San Jose Inside

Will Manage Child Labor Production

A notorious rebel group controlling several diamond mines in the gem-rich region of Sierra Leone has made a unique decision to hire former Santa Clara County school chief Colleen Wilcox to run the adolescent stone production unit of the diamond mines.

I was going to write about something completely different this week but my attention was caught by the incident this past weekend where two teenaged boys (16 and 17) were arrested for attacking a high school dance and a young woman’s sixteenth birthday party with homemade chemical bombs. Fortunately, it appears that there were no injuries or damage at the high school, but there easily could have been. However, the bomb tossed into the birthday party exploded in the birthday girl’s face, burning her skin and eyes. She and two of her friends were briefly hospitalized.  I can’t get the image of the peaceful and fun once-in-a-lifetime birthday party celebration disrupted by fright and injury out of my mind. What compelled these boys to do such a horrible thing?

A simple fact that is often forgotten—though it should not be so—is that we have the finest police department in the nation. Such things do not just happen. We have worked hard to keep that description. Chief Rob Davis has continued a tradition of excellence and community relations that began with Joe McNamara in the seventies. This is a succession of competence that needs to be recognized.

When I heard that there were some human cadavers downtown at the Tech Museum, I knew this was something I had to see. After I explained the Body Worlds 2 exhibition to friends, some of them thought it sounded interesting, while others looked at me like I just told them I was going on a tour of the local morgue. In fact, I wasn’t sure if they were that far off.

City Hall Diary

Early Saturday morning, October 6, I hosted a community meeting titled “Preserving Our Historic Neighborhoods: How to make your Neighborhood a Conservation Area.”

Many residents have been vocal about preserving not just their individual homes, but their entire neighborhoods as historic structures and/or areas.  Therefore, the purpose of the forum was to empower and inform residents by giving them options for maintaining their neighborhoods’ character and ambiance.

Politicians Will Take the Place of Mentally Ill

Just hours after the student body of Westmont High School announced that the theme of their annual Halloween haunted house would be the mentally ill, the National Alliance of Mental Health Professionals condemned the attraction as “insensitive” and put enough pressure on the school’s administration to force them to change it.

On Saturday morning, a public workshop will be held at City Hall to help determine what revisions need to be made to the city’s general plan for growth. An Envision San Jose 2040 Task Force has been assembled to review the plan and they are seeking public input to assist them in setting the agenda. Since many of us will find it difficult to attend the meeting on Saturday, I thought we might give our bloggers an opportunity to express their views on the matter here on San Jose Inside where they can be seen by the denizens of City Hall.

I received a good deal of feedback on my blog on the Downtown Association (DTA) last week. Most people were surprised at the lobbying efforts of “their” executive director in favor of clubs, many of those venues being very large and troublesome. Several people were, frankly, astonished. They held the simple, undeniable belief that unless everyone felt comfortable downtown during the evening hours, then the current policy was an immense failure. They echoed the established fact that our garages are unfriendly, unsafe and unusable to the vast majority of our citizens visiting downtown late or staying late.

It has become a tradition with me to go with my friends to see the Blue Angels fly over San Francisco at the pinnacle of Fleet Week. This year I stood on a rooftop taking in the spectacular views of the Golden Gate Bridge and the city itself. The sight of the Blue Angels flying above me never seems to get old. The maneuvers, the speed and the beauty of these planes are really something to marvel at.

City Hall Diary

A few months ago I wrote about the chronic problem of speeding in San Jose. My concern about this problem peaked when two parents were killed recently by a speeding driver while walking on Graystone Lane in Almaden Valley. At that time, I proposed that the City of San Jose review its traffic calming policy in an effort to update it so that it reflects the needs of residents today.  For example, the current policy refers to using NASCOP (a photo radar device) that would take pictures of drivers in their cars as they sped by. Recently, NASCOP was ruled illegal by state courts, leaving a hole in our current policy.

San Jose Officials Livid: We Stole It Fair and Square

With the coming out party for new UCSC Chancellor George Blumenthal at the San Jose Museum of Art last week came the disturbing announcement that he was claiming the title “Capital of Silicon Valley” for his granola-munching campus by the coast.

After my last column on the Mexican Heritage Plaza (MHP) a few months ago, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I had missed something and things didn’t add up to some of the conclusions I reached at the time. I spent what time I could spare over the summer searching and researching the matter over the Internet and my hunches were confirmed by what I found.

Two questions are now biting at the heels of the Downtown Association and its Executive Director Scott Knies: namely, just who do they represent and what do they stand for at this critical time in downtown’s evolution? These are questions that must be answered. Although they certainly make an effort lobbying for light rail platforms and bus routes in a constant and pressing manner, on the more significant issues of downtown’s character and direction, they are in a dubious and contradictory position. Knies is a good man with a nagging identity problem. The top-heavy Downtown Association is an enigma at best. At worst, they are a lobbying arm for nightclubs and entertainment promoters. A choice is now necessary. Time is running out for them and the future of downtown.

Sometimes when you grow up in an area as beautiful as the Bay Area, there are many things that are right under our noses that we don’t notice.  Maybe there are so many things to do that we don’t get a chance to uncover the gems that can be found in San Jose and the surrounding cities. 

City Hall Diary

At the evening meeting last Tuesday night (Sept. 25), the San Jose City Council discussed prevailing wage and volunteers and how this relates to city jobs for parks.

I am sure most of you have volunteered your time at some point, whether in your children’s school, as a coach or to pick up trash, etc. Most of you did so because it made you feel good to do something that benefits something larger than yourself.