City Hall Diary

Labor Day is a time that many of us celebrate with BBQs and rest. It’s a day to acknowledge the work of everyone in our society. However, many people work on Labor Day, including but not limited to 9-1-1 dispatchers, grocery store clerks, nurses, and sewage treatment plant workers, etc.

Ranting and raving is becoming quite a tradition on San Jose Inside. This is the place where it all happens so let ‘er rip!

Some Discovered in Mexico

In an interview with SanJoseInside.com late last night, Governor Schwarzenegger reiterated his frustration with Republican legislators by announcing that he had hunted down, captured and dragged several GOP members back to the Capitol to face the $15.2 billion budget shortfall.

I JUST COULDN’T RESIST yet another episode of The Gong Show, er, the city of San Jose’s Rules and Open Government Committee, since last week’s episode involved a proposed citywide moratorium on all new fast food restaurants.

A Conversation with Linda Ronstadt

The hugely successful San Jose International Mariachi and Latin Music Festival is upon us again. Now in its seventeenth year, the festival begins on September 7 at the HP Pavilion. This year’s concerts feature a long, impressive list of top mariachi and Latin artists, including names that would be familiar to the average music fan such as Lila Downs, Ersi Arvizu (with Ry Cooder) and Linda Ronstadt, who is also the festival’s chief adviser.

Nobody really knows how well the campaign is going for the committee attempting to recall San Jose Councilwoman Madison Nguyen. The group has been secretive about how many signatures they’ve collected so far. But what did surface this week is the number of people who have asked for the city to remove their names from the recall petition they signed.

Last week’s discussion of the Valley Fair/Westfield behemoth mall complex and its fleet of department stores is linked in one way to the more recent and dubious history of the Santa Clara County Fairgrounds. Yes, they both have “fair” in their titles, but more precisely, they both offer lessons and opportunities to do a few things right in the development of key properties in our city. 

This weekend San Francisco held one of its largest outside concerts, Outside Lands, which featured 60 acts on six stages in Golden Gate Park’s Polo Fields. More than 60,000 attended over the three days. Headliners such as Beck, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Radiohead, Jack Johnson, Primus, Steel Pulse and Bela Fleck, as well as many local bands, took the stages from Friday evening to Sunday night.

The Mercury News recently published an article drawing attention to the salary [$259,000 in 2007—Editor] of Harry Mavrogenes, the director of San Jose’s Redevelopment Agency (RDA). What should concern San Jose residents more is whether or not the RDA is adequately serving the interests of the people.

City Hall Diary

From my experience in running for elected office, one of the difficult hurdles was raising money. Now I don’t have a problem “asking” for money per se. However, the difficulty for me was “who” I should take money from and who I shouldn’t.  Who I take money from during an election can equate to access and/or even the perception of personal favors later when in elected office.

This week’s open public forum awaits you. Blog on!

Council Decides To Ban Kids Instead

In an unintended consequence of Councilwoman Nora Campos’s proposal to ban new fast-food restaurants in San Jose, the council has decided to allow fast food growth, but also try to protect kids from childhood obesity by banning them from the city.

Silicon Alleys

NEXT WEEK, perhaps the most colossal, across-the-board, mammoth gathering of stars with every possible relationship to visual computing will descend upon San Jose. Orchestrated by Santa Clara’s NVIDIA, pretty much the world pace-setter for visual computing technologies, NVISION08 is the first visual computing mega-event. No matter how much one lampoons the self-proclaimed Capital of Silicon Valley epithet, this event, like the 01SJ Global Festival of Art on the Edge, suggests the moniker finally fits.

Food for Thought

The arrest of a 57-year-old male San Francisco high school assistant principal and a 41-year-old Milpitas woman for running a brothel in an upscale North San Jose apartment complex has shocked the residents of the building and others around the city. It was one of two similar brothels shut down by San Jose police last week and the tenth one of the year brought to police attention by complaints from neighbors. But why should the fact that brothels exist in such places surprise anyone?

If the San Jose City Council think their pay sucks, they have only themselves to blame. They’ve been too afraid to give themselves a raise over the years—and who can blame them? It’s kind of awkward—not to mention usually unpopular—for public employees to give themselves a salary boost. That’s why the council wants to revamp the way things are done when it comes to council compensation