Eric Crutchlow

The Swim Center closed in January 2024 because we deferred maintenance until the building became unsafe. Rescuing it is now a $24 million project. Our fire stations needed so much work that they became the largest line in the $400 million infrastructure bond voters just passed. And by the city's own count, that bond covers barely two thirds of more than $600 million in unfunded infrastructure needs.

The Bond Compliance Oversight Committee makes sure bond money goes where voters were promised, and that matters. But its job ends at the bond. Nobody owns the whole picture.

My first proposal will be a standing Finance Committee that reviews major expenditures and makes recommendations to staff and council before the vote, maintains a complete inventory of city assets with their maintenance and replacement costs, and recommends how reserves should be funded so the next repair never requires the next bond. The Director of Finance will work directly with the committee.

Our municipal utility is the best deal in this city. Data centers are the reason it's under pressure. They bring in roughly $41 million a year in revenue, and they consume more than half of our electricity. The grid is full. Completed data centers are sitting idle today because SVP cannot connect them. And SVP is planning a $459 million expansion largely to serve data center load.

We have enough data centers. It is time to pause new approvals until three things happen.

First, SVP completes a cost-of-service study that proves residential ratepayers are not subsidizing data center infrastructure. Second, the city creates a report of the aggregate industry water use, compares it to residential consumption, and forecasted water availability. Data centers recycle water efficiently, and the numbers may show they are not the problem some assume. But right now nobody has the numbers. An average Santa Clara household of four uses roughly 100,000 gallons a year. Before we approve another data center, residents deserve to know how aggregate data center water use compares to the neighborhoods around them. Third, the General Plan is updated to say where data centers belong and where they don't.

Data centers are part of Santa Clara's economy. The ones we have should stay and thrive. But adding more before we've answered the basic questions of who pays for the grid, who gets the water, and what happens to the neighborhoods is not growth.

I voted against bringing the 49ers to Santa Clara. I thought it was a bad deal for residents. But the contract is signed, the stadium is built, and relitigating that decision every council meeting has cost this city more than the stadium ever did.

The years of fighting between the mayor's office and the council majority over the 49ers divided city government and made it harder to get anything else done. It produced lawsuits, dueling audits, and a council that spent more time on stadium politics than on streets, water, and fire stations. That era needs to end.

The contract exists. The job now is to manage it competently and make sure it works for residents. That means treating the 49ers the way you treat any major counterparty: enforce the terms, track the money, and publish the results.

I will push for a standing reconciliation report after every major stadium event. What the city spent, what has been reimbursed, and what remains outstanding, published quarterly and available to anyone. If the numbers are fine, the report proves it and the fighting stops. If they aren't, the report catches it early. Either way, residents get the truth instead of two sides yelling past each other.

The Santa Clara City Council often meets past 11pm. The vote on the Charter Review Committee's work, which represented ten months of public service by thirteen residents, happened after 1am. I was one of those thirteen residents. Almost nobody was watching.

This is not how public business should work. When major decisions happen after midnight, the public has been cut out of the process. It does not matter whether the meeting was technically noticed. If residents cannot reasonably stay awake to see their government act, the spirit of open government has failed.

I will push for a council policy that no new substantive agenda items are taken up after 10pm. If the agenda is too long to finish, continue it to another meeting. The work does not get worse by waiting a week. It gets worse by being decided in an empty chamber at 1am.

More broadly, this council needs to stop treating every meeting like a battle. I have chaired the Planning Commission through contested votes on the El Camino Real Specific Plan, data center policy, and dozens of land use decisions. We did it by reading the materials, debating in public, and voting without making it personal. A commission of appointed volunteers managed to do what the elected council has struggled with for years: disagree, decide, and move on.

Santa Clara's problems are solvable. The missing ingredient is a council that works like colleagues instead of factions, and that does its work while residents can actually see it.