmaker appointed to the City Council after serving on the Franklin-McKinley School Board. Williams served...