A variety of issues were discussed at last week’s council meeting that dealt with city finances. Jennifer Maguire, the Director of our Budget Office, shared that the ending fund balance this year is 1.3 percent. The city has always had an ending fund balance for as long as anyone can remember.

UPDATED. The San Jose Mercury News posted a video on its website last night that shows San Jose police officers beating a San Jose State student with a baton and using a Taser on him during a Sept. 3 arrest. According to the accompanying article, the force was used “even though the suspect was on the ground, and apparently offering no physical threat to the officers.”

San Jose’s Green Vision program may have hit a snag. Bob Garzee, one of the key players in the city’s push to create a network of public-private partnerships, has been sued by Union Bank of San Francisco. Garzee, the CEO of Synegry EV, Inc., had been planning to create a technology incubator in the city with which his company could develop electric vehicles. But when his line of credit came up for review late this June, it was denied

In this real estate market, builders are having to taking it to the streets to sell condos in downtown San Jose. Downtown workers may have noticed a troop of young, attractive, sign-wielding “protesters” marching up and down Santa Clara Street last Friday afternoon, chanting slogans like “Less Dues, Better Views” while handing out superhero-adorned pamphlets. This intrusive if creative bit of urban guerrilla marketing was paid for by Barry Swenson, whose company is trying the get the word out about its City Heights high-rise condo development at 175 W. St. James St.

Bottom-up-reform for improving education in Silicon Valley is more effective than top-down-reform efforts, however there is a paucity of examples of the former. In our climate of entrepreneurial know-how one would think there would be a bounty of examples of schools rearranging the apples on the proverbial cart to innovate and improve achievement for all. Yet, school the way we knew it back before the Apple II was introduced is still the norm.

The Public Safety, Finance and Strategic Support Committee, which I sit on, had a special meeting last Wednesday night. Usually, this committee meets during the day. This special meeting was being sponsored by the Independent Police Auditor (IPA) and the City Council stemming from the alleged racial profiling arrests Downtown for pubic intoxication. This is one of two meetings to be held at night to elicit public opinion about our police force. The next one will be spring 2010

The International Economic Development Council had the highest praise for San Jose and Mayor Chuck Reed. At its annual conference in Reno, Nevada, it named the city’s Green Vision sustainable development program the best in the entire United States.

The Mercury News Editorial Board used the “R” word again. You know, “Republican.”

In their Oct. 11 editorial, the Mercury News expressed its concern that the Nobel Peace Prize committee may have provided fodder for Obama’s political opponents by awarding him this year’s prize. “The award unfortunately emphasizes one of the biggest criticisms of Obama: that he gives lovely speeches but has no record of accomplishment. The condemnation he faced Friday was swift and largely ungracious, much like a week earlier, when Republicans reacted with glee after the U.S. lost its bid to host the 2016 Olympics.”

Before I get to the point of this column let me congratulate, Elinor Ostrom, who yesterday became the first woman ever to win a Nobel Prize in economics. Ms. Ostrom, a political scientist at Indiana University, was honored along with Oliver Williamson, an economist at UC Berkeley. This gets me to the topic of this week’s post. The economy and education are inextricably linked.

Last week, I toured the City of San Jose’s sanitary sewer system along with Public Works staff. For those of you who may not be aware, sewers in San Jose stretch out for 2,200 miles and range anywhere from 100 years old to brand new. The “sewer freeway” is at Zanker Road, where four large- diameter lines converge towards Alviso. They run side by side in different sizes and during the dry season we turn two of them off since the flow is slower without rainfall. This gives a rest to the other lines so they can be inspected and also helps move solid materials (grit) through the pipes.

A familiar name showed up out of the blue today, in a New York Times article looking back at the trial of the 85-year-old Anthony Marshall, who was found guilty this week of defrauding his mother, the late Brooke Astor. The article, which tells the story of the trial through the eyes of the jury, quotes one Philip Bump—the man Fly and many others believe was the poison-pen author of the now-defunct anonymous attack blog, San Jose Revealed.

While the healthcare imbroglio meanders on in Congress, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is being forced to decide how to resolve California’s own healthcare crisis. The state ranks last nationwide in terms of medical coverage for low income residents. This means that poor people are forced to turn to emergency rooms for everything from undiagnosed cancers to the common cold and, as a result, more than half of state hospitals are operating in the red.

Does Apple really understand climate change? Not according to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. This week, Apple became the latest in a series of major corporations to quit the Chamber, citing differences over attitudes toward climate change. Catherine Novelli, Apple’s Vice President for Worldwide Government Affairs, said that the company “would prefer that the chamber take a more progressive stance on this critical issue.” On Wednesday, the Chamber fired back.

Sitting at a café table outside Original Joe’s in downtown San Jose, Forrest Williams unzips his binder and starts flipping through the pages within, searching for a document. He finds what he is looking for: a slightly wrinkled, stapled packet of paper with a large amount of handwriting in the margins. This packet contains a long list of city council members, county supervisors, assembly members, senators and water board members—everyone the former San Jose City Councilman has ever worked with in his two decades as an elected official.

On March 16, 1964 in a special address to Congress, Pres. Lyndon Johnson said: “Because it is right, because it is wise and because for the first time in our history, it is possible to conquer poverty, I submit, for the consideration of Congress and the country, the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964.” Let me submit to the readers of San Jose Inside that the only means for us to eliminate poverty is to build a first class public education system for all America’s children.

At the Rules Committee last week, there was a proposal to amend the Graffiti Abatement Ordinance for juvenile offenders.

When someone gets arrested for doing graffiti in San Jose or other cities in Santa Clara county they are punished via the County court system. However cities do have a municipal code where offenders may pay a fine. State law does an adequate job of prosecuting adult graffiti offenders, however, some would say not such a good job of dealing with juveniles, since county probation does not want to spend the resources to supervise their community service work.