San Jose Inside

Meeting just bi-weekly, and not at all in the month of July, the life of a Santa Clara County supervisor can be a punt-pass-and-kick competition when it comes to making tough calls. It’s no surprise then that supervisors decided to defer any decision on the fate of County Executive Jeff Smith, whose contract expired at the end of June.

As we swelter with unseasonably hot weather this summer, too many children are sitting at home, losing months of instructional gains produced during the academic school year. The educational leaders know this to be true based on a wide variety of studies that indicate children without summer enrichment activities lose several months of achievement gains made during the school year.

Day two of the BART strike once again left commuters scrambling, the highways hopelessly jammed and countless people late for work.
 Go to 511.org for real-time updates and suggested ways around the hold-up, which has doubled or tripled commute times for a lot of people who work in and around San Francisco. Employees of the regional transit agency—the fifth most-used rail line in the nation—are on strike because contracts with the agency’s two biggest unions expired and discussions over a renewal fell apart. BART workers want higher wages—23 percent raises over the next four years.

The South Bay homeless population appears to be pooling in San Jose, as a new study estimates an 18 percent increase in the number of homeless people in the city since 2011. Overall, Santa Clara County’s homeless population grew by 8 percent—7,361 total—in the last two years, according to the county’s biennial census of the homeless population.

Discussion on technology dominated much of the Fair Political Practices Commission’s June 20 meeting in the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors chambers, as the state political watchdog discussed the role of monitoring campaigns, candidates and elected officials in between dealing with some technical difficulties in setting up its equipment.

Each fiscal year, San Jose’s councilmembers are allocated $20,000 in “HP grants” that can be utilized to provide grants to cultural, educational or recreational groups. These funds are allocated solely at the discretion of the elected official. My allocations, listed in this column, represent my personal priorities and values not only as an elected official, but also as a proud citizen of San Jose.

A new survey recently commissioned by the William C. Velasquez Institute (WCVI) and supported by Californians Against Utilities Stopping Solar Energy (CAUSE) reveals some striking trends in key voting demographics in California and nationwide.

The Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors enacted a new policy this week to make sure no one repeats George Shirakawa Jr.’s mistakes in failing to file campaign disclosure forms. It’s the latest in a series of reform efforts on the county’s behalf, some of which have come through new policies and others that are now being enforced.

I was 13 when I saw my first William Shakespeare play. We saw “King Lear,” one of the Bard’s last and darkest plays. It was a magnificent occasion for me, and I still have a passion for the Bard’s work, as well as watching performances in an outdoor setting—especially in a park. San Jose residents should feel lucky that special performances will take place next month in Willow Glen, where the Shady Shakespeare Theatre Company will put on its season opener, “The Twelfth Night.”

The District 2 county supervisor’s race is one of the most important in this region’s history. Two-thirds of the county budget—about $3 billion annually—goes to compensation and retirement benefits. Virtually all of the public employee union contracts are up for negotiation in the next two years, and there’s an unfunded $1.7 billion liability for retiree health care. The election will determine whether those issues are tackled by a board majority firmly in the pocket of the South Bay Labor Council—or one that might be a little more independent. For this and many other reasons, Metro and San Jose Inside endorse Teresa Alvarado for county supervisor.

Arlene Rusche (left) and her soon-to-be-wife Clara Brock at a marriage equality rally outside San Jose City Hall.

Arlene Rusche, 73, never expected to live long enough to have the option of legally marrying her partner.

“At my age, you begin to think you’re running out of time,” said the Santa Clara resident. “But then I heard the news and tears of joy just rolled down my face. Lots of tears. Then I turned to her, my partner, and I asked her, ‘Does this mean I can marry you now?’”

Rusche and her newly minted fiancé and partner of 22 years, 86-year-old Clara Brock, celebrated Wednesday’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling striking down DOMA and Prop. 8 at an evening rally outside San Jose’s City Hall.  About 300 people gathered in the downtown plaza, including politicians, community leaders, activists, gay couples who plan to tie the knot and gay couples who married when the California Supreme Court briefly allowed it back in 2008. Celebrants held up signs with messages like, “Keep calm and gay marry” and “Out and about.”

San Jose Police Department’s new plan to track “curb sitting,” which some residents say unfairly targets minorities, will be the first of its kind in the nation, says Independent Police Auditor LaDoris Cordell. “No police department in the United States is doing this,” she says of the policy that rolls out in July.  Cordell has long urged the department to document curb-sitting incidents to note the reason someone was stopped, their ethnicity, name, age and other data to determine whether certain groups are targeted.

If the Supreme Court rules in favor of marriage equality, Ray Hixson will assemble at a celebratory rally in Mountain View with hundreds of others. And while the LGBT community and its allies are hoping for a party, others want to head down to the Santa Clara County courthouse to apply for a marriage license. County Supervisor Ken Yeager, who’s openly gay, already asked the courthouse to prepare for an influx of same-sex couples ready to tie the knot.

To handle the surge of complaints, the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office set up a fraud hotline in Vietnamese and English for customers bilked by a San Jose travel agency. Sunlight Travel, founded in 1996 by Diane Ho, suddenly closed up shop June 5, leaving customers in a lurch. Many of them stand to lose thousands of dollars for flights bought but never booked. Sunlight Travel catered to a lot of Vietnamese clients from its now-closed strip mall storefront on South King Road.

There have been a lot of reports in the media recently about teens and children being bullied at school and through social media. Dating violence among teens has been studied for years, but the relationship to online harassment is a new issue.