San Jose Inside

UPDATE: Sources within the county have told San Jose Inside that Vinod Sharma will be officially removed from his current position as chief financial officer in two weeks. Sharma will be reassigned to a position in the Valley Medical Center Health and Hospitals System while county administrators work to create new accounting positions. During the 2013-14 budget process, the county allocated money to create these new positions but did not establish official titles. The Board of Supervisors is expected to approve these new positions at its first meeting in September. Sources tell San Jose Inside that Sharma’s salary will be “significantly lower.”

In the height of the Great Recession, the Los Angeles Recreation & Parks Department started a new program that proves progress can be made despite heavy budget cuts. San Jose would be wise to follow a similar path.

In what may turn out to be one of the most expensive races ever for a local county office, Cindy Chavez has captured the District 2 Supervisor seat held by her disgraced former ally, George Shirakawa, Jr. The victory places the largest county government in the global home of leading edge technology—from Teslas to Google Glass—firmly in the hands of an old-fashioned political machine; a classic one that delivers votes, wins elections, rewards its followers and dispenses benefits. Over the next two years, the board will vote on billions of dollars in employee compensation contracts—the county spends $3 billion a year on salaries, benefits and pensions—for the members of the unions who returned the former San Jose city official to public office.

Evan Low can host a blood drive, but can’t donate his own blood. Still, the openly gay mayor of Campbell and openly gay Vice Mayor Rich Waterman will lead an American Red Cross drive this afternoon—both for charity’s sake and to make a statement against the federal ban that prohibits men who admit to having sex with other men from giving blood.

After voting to raise taxes on pot clubs earlier this year, San Jose Councilman Sam Liccardo has found a new vice to tackle: nudie bars. Spurred by the imminent opening of a gentlemen’s club in downtown, Liccardo has asked the city to impose more restrictions on San Jose’s adult establishments. The city already bans nudity in downtown businesses, which leaves us to presume that the Gold Club, slated to open up Aug. 8 in the historic 81 W. Santa Clara St. building, will operate as a bikini bar.

Election nights have morphed into a game of cat and mouse between Fly and Stacey Hendler Ross, PR flack for the South Bay Labor Council. In the county supervisor primary and then the runoff, which took place Tuesday, Hendler Ross has taken to her new role as bouncer. No more than a minute into this week’s election night party for new county Supervisor Cindy Chavez, Hendler Ross grabbed a San Jose Inside reporter by the arm and tried to escort him out before realizing she should use her words. Noting that it was a private party and only “legitimate media” could enter, Hendler Ross also gave an SJI intern the boot, once again stifling the free press. Or so she thought.

I applaud Congressman Michael Honda’s recent convening of the STEM Advisory Council, which I attended last Friday at Applied Materials with 60-plus engineers, educators, policy makers and non-profit leaders. We must act now, as more and more firms in the U.S., like Applied Materials, require science, technology, engineering or math degrees to satisfy their employment mandates.

Judge Arthur Weisbrodt asked about corruption, dishonesty and backroom deals in a candidate’s debate two weeks ago. Oddly, he posed the question to Teresa Alvarado for not “taking on Cindy Chavez aggressively,” rather than ask Chavez directly. Debates with timed answers are too superficial to probe questions about complex financial relationships. So with one newspaper with its head in the sand, the other unable to get answers and an election opponent who avoided confrontation, the public has remained in the dark. Here are just a few of the questions that should have been asked.

Voters in Santa Clara County’s District 2 will choose a new county supervisor Tuesday, when Teresa Alvarado and Cindy Chavez face off in a special election. The two Democrats are vying to replace the seat vacated by George Shirakawa, Jr., who resigned amid scandal in March.

Almaden Lake, one of the filthiest bodies of water in the Bay Area and possibly the state, is steeped in elemental mercury and polluted by blue-green algae blooms and bacteria from bird droppings. But how to clean up this community cesspool has raised a fair bit of controversy.

On Tuesday night, the pundits will come out in force, as a small group of voters will decide who represents District 2 on the Board of Supervisors. The chattering class will flock to praise the victor, while the defeated candidate will be accused of doing everything wrong. Some pundits will opine that the losing candidate’s career is over. They will posture that the “loser” will never be able to run for elected office again. They will say that the losing candidate will have lost two elections, noting it is some kind of bar to future public service. That is horse manure.

Almost three weeks afterKTVU afternoon anchor Tori Campbell read fake, racist names while reporting on the July 6 Asiana flight 214 crash, the news station is still cleaning up its mess. The station confirmed Wednesday that it has fired at least three longtime producers over the on-air gaffe, which went viral a few seconds after Campbell stopped talking. But in an effort to erase any video evidence of the blunder, KTVU has also begun using copyright law to demand that YouTube remove videos of its anchor’s mistake.

Thanks to the work of the staff of Parks, Recreation and Neighborhood Services, and under the recent leadership of trails manager Yves Zsutty, San Jose’s entire trail system has undergone an amazing transformation.

The company that provides Santa Clara County’s ambulance services is in need of rescue. In December 2010, the Board of Supervisors contracted with Rural Metro, which missed an important bond payment last week, leading industry insiders and county officials to worry that the Scottsdale, Ariz.-based company may be headed towards bankruptcy. So what do the elected officials who supported the Rural Metro contract have to say about the current mess? Nothing.

In order to move on from partisan gridlock on education reform, we must deal with the facts of what works to increase performance for all students. Looking at two new bills coming out of the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate, that isn’t happening right now.