San Jose Inside

If recommendations from the Rules and Open Government Committee are accepted, the City Council will repeal its medical marijuana ordinance at Tuesday’s meeting. If not, the council will prepare the matter to go before voters on June 5. Other matters include an audit of Team San Jose and a list of the city’s top priorities for the fiscal year.

Sounding an optimistic note that 2012 would be a year of “hope, optimism and recovery,” San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed delivered his State of the City address at the San Jose Civic Auditorium Thursday night. Hours after being pummeled in the media over an actuary’s claim of inflated pension projections, Reed sounded confident and statesmanlike, saying that he wanted “ to thank the leaders of our employee unions who have remained engaged and stayed at the table for many hours, days and months of difficult discussions.“

The $250 million question: Did Mayor Chuck Reed and other city officials knowingly lie about the worst-case scenario for San Jose’s pension crisis? An ethics complaint that included almost 800 city employee signatures was turned into the Elections Commission Thursday. The complaint, filed on the heels of an NBC Bay Area report, states that Reed, Director of Retirement Services Russell Crosby and former city actuary Michale Moehle knowingly used false information to bolster the mayor’s push to declare a fiscal emergency, which may have also had an adverse effect on pension reform negotiations. In an interview Thursday, Mayor Reed defended the worst-case scenario projection.

The recent incendiary headlines regarding the California High Speed Rail Authority (CHSRA) employing “lobbyists” was another attempt by opponents to avoid substance and attack the process of building our nation’s first high speed rail system. Make no mistake, this isn’t an abuse of taxpayer money and the holier than thou statements of some pundits are simply cowardly political attacks on very good people.

As someone who embraces public service as an integral part of the American social contract, it dismays me when government moves to minimize the voice of the people it represents. Case in point: The recent flirtation with folding 20 volunteer City Commissions into five. Yes, that’s five.

Today I am headed to Los Angeles to attend a national conference focused on ending youth and family homelessness by 2020. The National Alliance to End Homelessness has worked hard to draw attention to not only ending chronic homelessness, but addressing the different approaches in working with youth and families.

San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed makes no secret of his distaste for the union-aligned sentiments of some City Council members. And while he may or may not have beat the bushes for challengers in the upcoming election, rumors suggesting just that may have something to them. This weekend Reed will open his home to host a campaign kick-off fundraiser for Tam Truong, the San Jose police detective who favors pension overhaul like the mayor and is challenging Kansen Chu in District 4.

I hope we can agree to stipulate that American jobs will require more cognitive ability today and in the ensuing decades than ever before in American history. Therefore, the push for higher academic standards for all public schools logically follows. Yet when I try to connect the dots among the issues on the American agenda for education, to increase cognitive skills for its system of public schools, I get these Whiskey, Tango and Foxtrot (WTF) moments. 

The list many public employees dread every year—annual salaries—posted to the city’s website. No one came close to matching last year’s top earner, retired police chief Rob Davis, but there were some interesting numbers pertaining to high-profile executives and their subordinates.

For this weeks blog, I am continuing the discussion about providing a fixed percentage of the budget towards police. A nickname for this might be, “We Get, You Get.” The name refers to when the aggregate budget grows, then funding for the most critical service a city can provide—police—would grow. (Providing a sewer system is a close second for the most critical service).

The City Council’s agenda has few items to discuss Tuesday, but there is an item pertaining to an annual Greek flag raising ceremony, which could always spiral out of control. Other issues on the agenda include a labor negotiations update, an application for strategic growth grants and the likely approval of streamlining the process to sell the city’s surplus real estate properties.

Don’t expect to see San Jose’s Chuck Reed join the growing list of mayors who have pledged their support to the Freedom to Marry campaign. In an interview with San Jose Inside last week, the mayor said he supports civil unions and domestic partnerships, but he draws the line at marriage. San Jose is the largest city in the country not to have its mayor supporting Freedom to Marry.

The quixotic Occupy movement needs some real leadership now.  While most of us share the concerns of the movement and have marveled at their ability to highlight issues that have really caused our economic pain, the immature and needless violence against people and property is hurting their cause and is ineffective in creating the change they seek.

Prospective Nora Campos challenger Anthony Macias, a 21-year-old student at Chico State, has written that he was impersonated by an individual who posted anti-Jewish comments online. He has not, however, substantiated the claim with specific information.

In a San Jose Inside post on Saturday, Jan. 28, a commenter who identified himself as Anthony Macias wrote “Regarding [Campos’] charges of antisemitism: Those are entirely false. I have never posted anything of the sort on any Yahoo! message board or forum. I think that someone was pretending to be me.”

The city of Oakland hired Teresa Reed to be its new fire chief Wednesday, continuing a trend of former San Jose public employees finding work with nearby municipalities. But Reed’s change in employment, after retiring from the San Jose Fire Department less than two weeks ago, appears to be just one example of why Mayor Chuck Reed (no relation) and other city officials in San Jose are clamoring for pension reform.