San Jose Inside

As the county Board of Education looks into authorizing a zoning exemption for a new Rocketship School (#8) on Lick Ave. off of Alma, by the Tamien light rail station, we are at a new day with a more reflective conversation. This issue comes up tomorrow night on the board agenda.

UPDATE: It turns out San Jose Councilmember Pete Constant did attend the Republican National Convention. Check back for more details.

San Jose City Councilmember Ash Kalra is in Charlotte, North Carolina this week to attend the Democratic National Convention. He is one of almost 6,000 party-nominated delegates. While he is attending the week-long rally, Kalra will be keeping touch with San Jose Inside. At the end of the week, the councilmember will give us a recap of the events, who he interacted with and his impressions of where the party is headed into the November election.

Happy Labor Day, San Jose Inside readers. We’ll return tomorrow to fill you in this week with updates on some shenanigans at the county level, an in-depth interview with City Manager Debra Figone and a dispatch from the Democratic National Convention.—Editor.

Enrique Flores is the founder of Eastside Heroes, a mentoring non-profit, director of the Corozon Project in East San Jose, and a policy aide for Supervisor Dave Cortese.—Editor

In just 10 days this August, seven of our San Jose residents were killed, and five more are recovering from gun shot wounds. Some call this a “spike” in violence, I call it “The Start of the Second War.”

We’re sad to announce that Leigh Weimers has passed away at the age of 76. Warm and easygoing, Leigh was a much beloved figure in San Jose who wrote a column for the San Jose Mercury News for 47 years. Leigh went into the hospital a month ago for congestive heart failure and was scheduled for heart surgery this week.

There is no question that Stanford is considered the elite school in the Bay Area. But if you are hiring, the San Jose State grad is a better choice. It is a lesson I learned from the 1980 Presidential campaign, and that reality remains true to this day.

If approved in November, Proposition 33 would allow auto insurers to offer discounts to new customers who have had continuous coverage for the past five years. Sound familiar? It should.

The last time we wrote about Johnny Khamis, who is running for a San Jose City Council seat against high school sportscaster Robert Braunstein, he called us racists for mentioning that he’s Palestinian and Braunstein is Jewish. For the record, Fly loves people of all races and religions, shapes and complexions. Khamis, however, thinks some Almaden voters could be Islamophobic, so he took the opportunity to announce he’s a Christian. But just how God-fearing is Khamis?

Governor Jerry Brown and other state lawmakers announced their plan Tuesday to curtail public employee retirement benefits. The Public Employee Pension Reform Act of 2012, which will require approval of the state legislature and could lead to a vote for additional changes, would cap pensionable salaries, require new hires to pay more into the system while getting less in return, increase retirement ages, and require final compensation to consist of a three-year average rather than the final 12 months, in an effort to prevent spiking.

After filing papers to run for a second four-year term for my County Board of Education Trustee seat, I learned on the Aug. 10 deadline that no one filed papers to run against me. Therefore, I am automatically re-elected. This is a great and unexpected result, but one that is not so good for providing me a campaign forum to raise some of the most critical issues of our time.

What does shucking corn have to do with an understaffed police department in San Jose? It all comes down to resources and being open to accepting assistance.

On Tuesday, Santa Clara County proclaimed the week of Aug. 21-26 as “Freedom Week.” The facts are staggering. Roughly 80 percent of slaves in the world today are women and it is an increasing problem.

County Supervisor George Shirakawa waded into the fight over who’s to blame for the rise in crime in San Jose Thursday afternoon, releasing a statement voicing his displeasure with comments San Jose Councilmember Sam Liccardo made to the media. In response, Liccardo shrugged before calling out Nora Campos for her letter to San Jose’s police chief. Go ahead and click through, because this gets good.

Who should hold sway over these city streets? It’s a debate that is taking place behind closed doors and in front of the media now that San Jose is on pace to break the annual record for homicides going back 15 years. On Tuesday, State Assemblymember Nora Campos (D-San Jose) sent an “open letter” to Moore, encouraging him to ask the California Highway Patrol for assistance in combatting crime and patrolling city streets.

It saddens many tree huggers that the once heralded California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) is being so abused by NIMBY groups that simple justice, common sense and economic progress demands its reform.