By Robert Haugh
The Santa Clara City Council acting as the Stadium Authority decided it would pay to repair the Levi’s Stadium sign.
They will use Stadium Authority funds that could go to the City’s general fund. It’ll be $1.42 million over three years.
The stadium sign agreement says that Levi’s Strauss & Company is responsible for replacing the sign. Originally, the 49ers asked that the sign be replaced for $1.3 million.
But under former City Manager Deanna Santana, City staff pointed out that the sign sponsor is required to pay for it.
After that, the team changed it’s request from “replace” to “repair.” That way the Stadium Authority, not Levi’s will have to pay for it.
Kathy Watanabe made a motion to get an independent third party to analyze if the sign needs to be replaced instead of repaired.
But the 49er Five voted it down.
It passed 4-2. (Councilman Raj Chahal was absent from the meeting).
Councilmembers Anthony Becker, Suds Jain, Karen Hardy and Kevin Park voted in favor.
Watanabe and Mayor Lisa Gillmor voted against.
After the vote, Hardy moved to have City staff or an independent third party to analyze if the sign needs to be replaced instead of repaired. Huh?
So the 49er Five want to figure out what’s the best approach after they voted for the 49ers budget request. Wow.
Why would they do it backwards and not attempt to defend public funds? During last night’s discussion, they told us.
“I think the concept here is that we need to keep our client happy,” said Jain.
“The customer is always right,” said Becker.
Becker, Jain and Park received $3 million from 49ers CEO/Lobbyist Jed York in an independent expenditure help to get them elected in 2020.
Speaking of money – the 49ers told the City Council two months ago that the City’s general fund will be getting zero dollars this fiscal year. Yup. Zero.
It’s easy to see why.
The lying Weakly got it wrong AGAIN for approved consent expenses. 4 Councilmembers had the common sense to vote against a $13,5k giveaway to recognize 49er employees. NOT APPROVE IT! City employees haven’t been recognized in years. I know! Obviously Park and Jain didn’t consider that when making their votes.
As usual Becker is such a joke. With all his scripted lines last night it was obvious the 49ers or someone wrote his material trying to prime him up as candidate running for mayor what a joke. He is so fake. Santa Clara does not want a liar no experience stoner for our Mayor. All his BS last night was embarrassing. His butt kissing and apologies and everything he said last night was written for him. Is Patty still writing for him or is Rahul’s crew on it. Becker is low hanging fruit RECALL!!!
I completely agree.
I can’t imagine if I was going to design a puppet that I would make it look like Becker. If Becker had a little more base intelligence he wouldn’t sound like such a loser when he goes off script. But he is.
Becker and jain drank the cool-aide.
Hook line and stinker.
Becker is low hanging fruit! 🤣🤣🤣🍋🍊🍌🍌🍌
Dear City of Santa Clara,
We have faced the very same treatment from out current elected representative in the East Valley.
Keep fighting year after year.
Eventually they will term-out.
Then continue the fight.
What our Plata Arroyo Neighborhood Association did to survive and be as strong as we are is not dumb-luck or magic, it was our friends at City Hall that worked for the Community that our Elected Representative ignored.
That is my opinion.
In Community Spirit,
Danny Garza
danny, waiting for a bad representative to term out could take forever especially if there are no term limits. these bad puppies needed to be gone YESTERDAY.
Sounds like the plan was cooked ahead of time and the ultimate goal was to get that money out of the stadium authority’s hands and do what these 5 were told. Oh and then as an afterthought maybe there should be an independent review done. You can’t make this stuff up.
A little bit of contract basics for 49er puppets Jain and Becker: The Stadium Authority owns the Stadium and we hired the 49ers Management Company as our agent.Therefore the Stadium Authority is the “customer” and the “client” in this relationship. It is the 49ers who should be keeping the voters of Santa Clara happy, not the other way round.
And if you were still employed by the City instead of having been fired by these puppets, you could have said that at the meeting last night.
Time to contact the DA and get this in front of the Civil Grand Jury.
Ironically, this news article came out today stating our city is $20 million in the red. Perfect time for the 49er 5 to give a $1.5 million gift to Uncle Jed. This is continued political corruption and pay back for the $3 million the 49ers spent to get their candidates elected. We know that the 49er 5 read this blog, so how about a response to explain this decision???
And two puppets are making sure to be re-elected in November get their fair share of PAC monies for being good soldiers.
Vote NO on raj and Karen in November. Santa Clara cannot afford them!
These 5 are like a Cancer eating away the taxpayers money. Chemo time!
The word outraged doesn’t do it justice. This does prove that all this whining about the city atty and city mgr being wasteful regarding city money was just another load of BS. Obviously the phony phive only care about paying off their existing and anticipated campaign debts. They don’t care one little bit about the city they are supposed to be serving.