San Jose Inside

It’s incredible—I have been writing this weekly column for SJI for two years this week. I went back to my first-ever post after my election to the County School Board on Nov. 4, 2008. Here’s my lead: “ California spends a lot of money on education—more than $65 billion from all funding sources in 2007-08 for K-12 education. Yet nearly 40 percent of Latino and African-American youth drop out of school prior to high school graduation… How disdainful is this in the land of the wealthiest and most educated people on the planet?”

I wrote that while attending the December 2008 California School Boards Association conference in San Diego. Perhaps I underestimated our communal stupidity.

It is that time of year again, with lobbyists circling City Hall in preparation for the General Plan hearings.

With the leadership of Mayor Reed, modifications to our General Plan (GP) have been reduced to once a year, for the most part. At the GP hearings, applicants make their case as to why current land-use designations should be changed to allow for the applicant to build what they want, regardless of how the land is currently zoned.

A visit to the website fordandbonilla.com is not as entertaining as it once was. For a few weeks this summer, visitors to the site were redirected to a cell-phone video capturing a heated exchange between San Jose political consultant Ryan Ford and council candidate Aaron Resendez, who was then running against Xavier Campos, the brother of Ford’s then-boss, Nora Campos. (Whew!)

The vid was blurry and the sound was bad, and it would have made no sense to any potential client shopping for services from Ford and his partner, Rolando Bonilla. But local insiders got a kick out of it—that was the point. The redirect was a prank pulled by another political consultant, Jay Rosenthal, who had registered the URL when he found out Ford and Bonilla were launching their enterprise.

Pat Dando announced that she will be leaving the San Jose Silicon Valley Chamber of Commerce after a six-year stint as head of the local group. “It’s time for a new chapter for me, personally and professionally,” she explained. She added that she wanted to wait until the elections were over before announcing her decision.

San Jose City Manager Debra Figone has not yet made a decision as to who will be the city’s next police chief. As the evaluation process goes on, more and more positive stories are coming out about acting chief Chris Moore.

“A rising tide lifts all boats” said Pres. Kennedy.  Will Governor-elect Jerry Brown be the leader that raises the tide for every California student from preschool to college commencement? After all, California—specifically Silicon Valley—was the economic engine that drove the nation’s economy just a few decades ago. Our declining high school graduation rate and achievement gap threaten our very economic and societal survival.

The Public Safety, Finance And Strategic Support Committee took up the topic of unnecessary force in conjunction with drunk-in-public arrests. The police department, along with the city auditor, city manager and Independent Police Auditor, spent approximately 500 hours going through paper to pull out data. Inherently, a paper system is cumbersome and takes time to extrapolate data. Although we have a records management system, it is antiquated and unable to make queries that a modern system would, and it was not set up to manage certain historic data. This issue is indicative of our city’s lack of investment in information technology. 

Mayor Chuck Reed has nominated Madison Nguyen to be vice mayor, three weeks after she won a surprisingly close race to hold onto her District 7 council seat. The move seems to confirm a shift of loyalties for Nguyen, a onetime ally of the South Bay Labor Council. She was the swing vote in the council’s decision to put Measures V and W on the ballot—a move SBLC vehemently opposed.

Longtime local pol-turned-mass-transit-fanboy Rod Diridon suddenly has a fight on his hands. His pet project, the California High Speed Rail Authority, has come under attack from U.S. Rep. Jerry Lewis, soon-to-be head of the House Appropriations Committee. It’s not that Lewis doesn’t like trains—this is purely political gamesmanship.

I was correctly quoted by Internal Affairs in the Sunday Merc as saying “we did look like clowns.” I probably should have said our Nov. 17 SCC Office of Education Board meeting was more like bad Kubuki theater, a little dance and a lot of misplaced drama.

Last Thursday, the council had a study session for San Jose’s 2010-2011 budget. The public meeting received little media attention. Perhaps, since the holidays are near, we only want to hear the good news…and next years budget is far from good. There is no dispute on the data—just the direction we shall choose to balance the budget. 

Like most people paying attention to the District 7 council race, Fly was surprised that the runoff between councilmember Madison Nguyen and Republican furniture-store owner Minh Duong ended up being a squeaker. After the revelations about the Chamber-endorsed Duong’s pile of bad debts and financial screwups, Fly was expecting that District 7 residents would re-elect the increasingly independent Nguyen by a landslide. Not so.

Every now and again the Mercury News editorial board hits a home run. Shortly after the election, the Merc issued a strong and thorough editorial about the city’s problems as they relate to city employees and their unions. “It’s time for San Jose city employees and union leaders to drop the ‘scapegoat’ label. It’s wearing thin, and nobody outside of union circles is buying it.”

Julie Constant, the wife of San Jose City Councilmember Pete Constant, officially entered the realm of local politics when she won a spot on the Campbell Union School District Board earlier this month. And already Fly is hearing rumblings that this could be a sign that the mother of five has aspirations for the District 1 seat that is now occupied by her husband’s newly slender derrière.

Educational policy at times ticks like a metronome, however today the stakes are so vitally high for the efficacy of our country and its people that the pendulum can never swing back. We must be on a collective mission to increase rigor and relevance into the curriculum for each and every child, irrespective of the color of their skin.