San Jose Inside

It is common practice for superintendents in counties with district budgets over $100 million dollars to receive well over $200,000 in salary. The position of superintendent is incredibly complex, especially under the current economic conditions. So, if I am at all responsible for the Santa Clara County school board’s negative grade in “Who’s Up & Down” in Sunday’s Internal Affairs column in the Mercury News, I am deeply sorry. But, my quote in reporter Sharon Noguchi’s article last Thursday, which detailed the salary for new county Superintendent Xavier De La Torre, was taken completely out of the context intended.

Although the City does a good job posting documents on its website regarding proposals and correspondence from both sides, I believe many others would rather see the interaction of union officials and city staff in real time. Thus, on Wednesday, I am asking the Rules Committee to support my recommendation to have the city and unions talk about this issue with the hope that both parties will agree to move forward and allow these meetings to be public.

Chuck Reed released his 2012-13 budget plan Friday, and for the first time in his six years as mayor he finally has the opposite of a budget shortfall. City staff says there is a $10 million surplus for the next fiscal year, which begins July 1, and with that money the mayor said in a statement that he wants to open four libraries and a community center, allocate $2 million to gang prevention programs, and invest in street repairs.

The public relations war we’ve all been waiting for is finally here. In a recent article, New York Daily News columnist Bill Madden suggested that MLB was unlikely to grant the Oakland A’s permission to move to San Jose. Baseball officials responded by saying no decision had been made. Then the A’s and San Francisco Giants sparred with competing statements about who had rights to the South Bay territory.

Jim Beall made an official announcement social media-style Thursday, telling all of his Facebook friends that he will, in fact, be running for the State Senate’s 15th District seat.

In a recent civil case, a San Jose police officer was found liable for using excessive force on Danny Piña, who was misidentified as a gang member. Piña was wearing a red shirt and police stopped him for riding a bike with a missing headlamp. The jury found that the officer, Allan De La Cruz, used excessive force when he broke Piña’s nose and dislocated his shoulder. I have a 16-year-old son who had a similar experience of being misidentified by police, based on what he looks like and there being a gang presence in the neighborhood.

Mayor Chuck Reed called an audit requested by local state legislators “politically motivated.” He is correct. But calling a fake “fiscal emergency,” exaggerating the size of the problem and calling on voters to pass a pension reform ballot measure that most attorneys, including myself, believe won’t stand a court challenge is also “politically motivated.”

A campaign fundraiser flyer for San Jose’s District 10 City Council candidate Edesa Bitbadal made its way on to The Daily Fetch website this week, and an unexpected name was at the top of the guest list: Gonzo! That’s right, former San Jose Mayor Ron Gonzales.

Just when the San Pedro Market in San Jose looks poised to take off and become a credible attraction downtown, the market’s manager has called it quits. Steve Borkenhagen left his role as the head of the wine bar/barber shop/restaurant complex last week to go back and run his family’s restaurant, Eulipia, on South First Street.

This new falcon at City Hall has got some nerve. They call him Fernando El Cohete. We here at San Jose Inside call him a home-wrecking lout. El Cohete (“The Rocket” in Spanish) appeared over the weekend, and a Mercury News report suggests that he engaged long-time City Hall falcon stud Esteban Colbert in “aerial combat.” Señor Colbert has been missing since Sunday.

With the filing deadline for the June primary coming up on Friday, I thought we’d take a closer look at the 2011 redistricting process that created the current San José City Council districts. It was the second consecutive redistricting process that saw very few changes to the geography of San Jose’s political map. But you can’t blame them for not taking bolder steps. The City Charter left the commissioners only a few months to finish their work. Meanwhile, they were under siege from residents who’d prefer that nothing ever change. Ever.

“Love is in the air,” Rev. Nancy Palmer Jones declared in her opening remarks for the invocation of Tuesday’s City Council meeting. Not long after that, everyone proceeded to attack one another. The public comments portion of the council meeting featured a passionate cast of characters speaking for or against the June retirement benefits reform ballot, which passed by an 8-3 vote.

Last month, public education in this country continued to slip into the abyss. New York City became the epicenter of school reform and the second major U.S. city—Los Angeles Times published individual teacher scores last school year—to implement a public dissemination of individual teacher value-added scores. Value-added scores are a teacher’s rating predicated on the progress each of their elementary or middle school students makes on standardized tests in one school year.

Putting a pension reform measure on the June ballot is critical to restoring the fiscal well-being of our city. Whether the projection of future annual pension costs are $300 million, $400 million or $650 million, we know for a fact that these costs have more than tripled in just ten years, going from $73 million in Fiscal Year 2001-2002 to $245 million this year. Please join me in supporting the retirement reform measure on today’s council agenda.

The stove runs hot in the spring, and a fresh batch of baseball rumors about the Oakland A’s potential move to San Jose came pouring in this past weekend. Bill Madden, of the New York Daily News, tipped the first domino Saturday by reporting writing that MLB Commissioner Bud Selig will uphold the San Francisco Giant’s territorial claims over the South Bay, and prevent the Oakland A’s from relocating to San Jose. Henry Schulman, of the San Francisco Chronicle, begged to differ.