Usually after elections, there must be the counting (and sometimes recounting), and the obligatory, if not always enlightening, analysis.  With the end of last week’s battles, there are two salient facts beyond debate. First, the fight over “Little Saigon” was traumatic for the city and more so for the hopes of Vietnamese-American candidates.  And second, the attempts of the Democratic establishment to boost and support candidates that would be solidly in their camp failed miserably with the crushing of Craig Mann in the Evergreen district.

On June 3, the San Jose City Council passed the controversial promoter ordinance that will regulate downtown nightlife by imposing fees and mandatory permits on event promoters and organizers. I don’t want to put too much on it, but the day after the ordinance passed, it was like someone had shot live entertainment in the head.

Oy vay. I have had it. Maybe they caught me on the wrong day, and maybe it’s always this way, but my last dealing with a city employee makes me realize why people curse them.

City to Spend $2.2 Million on Golf Nets!

Let’s get this straight: The City of San Jose is spending $2.2 million to install posts and netting at the city owned Los Lagos Golf Course to prevent errant golf balls from damaging people and property.  According to press reports, the city has paid $22,300 in claims over the past six years. 

Did you know the city has a central warehouse that costs over $850,000 a year to operate?  (Yes, we do. We really shouldn’t be surprised; this is the same city that spends over $30 million on three public golf courses.) Back to the warehouse: It stocks items like toilet paper, batteries, landscaping materials and cleaning products. The $850,000 is the annual cost of the seven employees and running the warehouse, and does not include the cost of the actual inventory.

Here is this week’s opportunity for our bloggers to discuss whatever they like in an open forum.

01SJ Diary

DURING THE opening ceremonies for the 01SJ Global Festival of Art on the Edge, Luis Valdez made an appearance and wowed the crowd with a Mayan performance justifying Robert Graham’s Quetzalcoatl statue in Plaza de Cesar Chavez as “art & technology.” Metro didn’t take notes, but it had something to do with how the Mayans, not the Hindus, invented the zero and that the coil of the statue referenced a spiral dance of some sort.

Management Company Tries to Stop Errant Losers From Entering

Following the City of San Jose’s example of protecting the public from rogue golf balls, Santana Row has decided to protect their “people” by installing security nets around their village in the hopes of keeping out any errant losers that happen to wander upon their property.

RECENTLY, I joined local video engineer Mark Hager on the first trial run of a literary tour through a slice of Silicon Valley underbelly that no one talks about. We’ll call them the Ancient and Mystical Brotherhood of Union Stagehands (AMBUS) who toil away behind the scenes at all your favorite arena rock shows and grand-scale conventions and industrial events. Yes, the same crew of riggers, ironworkers, A/V techs, lighting designers and their ilk who bump into each other backstage at Shoreline Amphitheatre at least partly overlap with the folks running cable and troubleshooting satellite feeds behind the scenes at conventions and high-tech product launches. Hager, a Bellarmine graduate, is possibly the first one to ever write a book about the lifestyle. Boom! Backstage Pass is now complete and available at http://www.boombackstagepass.com. Aside from juicy gossip about high-tech celebs and rock stars, the book is filled with flashes of what life was like at the beginning of the dotcom bubble:

THE 01SJ Global Festival of Art on the Edge—or 01SJ for short—is not one of those harebrained schemes to “put San Jose on the map,” or yet another attempt to alleviate San Jose’s inferiority complex. The festival isn’t taking place in San Jose just because Vancouver, Venice and São Paulo all have world-renowned cultural biennials and we don’t. The festival is happening here because, plain and simple, it must happen here.

“C’mon you can blog in the limo,” ringleader orders me as I get yanked off the front lines of the most boring election ever. The front lines at that precise moment, 11 to 11pm PST, means a balloon-festooned Carlos Goldstein’s restaurant in North San Jose that smells like refried beans. The quartered quesadillas in the warming tray have permabonded to each other so that they peel up in clumps. 

The election is over and the citizens are safe for a brief respite before the clamor and cacophony of the General Election.  There are things even more important than the fate of professional football at stake—like the future direction of the City of San Jose and the County of Santa Clara—that will be set in some significant and perhaps unchangeable ways. 

Solving San Jose’s Budget Mess

We keep hearing that San Jose has a “structural” budget deficit problem, but seemingly little is being done to fix the problem at its core.  The City of San Jose spends more than it takes in.  But is this deficiency due to insufficient revenues, or is it the product of misplaced priorities and poor spending choices?  How can cities find new ways to raise money in these challenging economic times?

A couple of bloggers have mentioned in their comments that few of the columns on SJI have focused on the local elections that are taking place today.  Maybe that is because so little noise is being made on the local front that it can more accurately be classified as a whimper.  (This may be due to the last local election that gripped the voters and the media.) Also contributing to this quietness is the political backdrop of the gigantic drama of the Presidential race.  So what happens when it’s so quiet you can hear a pin drop?  Do people care less if there is no drama?

Why I Support Diana Foss

The Santa Clara Valley Water District (SCVWD) Board of Directors needs new blood. Many of the members have been on it for way too long and may be there for the rest of their lives since they unanimously decided against term limits for themselves recently. The incredible arrogance of the board’s decision gives yet more sustenance to the necessity of changing the membership.

City Hall Diary

Disneyland in Alviso?  Not quite, but the comparisons are definitely there. Several months back, I accompanied Councilmembers Chu and Liccardo on a tour of the San Jose Water Pollution Control Plant.  We rode on electric carts that were linked together like those at an amusement park.  Our tour guide spouted off words like, “sewage back-up, micro-organisms, aeration, methane gas”—much different then “Pirates of the Caribbean.”