Frontline animal shelter workers have spoken with a clear and united voice: San José’s Animal Care and Services Center needs new leadership.

In a staff survey conducted this summer, the overwhelming majority of shelter employees called for the City to bring in a director from outside its current ranks. Their message is simple — it’s time for a fresh start. Workers want a leader who can rebuild trust, restore accountability, and set a new direction for a shelter that has been plagued for years by dysfunction, poor conditions, and low morale.

The results of that survey were recently covered in the Mercury News, where workers’ voices were front and center. The article highlights what staff have been saying for years: the culture inside the shelter cannot change if the same people who presided over past failures remain in charge. You can read the full Mercury News article here.

The stakes are high. A city audit last year exposed…

On Tuesday, the San José City Council voted to approve a $400 million subsidy to renovate the 32-year-old SAP Center and extend the San José Sharks’ lease through 2051. The deal commits San José taxpayers to the majority of the $425 million project, while Sharks Sports & Entertainment will contribute $100 million. The agreement also requires the City and Sharks to begin planning for a new arena by 2027.

The problem? There’s no financing plan in place. City leaders say they’ll look to bonds or higher hotel taxes, but they voted on the subsidy without identifying how to pay for it. That leaves the City’s general fund—the very budget that pays for libraries, parks, dispatchers, engineers, animal care staff, and other essential services—vulnerable.

Meanwhile, city workers are still living with the consequences of a hiring freeze. Departments remain understaffed, and workers across the city are being told to do more with less. Next year, the City is projecting a shortfall in the tens of millions of dollars, yet services and staff are already stretched thin.

The hypocrisy is hard to ignore. Just a few years ago, the mayor and some of his allies on the Council argued it was irresponsible to approve wage increases for city workers without first identifying how to fund them. They accused other councilmembers of lacking “political courage” for backing labor contracts. Today, those same leaders have approved a $400 million arena subsidy for billionaires—with no financing plan at all.

We support keeping the Sharks in San José. The team is part of our civic identity, and workers understand the economic activity the Sharks bring to downtown. But any deal of this size should come with guarantees: no risk to the general fund, a clear financing plan up front, and a commitment to invest in the services San José families depend on.

Workers and residents deserve better than austerity for the public and blank checks for billionaires.

MEF has taken the City of San Jose to arbitration over its unilateral change to the Flexible Workplace Program. This change forces employees with existing flexible workplace agreements to be in the office at least four days per week instead of three, without negotiating with the Union.

This is a major fight for our members. Instead of handling the case through the City Attorney’s Office as they normally would, the City has hired an outside “special law firm,” the Renee Public Law Group. This firm is known for taking on high-profile fights for cities when the stakes are high or when their legal position is questionable. MEF has submitted an information request to determine how much of the public’s money the City plans to spend on these outside lawyers to take this right away from employees rather than working with us to find a solution.

The City’s first move was to challenge the arbitrability of our grievance, claiming the case does not even belong in arbitration. We view this as an absurd argument and a delay tactic. Our position is that the grievance is clearly covered by the arbitration procedure in our contract, and now the City has the burden of proving otherwise. Unfortunately, the City has developed a pattern of raising procedural technicalities when it wants to avoid addressing the merits of a case.

Here is the current schedule: (more inside)