Like just about everyone else, I am glad that we have a new regime at City Hall in the mayor’s office and on the council. However, in the euphoria of the demise of the old and arrival of the new, we shouldn’t forget one of the biggest accomplishments of the past few years: the Dr, Martin Luther King, Jr. Library joint venture between the city and San Jose State University and the process that is creating the new and vastly improved San Jose library system. This is a legacy worth celebrating.

The Late Ira Brilliant’s Invaluable Legacy

When real estate magnate and music scholar Ira Brilliant died at age 85 in San Jose on September 10, he left behind the most important collection of items related to the life and works of Ludwig van Beethoven in North America. Located in a cozy corner of the fifth floor of the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Library, the Ira F. Brilliant Center for Beethoven Studies gives visitors a fascinating glimpse into the life of one of humankind’s greatest geniuses. It is open to the public from 11am to 6pm most days and is one of the best free rides in town.

It is a fact of life for downtown residents that Friday and Saturday nights are extremely noisy, especially if you live on or near Santa Clara Street. The constant stream of slow-cruising, high-volume subwoofer-armed cars is bad enough, but the loud music from the clubs and the groups of shouting, laughing merrymakers after midnight are just as bad. The only thing that makes it tolerable for those of us over 40 who live downtown is the fact that the police clear the streets at 2 a.m., and by 2:15, all is quiet. If it wasn’t for that, we wouldn’t get any sleep on the weekends.

The four murders that took place over the first weekend of December brought Chief Davis before the public to call for enlarging the force. According to the chief, his department was stretched so thin to cover the investigations of the rare spate of killings that he had to draw officers and detectives from other duties. He wants to hire 600 additional people over the next five years and boost the force by 35 percent. But, as Scott Herhold pointed out in his column last week, given the high cost of each member of the force, can the city afford to acquiesce to the chief’s request?

The Evergreen issue is still looming next week, but it is not the only development item on the radar screen these days. After a stinging editorial in the Mercury News on Tuesday, the city council unanimously backed off approving a proposal to begin major urban development in the Almaden Valley greenbelt by supporting Council Member Nancy Pyle in her efforts to thwart the usual assortment of lobbyists and support current city growth restraints. Planning Director Joe Horwedel said the Almaden proposal by the Rancho San Vicente partnership is so far removed from city policy that is isn’t worth the cost of the planning work and an Environmental Impact Report. We may have dodged a bullet here, but the issue will surely surface again.

In a little less than a month, the new regime takes over at City Hall. It’s been a long time coming and all of us are anxious to see how the balance of power shifts with the new mayor and council members and find out what’s on Mayor-elect Reed’s agenda for his first few months in office. I know that we are all hoping for the best and feel that our city needs some big changes from the fiasco of the Gonzales years and that we need to strike out in a new direction.

I have been reading about the Evergreen development issue over the past week with mounting alarm. Here we go again, with the tail wagging the dog. The developers are trying to call the shots, demanding an immediate decision, and many on the council are going along. The issue was supposed to come to a vote next Tuesday but I have learned this morning that it has been delayed one week to December 12. What’s the hurry? It doesn’t take much imagination to answer that one.

When Allied forces liberated the concentration camps in Nazi Germany as they marched toward Berlin, local civilian residents were taken to the camps and forced to face the terrible truth that had been in their midst. In the years since, the debate has raged over the level of culpability shared by the German people in accepting the horrors of these camps throughout the war and saying or doing nothing to stop the heinous crimes against humanity being perpetrated in their name right in their backyards.

Over the Thanksgiving holiday—as a change of pace from our regular critical analyses and discussions of problems—I thought we might have an open forum on what our bloggers like best about living in San Jose and Santa Clara County. In the heat of our political and ideological battles, we sometimes forget how fortunate we are to live in such a special place. I’ll go first to start things off.

Yesterday’s news that the city had mistakenly overpaid employees who were reservists called up to active duty since 9/11 certainly presents the council with a dilemma and the citizens of San Jose with a not-too-rosy view of the city payroll accountants. Some of the soldiers returning from stints in Iraq have received letters demanding repayment of thousands of dollars. How did this happen and what is to be done about it?

Voters all over the nation stood up against the forces of unethical government on Tuesday. The decisive wave struck here in San Jose with the rejection of Manny Diaz and the Gonzales-associated Cindy Chavez and the election of Sam Liccardo and Chuck Reed. The Jack Abramoff-connected California District 11 Congressman Richard Pombo was swept out of office, in what was thought to be a safe Republican seat, along with several of his colleagues in similar positions. The voters in besieged Ohio rejected the corrupt Ken Blackwell’s bid to become their governor, and in Florida, they firmly turned down Katherine Harris, the ethically challenged engineer of the 2000 Bush “victory” who wanted to be a U.S. senator.

Probably like most of you, I have one of the popular antivirus programs on my computer. Every once in a while when I am online, I get a message that the antivirus has stopped a Trojan horse worm from secretly infiltrating my computer and killing off my data, leaving nothing but itself. If only we had a similar program to detect and foil political Trojan horse worms from squeaking through the vote and becoming law. One such worm, a classic of bait-and-switch techniques, is Proposition 90.

There is new evidence suggesting that George W. Bush is a movie fan, especially of animated features. It’s obvious that he has seen “A Bug’s Life” and was taken with the scene where a mile-long single-file column of ants finds its way suddenly blocked by a fallen leaf and stops dead in its tracks, unable to move forward, unaware that it could just go around or over the barrier. I am sure Bush had this scene in mind when he signed a bill approving the construction of a 700-mile fence along portions of the 2,000-mile Mexican-U.S. border. That ought to stop those columns of pesky illegal immigrants from crossing over. Thank God, we can all breathe a sigh of relief now.

Last Friday evening, I received a copy of a letter from the Diaz campaign. It was written by Manny Diaz to Sam Liccardo, and it made mention of a letter which was sent to Mr. Diaz by neighborhood leaders throughout District 3. In our letter to Mr. Diaz, we had raised concerns regarding his continuing activity as a lobbyist. Instead of responding to our group, Diaz sent a letter to Sam Liccardo. I have now responded directly to Mr. Diaz with my concerns, and also told him why I have chosen to support Sam Liccardo in the District 3 race.

Leonard McKay 1921-2006

The most revered member of Celtic society in ancient Ireland was the seanchaí, or “storyteller”—the man who carried the sum total of tribal knowledge in his memory and recited variations of colorful legends created by the ancestors to carry kernels of truth and information from one generation to the next. Leonard McKay was our seanchaí. History, lore and legend—and the “creative elaboration” thereof—were his stock in trade, having learned the craft from his acknowledged predecessor, Clyde Arbuckle, in the old-fashioned way.

In a day when the city council spent over $200 million (including the recently “discovered” $34.1 million surplus) on airport construction, cleaning up Watson Park and other items, they also threw the Rep Theater a lifeline that may save it from certain death, just in the nick of time. Because of the way the deal is structured, it remains to be seen whether the theater will be financially fit enough to survive, but I believe that it is a good start.