Santa Clara County Grand Jury
• 2023-2024
HonorableBethMcGowen, PresidingJudge SuperiorCourtof California,SantaClaraCounty 191North FirstStreet,SanJose Ca 95113*
⚠️ Translation Notice: This content has been automatically translated. The original English text is the official version. Translation may contain errors.
⚠️ Este contenido ha sido traducido automáticamente. El texto original en inglés es la versión oficial. La traducción puede contener errores.
Note: Missing finding numbers detected: F3, F4
Findings and Recommendations 5 findings
F1A
I agree that there is a broken relationship among Councilmembers and the Mayor.
No recommendations for this finding
F1B
Disagree in part- The general statement is not a statement for the whole city council including the Mayor. I will agree however that the City's adopted ethical and behavioral standards are violated on the dais.
No recommendations for this finding
F1C
Disagree in part. I fully believe that Mayor and Councilmembers, including myself, engage in very robust discussions. I will agree that there have been petty grievances and squabbles from all members of the City Council. However, we can all do better to avoid any of these types of behaviors.
No recommendations for this finding
F2
Disagree wholly. Councilmembers Park, Chahal and myself understand parliamentary procedures, in fact Councilmember Park is by far the most educated on parliamentary procedures often citing it during council meetings. I have had extensive experience in parliamentary procedures from my time on the Santa Clara Planning Commission (2018-2020), Santa Clara Architectural Review (2019) and the Santa Clara City Council (2020-present).
Related Recommendations (1)
R2a
While I disagree with the finding of the Civil Grand Jury and their belief that I need training in parliamentary procedures, I will agree to take the recommended training because I can always learn more and better educate myself further in parliamentary procedures. Extra education is always a good thing, which all members of the City Council should take advantage of. The recommendation has not yet been implemented, but will be implemented in the future, with a timeframe before October 1st, 2024.
F5
Disagree in part, as it is a selectively applied finding. As stated previously, I find it surprising how much the Civil Grand Jury missed viewing all the hours of footage.
Related Recommendations (1)
R5b
While I strongly disagree with the Civil Grand Jury's assertion of a lack of ethics, I will strongly agree that all Councilmembers should take regular ethics training on top of their required Brown Act and Sexual Harassment trainings. I will agree to take the training as recommended because additional ethics training does no harm. In fact it is good governance to have refreshers on ethics and the Brown Act. I thank the Civil Grand Jury for their service and for their work in identifying areas that the City Council as a whole can improve which in return benefits our community. While I may not agree with all their findings, I believe the Civil Grand Jury was appropriate in identifying the needs to the Santa Clara City Council to work together and put aside any differences to assure that there is unanimous support behind the 2024 $400 Million bond measure that our city desperately needs for planning the future. Anthony Becker Santa Clara Councilmember District 6
* This report's PDF did not contain easily extractable text and required Optical Character Recognition (OCR) for analysis. There may be minor errors in the extracted findings and recommendations due to OCR limitations with scanned documents.