San Jose Inside

On Monday, a press release sent out by the Office of Pubic Affairs announced that County Executive Jeff Smith, “consistent with his word,” launched a webpage dedicated to “Reform Efforts.” This should solve everything.

The death last year of Audrie Pott, a 15-year old high school student in Saratoga, became an international story last week. Social media, sexual violence and alcohol are at the center of the storm once again. There are a myriad of lessons we can learn from this tragedy, along with steps schools, districts and families can consider to prevent these incidents from occurring in the future.

The economic viability of San Jose’ airport (SJC) is in a precarious position. Bond payments are now due for the $1.7 billion dollar airport expansion, and, ultimately, the payment could fall to the general fund if airport revenue cannot cover what is owed. In order to avoid a bailout by tapping into the general fund, it is important to run the airport in the black. There are two ways to do this: either increase revenue or reduce expenses.

The property that’s home to the San Jose Mercury News printing plant and newsroom will soon be up for sale.

Flights louder than 89 decibels can’t fly in and out of San Jose from 11:30pm to 6:30am without violating current airport rules. Airlines risk a $2,500 fine and, if a tenant at Norman Mineta San Jose International Airport, they could face eviction if found in repeated violation. The whole curfew conversation came up last week, when downtown Councilman Sam Liccardo asked to delay a City Council vote on a proposed $82 million addition to the airport. Signature Flight Support, whose proposal involves a massive new facility that will house Google’s executive jet fleet, doesn’t think it’s fair for the lease language to allow the city to evict the company over a single curfew violation.

McDonald’s doesn’t make you fat or cause ridiculous amounts of traffic, Pete Constant want people to know. Constant and fellow councilman Xavier Campos signed a memo Friday arguing that a proposed McDonald’s in Constant’s district should be approved on appeal.

McDonald’s wants to build one of its fine dining drive-throughs across the street from a middle school, but San Jose residents who spoke up at a recent public hearing aren’t lovin’ it. A public hearing will be held over the fast-food joint at Tuesday’s City Council meeting. Other items on the agenda include the proposal to turn Agnews Development Center into a high school and the San Jose Water Company’s $2 million bid for pipe repairs.

Three years ago, San Jose adopted a policy that allows for the disclosure of elected officials’ text messages and emails regarding city business when sent from personal devices. However,  this week City Council voted unanimously in closed session to appeal a judge’s ruling that would make the policy apply to all city employees.

In light of the flurry of emails and phone calls we’ve received in recent days, I’d like to ensure that everyone is well-armed with the facts about our long-planned expansion of general aviation at the airport and its impact on the curfew.  In the social media-driven landscape of instant conspiracy theories, rumors and innuendo, as Justice Brandeis reminds us, “sunlight is the greatest disinfectant.” There will be a hearing this Tuesday, April 16 to discuss the impact of any new agreements with Signature Flight Support—a provider of services for corporate jets and other general aviation—on the curfew. San Jose is one of only nine cities in the United States with a curfew restricting flight operations at its airport.

The Working Partnerships USA executive’s signature appears on county contracts that included salary reimbursements for herself, South Bay Labor Council’s then-chief of staff and current chief executive, Ben Field, and other key campaign officials. The county gave hundreds of thousands of dollars to Working Partnerships USA, including more than $200,000 to expand local anti-smoking ordinances […]

Two years ago, District Attorney Jeff Rosen cleverly cushioned the effects of county-mandated pay cuts for some of his senior prosecutors through an accounting loophole. After his top supervisors were disproportionately affected by the cuts, he started giving them “admin leave” so they could collect vacation time for a payout down the road to replace lost wages. The slick move, legal under county policies, got the attention of County Executive Jeff Smith, who’s now asking Attorney General Kamala Harris to investigate. The question is: What’s really happening here?

From the late 1890s into the 1920s, there was a national movement in the United States to create more livable cities. At its core, this movement believed that cities should be more than simply places where people work and lived. The movement was called City Beautiful. Now, on a smaller scale, one local citizen has refashioned this idea while eliminating graffiti.

Santa Clara County owes the city of San Jose nearly $7 million that was wrongfully diverted to county employee retirement accounts, according to a ruling handed down Friday by a Sacramento Superior Court judge. The ruling found that beleaguered county finance officials ignored “a half century of construction and application of California law governing allocation of tax increment financing.”

There are several critical “gaps” in the education of our children. One is the gap of how our high school students compare to high school students in cities like Helsinki and Shanghai on PISA (Program for International Student Assessment). Let’s call this gap the “Global Achievement Gap.” It is related to how students perform on comparable international assessments to real world problems in reading, math and science.

County Executive Jeff Smith admitted Friday that significant “culture problems” exist within the county and an internal investigation has been launched into finance officials who may have covered up their role in facilitating crimes committed by former county Supervisor George Shirakawa Jr. Meanwhile, Supervisor Dave Cortese told San Jose Inside that the Board is keeping close tabs on Smith’s “response and accountability.”