Posts by Take Back San Jose
Email Blast from Mayor Matt Mahan: Dashboards for Progress and Real-Time Performance at City Hall
Dear Neighbor, In Silicon Valley, dashboards, metrics, daily standups, and other performance management tools are as common as bureaucracy is in government. It’s my goal to change that. Without setting clear goals, tracking progress and reacting to real-time performance data at City Hall, we can’t move the needle on the issues that matter most. As…
Read More☆ Expert: SJ Housing Dept chasing the wrong metrics
It’s a time-honored business nostrum that “you are what you measure.” Housing expert Scott Beyer of the Market Urbanist takes a look at the beleaguered SJ Housing Dept’s audit, and finds the organization’s metrics confused, avoidant, and not very useful. An Opp Now exclusive. San Jose this past September completed and released a long-awaited audit of the Housing…
Read MoreOpinion: Converting to “defined contribution” pension plans much more cost-effective
Image by Pictures of Money on Flickr Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association’s president Jon Coupal explains how California’s unfunded pension liabilities, at nearly $250 billion (for SJ specifically: $3.6 billion), strain taxpayers, who must shoulder the price of overgenerous commitments. By switching from defined benefit to defined contribution plans, the State could reduce taxpayers’ risks while…
Read MoreHousing experts: Mere threat of “builder’s remedy” fast-tracks affordable housing development
In this Opp Now exclusive, three experts (SJSU’s regional planning professor Kelly Snider, Bay Area Council’s senior VP Matt Regan, and California YIMBY’s research director Nolan Gray) parse the builder’s remedy provision of CA’s Housing Affordability Act—which lets developers bypass local zoning laws for affordable housing projects if that city’s Housing Element is noncompliant. The…
Read MoreOpinion: SJ’s pro-AI development proposal “absolutely the right call”
Two San Jose AI companies—A-CX and InfoObjects—and UC Berkeley finance prof/AI researcher Anastassia Fedyk comment on Mayor Mahan and CM Cohen’s initiative to promote local artificial intelligence innovation. Making AI “approachable,” they explain, involves tapping into population density, university talent, and civic problem-solving. An Opp Now exclusive. Ilpo Niva, A-CX CEO and co-founder: Population density…
Read MoreBerkeley dean: “Never in my life” has antisemitism so pervaded local colleges
Image by Wikimedia Commons Over the last couple weeks, masses of students and faculty have advocated for the end of the Israeli people at universities such as Stanford, Berkeley, and UC Davis. In the LA Times, Cal’s law dean Erwin Chemerinsky expresses horror about the discrimination Jewish folks have experienced on college campuses since Hamas’…
Read MoreSocial media opinions: BART’s dysfunction indicates underlying revenue, safety, reliability issues
The Opp Now team dove into Reddit community r/BayArea to find out how local residents feel about Bay Area Rapid Transit, and the following comments—excerpted from a thread titled “Why does BART suck so much?”—are all things frank, tongue-in-cheek, and, yes, profoundly sobering for taxpayers. Fasten your seat belts. cuponoodles213: So I got rid of…
Read MoreOpinion: Bay Area’s anti-natural gas “Burn-Out Ordinance” to crash and burn
Phillipe Jacques de Loutherbourg: Coalbrookdale by Night. Image in Public Domain City Journal pipes in on the Bay’s heat pump debate (all gas heaters must be replaced by electric, as early as 2027) and points out: Since the switch will debilitate lower-income residents and could—in tragic irony—actually amplify climate harm, why bother with an all-or-nothing…
Read More9th Circuit says SJ religious student club can keep “statement of faith” for leaders
Several years ago, San Jose’s Pioneer High School de-recognized its Fellowship of Christian Athletes (FCA) student group because leaders were required to attest agreement with the group’s religious values. This fall, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 9–2 that FCA has the constitutional right to exercise freedom of speech and religion when selecting…
Read MoreEconomist: County’s guaranteed income programs are fool’s gold: unsustainable and promote gov’t dependence
Image by Charos Pix Local media recently celebrated a poorly designed Joint Venture Silicon Valley study, which discovered that people who get free money from universal basic income (UBI) programs (like Santa Clara County’s) are more able to afford things that—hold your breath—cost money. Stanford economics prof John Cochrane provides deeper analysis, noting that UBI…
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