While I was glad to see the back of the last mayor and council, I am beginning to worry about the effects of the old guard members on the new council. Why is it that decisions that seem obvious to the rest of us require months of delays and hundreds of thousands of dollars spent on consultants? And while, like the rest of the country, our infrastructure is crumbling, why does the Redevelopment Agency want to spend nearly a million bucks to bring a circus downtown? To top it all off, why has the council voted unanimously to unreasonably abridge the public’s freedom to speak in public meetings and limit the citizens’ ability to “petition the government for a redress of grievances” as per the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution?

The turmoil in the economy caused by the subprime lending debacle is far from over. The stock markets may be somewhat stabilized temporarily by the intervention of European and Japanese central banks along with the U.S. Federal Reserve pumping in billions of dollars borrowed from the Chinese, but the overvalued real estate markets will most certainly take a tumble as a result of bad loans and a tighter fist in the banking industry as a whole. There is still a subprime lender shakeout to come as many are in deep trouble due to “lack of liquidity,” i.e., there are no buyers funneling cash through their complicated systems. To add to their problems, it was reported yesterday that the big banks have stopped institutional lending against subprime portfolios.

California Secretary of State Debra Bowen’s decision to decertify electronic voting machines manufactured by Sequoia and Diebold is a welcome one. There are serious security concerns associated with these machines that the manufacturers have not addressed, forcing Bowen to take this action. Among other things, it has been demonstrated that the machines can easily be hacked, employees of the manufacturers can gain access to the machines, and they provide no paper trail for each voter for a hand count in case of breakdown.

Now that public attention has been focused on the free-for-all at the Santa Clara Valley Water District (SCVWD) with their hitherto bottomless reservoir of cash quietly lifted from the wallets of resident taxpayers, the board is slowly starting to respond—begrudgingly. While the board has decided that three executive officers who formerly reported to spend-happy CEO Stan Williams will now answer directly to them, and they have further limited Williams’s ability to hire top aides, this is merely using their finger to plug a hole in the dam holding back public opinion that is about to burst. It’s going to take more to satisfy a riled citizenry who are rightly outraged by what has been going on behind our backs at the SCVWD, and getting more so every day.

“Greed is good” is the line most people remember from Oliver Stone’s film, “Wall Street.” Of course, the moral of the story is that greed isn’t good and it can put you in prison and leave you penniless. Unfortunately, this lesson has been lost on corporate America, Wall Street and the interdependent real estate and mortgage industries. (Just look at the ridiculous level of CEO pay and the soaking we are getting from everybody from the oil companies and food importers to drug manufacturers and the health insurance companies.)

There are plenty of proposals for poorly planned, wanton residential developments in the city. Coyote Valley and Evergreen come to mind, but now there are cracks beginning to show in the showpiece North San Jose development. Namely, the lack of proper planning has resulted in insufficient schools for the children of new residents, necessitating going quite a distance to get to one, and the area’s existing schools are rapidly becoming overcrowded, especially in the crucial lower grades. There has even been a spillover into nearby Santa Clara which is upsetting their educational apple cart.

If you think they are wasting our money at City Hall these days, you should take a look at the Santa Clara Valley Water District (SCVWD), the public agency created by the California Legislature to oversee supply of our water and manage flood control. They have a board of seven directors, five elected by region and two appointed by the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors. The SCVWD has a plush, marble-floored and chandeliered $26 million headquarters complete with duck pond, and an extremely well-compensated CEO, Stanley M. Williams.

Summer vacation and weather are finally here. I thought we might take time out from the usual political battles and talk about what books we are reading, films we are watching and leisure activities we are doing this summer. There is nothing better than reading a good book at the beach as far as I am concerned—unless it’s too hot, in which case it’s off to the movies where there is air conditioning!

Anyone who wants to look at a parallel example of what our own downtown is becoming need look no further than … well … Rome. An article  in the New York Times on Tuesday paints a picture of the historic medieval district of Trastevere—just south of Vatican City on the west bank of the Tiber—and other ancient parts of central Rome around Piazza Navona and Campo dei Fiori, just a “stone’s throw from where Julius Caesar met his treacherous end,” as being under siege by “booze-soaked” tourists (mostly from America and Northern Europe) that have made these areas living hell for residents, some of whose families have been there since Christians were fed to lions.

The Mercury News is rapidly reaching a terminal stage and those of us who care about it are very worried. The announcement that the paper is cutting another 40 people from the editorial staff is only the latest development in the steady downward spiral the paper has been taking over the past year or so. The Mercury and MediaNews management officially blames the changes on the economics of running a newspaper—falling revenues from advertising—but it is non-local ownership that is at the root of the decline. The “new” MediaNews Mercury is even beginning to make the Chronicle (where they are also cutting staff) look good.

The San Jose City Council voted unanimously to end free downtown parking in city garages and impose a $5 charge after 10 p.m. Thursday through Saturday nights from July 1. This comes in the wake of the widespread use and abuse of the garages for partying and mayhem at night as we have been discussing here on SJI. The projected $400,000 of revenue raised by this fee will be used to pay for city parking garage policing and clean-up.

If you thought the downtown problems I described in last week’s column are bad, wait until you see what the Downtown Association and nightclub lobby have in store for the very near future. They call it “soft closing,” which is really just a euphemism for extending opening hours for nightclubs from 2 a.m. until 3 a.m. The city planning department will hold a hearing on the matter of a proposed pilot program for a large designated area of downtown on June 11 at 6:30 p.m., followed by a city council hearing on June 19 at 1:30 p.m., both at City Hall.

Those of you who aren’t quite sure what the San Jose Downtown Association (SJDA) is talking about when they promote the “24-Hour City” need go no further than the San Pedro Square/Market Street public parking facility. Use it over any weekend and you’ll find out. For the full effect, park on an upper floor and use the stairways to go between your car and the street.

The San Jose City Council voted on Tuesday to hire two consultants for the Mexican Heritage Corporation (MHC) at a cost to the taxpayers of $100,000, compounding the errors in judgment they have already made on this issue. One of the consultants will be hired to “help” the MHC develop a business plan and fundraising capabilities. The other will take the pulse of the community and advise the MHC on how better to serve the public.

Is it Legal and Ethical?

The until-now little-known scheme of refinancing school district bond debts for capital expenditure and refunding the difference to the districts known as “cash out” is being challenged in court by a local group, Citizens for School Bond Accountability, chaired by Jill B. Escher. They have exposed that the San Jose Unified School District is skimming the difference created by lowering interest rates through refinancing the 1997 Measure C bonds in 2005, earmarking the considerable sum of $20.4 million for new projects rather than returning it to the taxpayers.

The 28 percent hike in garbage rates for single-family homes approved by the San Jose City Council by a vote of 8-2 on Tuesday seems to have been a very unpopular move. The increase averages about $5.65 per month, raising the current rate from $20.15 to $25.80 for about 55 percent of the city’s residents. (Putting it into perspective, the increase equals about 20 miles’ worth of gas in one of those jumbo SUVs that can be seen with the naked eye from the moon or an iceberg lettuce side salad at an average overpriced Silicon Valley restaurant.)