The San Jose City Council will revote on its plan to rebid the $7 million construction contract for an Eastside library. On Friday, Councilmember Rose Herrera submitted a memo calling for reconsideration of the June 23 vote, taken on the eve of the July council recess.

The first council meeting of the new fiscal year will result in discussing the new budgets cuts that must be made due to Sacramento’s raid of cities’ property tax money. Since San Jose does not want to look at delivering services differently, as Chicago and other cities do, then that leaves us with only one option: cut services to San Jose residents.

When the Governor Arnold Schwartzenegger signed his Million Rooftops initiative back in 2006, one of the first people to jump on board was San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed, who said the city would take 100,000. The following year, Reed announced his Green Vision to reduce the city’s nonrenewable energy use to zero by 2022.

Now the mayor is bringing his initiative much closer to home—his own home, in fact.

The fact that every eligible resident can attend a state university, long a source of pride in California, will soon be a distant memory as a result of massive state budget cuts. As the fall 2009 CSU semester approaches, thousands of college students will return to campus to find fewer instructors, slashed classes, empty dorms and diminished services. Some will be denied university admission altogether.

Do you remember the commercial for Ginsu Knives from the late ‘70s?  It would show a sharp knife on TV cutting through everything from tomatoes to tin cans. The announcer would repeatedly say: “But wait! There’s more!”

Well, just when you thought we had a balanced budget for the City of San Jose, the state of California has said “But wait! There’s more!”

Citing “low morale” and “childish” political infighting on Gilroy’s city council, Santa Clara County Supervisor Don Gage announced that he will run for mayor of that city. Gage served on Gilroy’s City Council from 1981 to 1997, when he ran for a seat on the county’s Board of Supervisors.

San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed struck a defiant pose yesterday in response to California’s new state budget. After hammering out a difficult budget of his own to cover the city’s $84 million deficit, Reed was shocked to learn that his city could be handing over as much as $100 million to the state.

His strategy is simple: Sue the state. “We will certainly be joining in with other cities in litigation,” he said.

This was echoed by mayors across California

Are we witnessing today the disintegration of California before our very eyes? The budget decisions the “Gang of Five” have agreed to might be the beginning of the end for California’s world leadership. America has been known to act boldly when we are threatened by global competition. Remember Sputnik in 1957? Can we find the same spirit in 2009 to confront the $26 billion California budget deficit?

I was recently downloading classic songs on my iTunes from the late ‘70s, two of which were Bob Welch’s “Ebony Eyes,” and Player’s “Baby Come Back.” iTunes is great because I can choose the specific songs I like rather than having to purchase the entire album. While downloading my songs, I was thinking about how we choose our politicians. Unfortunately, we don’t get to pick politicians the way we do music, although I bet most of us would like to. It would be great to choose the top characteristics of the best candidates in a race and then take those skill sets and create our own politician.

A press release arrived today from California’s Secretary of State, Debra Bowen, that read like something in The Onion. It announced the approval of an initiative to require drug and alcohol tests of all members of the state legislature. Among other things, the statute would “prevent a legislator who tests positive from performing his or her official duties or from getting paid until that legislator completes a substance abuse program.”

Fly can practically hear the conversation that led to this effort: “I think they’re all high on glue.” “What are they, smoking crack?”

Regents of the UC system are meeting in San Francisco to decide on how to implement the necessary budget cuts for the coming year. The meeting comes in the wake of an $800 million cut in state funding to ten-school system’s budget, compounded by an additional $335 million deficit expected over the next two years because of increasing costs.

They will be voting on a plan unveiled by UC President Mark Yudof to impose furloughs and salaries on 100,000 staff members, which will reduce their pay by 4 to 10 percent. The biggest cuts would be borne by the highest-paid staff members, with Yudof himself taking a 10 percent pay cut. This was unsatisfactory to protestors gathered outside his house this week, who pointed out that Yudof is already earning $800,000, while they are barely earning enough to provide for their families.

A U.S. District Court judge dismissed two state legislators, Assemblyman Joe Coto (D) of San Jose and Senator Gilbert Cedillo (D) of Los Angeles, from a lawsuit filed by the Minutemen, an anti-illegal immigrant group, which claims that its First Amendment rights have been violated. The legislators had petitioned Caltrans to revoke the group’s Adopt-a-Highway program and remove a sign bearing the group’s name.

For local hotels and other downtown businesses, the $300 million McEnery Convention Center renovation project is vital for San Jose to remain competitive with nearby towns such as Santa Clara and San Mateo. Last year hotel owners even attempted to raise $150 million in private funds in order to keep the project on track. But with California’s budget crisis forcing state legislators to find new sources of money to close the gaping budget deficit, redevelopment projects such as this are an easy target.

Santa Clara County Prosecutor Ben Field announced yesterday that he would be leaving the District Attorney’s Office to work for the South Bay Labor Council. The announcement comes after a State Bar judge issued a harshly worded report recommending that Field be suspended for four years for ethical misconduct. Charges included withholding evidence from defense attorneys and disobeying a judge’s orders.

Former San Jose mayor Ron Gonzalez has been named as a potential candidate to head the Hispanic Foundation of Silicon Valley, a small but highly visible charity that caters to the needs of the local Latino community.

Gonzales had a meteoric rise in Santa Clara County, starting with his selection as the first Latino mayor of Sunnyvale. He later served as a county supervisor and was elected mayor of San Jose with a promise to rebuild the city’s neglected neighborhoods. Seen as a rising star in the local Latino community, Gonzales was tapped as a keynote speaker at the 2000 Democratic National Convention. But all was not well for Gonzales. In the coming years he had a well-publicized romance with an aide and was charged with backroom lobbying. Though Gonzales later married the aide and the charges against him were dismissed, Gonzales left office with his reputation tarnished.

The consent calendar on the city council agenda comes after the City’s ceremonial items are completed. The difference between “consent” items and the rest of the agenda is that the consent items are suppose to be composed of “rubber stamp” issues like excused absences for councilmembers, final adoption of ordinances that were already voted on at previous council meetings, etc. As a result, all the consent items are voted on at once.  However, any councilmember or member of the public has the right to “pull” an item from the consent calendar which requires that the item be voted on separately than the rest.