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Cupertino Mayor criticizes Apple in an interview; disproves almost everything hours later

You know that kind of thing that you just take for granted and never stop to think about if you get close to the truth? It was more or less like this, my judgment about the relationship of Apple with Cupertino, its host city: in my mind, residents and local authorities viewed Ma with pride, as a kind of flagship and attraction of the city, she and Apple protected each other and everyone lived in sunny fields, jumping in an unlikely capitalist utopia.

My delusional dreams were overturned yesterday morning, when the new Cupertinian mayor (supposedly) put his mouth on the trombone in The Guardian expressing his many dissatisfactions with Apple and, in the process, exposing various problems of the city many of which, according to him, are directly linked to Ma itself.

Apple Campus 2 Work

Barry Chang he took over the city hall a short time ago last December, and his relationship with Apple has already started badly: shortly after taking office, he did or rather tried to pay a visit to the company's campus to talk to executives about the traffic in the local highways. However, things did not go as planned: before any contact, the company security guards accompanied the mayor to the exit, stating that he "could not enter, as he had not been invited". "I never came back," says Chang.

The mayor says that Cupertino suffers from an infrastructure that already shows signs of aging: the streets and highways do not support the growing volume of cars, causing congestion and noise pollution; public transport does not account for the number of passengers. On the other hand, explains Chang, limiting the development of the city would be very damaging to the regional economy. The real solution, the politician thinks, would be to raise taxes for the rich and for businesses, like Apple, if he had been chatting with Woz?

On the other hand, Chang is concerned about the magnitude of the power that Ma has in the city. The Cupertinian mayor reports that he proposed that Apple give $ 100 million so that the city could improve the city's infrastructure; the proposal would need the approval of only one of the other three board members to pass, but nothing was done.

The gigantic Apple around here. The board members don't want to make you angry. Apple talks to them, and they don't vote against Apple. That fact.

Chang's mission now is to pass a tax bill that would charge companies with more than 100 employees a tax of $ 1,000 per employee. If it passes, it will be a considerable increase in Apple's payroll, which last year paid $ 9.2 million in city taxes (representing 18% of the city's tax revenue).

"If you are helping to create the problems, you have to help solve them," said the mayor, who even tried to organize a protest outside Ma's offices. "No one wanted to go," he said.

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A few hours after the publication of the The Guardianhowever, the Cupertino City Hall published a note on its website stating that the matter has a number of factual errors. "I was shocked to see a recent article quoting me with words I didn't use and describing situations that never happened," said Chang in the note.

He maintains his opinion that the installations of large companies in the city cause serious problems of urban mobility and this is one of the major concerns of his management, but he states that the other situations and statements reported in the article are untrue. “The reporter clearly got me wrong,” he concludes. "My concerns and those of the city council are very well documented."

And, did the fear of Apple's power beat or was the report, in fact, untrue? We are in debt.

(via TNW)