City Hall Diary

As some of you many know via Sal Pizarro of the Mercury News I have grown a beard. I stopped shaving the morning of the mayor’s State of the City speech. I joked with Sal that I was not going to shave until we fixed the structural budget deficit. Getting our city’s finances in order is the number one priority and will take hard work and more community outreach. By that time, my beard will end up competing with Moses or the members of the band ZZ Top.

After Reviewing the Embarrassing to the Boring, Meetings to be Sheltered from Public View

Just a day after San Jose officials demanded the posting of council members’ calendars online, the vacuous and inane entries dictated that they relent and allow them to be kept private.

“After reviewing the meetings these public officials are taking,” said city attorney Rick Doyle, “we have decided it reflects badly on our city’s image. We will therefore quarantine them until further notice, even if that means losing track of Gallo and Strangis.”

Over a year ago, an ABC 7 News I-Team report exposed San José’s failure to protect children from pornography and those who would openly view pornographic material in their presence. The investigation revealed that there have been a number of individuals arrested for viewing child pornography in libraries, and still others have been arrested for performing lewd acts such as masturbating in public while viewing pornographic material. Please take the time to see the reports here and here.

The tumult and the shouting have died. The captains and the kings have departed. The election is over. What happened?

The impressive showing and meteoric rise of Obama across the nation served notice to the entire country and world that a new era has arrived—an era marked by renewed hope and optimism about the future. The old hackneyed tactics are no longer good enough. In fact, this time, fed by the reckless behavior of powerful people, they backfired. It was indeed a historic election.

Today is the presidential primary. Hope is in the air that change can be made and things will be better with a new president. Optimism and inspiration have never been higher for me than with the candidacy of Barack Obama. He has inspired me in a way that most politicians never have, and it seems young people in our country and city have been energized by him as well.

City Hall Diary

At the General Plan Task Force meeting last week, we discussed transportation and how future VTA projects will guide San Jose’s land use. The VTA budget for new projects is funded out of the voter-approved half-cent sales tax. The tax provides partial funding for BART, light rail extension, bus rapid transit improvements, some road paving, trails and bike lanes.

Expiring on Weekdays Will Cost You

As if dying is not bad enough, in the small print of a county plan that assesses a phone fee to cover 911 emergency response services, the supervisors have included a provision that places a tax on people who have the audacity to die on weekdays.

If our city council’s holier-than-thou moral army member Pete Constant really wants to put a stop to any opportunities for “sexual misconduct and lewd behavior” in the Martin Luther King Jr. (MLK) Library, why doesn’t he advocate the installation of men’s room toilet stalls with walls all the way to the floor in case Larry Craig comes to town? Or why doesn’t he work to stop distribution of applications for the Congressional page program there in case some hapless San Jose student gets an intern position with the likes of Congressman Foley or Senator Vitter? Oh, wait: Craig, Foley, and Vitter are members of the Republican moral army too. Ironically, Constant’s plan to restrict internet access at the library will presumably mean that the more than 1.25 million websites mentioning the extracurricular activities of these three men—Craig (778,000 Google hits), Foley (75,000 Google hits) and Vitter (400,000 Google hits)—will be on his porn censorship list.

There is a line from an old John Ford movie that explains much of the mythology of America and, indeed, the current deification of celebrities: “This is the West … when the legend becomes fact, print the legend!”

I visited the Mexican Heritage Plaza on Friday to see the play, “School for the Americas,” concerning the last day in the life of Che Guevara. It was entertaining and enjoyable, in spite of a degree of anti-Americanism. The next day, a subsequent conversation with the play’s author, Jose Rivera, sponsored by the Commonwealth Club, was low key but nice.

Our conversation about parcel taxes and schools last week leads me to another important question: Is a private school education better than a public school one in San Jose?  Many people talk about the schools in this city as not being good enough for their kids; therefore, they send them to private schools where they pay thousands of dollars a year for their education. But is the actual education itself a better one? If not, then what are they really paying for? One argument would be to say that they are paying to be in a school where education is a priority and where you get to be with like-minded people who feel the same way. Is that enough?

City Hall Diary

Several months ago I wrote a blog “Try It Before You Buy It,” where I spoke about the importance of making sure that the city has the option of using technology before actually purchasing it. I shared how large organizations struggle with information technology (IT) implementations when dealing with vendors who often make promises that differ from the actual results received. I also pointed out how the VTA and City of San Jose have spent millions on unwise technology decisions to purchase software.

Skin-ectomy Cancelled After Pulses Found

A tragedy was averted early Friday morning when an alert night watchman, guarding the Body Worlds exhibit at the Tech Museum of Innovation, recognized several Santa Clara County supervisors in a corner of the basement laboratory who were tagged for the initiation process of de-skinning in order to be prepped for display in the anatomical exhibit.

By Marcela Davison Aviles

Prior to addressing the Mexican Heritage Plaza’s (MHP) sustainability model to operate successfully now and in the future, we believe the community should also ask the following: Is the Plaza making significant improvements and is it better off today than four years ago? The answer lies in the Plaza itself.  Four years ago the new board of directors and CEO inherited substantial debt; the Plaza also suffered from six years of deferred maintenance and heavy wear and tear. Critical equipment and systems no longer functioned. The garden was in decay. The administrative offices were unkempt and dirty. The parking lot was rented as a used car sales lot. The Mexican Heritage Corporation’s (MHC) finances were in complete disarray. The Plaza’s reputation, as characterized by one prominent arts program officer, “was a joke.”

It is the time of year when truth is the first casualty: election time. This year, one example comes in the guise of a “reform” Prop 93, the “change term limits” measure. When groups we should trust—firefighters and public safety personnel—send deceptive mailers talking about “reducing” the time the politicians can serve, it is, indeed, the depths of degradation. I can only conclude that they believe the end justifies any means. This particular end is the perpetuation of selected leaders in office, and increased benefits to those unions who play ball with them. It’s a sad situation and you wonder how any self-respecting person could have so little regard for the truth.

I can’t drive by a San Jose Unified School, especially those located downtown, without frustrations, questions and concerns. We live in an area where we have the confluence of high-tech and some of the smartest minds in the world, yet our school system in San Jose boasts poor facilities, program cuts and low test scores. This year especially, we have seen regime changes at the county and politics at the top of the food chain in the district; but are the kids and teachers getting the funding and the money they need to improve the educational system in San Jose?

January 21, 2008 is a legal holiday in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.  It is a day in which we should take a moment (or longer) and pause…and think of the teachings of
Dr. King. His legacy, his goals and how he affected our society will be remembered forever.

What if Dr. King were alive today? What would he think of the USA or San Jose? The war in Iraq? What more could he have done—would have done? Could he have accomplished more?