The Civil Grand Jury of Santa Clara County published a report A House Divided: Cupertino City Council and City Staff.

The report shows there is a tension between the City Councilmembers and the city staff.

City of Cupertino hired Linda Daube to investigate issues raised in the report. Linda returned to the Council with her Fact Finding Report.

In the City Council Meeting of 5/9/2023, the council majority (Mayor Hung Wei, Vice Mayor Sheila Mohan, and Councilmember J.R. Fruen) made some unpreceded decisions, including

• Remove all committee assignments from Councilmember Chao and Councilmember Moore.
• Referred Santa Clara County District Attorney to investigate current and former councilmember (including former Mayor Paul) to see if they had unduly influenced the City Manager or City Staff in hiring or firing decisions.
• Went ease for City Staff and didn't ask for any improvement in response to the Civil Grand Jury report.

The interesting thins is the Deputy District Attorney responded to the referral in a short 9 business days and claiming "There is no evidence ... that any former or current council member attempted to influence any of the City Managers in their hiring or firing decisions".

San Jose Spotlight covered the story.

Cupertino City Hall was designed and built in 1965. The size is about 24,140 square-foot (indicated here). It doesn't meet the current building standards. Please see here for more information. We need to do something to make staff work in a building that meets standards.

There are three options according to a 04/30/2019 report:

• Building new City Hall - $70.5M
• Renovated - $23M
• Minimum - $6.6M
  

Neighboring city Sunnyvale just built a new 120,000 square-foot City Hall. And the first phase cost was about $315M. So the per square-foot cost is about $2625.

On 11/15/2022, Cupertino City Council directed the staff to include the City Hall Renovation with $27.5M to next FY budget (see here).

On 02/11/2023, the new City Council preferred a new 80,000 square-foot City Hall. If we take the Sunnyvale new City Hall's per square-foot cost number, the cost would be $210M, which is much more than proposed $70.5M.

New City Hall was included in the FY 2023-24 five year plan for CIP.

Given Cupertino is in a budget crisis, which option for the City Hall do you think Cupertino should take?

About 40% of the City of Cupertino's revenue comes from sales taxes. But with a state audit, the sales tax revenue is estimated to drop 73% this year, from $11.4 million from $42.1 million, a $30.7 million change. The City of Cupertino's budget will change from surplus to deficit. See staff report for details.

Below is a screen shot of the staff report.

The city offered three strategies: reduce fund, cut expenditure and increase revenue.

Below is a screen shot of fund reduction.

Below are screen shots of expenditure reductions.

Below are screen shots of increasing revenue.

The City of Cupertino is conducting a survey.
How should Cupertino balance its budget?

Below are some ideas not offered in the city survey above.

• A hiring freeze while the budget is in deficit. The Staff per 1000 residents ratio is at all time high (3.32). How about scale it back to FY 14-15 level (2.62)? refrence
  
  Given the population is 66,274 in 2022, we can save 46 positions. Each position costs about $186,000 per year (See Expenditure Reduction Strategies above). The saving is about $8,556,000 per year.

• Change the City Hall plan to minimum, which would reduce $16.4M for renovation, or $63.9M for a new City Hall. See here for more details.

There are two representation modes: trustee model of representation and delegate model of representation.

Almost all the current representatives are in the trustee model of representation. People are familiar with this model since the beginning of Democracy. But people chose this model not because it is good, but because they had to use this model due to technical limitations.

Representatives need to make laws and policies. They need to 1. communicate to each other efficiently, 2. vote quickly. In the old days, people have to stay in the same room to achieve both. Democracy system had to use representatives and representatives had to run on trustee model of representation due to the technical limitations.

But with today's technology, people can communicate and vote online which can overcome the two requirements easily. Current law still requires representatives. But representatives can run on delegate model of representation, so the constituents make the decision directly.

AB 2098 is wrong in several places:

• Unprofessional conducts should be treated the same, regardless of whether they are related to COVID-19 vaccines.
• Evaluating the long term effects of vaccines normally takes many years. It is against scientific method to say anything not align with current scientific consensus is misinformation.
• The vaccination/booster is still an ongoing process. It is impossible to say the current scientific consensus is settled.
• All vaccines have side effects. If a physician or surgeon promotes COVID-19 vaccines, and the patient is harmed by the side effects, should the physician or surgeon be hold responsible, too?
• Physicians and surgeons are protected by the First Amendment, too.

There are many research shows the side effects of the COVID-19 vaccines, like this one.

Gas price went up significantly in 2022. CA legislature had two plans to give California people a relief:

• Suspend the gas tax, so people pays less at the pump
• Give people a rebate check depending on their income, and the rebate check conveniently arrives right before the Midterm Election

The legislature passed the second plan. Which plan do you prefer?

This is the summary of the results.

Please see the detailed results here.

Since Prop 47, California changed many crimes, especially property "thefts", into misdemeanors. Those so called "Petty theft" are essentially not punished.

There are many reasons resulted this change. One of them is that incarceration is very expensive.

Sure, by not incarcerating at all the government can save some money. But the cost is pushed to normal people.

California falls into a dilemma: it costs government money if punishing "petty theft" by incarceration; it costs people's property and safety if not punishing at all.

But the people and the government has social contract: the people pay taxes and obey the laws and the government should maintain social order for the community. Now by not maintaining the social order, the government broke the social contract.

Below is the summary of the results.

Please see here for detailed voting results.

SB 9 took effect on 01/01/2022. What's your opinion about it?