By Robert Haugh
On Tuesday, EMC Research and the Lew Edwards Group released information from a recent Santa Clara citywide survey.
The news was not good.
For the first time since I’ve been covering City Hall for over a decade, the Santa Clara City Council is considered out of touch with our residents.
In this year’s survey, the majority of voters think that Santa Clara does a poor or just fair job focusing on priorities that matter. That rating was 44-52 percent.
The numbers are worse on the question of how responsibly they’re handling tax dollars. That rating was 43-54 percent.
It’s clear that since the 49er Five took over, the numbers have taken a big dive.
EMC Research and the Lew Edwards Group also did polling for the Mission City in past years. So we can see similar or identical questions on this survey compared to 2018 before the 49ers took over the City Council.
In 2018, voters thought the City did an excellent to good job responding to concerns and complaints 50-34 percent.
We can compare that to this year’s “priorities that matter” question (44-52) because they’re similar. The numbers have dropped from a plus-16 in 2018 to a minus-8 in 2022. That’s a change of minus-24. Wow.
On an identical question about ‘using tax dollars responsibly,” voters in Santa Clara felt positive in 2018, 49-41 percent.
Now, that question results is negative, 43-54 percent. That’s a change from plus-8 in 2018 to minus-11 in 2022 for a total of minus-19. Ouch.
These are terrible numbers for a City that has always been considered well run. Maybe we shouldn’t be surprised.
Santa Clarans have been buzzing for months about how the 49er Five fired former City Attorney Brian Doyle without cause at the team’s request. These numbers reflect how Mission City voters think about the direction of our City.
[…] confidence in Santa Clara takes a dive after the 49er Five take over. Polling shows big drops from […]
As I have said many times WE NEED TO LET THE PEOPLE IN SANTA CLARA KNOW WHAT JED YORK DID. HOW DID HIS PEOPLE GET VOTED IN? i am sure when they walked there districts, they mentioned Jed York or the 49ers.. the people must have said to themselves, I LOVE THE 49ERS SO I AM GOING TO VOTE FOR HIM. aND TODAY THEY STILL DO NOT KNOW HOW BAD THEY ARE AND THE ROTTEN THINGS THEY HAVE DONE TO OUR CITY. Not everyone reads Robert’s e-mails. I wish they did. Why can’t we have our own news paper ????????????????????????????????????????
The Data just shows us what we already know. The 49er 5 have no value added, they are ruining our city.
It’s easy to see the five traitors are setting goals for Jed, not the city that they are sworn to represent.
Not a lot of community outreach. Although they all seem to make the 49er meetings.
They have no perspective, can’t see the big picture, and only pursue their pet issues (or what they are directed to pursue). They have no regard for public money – we’re “broke” and the response is to paint fancy crosswalks?
Here is a microcosm of our problem. I live in District 6. A couple of Sundays ago, a water line burst at Forest and Harold, flooding the entire neighborhood. This generated an emergency call out (overtime) of personnel to fix it.
I looked into things (briefly spoke to the guys working and then dug thru the City’s website) and found out that our water lines are on a roughly 150! year replacement cycle. Sounds kind of important and maybe something that we should look at closely.
My point: water is a pretty important issue. We should dig into that more and maybe find a better solution than waiting until pipes burst and hiring overtime.
But what do we get from our D6 rep? Painted crosswalks and the removal of two elected positions. Bizarre. Can’t see the forest through the trees.
Leave our City Charter alone please, keep the elected positions (we likes checks and balances) and handle the basics. You can start by meeting in person. These zooms are ridiculous, unnecessary and likely contribute to the discourteous behavior.
I am sure the 49er council members aren’t concerned. They have demonstrated a complete disregard for what is good for residents. They act like they are elites and we are the ignorant unwashed. Many people push for a higher voter turnout. We don’t need more voters, we need more informed voters.
Thanks for doing your part, Robert.