With more than 1,200 COVID-19 positive cases countywide and counting, San Jose leaders are scrambling to stop the spread to homeless people and vulnerable residents living in shelters, encampments and overcrowded homes by building emergency housing. The City Council on Tuesday will discuss a proposal to allocate more than $17 million to build modular homes...
San Jose lawmakers unanimously approve paid sick leave policy
Low-wage workers in San Jose employed during the coronavirus pandemic will soon receive paid sick leave if they start to feel ill on the job. Following a unanimous vote Wednesday, the San Jose City Council decided to move forward with the emergency ordinance, one week after Mayor Sam Liccardo introduced policy. “We believe that compliance is...
San Jose adopts measures to help businesses amid coronavirus closures
As cancellations, school closures and mandatory quarantines ramp up, San Jose leaders are scrambling to help the city’s most vulnerable residents, fearing devastating economic consequences for residents and local small businesses that are losing income. Following last week’s call to place a moratorium on evictions for residents who can’t pay rent because of lost income,...
Plans for San Jose’s El Paseo de Saratoga shift as residents weigh in
Plans for a major redevelopment of San Jose’s El Paseo de Saratoga retail center are evolving as local leaders and residents gear up for a major feedback session on the future of the site this weekend. The most recent plans submitted by developer Sand Hill Property Co. includes the hundreds of homes, amenity space and...
From equity to blight and guns: San Jose lawmakers outline new priorities
With limited resources and time, the San Jose City Council each year must decide where its priorities fall. On Tuesday, the lawmakers will duel on which policy proposals they consider imperative for the city’s growth and progress. Since 2011, lawmakers have crafted a high-priority list of policy initiatives to steer the direction of the city’s...
San Jose lawmakers denounce SVO’s altered photo of Sylvia Arenas
Supporters of San Jose Councilmember Sylvia Arenas are crying foul after an image of the Latina lawmaker surfaced on a new opposition website that appears to have darkened her skin. The image, which cropped up this week on a website funded by the Silicon Valley Organization’s PAC, first appeared in a Mercury News article four...
Rule change prompts San Jose lawmakers to reduce travel
San Jose lawmakers have significantly reduced city-funded travel, a San José Spotlight analysis found, and some say it’s because of a trip five elected officials took to Japan nearly two years ago. The city has since implemented a new travel policy, which restricts how many councilmembers can travel at a given time. The policy, approved in...
San Jose lawmakers vote against supporting Measure B funds reallocation
Silicon Valley climate activists are urging the VTA to declare a climate emergency and reallocate funds from a 2016 half-cent sales tax to public transit projects in an effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. But the San Jose City Council on Tuesday, which has five directors on the VTA board that includes Mayor Sam Liccardo...
San Jose lawmakers approve plan to keep Winchester Ranch seniors housed
For seven tumultuous years, the residents of a west San Jose mobile home park dueled with the city over razing their community of mobile homes to build 700 units of luxury housing. But last week, the uncertainty the park’s residents faced for nearly a decade was put to rest. Lawmakers unanimously approved a plan that...
San Jose city, business leaders announce new ‘Innovation Zone’
San Jose city officials and business leaders on Thursday unveiled a new “innovation zone” on the city’s west side, where companies can test new technology and the onetime Century 21 theater building may become a new “Innovation Hub.” The new innovation zone, announced by San Jose Vice Mayor Chappie Jones and Councilmember Dev Davis will...