Decision '08: Follow-up

Santa Clara Plays Fair would like to thank all of you who contacted us and who volunteered for the candidates' campaigns in the November 4th election!

Although we did not get all of the changes we still firmly support: We're quite glad to see Councilwoman Jamie McLeod returned to her seat on the City Council. We believe that Councilwoman McLeod will be the one to carefully scrutinize any "deals" with the San Francisco 49ers requiring multi-million dollar subsidies from Santa Clarans.

During the precinct walks we did, many Santa Clarans asked us why the stadium subsidy issue wasn't even on their ballots.

That's a good question for our leaders - and for the San Francisco 49ers.

It's pretty clear that, with conditions in Santa Clara as well as across the nation, those attempting to make us help pay for a millionaire's NFL football stadium could not afford to have Santa Clarans expressing their will on this issue too soon:

http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_10968380

While we note that Councilwoman McLeod and challengers Emerson, Hardy, Lowery and Bouza were the most forthright on the issue, the rest of the incumbents only spoke of the stadium subsidy issue when they were specifically asked - or they completely ignored the stadium subsidy in their campaign literature. Surely this was no accidental omission.

Unfortunately, this will be the rule for the somewhat new City Council. It will be true for the next six months or so at least, due to the confidentiality agreement demanded by the 49ers after CFO Larry MacNeil's presentation to City Council of last April 24th.

It will be important for us as City residents to keep the issue alive while our City Council continues with the "Closed Session" meetings that it has been conducting since May of 2007 - some 41 such secret meetings as of September 30th of this year.

If you have any questions about this process or about the stance of Santa Clara Plays Fair on this issue, please contact us any time.


Best regards,
Bill Bailey
Treasurer