Two events prompted Teresa Alvarado to run for a seat on the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors. One was the retirement of her mother, Blanca Alvarado, the first Latina elected to serve as a San Jose City Council member and later as a county supervisor. The other was Barack Obama’s candidacy. Looking back, Alvarado says she saw a new, more pragmatic political model emerging. “I felt like it was time for our generation to step up,” she says.

I kept wondering why it’s taking so long for Major League Baseball to make a decision on whether or not to let the A’s move to San Jose.  It’s a big and expensive decision, but one that could have been made months ago.  I assumed that the source of the delay was rounding up the money to compensate the SF Giants ownership for the territorial rights to Santa Clara County.  Unfortunately for San Jose, there may be another reason for the delay.

Unlike the San Jose Mercury News, which championed Dolores Carr’s opponent four years ago and has been unrelenting in its criticism of her ever since, Metro endorsed Carr in the 2006 general election. We believed an outsider would be healthy for an office with a succession process as ingrown and medieval as the Vatican’s papal conclave

Sadly, her troubled tenure has been plagued by rookie mistakes, judgment lapses and a tin ear for the appearance of conflicts of interest. And despite the edge she now holds in managing a county department, we’ve concluded that the less experienced Jeff Rosen will grow into the job faster than it will take Carr to repair the county’s damaged prosecutorial apparatus and restore its reputation.

UPDATE—Friday 6pm: Mayor Chuck Reed endorses Carrasco.

I served as a principal of public schools for nearly 20 years, so it is with tremendous empathy toward the administrators at Morgan Hill’s Live Oak High School that I write this week’s post. I also have empathy for the students on both sides of the political maelstrom.

This year, the San Jose City Council is forced to make drastic cuts. Unfortunately, the city of San Jose has had a deficit for the last decade even before the Great Recession. In fact, even without the recession, San Jose’s financial obligations are significantly higher then revenues coming into the city.

As a result current elected officials are left with trade offs often having to pit necessary services against each other. This year the deficit is $118 million. This is more then the entire library, transportation, planning, code enforcement, information technology, city attorney and public works departments combined.

In Sunday’s Mercury News, reporters Linda Goldston and Vinne Tong wrote, “Arizona’s SB 1070 allows police to stop and ask about a person’s immigration status when they suspect the person could be in the U.S. illegally.”  Is that true?

Sometimes when I read the blog responses to my weekly post I feel like my opinion on educational funding issues is in the smallest of minorities. Sometimes I wonder if I am a lone voice in the wilderness. I was quite heartened when I recently read the results of a new survey by the Public Policy Institute of California funded by William and Flora Hewlett Foundation that places my opinion with most of my fellow Californians. I now feel vindicated, but so what?

I hope your weekend was enjoyable. I wanted to let you know that I believe that you have a very difficult job and I wanted to say thank you for your nearly 30 years of service to San Jose.

Managing an organization of approximately 1,400 people, public or private, is a challenge. It is impossible to make everyone happy internally or externally all of the time, or even some of the time. Overseeing a Police Department is one of the most difficult and demanding jobs one could have because of the high level of public scrutiny. As I have heard you say many times at the police academy graduations; wearing the police uniform puts the officer in the spotlight and all eyes are on the police officer. Our police are judged by everything from their words to the tone of their voice to body language.

With the retirement of Assistant Chief Katz there is a void in the police department leadership ranks.

A joint Mercury News/KGO TV poll indicated that Santa Clara’s Measure J (The 49ers’ Stadium) is likely to pass. Weeks prior, a poll was commissioned to measure the level of support among voters for a baseball stadium indowntown San Jose.

QUESTION: When will some agency or press outlet sanction a poll to ask local residents about their feelings towards breaking the unions’ vice-grip on the delivery of city services? (“Would you support allowing 50 percent of city services to be done by the private sector?”). I’ll bet the “yes” category would approach 90 percent.

California public education is in deep crisis, but more to the point, a huge fiscal crisis. The depth of the lack of funding and its instability due to the economic downturn is unparalleled in my career. There is folk etymology that was popularized by John F. Kennedy that indicated when the word “crisis” is written in Chinese, one character means “danger” and the other means “opportunity.” For the sake of argument let’s say the etymology is true.

Last week I attended evening budget meetings in Districts 3 and 5. The center of our city (District 3) had a high turnout from residents who find great value in community centers. Particularly, the Gardner and Washington Community Centers. Both facilities provide a place to go and where residents can be positively impacted. Classmates and friends of mine from Willow Glen High grew up in the Gardner area, formerly known as “Barrio Horseshoe.” It was a problematic neighborhood with many gang issues.

Do the citizens of San Jose have an advocate on the San Jose City Council?  At times like these I’m not so sure.  When it comes to talking about the San Jose City Government budget and the efforts to close the over $116 million deficit, the focus of debate is not about providing for optimum city service levels, it’s about making payroll.  Seriously, no one is really talking about quality of service, they’re talking about salaries and pensions.  In San Jose, the emphasis is on filling pockets instead of potholes!

I have been totally flummoxed on what in today’s world constitutes a progressive agenda for public education. I believe I am a progressive on many debatable public policy issues. When I attempt to outline a progressive agenda for K-12 education I am personally conflicted now more than ever

Last Wednesday night, the Public Safety committee held a special meeting regarding our police officers. The city manager began by sharing the amount of effort and outreach that has transpired the last few months with city initiatives with regards to our police department.

For the last two years, certain individuals have been lambasting our police force with charges of racial profiling and excessive force. Our police force has more than 400,000 engagements a year with San Jose residents and 99.8 percent of those have no complaints

In a recent letter to the Mercury News, San Jose resident Pirouz Maghsoudnia questioned the wisdom of giving a public subsidy to a baseball franchise in these troubled economic times.  “The City of San Jose…does not have money to fix its streets, cannot provide police and fire protection for its residents or keep its libraries open, but has millions to bring a baseball franchise to downtown.”  Maghsoudnia points out that taxpayers are being asked to prepare for service cuts while the city is selling assets for $20 million to assemble the lot for the stadium.