Two weeks ago, Larry Pegram hand-delivered a letter to Donald Rocha, his opponent for the District 9 seat on the San Jose City Council. The three-page missive asked Rocha to pledge support for a doctrine labeled the “Pegram Principles,” obviously modeled on the “Reed Reforms” that helped Larry’s friend Chuck win the mayor’s job a few years back. (As if front-runner Rocha would have anything to gain by endorsing his opponent’s philosophy.) Pegram attached a personal note, essentially one of those “no-negative campaigning” promises: “Dear Don, I look forward to a campaign that is worthy of our constituents and is carried out in an honorable manner.”

The Santa Clara County Board of Education (SCCBOE) will meet tomorrow to decide whether to sanction trustee Craig Mann for violating the Board’s code of ethics. The move stems from several biting e-mails Mann fired off last May.

Where are the bold and courageous leaders that give us the facts and inspire us to new heights? In Attorney General Brown’s website announcement on his candidacy for Governor he says he will speak the truth, yet his three-minute commercial is filled with the platitudes he says he abhors.

My memo below will be discussed, next Wednesday, July 28 at 2pm at the Rules Committee which includes Mayor Reed, Vice-Mayor Judy Chirco, Councilmember Nancy Pyle and Councilmember Pete Constant. This is a public meeting.

Recommendation
Direct City Attorney to prepare legally binding ballot language for a ballot measure to be considered at the August 3, 2010 Council meeting for the November 2010 election allowing residents of San Jose to vote on changing the City charter by removing charter language regarding “minimum benefit” and “contributions/ cost sharing” in regards to pensions (Sections 1504 and 1505). Removing this language would allow the flexibility to negotiate a 2nd Tier pension for new employees whose hiring date is after January 1, 2011. This proposal would not change current legally vested benefits for existing employees. 

On the morning of July 8, County Assessor Larry Stone met District 1 Supervisor candidate Mike Wasserman at Bill’s Café on the Alameda. By the end of breakfast, Stone, a lifelong Democrat, offered Republican Wasserman his endorsement in the upcoming November election.

“I knew going into the meeting that if in fact our values were comparable that I was prepared to endorse him,” Stone says. “I called Forrest [Williams]. I guess I wanted him to hear my decision, not find out from the press. It was a very short but cordial conversation.”

What on earth is going on in San Jose’s cyberspace? Fly noticed that the 3-year-old Vietnamese political blog Little Saigon Inside has completely changed its look to a more generic Blogspot template.

It has now reintroduced itself in a post that seems to swear off the kind of finger-licking local gossip pointed out in this column last week.

Sgt. Bobby Lopez, the former San Jose police union president, ignited a firestorm last month when reports surfaced that he boasted of having a spy in the Independent Police Auditor’s (IPA) Office. Now he has hired an attorney and won’t talk.

Two weeks ago, the usually loquacious Lopez announced that he would run for his old job as president of the San José Police Officers Association (POA). Lopez said he believes George Beattie, his media-shy predecessor, is a weak leader.

In an article published by the Mercury News, San Jose State Professor Larry Gerston advanced the argument that huge costs savings could be realized if the county’s many school districts were consolidated.  Great gains could also be achieved if police and fire services were re-aligned countywide.

By Joseph DiSalvo and Pierluigi Oliverio

We are asking San Jose Inside’s readers and bloggers for your generosity.

The devastating fire on July 5 at Trace Elementary School in the San Jose Unified School District has created an extraordinary outpouring of support and giving from across the City of San Jose. According to Karen Fuqua, Director of Public Relations for the district, the citizens of San Jose should be very proud of their contributions to Trace. It is, she says, overwhelming and heartening at the same time.

From time to time I have talked about outsourcing certain city services to save money—so the city can use the money saved on core services we provide to the community. When I first introduced a pilot program for outsourcing park maintenance at the Rose Garden Park in 2007, the council (except for Mayor Reed) shrugged off my idea.  Now, the topic of how to provide services to San Jose residents with limited revenue is being discussed. For example, the city was able to open some of the pools that were due to be closed because the city outsourced to private organizations which are less costly.

The robust Vietnamese press in Silicon Valley has always played by its own rules, and a post on the blog Little Saigon Inside provided a particularly salacious example recently.

The author, Vinh Nguyen, points out that the Vietnam Daily Newspaper went after District 7 City Council candidate Minh Duong before the June primary with articles that accused him of being pro-Communist while boosting long-shot candidate Patrick Phu Le with headlines like “Phu Le Has a Very Great Chance of Being in the Run-off” (Le captured 17.11 percent of the vote to Duong’s 24.07 percent).

Judy Glickman, wife of former Los Gatos Councilman Steve Glickman, may be mounting a run of her own this November.  She has been hitting up local political consultants, shopping for somebody to help her in a race for her husband’s old seat on the clubby Los Gatos Town Council.

Her hubby was often a lone-wolf on the council, battling an otherwise unanimous body on topics ranging from a skatepark (which he favored) to a new public library (which he opposed). After deciding to step down rather than seek a third term last summer, Glickman circulated two 11th-hour initiatives—one to halt the new library project and another to institute term limits on his former colleagues. Both failed

Many times in this weekly post I have opined that the education of all our children is our most important nationally priority. I frequently get chastised on SJI for supporting a system of public education that is perceived as weak and inadequate. There is no doubt in my mind that our public education system is our best path to the ideals that our Founding Fathers dreamed and that we commemorated on Sunday.

Hope your Fourth of July holiday was fantastic. On June 29, prior to the holiday the Council made the final vote for a balanced budget. More than 20 people spoke at the Council meeting and all but one advocated that the Council not outsource janitorial services but rather keep the janitorial staff employed, since they provide an incredibly valuable service. You would have thought janitorial was listed in the city charter by the speakers’ comments.

LaDoris Cordell, San Jose’s Independent Police Auditor, says a study has concluded that there is no spy inside her office.

“I am greatly relieved that the investigation has determined that there are no leaks of confidential information by any member of my staff,” Cordell said at a press conference outside her downtown office this afternoon.

Cordell announced her conclusions in response to a June 9, 2010 article in the San Jose Mercury News. The newspaper claimed that confidential information from inside the IPA’s office had been leaked to SJPD Sgt. Bobby Lopez, the former president of the San Jose Police Officers Association, during his tenure.

Fly noticed a familiar, comely face in the corner of MercuryNews.com last week but was slightly confused to see a blue and orange PG&E logo where Evan Low’s dimple should be.

The trail-blazing, openly gay mayor of Campbell, shilling for PG&E? It turns out to be an ad for the much-maligned SmartMeter Program, the PG&E initiative to replace all old power meters with digital ones supposedly designed to provide more accurate readouts and give customers a better way to monitor their gas and electricity usage.