San Jose Inside

The Santa Clara Family Health Foundation, a local nonprofit that helped bump up the county’s sales tax last fall, doesn’t want the public to know about its secret political activities. And now it’s lawyering up to quash Metro/San Jose Inside’s public records act requests.

Cindy Chavez’s campaign manager, Ed McGovern, acknowledged Tuesday evening that his client has a found a way to circumvent state laws that prevent independent committees from coordinating with candidate campaigns.

Since their advent in the mid-80s, enterprise zones have sparked economic development. But, in some cases, these geographic areas that provide companies a litany of tax breaks have also granted corporations a chance to game the system. Two competing bills in the state legislature could either eliminate these zones or modify their scope. On Wednesday, San Jose’s Rules and Open Government Committee will consider taking a stance on the bills, as well as discuss the future of the Willow Glen trestle.

If NY Times columnist and author Thomas Friedman is correct, and I believe he is, the world beyond schools no longer wants to know how much you know, but how you can use what you know. Our concept of schooling in America today is quite archaic if Friedman’s assertion is right. However, there is a strong and hopeful effort, the Common Core of Standards, to steer the ship of public education to a better place.

What’s the difference between Cindy Chavez’s campaign and some of the independent expenditure committees that want to get her elected to a county supervisor seat? Little more than a few choice words, according to mailers that have been targeting voters in District 2. With absentee balloting already in full swing, the campaign of candidate Teresa Alvarado chose last week to file a complaint with the Fair Political Practices Commission.

An audit of the San Jose Fire Department didn’t include enough analysis of staffing, councilmembers Ash Kalra and Xavier Campos argue in a memo. They want to look into whether the shorter staffing levels are what led to longer response times and loss in overall service. Other items on the council agenda for Tuesday include a settlement with the family of a young child killed by a falling tree and a proposed ordinance to allow street vendors to sell fresh produce in low-income neighborhoods.

Former San Jose Police Chief Chris Moore has a new job as senior vice president for Rivada Networks, a company that designs broadband public safety communications for state and local government agencies. Moore retired from SJPD in January after serving the city of San Jose for more than 27 years. It was assumed Moore wouldn’t stay unemployed for long, but his new digs have an interesting backstory.

An assortment of local politicians and community members gathered in the City Hall rotunda late last month to pay their respects at the 38th “Black April,” a ceremony to honor and remember the Vietnamese diaspora and fall of Saigon. By most respects, it was a solemn occasion that showed respect and solidarity. And then the Mercury News had to go and ruin everything.

A form of fiscal democracy called “participatory budgeting” that started in Brazil and is slowly gaining traction in the U.S. may soon take hold in San Jose. Councilman Sam Liccardo submitted a proposal to the city Wednesday that asks to set aside $1.05 million from the Essential Services Reserve to fund a pilot program, which would give each of the 10 council districts $100,000 for residents to decide how to spend.

A number of local elected officials have recently shown signs of unstable and unacceptable behavior in public life. All of these extreme actions indicate people dealing with mental-health related issues. That does not mean they are all mentally ill. Then again, the absence of a diagnosis is not the same as being “not sick.”

A Sacramento lobbying firm appears to be playing a game of snooker when it comes to misleading San Jose residents about crime and casinos. The “Consumer Alliance for a Strong Economy” has been scaring residents into believing the city wants to deregulate card club oversight through robocalls, provocative mailers and even a Mercury News op-ed.

Monday’s state Supreme Court ruling that cities can choose to ban medical marijuana dispensaries counts as a setback—assuming setbacks can be measured by nothing lost, nothing gained. According to local medical marijuana collective operators and advocates, the court’s unanimous decision did little more than uphold the status quo, after the city of Riverside’s decision in 2009 to declare a moratorium and shutter 56 dispensaries. The ruling now upholds bans in about 200 other California cities, including local municipalities such as Palo Alto and Gilroy. But the same industry experts who dismiss the court’s decision as inconsequential also see a silver lining.

Marijane Hamann Park is a spacious green expanse of 10.5 acres ensconced in a suburban enclave of San Jose that borders the city of Campbell. The park’s amenities include a children’s playground, a large green carpet of lawn, picnic tables and barbecues. But not too long ago, neighbors of Hamann Park had some tough choices to make to reclaim the park.

It is so difficult to get things done in Washington that one has to wonder why we wanted to get here in the first place, uttered a pensive U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan last week. It was a tragically sad but candid comment about where we are in this fractured system of democratic government.

Of San Jose’s 5,000 or so homeless residents, nearly 30 percent are chronically on the streets, according to city housing officials. Most of the chronically homeless suffer from mental illness, physical disability, addiction or some combination of the three. On Wednesday, the San Jose’s Rules and Open Government Committee will discuss legislation that could address such problems.