This is my last post for San Jose Inside. I’m looking to start my own site in a couple of months (please stay tuned). A quick note of thanks to Jack Van Zandt and to Eric Johnson. I hope that you enjoy my final post.

When I was a kid growing up in San Jose, the neighborhood park was constantly tended to. Every Summer, there was a recreational leader who organized activities and coached the park’s baseball team. Fast forward to today, where you’ll find the park restrooms closed on weekdays, and you’re lucky if the City sends someone to mow the weeds once a month. In his letter to shareholders, Google co-founder Sergey Brin wrote, “I am optimistic about the future, because I believe that scarcity breeds clarity.” I hope that the scarcity that we all now face will finally bring clarity to San Jose.

Just because the majority of the Public Intoxication Task Force quit the group last night doesn’t mean they are giving up on their mission to revamp police practices in San Jose.

The controversy-plagued Santa Clara Valley Water District board has finally selected a CEO—naming Beau Goldie, a longtime district employee, to the long-vacant post.

More on the appointment / resignation of police auditor Chris Constantin. According to the Mercury News, “Campos and Councilman Ash were not informed of the potential conflict.”  “‘He never disclosed to me and to other council members before we took the vote,’ Campos said.”

As part of his War on Poverty, and his visionary effort to create a Great Society, Pres. Lyndon Johnson launched the Head Start preschool program in 1965. That program is designed to meet the early childhood education, health, nutrition, and parent education needs of many of our poorest children and families. Fortunately, Head Start was on the list for a significant increase in funding in the recent 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, just passed by Congress and signed by President Obama.

The Recall Madison folks, in a remarkable display of nerve, today asked Councilwoman Madison Nguyen to sign onto their petition asking the City Council to appoint someone to her seat if she is recalled on March 3. That’s right, the group of 50 or so mostly Vietnamese-American protesters, along with former County Supervisor Pete McHugh, were back at their familiar post outside City Hall at noon.

Some local Vietnamese folks are already lobbying San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed to bypass a special election, and appoint someone to fill Councilmember Madison Nguyen‘s seat, should she be recalled on March 3. Barry Hung Do, an anti-Nguyen community activist, says he met with Reed back in December hoping to talk him into appointing someone to the embattled councilmember’s seat rather than spending money on a special election. 

Recently, the Mercury News reported that the San Jose International Airport is looking at major layoffs over the next 18 months.  According to the FAA, San Jose has experienced a 14 percent decline in domestic departures over the past two years.

Violent crime among young people is on the increase, according to a new study by James Fox and Marc Swatt from Northwestern University. Fox and Swatt indicate that the much heralded decline in youth crime in the 1990s has ceased.  According to anecdotal data of my neighbors and friends, we are experiencing a rising tide of youth crime and gang-related violence in the suburbs of San Jose.

Tom McEnery recently returned from a visit to Vietnam. This is the second in a three-part series.

Beyond the Continental Hotel and the Cathedral of Notre Dame—we just missed a wedding there—is a place I was both anxious and nervous to see. It was once called the Museum of Chinese and American War Crimes. But in slight bow to political expediency,  it has a new name: The War Remnants Museum.

By Colleen Watson
Starting at Story Road and King Street at 4:30pm. Wednesday, about 200 marchers protesting US immigration policy worked their way to City Hall, chanting “Yes We Can.” The largely Hispanic group reached a mostly empty City Hall at 6:30pm.

Is San Jose’s nonpolitical mayor in a position to attract federal clean-tech dollars?

Silicon Valley business leaders will be keeping an eye on what happens immediately following inauguration day, when, analysts predict, President Barack Obama may address his plan to shift the nation toward clean technology—an emerging local business sector.

“My father insists that I call it Saigon—you see, he was in the Southern Army,”  was the simple, direct way our guide informed us why he used the city’s old name.  The comment was made in near perfect English. “Sometimes we say Ho Chi Minh City,” he conceded, “but I prefer Saigon.”  This was our introduction to a place so much in American minds for the last forty years, just recently a significant factor in San Jose politics.

“It’s not what you know, it’s who you know,” a father tells his son while standing outside the cyclone fences being erected for the inaugural. He was, of course, talking about tickets. And if you know a congressperson, you had a chance of getting the Ticket of the Century.

Last week, Mayor Reed held his State of the City Address. And I think the mayor was forthright by clearing stating that the City of San Jose has a large deficit, and that cuts to services and layoffs are before us. In fact, I believe that the current $60-65 million budget deficit will worsen and grow to $70-75 million.

A San Jose police officer tased a woman and shot her husband following an altercation that occurred as they left a downtown restaurant and nightclub around 1am Sunday morning, according to witness reports. San Jose Police Department spokesman Jermaine Thomas confirmed that a weapon was discharged, that a man was “taken to a local hospital with non-life threatening injuries,” and that the call came in a few minutes before 1am. He declined to provide other details as of 4am Sunday.