San Jose Inside

As the sun came up revealing all the burned out people and campfires, Jefferson Airplane played Wooden Ships. A serape-skirted woman with long blond hair played the flute in the campsite next to ours. The sun rose and everyone collectively woke up. The Hog Farm was spread out on the knoll above us serving a breakfast of brown rice and vegetables. We were all exhausted but it wasn’t that different than any other camping trip we’d gone on. Just a whole lot more people and a lot better music.

Well we’re a day late and a dollar short. The weather’s too nice here in sunny San Jose to stay inside and post, so we recommend you get out and enjoy the sunshine. Take a walk, ride a bike, hike a mountain, visit a park or head to the beach. If there’s anything on your mind on any subject that you’d like to share with fellow San Joseans, though, please share it here.

On a recent Friday afternoon, 93-year-old Judge Paul Teilh sat in his office the fourth floor of Santa Clara County’s Hall of Justice building, with his head buried in his hands. The office was almost empty, and his desk was covered with brownies, cake, sprinkled doughnuts, and several gifts. Throughout the day, several people passed through his office wishing him farewell, believing it would be his last day on the bench. However, Teilh was not ready to leave.

Lost in the ongoing debate for a national health care system are questions of personal responsibility. If we as a nation accept and require that everyone should receive health care services, shouldn’t there be some minimal standards of responsibility to help the program along?

County Assessor Larry Stone may be getting bored with waiting for the baseball commissioner to approve an A’s move, so he’s thinking up new ideas. One popped out of his lips at the mayor’s annual breakfast at the San Jose Jazz Festival, of which Stone is honorary chair. Let’s build a statue to commemorate the Doobie Brothers in San Jose, their hometown, Stone proposed. Certainly other cities have celebrated their popular musicians. Austin has a Stevie Ray Vaughn statue and Seattle honored Jimi Hendrix with the Experience Music Project.

The San Jose City Council passed a series of resolutions on the topic of campaign contributions yesterday. The most controversial vote revolved around a cap on so-called “soft money”—contributions by individuals or special interest groups that act independently to persuade voters to support one candidate or another. The cap, set at $250, was ruled unconstitutional in federal court in 2006 as a violation of free speech, but this ruling was later overturned on a technicality. The city voted to extend the cap by a vote of 6 to 5.

The son of a former tennis partner of mine called and left a frantic message on my phone last week. I called him back the next morning to find out what he wanted. Like so many others before him he was trying to get my relatively informed advice about where to put his child in school. He recently moved into the San Jose Unified District.

Of course, I understood the urgency in his voice. This is one of the most important decisions a parent can make. Most times the decision is made due to geographic boundaries solely, and the parents have little voice. He asked if I knew any tricks of the trade to get his son into a school that’s not in his immediate area.

The City of San Jose closed a $84 million dollar budget shortfall for the 2009-2010 fiscal year, which resulted in 13 city employees being laid off. However, these 13 former employees are first in line for job openings at the City should they become available. Also as a result of the balanced budget, 250 city employees moved into different departments and/or positions based on their seniority. For those 250 people involved in the “bumping,” it is a intricate process that is all about years or months of service that I will attempt to explain. Bumping is governed by the Civil Service Rules.

It’s Saturday, Aug. 8, 2009. This is San Jose Inside’s weekly open forum. What’s on your mind?

Guest column by Jack Wimberly
Neighborhood associations typically come with a uniqueness all their own but most share a common thread of yards and single-family dwellings, with a dash of charm.  Downtown San Jose, an area playing host to many domiciles, lacks that thread on a sizeable scale.  Her neighborhoods consist of busy thoroughfares, mass transportation, and transients—transient workers, transient travelers and transient residents.

Was Cesar Chavez a racist?  No, I don’t think so.  But today, people of every political stripe and ethnicity are labeled “racists” for espousing some of the same attitudes towards immigration and immigration law as Cesar Chavez did.

Traffic may be down considerably at Mineta San Jose International Airport, but that hasn’t affected its quality of service. The $1.3 billion renovation and modernization project has earned Mineta the title of Airport of the Year for 2008.

Figures just released by the Sacramento Bee calculate how much local counties, cities, and redevelopment agencies across the state will be forced to pay to cover the $3.7 billion that the state needs to balance its own budget. In Santa Clara County, that sum comes to $185,253,807.

A watershed moment in an acrimonious battle between local labor and business occured Tuesday when the San Jose City Council reversed its vote to rebid the construction of the Educational Park Library and awarded the contract to low bidder Barry Swenson Builder.
The vote was 6 to 5, with union-aligned councilmembers Nora Campos, Kansen Chu, Ash Kalra, Madison Nguyen and Nancy Pyle opposed.

The word equity comes from the Latin root aequus, meaning fair. Equity and fairness should be the foremost constructs when it comes to students and public schools. Lately, I have been pondering whether there is a real or perceived Machiavellian plot to create a rulebook for Charter schools that is inequitable toward public schools and their districts. What is good for Charters should also be good for district schools and vice versa. I am getting increasingly suspicious and concerned.