San Jose Inside

The Business Journal so much reminds me of that old saying about editors: that they “come in after the battle and shoot the wounded.”  Never was it truer than in their recent editorial about Cirque du Soleil. They have been absent in past years concerning the takeover of City Hall by lobbyists; absent on the unconscionable stealing of our future by the transfer of 1400 acres of industrial tax base to residential housing; absent on any meaningful discussion of the proper support for small businesses in the downtown; and absurdly critical of candidate Chuck Reed on some relatively minor issues in the recent election. Not much of a record.

Last week a friend forwarded an email to me about Stanford Medical School and how they might be looking to relocate their school in order to best serve their students’ needs.  Now I know that they have filed for relocation, but I cannot find much to substantiate that they may be looking outside of Palo Alto for a home. This brings up a few interesting topics. Why couldn’t San Jose be the home for Stanford Medical School?  And in that vein, why couldn’t Santa Clara University or San Jose State open a medical school in our town? Finally, and perhaps most importantly, what major city in the U.S. finds themselves in the same boat as San Jose in that we don’t have a hospital in our city core? I can’t imagine that you won’t find a major hospital in Detroit or Chicago.

City Hall Diary

On Thursday, August 23, 2007, the elected officials of the City of San Jose and Santa Clara County met to talk about five top priorities that affect the city and county. City and county staff attended, including San Jose City Manager Debra Figone and County Executive Pete Kutras.

49ers to Santa Clara, A’s to Fremont, Warriors to Mexican Heritage Plaza

In a very complicated deal consummated late Thursday night, the San Jose City Council has decided that the best use for the beleaguered Mexican Heritage Plaza is to turn it into a sporting facility designed and equipped to house last year’s NBA Cinderella team, the Golden State Warriors.

While I was glad to see the back of the last mayor and council, I am beginning to worry about the effects of the old guard members on the new council. Why is it that decisions that seem obvious to the rest of us require months of delays and hundreds of thousands of dollars spent on consultants? And while, like the rest of the country, our infrastructure is crumbling, why does the Redevelopment Agency want to spend nearly a million bucks to bring a circus downtown? To top it all off, why has the council voted unanimously to unreasonably abridge the public’s freedom to speak in public meetings and limit the citizens’ ability to “petition the government for a redress of grievances” as per the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution?

You really wonder how many times the San Jose Business Journal (SJBJ) will blunder into a story, cite a few facts, and then make sweeping comments that stand history, if not common sense, on its head.  The paper did it again with its recent editorial on the binding arbitration award to the Firefighters Union. Whether it’s the citizens’ General Plan or the recent political turmoil at City Hall, the SJBJ displays a Bushian knowledge of local history that is frightening.

OK, so I did it, I finally did it, though maybe not for the right reasons. Nonetheless, I now have an internet profile for a dating website. Ugh! Over the weekend, I decided to both appease my mother and try something that people have been telling me to do for years.

I was invited to attend the musical “Leader of the Pack” performed by the local Children’s Musical Theater (CMT) in the San Jose Civic Auditorium. Over the past year, I have attended a few of CMT’s productions. What specifically caught my eye during “Leader of the Pack” was a young girl who performed in a wheelchair. At first I thought the wheelchair might be part of the story, but I soon realized that she was a cast member who was disabled. She still participated with limited body movement and singing.

Council Decides Against “Probably Won’t Have Violence Perpetrated Against You” Big City

The San Jose City Council has decided to get proactive over the city’s probable loss of its coveted “Safest Big City” title by choosing the most marketable name left in the field of monikers: “Relatively Safe Big City in America.”

The turmoil in the economy caused by the subprime lending debacle is far from over. The stock markets may be somewhat stabilized temporarily by the intervention of European and Japanese central banks along with the U.S. Federal Reserve pumping in billions of dollars borrowed from the Chinese, but the overvalued real estate markets will most certainly take a tumble as a result of bad loans and a tighter fist in the banking industry as a whole. There is still a subprime lender shakeout to come as many are in deep trouble due to “lack of liquidity,” i.e., there are no buyers funneling cash through their complicated systems. To add to their problems, it was reported yesterday that the big banks have stopped institutional lending against subprime portfolios.

Two stories—one local and one national—do much to define the political money chase in the electoral process nowadays. Nationally, the proliferation of “independent committees” is about to sink the process in a sea of dollars and special interest “juice.” The so-called “Swift Boat” attacks on John Kerry in 2004 that came from such a committee that raised $25 million from many dubious sources, was fatal to his chances. They managed to turn a decorated war hero into a wimp and shirker. After the election, the Federal Elections Commission fined this committee $300,000. Big deal! The dirty job was done; the election was won.

Knowing San Jose as well as I do, I sometimes forget how people who move here view this town. My friend just moved back to San Jose after living in Hawaii for eight years, started working at a restaurant downtown, and really is starting to get to know the area well. So it was interesting when she started commenting on and questioning the status of downtown San Jose.

City Hall Diary

One issue that everyone who is paying attention to San Jose politics agrees with is that the City of San Jose’s General Plan is outdated and is in need of revamping. 

At the August 7 city council meeting, all of Mayor Reed’s recommendations for the General Plan Update Task Force (which included Councilmembers Liccardo and Chirco and me) were supported by the council. The task force is a diverse group of people representing environmentalists, developers, unions and community members, among others.

Feared to Be in the Hands of Gadflies and Former Politicians and in Denny’s Chili

According to a scathing report from San Jose’s Government Accountability Office (GAO), the city has lost track of approximately 190,000 Keys to the City.

The Key to the City is an award used by municipalities in which an ornamental key is given to honor esteemed visitors, local residents, or organizations of note in a ceremonial presentation. The award carries no formal privileges or distinctions but symbolizes honor, power and the ability to break certain rules without fear of humiliation or prosecution. Former Mayor Gonzales is rumored to have hundreds of them.

California Secretary of State Debra Bowen’s decision to decertify electronic voting machines manufactured by Sequoia and Diebold is a welcome one. There are serious security concerns associated with these machines that the manufacturers have not addressed, forcing Bowen to take this action. Among other things, it has been demonstrated that the machines can easily be hacked, employees of the manufacturers can gain access to the machines, and they provide no paper trail for each voter for a hand count in case of breakdown.