While councilmember Pierluigi Oliverio endeavors to get Proposition 215 implemented here in San Jose by licensing, regulating and taxing medical marijuana dispensaries, there is some serious marijuana drama going down in South County. For those who haven’t been following the sticky situation in Gilroy: it’s been two months since the city council started battling to shut down Garlic Town’s one and only medical pot club.

As a current County Office of Education Trustee and former school principal I am very concerned about our Silicon Valley school preparedness for an earthquake disaster. It’s like the Bay Area is sitting on an explosive device equal to the size of a huge bunker- busting bomb and we do not know when it will detonate. Doesn’t it seem our schools should be ready for the inevitable detonation?

Over the past few years there’s been a lot of emphasis on redefining the 3Rs of education: “Reasoning, Resilience, and Responsibility,” or “Rights, Responsibility, and Respect.” Is it because the traditional 3Rs—Reading, Riting, and Rithmetic—don’t carry the same nebulous weight as those lofty goals? Or perhaps because spellcheckers and calculators make them obsolete? Or maybe—and Fly’s going out on a limb here—because only one of the 3Rs actually begins with R?

It was an emotional morning for Jeff Zarillo, 36. At a trial being watched across the nation, he described how he loved his partner, Paul Katami, more than he loves himself, and how he only wants to have “the same joy and happiness” that his parents and brother have in their marriages. Zarillo was the first witness in the Proposition 8 trial, which opened today.

I am one of the members who sits on the South Bay Recycled Water Committee, representing San Jose. This committee has investigated and is now recommending a partnership with the Santa Clara Valley Water District to move forward with recycled water and jointly build an advanced water treatment plant.

The New York Times report following the release of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s budget plan yesterday summarized the harsh facts succinctly: “Mr. Schwarzenegger … has proposed eliminating the state’s $1 billion welfare program for families with children, ending a $126 million health insurance program for children, reducing the state’s Medicaid eligibility to the minimum to save over $500 million, and ending the state’s network of subsidized home health care providers for the poor.”

Mayor Chuck Reed sent a letter to the California High Speed Rail Authority (CHSRA) today, asking that the group reconsider a decision regarding the route of the Sacramento/San Francisco/Los Angeles line, which may pass through San Jose’s Diridon station.
*UPDATED 3:40pm.

In 2006, Augustin Uribe was convicted of child molestation and sentenced to 38 years to life. He will be a free man this week after Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Andrea Bryan ruled yesterday that Deputy District Attorney Troy Benson, who prosecuted the case, engaged in “numerous acts of misconduct.”

This is a big year for the City of San Jose and its future. The City faces a $100 million budget deficit. Mayor Reed and the rest of the council will have to pull the proverbial rabbit out of a hat. Unfortunately, things may get worse before they get any better. Truth is, there’s no rabbit…there may not even be a hat!

Local political strategist and onetime San Jose Inside blogger Jude Barry has announced a new business venture that he hopes will revolutionize the process of signature-gathering for ballot initiatives.

Councilman Sam Liccardo tells Fly that political consultants working for the San Francisco Giants have been “push-polling” to turn the San Jose public against the idea of the Oakland A’s franchise coming to the South Bay. A push-poll (for anyone who missed the 2000 Republican primary, in which the George Bush campaign famously used the tactic against Sen. John McCain) is an attack masquerading as a telephone poll. Liccardo says the Giants have been calling people in his district asking if they agree or disagree that city resources should be spent on police, fire fighters, parks, trails…or “land giveaways.”

There is a Choice Revolution going on in public education today. Charter schools are at the heart of the increasing number of educational options available to parents—and public-school choice is generally a good outcome of the charter movement.

The federal program Race to the Top, which makes $4.35 billion available to states, requires that they lift caps which now limit the number of new charter schools. Locally, we are likely to see a huge growth in the number of charter schools without the 100-per-year cap imposed by the state of California.

I turned 40 in December. I spent my birthday with family and long-time friends. Many of my friends I have known since age five, from kindergarten in San Jose Unified School District, which equates to knowing most of my friends for more than 30 years. The majority of my friends are not political in their occupations and nearly all of them have never been to a San Jose Council meeting. Instead, they are teachers, nurses, Realtors, attorneys, tech folks, blue-collar skilled tradesmen, stay-at-home parents and—as my Mom likes to point out— most are married with children.

Many of my native San Jose friends have a very positive outlook towards San Jose. Their views are somewhat different than what I hear in my council office, where, typically, I hear alot about what is wrong with our city or questions as to why things aren’t done differently.

Unemployment may still be above 10 percent, but San Jose still leads the nation as the second best place to find a job, just behind Washington, DC.

The City of San Jose is facing a whopping $100 million deficit for fiscal year 2010-11. Something’s got to give. Actually, a lot more than “something” has got to give, be cut, and/or taxed.

The Wall Street Journal recently ran a front page story that questioned the way in which American cities will be run and defined in the future.  In his piece, reporter Conor Dougherty raised a number of issues that need to be addressed here in San Jose.  Dougherty highlighted the troubles and travails of Mesa, Arizona.  He cited Mesa Mayor Scott Smith’s belief that city service levels for his city will not return to prerecession levels for a long time, “if ever.”  In an effort to cut costs, the City of Mesa has gone as far as to hire civilian investigators to do some after-crime reports and investigations, tasks previously done exclusively by police officers.  “‘We are redefining what cities are going to be,’ says Mayor Smith.”

No one questions whether Peter Friess did a great job turning San Jose’s Tech Museum of Innovation around. He might claim that much of that is thanks to the work of Birgit Binner, a graphic designer he hired as a consultant, whose job was “to establish The Tech Museum as an immediately recognizable brand.” The problem is that Birgit Binner, who receives a $400,000 salary for her two-year contract, is also Friess’s wife.