The $64.7M Non-Interest Bearing Account Issue

The current Council majority in 2023 eliminated the rights of Councilmembers to make public records requests (PRRs), which is inexplicable (How can it possibly be appropriate to approve a rule where Councilmembers have less access to public information than members of the general public?). Nonetheless, despite the efforts of some to obscure and, somehow, by some significant factors, worsen their own failure to do diligence by eliminating a basic and Constitutionally-protected mechanism of doing so for others, I review the PRRs on the city’s public page where the result of other people’s PRR requests are posted. The city posted this in response to a PRR regarding Cupertino’s finances. That PRR result was uploaded January 29, 2024 and showed there was approximately $49M in the City’s Commercial Checking account in December 2023. I noticed this PRR in February and asked about whether this account was earning interest. By the time I had asked, the account had already grown to nearly $65M. At my urging, the city staff moved the funds to a LAIF account in March earning about 4.55% and by June the remaining checking account was converted to one bearing interest. We lost over $2M in interest in the past year alone, while having events and services cut unnecessarily.

Out of the many reasons I support Ray Wang for Council is that he is internationally-renowned for his financial knowledge. Appearing on CNBC, Bloomberg, and Fox Business News, Ray Wang is relied on for information about business performance and is a regular speaker and participant in international technology conferences, including the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. He understands prudent investing and that idle funds must be put to work. Think about this. Ray submitted the PRR for this. Once he is elected to Council because we need him there, based upon the rules as they now exist, he would not even be able to request this information. That is simply wrong, and unarguably harmful to the public.

I want to make something very clear. It is not my intent to cast aspersions or not get along with people. But we need to consider that getting along is not about looking the other way, especially in our system where we are supposed to evaluate and receive public input. Our system is an exemplary one because people of good conscience are supposed to be able to inquire and to evaluate free of reprisal. Please think about this when you evaluate the attacks of others that are due, essentially, to the fact that there are people who are conscientious enough to want to get along with them through meaningful dialog in this system that we support and are always seeking to improve. I implore you as friends, neighbors and colleagues to support transparency rather than obfuscation, and not to preclude efforts to improve our collective lot in absolutely unnecessary and counter-productive ways. Perhaps some don’t care that their “game” is about letting others do the real work while finding various ways to take the credit, and while attacking and even smearing others who are the ones doing that real work. Well, I can only share my perspectives here, and I hope to have the chance to keep serving the public in a manner of integrity, and, by extension, real effectiveness. I hope that you support my re-election and the election of Ray Wang, who is in fact a very good person, to the Cupertino City Council. Thanks for the consideration.

This is the non-interest bearing account balance prior to Kitty Moore's request.