San Jose Inside

At the time of this posting, members of the San Jose Restaurant & Entertainment Association are presenting a plan to the San Jose City Council for “community policing” in the downtown entertainment district. The plan, a response to the city’s efforts to impose up to $80,000 in fees on a number of downtown nightclubs, calls for instituting a new version of the “shared employment” model, in which police officers are directly compensated by club owners. It also calls on Chief Rob Davis to use the powers given to him by the urgency ordinance passed in 2006. View the Powerpoint of the San Jose Restaurant & Entertainment Association community policing proposal.

Are Santa Clara County School districts violating the California Voting Rights Act by holding at-large school board elections?  The prima fascia answer is yes. In September, 2008 Madera County Superior Court James Oakley invalidated, in advance, the results of the November 4, 2008 Madera Unified School Board election.

Just-released Department of Justice numbers again show racially disproportionate arrest rates in San Jose.

San Jose has more of one type of arrest than many cities with significantly larger populations. And local police are arresting Latinos at a rate well beyond their respective proportion to the general population. In fact, San Jose has more arrests of Latinos than San Diego and San Francisco has total arrests.

No, this isn’t a four-month-old story on public intoxication, but it may change that story’s ending. It is the story of another charge that also relies heavily on police discretion: the charge of “resisting arrest”—also known as 148(a). And the numbers should re-orient the discussion around the public intoxication issue from being about sobering stations and breathalyzers, to the common dominator of both arrest patterns—police practices at the time of arrest.

Last week, I attended a brainstorming session at City Hall.  The purpose of the gathering was for ideas to help Downtown during the recession. The group included the Downtown Association, land owners, developers, business owners, arts advocates and others. Individuals presented their ideas to the group.  One example was sponsoring an overnight camp-out in Downtown parks by the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts. Another was closing SOFA to cars every Friday allowing for a pedestrian-oriented evening. Other ideas included a 24-hour theater festival, music festivals, murals and free parking. And another was that the city could give away free Downtown land for an architectural design contest.

I thought to myself, “What could we do during a long-term recession that costs the city zero dollars and would actually bring more revenue to the city?” My idea: allow card rooms to locate in Downtown again.

SJI’s free marketplace of ideas & opinions is open for business. In the words of the Academy Award-winning director Cameron Crowe: “Say Anything.”

Residents of District 7 will be the biggest losers if Madison Nguyen is recalled from office. Only one of its past three representatives, George Shirakawa, Jr., was able to serve out his term. Shirakawa’s father died in office. Terry Gregory’s term was cut short by a gift scandal. Now, if Nguyen loses her seat in a recall, District 7 residents will for the third time be penalized with a mid-term transition. As a diverse community with issues to solve and a larger development pipeline than other council districts, the area does not need to bring a new councilmember up to speed.

Allow me to quack poetic about the efforts of a local team of artists from San Jose State University who collaborated behind the scenes on an installation for last year’s 01SJ Global Festival of Art on the Edge in downtown San Jose. Just last month, the project Tantalum Memorial took home first prize at transmediale.09, an international festival for contemporary art and digital culture in Berlin.

Guest Column

By Steve Borkenhagen

Downtown San Jose has suffered for decades from a severe lack of retail activity. We have a number of entertainment venues, museums, restaurants, bars, offices and (more recently) housing, but we have not had a vibrant retail area in the heart of our city since the 1960s. Generations of South Bay residents have never experienced retail excitement in Downtown San Jose. The San Jose Public Market has the potential to change this.

This past Tuesday, members of the San Jose City Council, city executives, and city staff got together to try and arrive at some about possible solutions for San Jose’s budget mess. They found none. According to the Mercury News, some of the “solutions” that were kicked around included keeping libraries open for only three days, closing some park restrooms on weekdays, and raising all kinds of fines and fees for expected city services.

But rather than cutting city departments evenly across the board, why doesn’t the council and the city manager’s office re-examine just what city departments are essential to the workings of a major, modern American city. In other words, should some city departments be eliminated alltogether?

Guest Column

By John Conway

As a founding member of the San Jose Restaurant and Entertainment Association, I want to bring you up to speed on developments regarding the public-private partnership that is evolving to share the fair costs of a new policing model for our downtown Entertainment Zone.

The last we heard from Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins, executive director of the South Bay Labor Council and Working Partnerships, she was on her way to Washington, D.C., to assist President-elect Barack Obama’s transition team. That’s when former SJ vice-mayor (and failed mayoral candidate) Cindy Chavez resurfaced in the political scene, stepping up to represent the labor camp on the 18th Floor of City Hall—as a temporary contractor. But Ellis-Lamkins has been virtually absent at City Hall since then, which has raised the questions of whether she is stepping down for good—or already has.

Captain Sullenberger flies an airplane and Superintendent Skelly leads a school district, both potentially perilous professions. Captain Sully became a hero and Superintendent Skelly became a goat.  What is the difference that led to these two men being characterized so differently by the media?

State Sen. Abel Maldonado, who is playing the lead role in this week’s chapter of the California budget fiasco, laid out a four-item “wish list” Monday, as the governor and Democratic leaders courted his vote.

Last week at the Rules committee, there was a standing- room-only crowd to support our request to use $1.9 million to fund the citywide school crossing guard program on a temporary basis (three fiscal years) out of the $9 million the City receives from the tobacco settlement monies.