Next week, December 4th, the City of San Jose will vote to sell Google public land for a 30,000 people campus in downtown San Jose. The City has been negotiating behind closed doors with Google regarding the mega campus, causing major concern among residents, non-profits, and neighborhood activists. The secretive nature of the negotiation has been said to violate the California Open Meeting Laws, and earlier this month, the City was sued for its handling of a deal to sell valuable public land to Google.
The community’s call to the Mayor and City for an open and transparent negotiation process has fallen on deaf ears. To date there have been:
- 23 closed-session meetings about the deal
- 18 non-disclosure agreements signed by the City officials including the Mayor
- Zero public council meetings about the project since February
- No public access to information Google has shared with Mayor Liccardo and other City officials.
The scope of the Google mega campus project will have a massive impact on the people of San Jose, and while it could bring new jobs it could result in skyrocketing rents, rising inequality, gentrification, and devastating traffic. However, instead of an open and transparent process to consider the project’s impact on San Jose’s future, it seems as though the details about the project and the conversations between Mayor Liccardo, the City and Google are being kept hidden from the public.
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