City Hall Diary

Recently, I attended the San Jose Elections Commission where Instant Runoff Voting (IRV) was on the agenda. (By the way, there are two unfilled seats waiting for SJ residents on this commission.) IRV was discussed, but the commission deferred the item for one year.  The main reason for deferral was that to implement IRV would require a vote of the people to change the city charter. This in itself was not a worry; however, the cost for the city to put it on the ballot was viewed as bad timing, considering our current budget deficit.

Without Public Scrutiny or Accountability, Lavish Spending Insured

In 1944, Sig Sanchez was appointed to the Santa Clara Valley Water Board. Months later he was dismissed, but only after he had disappeared into the jungles of the Philippines, perhaps forgotten by all except Assemblyman Ira Ruskin. For almost 25 years, Mr. Sanchez, believing himself to be a member in good standing, has been voting remotely and regularly, casting his rogue votes without public scrutiny or accountability.

Your birth is a mistake you’ll spend your whole life trying to correct.
—Chuck Palahniuk

PART OF being a respectable columnist is to exhibit a strong degree of self-confidence and integrity when admitting one’s mistakes. Since I have committed more than my share of embarrassing howlers over the years, I feel the time is right to do just that. So here are a few to get us started.

Mayor Reed’s proposal for green building mandates would make San Jose’s policy the most advanced in California, according to the article by Erin Sherbert in this week’s Metro. The mandates would apply to commercial as well as residential developments. Reed wants to create a renewable-energy-powered San Jose that will reduce consumption in the city by half within the next two decades. Since the average green building saves 50 percent in energy usage, and reduces carbon dioxide emissions by 40 percent and solid waste by 70 percent, it is an attainable goal.

We all love to be as little children: to see colorful animals and play with tinker toys. And if we have young kids or grandchildren, it can be a great joy to travel the city and see so many examples of toys, painted tigers, and kaleidoscopic shades and tints at our obvious points of interest. This is the state of our public art in San Jose: colorful, playful, and totally one dimensional. There has to be more in a city and its description of itself as evidenced in her adopted pubic art program. There is a pivotal question though: Are we mature and confident enough to reflect this as a statement of who we are?

This past week was an unusually (or maybe not so unusually) busy week for the HP Pavilion as they hosted two Sharks games, two concerts and a football game, all in the space of a few days. Not only did the staff and crew who change over the arena work some serious overtime last week, but the whole downtown benefitted from HP Pavilion being one of the busiest venues in the country.

San Jose’s Code of Conduct and the Constitution

Attached to every San Jose City Council agenda is a “Code of Conduct” for public meetings. The council wants to foster an atmosphere of “fairness, courtesy, and respect for differing points of view.”  But are these suggestions/requirements Constitutional?

City Hall Diary

Last Tuesday, the city council had two agenda items to vote on that would allow for applicants to sell alcohol: one for a Whole Foods grocery store and the other for a gas station.

Marking Will Raise Awareness and Legitimize Worldwide Concern

Following the dubious and controversial path set by fashion designer Mark Ecko when he purchased Barry Bonds’s home run baseball, conducted an online public poll, and ultimately branded the Cooperstown-bound ball with an asterisk, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has bowed to public pressure and decided to place an asterisk on the Olympic torch.

It’s now more than three years and counting since the old San Jose Medical Center was closed, and it’s still getting kicked around in a game of political soccer. Corporate owner Hospital Corporation of America (HCA), who abruptly closed downtown’s only emergency room hospital in December 2004, citing profitability concerns as the reason, wants to pull down the building, sell off the land for development, and walk away with a bucket of gold, leaving all responsibility behind. However, the city council will not approve a rezoning of the site to facilitate the demolition and sale of the land until they have a deal on a location for a new downtown clinic.

In a postscript to the visit of former President Clinton to San Jose for the state Democratic Convention, I was surprised to learn that his rather haggard appearance had a reason. The San Francisco Chronicle reported Clinton had a “meltdown” before his rather calm address to the assembled delegates where he advised all to “chill out.”

An Act of Protest Has Never Sounded So Good

The corner of Stockton and Lenzen Avenue was bumpin’ on Saturday night. At a show called “Cultura En Tu Idioma,” held at the De-Bug Community Center, some 500-plus Latino youths came to celebrate a culture of their own invention: Spanish rap, rock, poetry and cumbia, all interwoven into one singular expression. No alcohol, no fights, just young people expressing themselves and having a good time.

As I travel to new places, I always compare them to San Jose.  I spent the weekend in San Diego and noticed that the dynamics of that city are so different from what we have here. There, the beach towns and entertainment scene in Pacific Beach cater to a college-aged crowd and have become overrun with young kids, many of them troublemakers. On the other hand, downtown San Diego is chic, popular, classy and has an entirely different feel to it. People are dressed up in suits and dresses. Clubs have heavy cover charges and $350-per-table bottle service. The big money brings a different clientele and a much different feel.

San Jose Finishes Third Behind SF and Oakland

The SF Chronicle recently published a compilation of facts and figures relative to the Bay Area’s three largest cities.  The simple data provides a picture of where we are, and perhaps, where we are going

City Hall Diary

The end of March marked my first anniversary as an elected official. As I reflect on my first year in public office, I am amazed at all the different topics I have been involved in as a councilmember. I am pleased that employees who work at companies like Cisco and Adobe are now allowed to volunteer in our parks and that the Rose Garden was adopted by volunteers. I am ecstatic that Coyote Valley has been shelved—for now. I am feeling positive about the evolution of residential towers downtown and saving our city money on technology.  The council is making progress with balancing the budget and I enjoyed being part of the efforts of updating the traffic calming policy.

This week marks the second anniversary of the passing of one of the great young talents in American letters: the New York publisher Elizabeth Maguire, who died of ovarian cancer April 8, 2006, at the age of 47.  So, one might ask: why should San Jose’s citizens remember her? One answer is that her work exemplifies how innovation can come from just one individual and impact an entire country. Isn’t this what Silicon Valley applauds?  A second answer, for me, is that she reminds me of a man I never knew: Leonard McKay.