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.

Size of Council Doesn’t Matter

A new study conducted by the League of California Cities (LoCC) put to bed the myth that citizens were only satisfied by the length of council meetings and not by the quality. They recommended an optimal session should last just three to thirteen minutes tops.

Although not rising to the epic proportions of Jarndyce vs. Jarndyce in Dickens’s Bleak House, the long legal battle between Sunnyvale neighbors over a private property rights issue with an environmental twist that was concluded last week has important repercussions for the principles that govern California urban life and may bring a change in state law.

For the first time in many years, I attended a Democratic State Convention last Sunday.  The fact that it was being held at our own Convention Center made it easy, but the real hook was the fact that an Irish parliamentarian friend of mine wanted to hear Bill Clinton’s speech and say hello to him. We did both as we listened to the 45-minute speech (pretty good) and then spoke to the former president for a few minutes.

One Last Fight Left for Silicon Valley’s Environmental Activists

If the Silicon Valley region has been a laboratory for high tech innovation, East Palo Alto has been its trash bin. But now, in a hallmark victory for the environmental movement, those days are over. After a more than twenty-year struggle, East Palo Alto residents have managed to force the Department of Toxic Substances to shut down Romic Environmental Technologies Corp., the toxic waste company that processed much of the hidden hazardous material of our valley.

The news that four men (including a former Bellarmine student and current freshman football coach) have been arrested for the murder of Los Gatos businessman Mark Achilli shows that though we live in a safe area, something pulled right out of a Hollywood movie can and did happen in our backyard.

A month ago I drafted a memo that would expand the city’s ordinance to allow Community Benefit Improvement Districts (CBID). This is not an original idea, nor is it cutting edge. In fact, it’s embarrassing that the City of San Jose didn’t jump on this opportunity sooner.