San Jose Inside

I attended a luncheon at City Hall yesterday honoring one of San Jose’s most notable citizens: playwright and film maker Luis Valdez. It was a wonderful and inspiring time, as all sessions with Luis and his wife Lupe are. However, it had one other element to it. Supervisor Blanca Alvarado asked Valdez a question that focused on the Plumed Serpent—Quetzalcoatl—and the meaning of art.

At the recent televised priority session, the city council and senior staff discussed the priorities for San Jose which included the Redevelopment Agency (RDA) and the dollars spent on the Strong Neighborhood Initiative (SNI).

First Step in Becoming Autonomous City

Federal Realty Investment Trust continues to add to its tremendously successful Santana Row and bolster is byline, “700 shops, 200 restaurants, 19 spas, 10 hotels, 1 Little Saigon,” by focusing on ethnic consumers after deciding to incorporate a Vietnamese business district to its mix of uses.

After Reviewing the Embarrassing to the Boring, Meetings to be Sheltered from Public View

Just a day after San Jose officials demanded the posting of council members’ calendars online, the vacuous and inane entries dictated that they relent and allow them to be kept private.

“After reviewing the meetings these public officials are taking,” said city attorney Rick Doyle, “we have decided it reflects badly on our city’s image. We will therefore quarantine them until further notice, even if that means losing track of Gallo and Strangis.”

Mayor Reed’s State of the City Speech Only Gig Going

Thousands of starving Hollywood writers have arrived in San Jose looking for work on one of the last gigs going: Mayor Reed’s annual State of the City speech at the 2008 San Jose Community Breakfast.

City Hall Diary

No, I am not referring to the subprime mortgage crisis and the subsequent foreclosures but rather last week’s three-hour city council study session regarding inclusionary housing. Many comments were expressed on how inclusionary housing should be dispersed. What exactly is “inclusionary housing?” Is it for extremely low income (ELI), or for others? No one can argue that San Jose has not done a good job at building affordable housing, especially when you compare San Jose to other municipalities in the Bay Area.

Deportation Promised If Cooperation Not Achieved

A group of nearly 27 American expatriates from San Jose stormed the offices of the People’s Committee Chairman in Ho Chi Minh City on Tuesday and demanded a renaming of a concentrated strip of American businesses that has become known as “Little San Jose.”

The question of raising taxes came up for discussion during a special study session regarding deferred maintenance and infrastructure backlog within the city of San Jose.  The city needs at least $915 million in one-time funding and an additional $45 million for ongoing funding needs if we want to catch up with our projects.

You may be asking yourself how the city came to these numbers and why the city allowed our backlog to become so poor and what exactly is the best method to pay for so many projects?

Police officers are entrusted by the public with an awesome responsibility: the power of life and death. In a city of one million it is inevitable that officers will use weapons in the course of their duties. It’s part of the job and something that is accepted by the citizens whose laws are enforced by the police in their name. Any time an individual officer decides to use any weapon—whether gun, baton, Taser, fists, boots, or karate—that results in death, the act must be just and justified. It seems to me that the best way to assure the public that their law enforcement representatives are making correct decisions in applying lethal force according to the circumstances, and are operating within the law in doing so, is an automatic oversight enquiry by an independent auditor who reports to our elected representatives.

Cite Dignity, Embarrassment, Shame and Stupidity

In a move without precedent in the city’s history, San Jose City Council Members Pyle, Campos, Williams and Chirco, have decided to relinquish their posts rather than suffer the humiliation of professional ridicule, personal disparagement and possible public stoning.

Much to nobody’s surprise, the San Jose Grand Prix is dead. Apparently, it committed suicide. The laughably dubious reason given by the organizers for its demise is that downtown development is happening at such a scorching pace that the property where one of the main grandstands is located is going to be built on and there isn’t another location for the race’s premium seating structure. The Grand Prix directors say that they have always been aware that the construction on the property would happen. If they had done their homework, then they must have also known that it would mean the end of the race. Did they keep this fact to themselves? 

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?

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.”

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.

Complaints of Monopoly Flood in After Latest City Hall Retail Debacle

The U.S. Justice Department is looking into practices by the South Bay Labor Council to determine whether their control of San Jose has violated any antitrust laws in the wake of a failed City Hall retail leasing effort.