Folks, the Super Bowl is coming, so let the Gillmor Games begin. Mayor Lisa Gillmor is doing her media rounds, revving up her David vs. Goliath narrative once again, and the poor media outlets that don’t cover our fair city on a daily basis are eating it up.
But we at The Weekly, and you dear reader, know better because we’ve heard this tired tune before. The latest dastardly deed by those mustache-twirling, charlatans from Levi’s Stadium? Why, succeeding where Gillmor has failed. Bringing success and renown to the City of Santa Clara in the form of the Super Bowl.
Cleo Stuckrath could not have written a better Showtime melodrama herself.
Any businessperson worth their salt who watched the City Council back and forth on Sept. 23 knows that no bank would back the letter of credit Gillmor was demanding the 49ers provide. Credit to the 49ers representative who responded politely to questions like … “If you truly pay your bills,” and “Are you saying you can’t get a letter of credit because you don’t have any assets?” When he didn’t rise to the bait, she cut the conversation off with “we’re going in circles.”
How dare he fail to fall for Gillmor’s thinly veiled trap! The scoundrel!
But let’s talk about Mayor Gillmor’s fantasy as The Spunky Gal Mayor Who Could. Less than two weeks before her showdown with the Nefarious Niners, she bowed down to big data. Gillmor voted in favor of a nearly one billion dollar expenditure by SVP for energy storage. Not a single data center representative showed up at that meeting. We didn’t hear Gillmor demanding letters of guarantee for 20 years of business.
In case you didn’t hear, that’s how long this one billion dollar contract will last. We’re sure if those data centers pull up roots and left town, taking their business with them, she’d write it off as “stuff happens.”
You know who foots the bill? You, dear reader.
Because there is no land lease, no contract and no guarantee that keeps these data centers in town for longer than a week, a month or a year. There’s nothing special about the land they sit on. We at least know that Levi’s Stadium is one of a kind. The 49ers and the city are bound together by a unique piece of land.
You can’t say the same about that brick of a building on Central Expressway that stores data. There’s nothing tying data centers to Santa Clara except that good old cheap energy. If we, the citizens of Santa Clara, don’t help foot the bill, the data centers will pull up stakes and get the hell out of dodge.
Once again, Gillmor has targeted the wrong Goliath. Because it’s never been about the people of Santa Clara, she has never been our champion. She has only had one cause. Herself.
Previous Milestones:
Milestones – Gillmor’s Assured Loss – Opinion
Milestones – A Bad Penny – Opinion
Milestones – Santa Clara’s Slime Report – Opinion
Miles, it appears to be the Santa Clara way: though I’m starting to think it’s really the Gillmor way. Thank you
Mayor Gillmor is Goliath, and the people of Santa Clara are David. Miles is onto something here—Goliath was considered the champion of the Philistines, much like Lisa Gillmor and her cult-like following believe she is the champion of Santa Clarans.
Gillmor, like Goliath, is intimidating and armored with powerful weapons: grand juries, bloggers, the Chronicle, loyalists, district attorneys, lawyers, Tom Shanks (the so-called “ethics expert”), and James Rowen. Many consider Gillmor untouchable—like Teflon, nothing sticks. She has gotten away with so much, especially perjury and leaking the grand jury report to the San Francisco Chronicle. It’s believed she sees it as her birthright to run the city—as if she owns it.
But Santa Clara is not owned by one person. It is owned by all of us. The people of Santa Clara must defeat the Gillmor Goliath.
One of the best lines is, “If you truly pay your bills.” Maybe Gillmor should personally pay, from her own wealth, for the bills she’s created for the City of Santa Clara. She should also be paying for the legal defenses tied to the crimes she’s accused of committing. What assets does she have? Certainly, the 49ers have more. Is this why she refused to sign non-disclosure agreements—because she has too much to lose? Her assets? It seems clear she didn’t sign them because she feared being held accountable for her history of leaks.
Remember the Measure J audit leak to the San Francisco Chronicle? 👉 https://www.stage.svvoice.com/call-a-plumber-for-the-leaks-and-faulty-pipes-behind-santa-clara/
What happened on Sept. 23—the interrogation over the Super Bowl contract—was no different from her “kangaroo courts” of the 1990s. (Her words, when defending Jim Arno in 1995.) It reminded me of when she and former Mayor Eddie Souza interrogated former Chamber of Commerce president Betty Hangs for six hours, or how she spent two City Council meetings grilling then-Mayor Judy Nadler over campaign postage.
Then there was the time Gillmor and her majority berated Patty Mahan and Pat Kolstad for hours because they wouldn’t appoint someone to Dominic Caserta’s vacant seat—then censured them. Or when her majority denied curfew extensions for Levi’s Stadium, but granted them to Great America.
Let’s not forget the weaponization of California Penal Code §933.05(f) to protect the 2022 grand jury report. They could leak it, but no one else was allowed to speak about or debunk it. It was a truly despicable move—another kangaroo court Gillmor fully supported.