San Jose Inside

The City Council will finalize a decision Tuesday for a pension reform ballot measure. This is the question that will likely be put to voters on June 5: “To protect essential services: neighborhood police patrols, fire stations, libraries, community centers, streets and parks, shall the Charter be amended to reform retirement benefits of City employees and retirees by: increasing employees’ contributions; establishing a voluntary reduced pension plan for current employees and pension cost and benefit limitations for new employees; reforming disability retirements to prevent abuses; temporarily suspending retiree COLAs during emergency; and requiring voter approval for increases in future pension benefits?”

As conservatives and religious groups battle President Obama on his healthcare plan, and Rush Limbaugh continues to call a Georgetown law student a “slut” and “prostitute” because of her advocacy for access to birth control, local leaders are speaking out against what they see as a conservative, religious-based attack on women’s health.

Why are there so few John Sobratos? In one of the richest areas of the world, there is a dearth of giving among the wealthiest in our midst. Many of the social problems we currently suffer could be alleviated by smart programs and a relatively small commitment from the people who have benefited the most from American opportunity.

San Jose City Hall’s celebrity falcons Clara and Esteban Colbert celebrated the dropping of their second egg of the season around 8:30am Wednesday morning. Clara started her sixth nesting season Saturday with the dropping of her first egg. Glenn Stewart, biologist and coordinator of UC Santa Cruz’s Predatory Bird Research Group, expects each egg to drop in 56-hour intervals until Clara and Esteban have a nest of three or four. Clara has had a series of lovers since she first built her nest on the 18th level of City Hall in 2007.

In an attempt to box in Mayor Chuck Reed on his worst-case scenario of the city’s pension crisis, a complaint was filed with the SEC on Monday on behalf of three unions. The complaint claims Reed didn’t disclose pertinent information on the pension crisis in forms filed with the SEC and misled investors who helped the city issue $435 million in bonds last year.

Some people can’t wait to start campaigning. Case in point: Leslie Reynolds, a District 10 City Council candidate in San Jose. On a hot summer day last August, Reynolds erected a booth at the “Grande-licious” event in Almaden put on by 95120 Magazine. Her booth included a banner declaring her intention to run for Nancy Pyle’s termed-out seat in 2012 as well as free glasses of lemonade featuring her campaign logo. (See Facebook for photos of the good family fun.) A couple months later, Reynolds says a friend of her son designed her sleek campaign website pro-bono. While Reynolds, a San Jose Unified school board member, says she has tried to comply with city rules by not accepting contributions until Dec. 9, that might not matter.

Dr. Xavier De La Torre will be officially appointed Mar. 7 as the Superintendent of Schools in Santa Clara County, replacing retiring Superintendent Dr. Charles Weis. The announcement was made simultaneously to the leadership teams at the Santa Clara County Office of Education and the Socorro Independent School District in El Paso, Texas, where Dr. De La Torre is superintendent. As was made clear to him during several interviews by the SCCOE Board of Trustees, Dr. De La Torre understands the “fierce urgency of now” relative to increasing achievement for all students.

A four-month manhunt ended Saturday with the arrest of Steve Ruiz, who is suspected of killing fellow Hells Angels motorcycle club member Steve Tausan at a funeral during October of last year. Ruiz will reportedly be charged with homicide Wednesday.

I had some calls last week on the topic of pensions and the June ballot measure. Several people were under the impression that San Jose will eliminate pensions altogether, which is not the case. Other callers wanted to replace the current system with a 401K-type benefit. I think there are other options to pension reform that would save San Jose money. For one thing, we should eliminate spending on all items not in the City Charter.

A 9-year-old boy in Washington, described as frightened and crying, sat in front of a judge in juvenile court waiting to see if he would be granted bail for a charge of assault with a deadly weapon. The boy found a gun at his mother’s house, put it in his backpack and took it to school. When he put his backpack down, the gun went off, critically wounding an 8-year-old girl. This comes from a brief Associated Press article in a local paper. There are questions that went through my mind about this story: How is a nine-year-old competent to stand trial? And, Washington State grants bail for kids? Thee state of California doesn’t do that–isn’t bail to make sure someone shows up for court? And why did he bring the gun to school?

Recently, a SJI columnist who also is a city councilmember suggested that libraries should be staffed with volunteers to avoid closure and increase hours of operation. I applaud this outside the box type of thinking, but why stop at libraries?

Two of San Jose City Hall’s most prominent political figures are causing quite a dustup in Milpitas. The mayor’s budget director, Armando Gomez, also a Milpitas councilmember, has been battling behind the scenes with Chuck Reed’s longtime political consultant, Vic Ajlouny. As recent as four years ago, the two men sat in on Reed’s senior staff meetings. While maintaining decorum in Silicon Valley’s capital, the political paintball has busted loose a couple exits up the freeway.

Earlier this month, I attended my fourth California Democratic Party Convention as an elected delegate to the State Central Committee (or DSCC). If I tried to explain how CDP functions, I’d blow my word limit, and you’d still be confused. At its core, the DSCC exists to set a platform for California Democrats and endorse candidates for state and federal offices. Primary endorsement contests generally amount to two formerly cordial Democrats nitpicking their respective records to death.

The Santa Clara County Board of Education is nearing completion of its most important statutory responsibility: the hiring of a new county superintendent of schools. The new county superintendent must be willing to encourage the utmost in school district transparency relative to the dollars expended, the test results, the grades, etc. Without transparency, public education can continue to obfuscate rather than improve.

Last week, the council discussed a poll of residents/likely voters regarding their views about tax increases. The majority of the Council appears to be considering a June ballot measure for a tax increase. Since the poll respondents are anonymous and nearly everyone on this blog is anonymous, I thought I would ask the question: Which tax do you want? How much of it?