Op-ed: How can we trust a City Council that won’t explain its votes?

We recently ran an experiment to see whether our City Council would respond to questions from the public and explain its decisions. The result should concern anyone who cares about accountability in San Jose as they consider their choices in the upcoming election.

Our group, No Digital Billboards in San Jose, is a coalition of residents, neighborhood  associations and environmental and preservation advocates. We are the people of San  Jose. We began our work in 2020, when the city council rescinded a 48-year ban on new billboards and started moving toward approving more than 100 new digital billboards across the city.

Over the past six years, we have learned a lot about how things work — or do not work — at City Hall, so we were not surprised by the outcome of our experiment. But you should be.

For the first phase of our experiment, we reached out to every city councilmember and the mayor several days before a scheduled vote on digital billboards. The issue before the council involved expanding a billboard project that had already been approved in 2025, and we raised specific concerns. How many replies did we receive? Two out of 11, both merely automated acknowledgments.

On May 5, the council took up the billboard item. Seventy pages of written public comment, plus several in-person speakers, opposed expanding the project. Yet the council voted to approve the changes with no substantive discussion. Press a button. Vote yes. Done.

For the second phase of our experiment, we sent this letter to each councilmember and the mayor:

“Earlier this week, the City Council approved a revision to the Clear Channel contract allowing for larger, taller digital billboards with greater total light output. While the item was presented in part as approval of an environmental report addendum, it also involved a substantive revision to the underlying contract. However, neither the City nor the applicant identified any unforeseen circumstances, additional public benefit, or clear justification for modifying a project that was already defined and approved in 2025.

“We respectfully ask that you explain the basis for your vote in support of this change. This is not a rhetorical question — we are genuinely seeking to understand your reasoning.”

A senior policy analyst from the mayor’s office responded with an offer to meet, but responses from the rest of the council were as before, with only two automated replies.

If this is how councilmembers treat organized, informed constituents on a highly visible topic, what does that say about how they treat everyone else?

The outcome of our experiment is clear: Silence from elected officials erodes public trust. If City Hall wants to restore that trust, it can acknowledge that the most basic tenet of good governance should be that every email to a councilmember is logged and at least acknowledged.

And if a councilmember is going to press the button for a yes vote, they should explain that vote — before, during or at least after the meeting. Most of all, the mayor and council leadership should make clear that ignoring questions from the public is not acceptable.

San Jose residents should not have to run experiments to find out whether their representatives are listening. But now that we have, current city councilmembers and candidates should answer a basic question: Will you commit to responding — and  explaining your votes — to the people you serve?

Jason Hemp, Les Levitt and John Miller are co-founders of No Digital Billboards in San Jose.