“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.”

The June 3 Election

We are opening up this first of a weekly open thread and we’ll see how it goes. I was thinking that we might begin by discussing Tuesday’s election. How about someone starting us off by telling us who you are supporting in any local race and why. After Tuesday we can discuss the results. Or we can go off in another direction. It’s your decision.

Larry Stone Defends Eating Habits and Other Accusations

A former press secretary for taxman Larry Stone has written a “tell-all” book seriously implicating his former boss with several scathing accusations meant to demean and embarrass the county assessor.

WITH LITERARY TRAVEL on the rise these days, more and more people are feeling the need to follow in their favorite authors’ footsteps or to explore the locales that writers have placed in their novels. Longtime media consultant and video engineer Mark Hager is currently working on a novel about backstage life in Silicon Valley’s corporate venues, and if I’m still around when this thing comes out, I will organize similar tours like the one he and I recently undertook.

Food for Thought

What shall we suppose is the spark that attracts our children’s motivation? Is it the exhilaration of sport?  Is it the need to join in, and be alike? Is it the need to set out, and be different?  Much has been written and legislated in the desire to find the elusive formula that will spark and educate each generation to a sense of responsibility and, if we’re lucky, leadership.

As we commented at the founding of San Jose Inside, our modest effort to change and improve the political landscape in San Jose, “the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.” Edmund Burke, writing in eighteenth century England, did not have the need to say “people,” but I will, since our politics has been greatly improved by the advent of the many women in local political firmament. And I will further offer the thought that here in our city, women have often stepped forward and courageously changed the direction of our local government.

As I sat enjoying the rest and relaxation that comes with the Memorial Day holiday, I wondered why we can’t find a way to make three-day weekends a part of our city’s culture. I know it doesn’t seem possible, but think about it hypothetically for a moment. What if we only worked 4 days each week? Would our city benefit?  Yes!

It’s graduation season, and tassels are being turned in high schools, community colleges, vocational programs and universities all over the South Bay. This year, a friend of mine who I first met seven years ago when he was locked up in the max unit of juvenile hall (I was giving writing workshops through a program called “The Beat Within”) got his high school diploma and is now taking classes at De Anza College. He was the kind of youngster that was always quick witted, which probably got him more trouble than anything else, but this year, his gift for gab was rewarded, and he was the commencement speaker at his graduation. He was even on the evening news when they did a segment on graduations, which was a bit of redemption for him since the last time he was on TV, he was kicking in a newspaper stand during Mardi Gras years ago.

City Hall Diary

Last week, the council spent 90 minutes deliberating the sale of a 0.19 acre parcel of surplus downtown property for $450,000. The current tenants, the Arab American Community Center and the Indochinese Refugee Center, are nonprofits who pay $12 a year in rent (month to month) on an expired lease. They were notified in January 2006 about the city’s plans to sell the property.

Complaints of “Gamey” Chicken Marsala

San Jose’s favorite romance, between City Hall peregrine falcons Carlos and Clara, came to an ignominious end yesterday after three employees discovered that they ingested most of the birds after complaining that their weekly Thursday lunch special of chicken marsala tasted “gamey.”

IN THE TRAVEL writing business, one always runs across those service-type articles with titles like “72 Hours in Casablanca,” “A Weekend in Montreal” or “Three Perfect Days in London”—the point being that the reader should be able to easily replicate the author’s experience. Since nobody anywhere has bothered to enlighten us with a “Five Hours in Alviso” exposé, allow me to furnish an example of how just such a piece might begin.