Santa Clara was a little more than a tenth the size.
By the early 1950s, San Jose had 100,000 residents and doubled its population in the decade that followed. Both remained tiny villages of less than a thousand inhabitants until the Gold Rush, when San Jose became the bigger city, and for a short time, California’s capitol. The rivalry dates back to 1777, when San Jose was established as a pueblo and Santa Clara became home to a mission. It’s a title neighboring San Jose-the Bay Area’s largest city and the seat of Northern California’s biggest county-introduced in the 1980s as a marketing slogan. Football, in fact, is just one piece of Santa Clara’s bid to become the “Capital of Silicon Valley,” if there is such a thing. When the million or so visitors to the Bay Area return home and attention shifts away from pursuits involving genetically engineered cyborgs in shoulder pads-and several kickers-giving each other brain damage, the vision for what Santa Clara intends to become will take shape.
Another reason could be the civil grand jury investigation that has been quietly looking into the city’s Stadium Authority-tasked with overseeing all operations at Levi’s Stadium-for the last three months. The city manager, in response, is apparently fed up and feeling underappreciated for his efforts, but that isn’t the story he’s selling.įuentes has explained his housecleaning by informing colleagues he simply wants to “stay nimble.” Other electeds in Santa Clara seem less sanguine.įuentes, and by extension other top city staff, are suspected of withholding and/or obfuscating information related to the operations of Levi’s Stadium, the two-year home of the San Francisco 49ers. “I don’t know what that’s about,” the mayor said, adding that he hopes Fuentes decides to stick around. Two weeks after the meltdown-which elicited chortles at City Hall over the unrequited, hold-me-back chest puffing-Santa Clara Mayor Jamie Matthews admitted he’d heard about the city manager’s unusual office purge. A request to take a view of Fuentes’ office was denied by his executive assistant, who noted such a sneak peek is “not how we do things.”
He also mysteriously disappeared from his office for two days last week in the all-important lead up to the big game, which is being held at Levi’s Stadium. Instead of getting a raise, the city manager of nearly three years was granted the indignity of a stipend, a one-time 5-percent boost to his $290,000 annual salary.įuentes refused it outright, and has since declined interview requests until after Super Bowl 50.
In October, the City Council authorized a pay increase for the city attorney, but not for Fuentes, who in the months prior had quietly handed out 5-percent merit pay increases to the city clerk and police chief without the council’s knowledge. He was letting his colleagues know that he’d had it. These were not the actions of a man getting a jump on his spring cleaning as much as an outburst by the city’s highest paid employee. He cleaned off his desk and stripped his office’s walls of photos, according to sources at City Hall, and a paper shredder’s gears could be heard in the long corridor that bisects the municipal headquarters’ east wing. While other city officials were off for vacation, and fewer still went through the motions at work in the closing days of 2015, the city manager of Santa Clara threw a tantrum. Julio Fuentes lost his cool during the holiday break.