In 1976, San Jose city leaders emerged from a retreat at the Asilomar Conference Center and declared that their number-one priority was to fix the jobs and housing imbalance in San Jose.  Since then San Jose has provided the most affordable housing in the state of California, and tens of thousands of market-rate dwellings; however, San Jose has not shared in the job growth. So while other cities have a “jobs surplus,” San Jose still has a “jobs deficit.”

This is the weekly open forum where SJI’c commenters are invited to set the agenda, choose the topics, and opinionate freely. You could look it up.

In the wake of Hearst Corp.’s threat to close the San Francisco Chronicle, some analysts are speculating that the Bay Area’s largest and oldest newspaper might join the ranks of Dean Singleton’s MediaNews empire—which includes the San Jose Mercury News and virtually every other newspaper in the region.

Aside from Taco Bravo, the Recycling Center on McGlincy Lane and that large bear on top of Campbell Automotive, the other primary attraction in Campbell is a curious little bastion of activity called On the Corner Music. Located—you guessed it—on a corner at 530 E. Campbell Avenue, this little record shop offers an eclectic selection of vinyl LPs, and regularly stages art openings, parties and happenings, the latest of which goes down this Friday.

Can Madison Nguyen’s troubles be explained away as a branding battle between two shopping centers, and the powerful men who own them?

Councilwoman Madison Nguyen didn’t receive an invitation to San Jose’s annual Vietnamese Spring Festival, which was held two weeks ago. It was the second time that Nguyen, the first Vietnamese-American elected to the San Jose City Council and one of the highest-ranking Vietnamese elected officials in the nation, was scratched from the list.

The public act of disrespect was not that surprising, given that one of the event’s main organizers was the powerful local landowner Son Nguyen.

Two weeks ago, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder scolded the nation stating that we are a “nation of cowards” when it comes to addressing issues of race.  “Though this nation has proudly thought of itself as an ethnic melting pot, in things racial we have always been and I believe continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards…”

I agree.  Too few of us have the courage to speak out about the issue of illegal immigration for fear of being branded a racist or a xenophobe.  The subject of illegal immigration and/or immigration reform has become the new “third rail” of American politics (touch it, and you die).

At the time of this posting, members of the San Jose Restaurant & Entertainment Association are presenting a plan to the San Jose City Council for “community policing” in the downtown entertainment district. The plan, a response to the city’s efforts to impose up to $80,000 in fees on a number of downtown nightclubs, calls for instituting a new version of the “shared employment” model, in which police officers are directly compensated by club owners. It also calls on Chief Rob Davis to use the powers given to him by the urgency ordinance passed in 2006. View the Powerpoint of the San Jose Restaurant & Entertainment Association community policing proposal.

Are Santa Clara County School districts violating the California Voting Rights Act by holding at-large school board elections?  The prima fascia answer is yes. In September, 2008 Madera County Superior Court James Oakley invalidated, in advance, the results of the November 4, 2008 Madera Unified School Board election.

Just-released Department of Justice numbers again show racially disproportionate arrest rates in San Jose.

San Jose has more of one type of arrest than many cities with significantly larger populations. And local police are arresting Latinos at a rate well beyond their respective proportion to the general population. In fact, San Jose has more arrests of Latinos than San Diego and San Francisco has total arrests.

No, this isn’t a four-month-old story on public intoxication, but it may change that story’s ending. It is the story of another charge that also relies heavily on police discretion: the charge of “resisting arrest”—also known as 148(a). And the numbers should re-orient the discussion around the public intoxication issue from being about sobering stations and breathalyzers, to the common dominator of both arrest patterns—police practices at the time of arrest.

Last week, I attended a brainstorming session at City Hall.  The purpose of the gathering was for ideas to help Downtown during the recession. The group included the Downtown Association, land owners, developers, business owners, arts advocates and others. Individuals presented their ideas to the group.  One example was sponsoring an overnight camp-out in Downtown parks by the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts. Another was closing SOFA to cars every Friday allowing for a pedestrian-oriented evening. Other ideas included a 24-hour theater festival, music festivals, murals and free parking. And another was that the city could give away free Downtown land for an architectural design contest.

I thought to myself, “What could we do during a long-term recession that costs the city zero dollars and would actually bring more revenue to the city?” My idea: allow card rooms to locate in Downtown again.

SJI’s free marketplace of ideas & opinions is open for business. In the words of the Academy Award-winning director Cameron Crowe: “Say Anything.”

Residents of District 7 will be the biggest losers if Madison Nguyen is recalled from office. Only one of its past three representatives, George Shirakawa, Jr., was able to serve out his term. Shirakawa’s father died in office. Terry Gregory’s term was cut short by a gift scandal. Now, if Nguyen loses her seat in a recall, District 7 residents will for the third time be penalized with a mid-term transition. As a diverse community with issues to solve and a larger development pipeline than other council districts, the area does not need to bring a new councilmember up to speed.

Allow me to quack poetic about the efforts of a local team of artists from San Jose State University who collaborated behind the scenes on an installation for last year’s 01SJ Global Festival of Art on the Edge in downtown San Jose. Just last month, the project Tantalum Memorial took home first prize at transmediale.09, an international festival for contemporary art and digital culture in Berlin.

Guest Column

By Steve Borkenhagen

Downtown San Jose has suffered for decades from a severe lack of retail activity. We have a number of entertainment venues, museums, restaurants, bars, offices and (more recently) housing, but we have not had a vibrant retail area in the heart of our city since the 1960s. Generations of South Bay residents have never experienced retail excitement in Downtown San Jose. The San Jose Public Market has the potential to change this.

This past Tuesday, members of the San Jose City Council, city executives, and city staff got together to try and arrive at some about possible solutions for San Jose’s budget mess. They found none. According to the Mercury News, some of the “solutions” that were kicked around included keeping libraries open for only three days, closing some park restrooms on weekdays, and raising all kinds of fines and fees for expected city services.

But rather than cutting city departments evenly across the board, why doesn’t the council and the city manager’s office re-examine just what city departments are essential to the workings of a major, modern American city. In other words, should some city departments be eliminated alltogether?

Guest Column

By John Conway

As a founding member of the San Jose Restaurant and Entertainment Association, I want to bring you up to speed on developments regarding the public-private partnership that is evolving to share the fair costs of a new policing model for our downtown Entertainment Zone.