Scanning local media, it sometimes seems like everybody is always in favor spending more taxpayer money on gov't "services," even if those services don't deliver. We highlight some local leaders who advocate for professional fiscal restraint.
In a thoughtful Merc op-ed, former Assessor Larry Stone says the quiet part out loud: Entertainment Zones won't awaken DTSJ from its somnolence. Stone calls for stronger demands for in-office work. But imaginative international city planners realize those days are long gone, and it's time for a complete reimagining of downtown space. Their ideas explored, below.
Year after year, decade after decade, local gov't has asked county residents to shell out more and more for a mass transit fiscal sinkhole that has delivered less and less. Public policy prof and former SJ CM Pete Constant walks us through the sorry tale. An Opp Now exclusive.
Carol Pefley, candidate for CA Assembly District 28, says real financial accountability starts when leaders have the guts to pull the plug on failed gov't programs.
On August 18th, San Jose City Council is considering approving the Planning Commission’s proposal for upzoning of the whole city, in which historic single-family-home zoning will give way to high-density, multi-story, multi-unit zoning, with by-right development and no parking requirements. Some of F&H's key concerns:
Hey, we're all used to wildly prejudicial, not-very-smart, pro-tax media coverage in the Bay Area. But this last weekend offered something new: local opinion leaders rising up and taking the reliably lefty SF Standard to task for their transparently biased coverage of the transit tax opposition. A selection of comments from X follows.
Rather than hike taxes in five counties to “rescue VTA,” transit bureaucrats could find easy savings if they wanted. For example: a yearly $15 million that goes to fund a diesel train to Gilroy that serves hardly anybody. Here are five reasons the South County Caltrain is not exactly chugging along, courtesy of Gilroy City Councilmember Zach Hilton writing for the Gilroy Dispatch.
City officials crow, dubiously, that they’ve figured out “the model” for bringing down sky-high rents and making SJ more affordable. Facts on the ground tell a different, more sobering story. Apartments.com’s national rent report reveals that:
Rental prices in SJ (end of June 2026) are now up 5.2%, year-over-year.
The overall median rent in SJ stands at $3,058, after rising 1.4% last month alone.
--Apartments.com
In the frenzy to bail out boondoggle fantasies like a BART-to-San Jose line, bureaucrats’ appeals to the most vulnerable fall flat when you understand just how harmful their proposed half-cent sales tax will be to the region’s lowest income earners. Stacked on top of Measure A’s countywide 5/8-cent hike, struggling San Joseans could soon be paying a 10.5% sales tax.
