{"id":410126,"date":"2026-07-24T00:32:16","date_gmt":"2026-07-24T00:32:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/410126\/"},"modified":"2026-07-24T00:32:16","modified_gmt":"2026-07-24T00:32:16","slug":"edboard-oops-santa-clara-did-it-again-opinion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/410126\/","title":{"rendered":"EdBoard: Oops, Santa Clara Did It Again – Opinion"},"content":{"rendered":"

Like Britney Spears with her habit of breaking hearts, Santa Clara has a habit.<\/p>\n

Like her, we like to flirt: with being a big city. We love having big-city assets \u2014 an Olympic-caliber swim center, a convention center, a billion-dollar NFL stadium \u2014 but we don\u2019t like making commitments to maintain them. Now we\u2019re doing it again with Levi\u2019s Stadium.<\/p>\n

The city\u2019s approach has always been pay-as-you-go, City Manager Jovan Grogan reminded the city council last October, and that \u201conly works when you have cash.\u201d But the city has no cash and the bills are overdue. \u00a0<\/p>\n

Santa Clara\u2019s unfunded infrastructure backlog nearly reached $600 million last year. The bond passed in 2024 only covers $400 million<\/a> of that. And at the demand of Mayor Lisa Gillmor, it excludes the entire stadium\/convention center district\u00a0 \u2014 the part of the city visitors are most likely to see.<\/p>\n

Sunnyvale made a different choice. It doesn\u2019t build without funding in place years in advance for construction and maintenance \u2014 precisely why Sunnyvale has no stadium and no convention center. Instead, Sunnyvale has a city hall that\u2019s an architectural gem. That\u2019s not an accident. That\u2019s fiscal discipline.<\/p>\n

Exhibit A \u2014 The International Swim Center<\/p>\n

Built in the late 1960s, the ISC has long outlived its 25-to-30-year design life. For decades, city councils were regularly warned the center was on course to becoming a useless hole in the ground.<\/p>\n

SPONSORED<\/p>\n

\"Devid\"Devid<\/a><\/p>\n

In January 2024, swimmers arrived at the swim center only to find a sign saying it was closed \u201cuntil further notice\u201d when the county shut it down because of the swim center\u2019s deterioration. \u201cSignificant deferred maintenance\u201d had led to \u201csignificant challenges\u201d in keeping it open, the city manager told the council.<\/p>\n

You needn\u2019t be a structural engineer to understand how neglecting maintenance ends up costing more. If you don\u2019t fix the leaky shingles on your roof, you won\u2019t just have a leaky roof: you\u2019ll have a rotting house.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Exhibit B \u2014 The Convention Center<\/p>\n

The Santa Clara Convention Center was profitable under Chamber of Commerce\/Vistors Bureau management.<\/p>\n

So Mayor Gillmor and then-city manager Deanna Santana decided that although things were working, they nonetheless needed fixing. A goal of Gillmor\u2019s since the 1990s \u2014 when her conduct caused the Mercury to dub her \u201clooney\u201d in an editorial \u2014 the council fired the Chamber\/CVB in 2019 and brought in new management by one of Santana\u2019s legion of cronies.<\/p>\n

Since then, even excluding the pandemic years, the center has been a money loser; getting minor fixes and fresh paint when much more is needed. And Gillmor made sure it will stay that way by excluding the convention center and stadium area from last year\u2019s bond measure.<\/p>\n

Exhibit C \u2014 Oops, We\u2019re Doing it Again with Levi\u2019s Stadium<\/p>\n

Now the city\u2019s doing it again with Levi\u2019s Stadium. Instead of a five-year capital plan, the stadium authority chose to approve just one year\u2019s worth of improvements, failing to earmark enough for capital projects. Albert Gonzalez summed it up: \u201cHave we underfunded the capital expenses for the stadium? Yeah. We have.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s true that admitting there\u2019s a problem is the first step toward solving it, but in Santa Clara that\u2019s often the last step, too.<\/p>\n

The reserve is laughable for the stadium\u2019s value.<\/p>\n

Generally accepted standards for maintaining big public buildings say an owner should be setting aside somewhere between 2 and 4% of a building\u2019s value every year to keep it in good repair \u2014 more, if repairs have been neglected.<\/p>\n

For a stadium worth well over $1 billion, that\u2019s about $20 to $40 million a year. Santa Clara is putting aside $3 to $4 million annually. And remember, that isn\u2019t money from the city\u2019s general fund. It\u2019s money that\u2019s generated by stadium authority revenue \u2014 money that Gillmor\u2019s been trying to divert into city coffers for the last 10 years.<\/p>\n

And it gets worse. The budget shows the stadium\u2019s dedicated repair fund dropping to just $609,000 by next summer. That\u2019s why the stadium authority had to shuffle nearly $6 million out of another account just to cover this year\u2019s projects.<\/p>\n

Indeed, the organization of the stadium project 15 years ago was an exercise in penny-wise, pound-foolishness.<\/p>\n

Instead of appointing a separate stadium authority whose sole fiduciary duty was running and maintaining the stadium, the city chose to make the city council the stadium authority board. The point of setting up the Stadium Authority as a separate public agency is protecting it from city councils diverting stadium revenues away from operations, maintenance and reserves. When the council is also the stadium authority board, the fox is running the henhouse.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the 12-year-old stadium\u2019s major systems are wearing out and, according to the most recent report, \u201cnearing end of life.\u201d It\u2019s the swim center all over again \u2014 warnings ignored, maintenance skipped and a bill that grows while the city looks away. Except this time the asset is worth a billion dollars.<\/p>\n

Previous EdBoard Posts:
EdBoard: Hey, Glen, We\u2019re Listening<\/a>
Truthish-ness and Truth \u2013 Opinion<\/a>
Mayor Gillmor Must Own Her Role in ISC Failure \u2013 Opinion<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Like Britney Spears with her habit of breaking hearts, Santa Clara has a habit. Like her, we like…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":410127,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[6036,50505,25438,88,90,89,197,64984,2920,2921,2922],"class_list":["post-410126","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-jose","tag-bay-area-news","tag-international-swim-center","tag-levis-stadium","tag-san-jose","tag-san-jose-headlines","tag-san-jose-news","tag-santa-clara","tag-santa-clara-convention-center","tag-santa-clara-mayor-lisa-gillmor","tag-santa-clara-weekly","tag-silicon-valley-voice"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/410126","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=410126"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/410126\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/410127"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=410126"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=410126"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=410126"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}