San Jose Inside

Municipal whistle-blowers—and political shysters—may no longer be protected by anonymity, if a proposal by the city’s Elections Commission is approved. The proposal suggests that all written complaints of improprieties be signed before they are submitted to a law firm for investigation, and that callers to the anonymous tip hotline state their precise relationship to the person they are accusing.

The proposal was made in response to a series of allegations surrounding former mayor Tom McEnery, which ultimately were found to have no merit.

Even though my advocacy for school uniforms caused a major career snag when I was a middle school principal in Moreland School District nearly 15 years ago, I am still a strong and passionate proponent.  Placing an emphasis on the proper tone for learning while reducing discipline problems are two outcomes of an effective uniform policy. I believe we need a renewed county conversation about the efficacy of school uniforms, particularly for our students in middle school

San Jose’s population is officially 1,006,892! 

1,006,892—confirmed by the State Department of Finance on April 30th of this year. I thought it would be interesting to share how San Jose has grown since 1950. Take a look:

This is the Sept. 5-6 edition of San Jose Inside’s open forum, where users generate the topics of discussion. What’s on your mind?

A report commissioned by San Jose’s Office of Economic Development claims that relocating the Oakland A’s to San Jose would add $130 million to the local economy and create as many 2,100 jobs, almost 1,000 of them new jobs. The anticipated economic benefit to the city is expected to approach $3 billion over the next thirty years. Beneficiaries of the move would include local schools, which can expect to see as much as $842,000 per year from it, and Santa Clara County, which would get $948,000 because of a profit sharing agreement with the city in redevelopment areas.

San Jose’s favorite Evangelical leader, Larry Pegram, chose the biggest political event of the season to come out last week. (No, not like that.) At the annual Chamber of Commerce Political Action Committee (COMPAC) picnic, Pegram, who was a vociferous leader on the campaign to ban gay marriage in California last year, was spotted wearing a yellow ribbon, flagging him as a candidate. When asked what office he was seeking, the president of the Values Advocacy Council confirmed that he is eyeing Congress in 2010.

The Toyota Corporation recently announced that the NUMMI Plant in Fremont will be closed next March.  Last week, a number of NUMMI workers and a handful of politicians held a rally outside of Senator Dianne Feinstein’s San Francisco office to protest the decision to close down the plan

Ted Kennedy is dead.

Even after the funeral obsequies, how strange it is to hear; how jarring to read. Like all people, ordinary ones or acclaimed historians, I have been reviewing my connection to him and to the Kennedy family.

The San Jose City Council signed off Tuesday on a Grand Jury Report detailing how two municipal golf courses have ended up in a $1.9 million sand trap. Los Lagos and Rancho del Pueblo, two of the three public courses owned by the City of San Jose, have been draining $800,000 per year out of the General Fund because of extensive debt.

We are living in extraordinary times. Unemployment nationally is approaching 10 percent, more troops are being requested in the war in Afghanistan, the Lion of the Senate died, and was referred to by his Republican colleagues as the best legislator in history, and the SF Giants are near a playoff berth.

Another testament to this astonishing era is the special session of the California legislature recently called by Gov. Schwarzenegger to reshape education as we have known it.

Last week, I chose to attend both outreach meetings regarding the issue of retirement board governance, so I could hear concerns first- hand instead of reading a staff report. The possibility of changing the makeup of the current retirement board was presented by the consultant. The biggest change, if adopted, would be to remove city councilmembers from the board and add “independent” board members with a finance background.

Since 99.95 percent of city residents did not attend the meetings I thought I would share a synopsis of the comments that were made by attendees

It’s San Jose Inside’s weekend-long open forum, where any comment on any topic is welcome. What’s on your mind?

If there is one word to describe the theme of this year’s San Jose Mariachi and Mexican Heritage Festival, it has to be “connectivity,” and not just because the festival has landed T-Mobile as its title sponsor. At this week’s press conference for the lead-up to the festival that takes place Sept. 20-27, the word “connection” and its derivatives were uttered multiple times by all three participants: festival CEO Marcela Davison Aviles, artistic director Linda Ronstadt and headline performer for the Sept. 25 concert, Joan Baez.

Representatives of the city’s police, firefighters, and city workers unions and retirees are up in arms over plans to restructure the boards that oversee their pensions. Their pension funds lost almost one-quarter of their value in the recent stock market plummet, leaving them with $3.2 billion. Now the city is planning to replace its representatives on the oversight board with council-appointed delegates who do not work for the city or do business with it.

If it wasn’t for Ted Kennedy, I’d probably be unemployed now. You see, when I was in college I wanted to be a journalist. Unfortunately and tragically, that’s not a place these days for those looking for job security. Like a scene from Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life, I can see my guardian angel pointing to a cubicle in some half-filled newsroom as the place I would have toiled if Kennedy had never lived.