*Jak VanNada is responding to this Op-Ed by Jeffrey Suzuki
Jeff Suzuki, president of the Los Gatos Anti-Racism Coalition and a candidate for Town Council, has published an op-ed entitled “A view inside LGARC’s Rental Assistance Program.” Billed as a response to our questions, it answers just one of seven, and LGARC’s own filing contradicts that answer. The rest, he says, wouldn’t fit in 750 words. Yet he found room for self-praise.
The scorecard: what was asked and answered
- Who are the directors, and how were they selected? Not answered.
- How can a resident join, and who decides? Not answered.
- Has any officer or director been paid? Answer: no. Yet LGARC’s 2023 filing with the Attorney General reports $12,169 in officer compensation. Which is it?
- Of the $64,500 in Town grants, how much reached Los Gatos renters? Not answered. He offered, “well over $100,000 delivered to more than 110 households across Santa Clara County.” Los Gatos taxpayers funded rental assistance for Los Gatos, not Santa Clara County.
- Produce the documents each grant agreement requires. Not done.
- How do the 2023 filing’s receipts, expenses and year-end assets reconcile, and why does it report no government funding? Not answered. Corrected statements, he says, “will be public once processed.” He could release them today, but has not.
- Where is the conflict-of-interest policy LGARC’s bylaws reference? Not answered.
Suzuki calls the work difficult, unceremonious and “not for the faint of heart.” No one doubts it. But hard work is no license for secrecy. An organization that takes public money accepts a higher standard of disclosure. If LGARC won’t meet it, it is free to raise money privately.
Suzuki declined to name LGARC’s directors. Pressed at a recent Democracy Tent meet-the-candidates event, he said he isn’t legally required to disclose them. That may be so. But an organization that won’t say who governs it should not receive public money. Available public records note one director: Kylie Clark, then Mayor Rob Moore’s live-in partner and now his fiancée. Almost immediately after LGARC became a 501(c)(3), it began receiving Town grants, a change driven by and voted for by Moore. Coincidence? Vice Mayor Maria Ristow has also pushed its funding, and her campaign website lists LGARC as an endorser. Neither disclosed these ties when voting to fund the organization, and Moore did not recuse himself from debate or voting.
In a December 2020 post to LGARC’s private Facebook group titled “We need applicants for commission seats!”, Suzuki wrote that a Finance Commission of former CFOs was, “likely just going to be old white men attempting to apply business practices to government,” adding, “Luckily, we aren’t going down that route.”
The president of an anti-racism coalition, recruiting members for Town commissions, told them who should be kept off: older residents, white residents, men. The message is plain. We don’t want you. You don’t further our agenda. Don’t bother applying. Swap in any other age, race and gender, and no one in Los Gatos would hesitate to call it what it is.
The same post states the goal: getting LGARC members into Town government “to further our influence.” In FY 2026, LGARC’s Town-funded rental assistance reached six households. The closer we look, the more we wonder whether this is a charity or a political group with a small rental assistance program as its credential.
It also duplicates rental assistance the Town already buys from West Valley Community Services under a five-year contract. Funding both, with this many questions unanswered, makes no sense.
This is public money, and LGARC’s president does not say how much of it reached Los Gatos renters. Its grant agreements required invoices, receipts, cancelled checks and bank statements with each annual report. The Town received none. LGARC later produced heavily redacted bank statements showing money going out, and nothing showing the payments were legitimate. That is hard to square with the comment by the Town’s grant administrator that LGARC’s documents were “a good example of reporting.”
The Town is reviewing the grant program’s internal controls; we are eager for the results. But a program review is not an audit. The Town should commission an independent audit tracing every Town dollar paid to LGARC to the renter it was meant to help and publish the results. Voters deserve to know where the money went before Nov. 3. And if Suzuki is elected, he will appoint a member of the Finance Commission. Old white men need not apply. He has already said so.
Jak VanNada
Los Gatos Community Alliance
*Letters are edited for length and clarity.
