☆ Water district rates about to double

By Take Back San Jose | April 26, 2024
Aerial view of water forcefully cascading over a breached dam

Image by WaterArchives.org Hold onto your (wet) wallets. Opp Now contributor and local City Planning graduate student Susie Murillo takes a look at upcoming plans for the county water district to jack up rates, yet again, with little accountability and dubious reasoning. An Opp Now exclusive. “A rise in water rates may sink all who…

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☆ Oliverio: Big lesson from State audit re: CA and SJ homelessness programs: Clear-eyed realism more important than rosy intentions

By Take Back San Jose | April 25, 2024
Bookshelf in a library labeled "history" with sections for united states and europe, filled with various history books.

Former SJ CM and current Planning Commissioner Pierluigi Oliverio takes a look back at how SJ’s and the state’s homelessness efforts went sideways. Spoiler alert: good intentions can go astray. An Opp Now exclusive. History books will likely note that this huge spending in California on homelessness over the past decades had the best of…

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On that Labor/Business divide: the statewide edition

By Take Back San Jose | April 12, 2024
Construction of a large suspension bridge over a body of water, with cranes and a shipyard visible in the background.

Image by Wikimedia Commons California labor groups have their list of priority bills and the California Chamber of Commerce has a list of “job killers” it wants to defeat. Sometimes the two lists collide. The inestimable Dan Walters comments in Calmatters. An annual political ritual was repeated Wednesday when the California Chamber of Commerce released…

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