San Jose Inside

The San Jose City Council voted unanimously to end free downtown parking in city garages and impose a $5 charge after 10 p.m. Thursday through Saturday nights from July 1. This comes in the wake of the widespread use and abuse of the garages for partying and mayhem at night as we have been discussing here on SJI. The projected $400,000 of revenue raised by this fee will be used to pay for city parking garage policing and clean-up.

City Hall Diary

As I have mentioned before in a few of my posts, my parents taught me the importance of saving my money and using it prudently at a very young age. I think my parents taught me well; they practiced what they preached and I learned by example.

The San Jose City Council voted on Tuesday to hire two consultants for the Mexican Heritage Corporation (MHC) at a cost to the taxpayers of $100,000, compounding the errors in judgment they have already made on this issue. One of the consultants will be hired to “help” the MHC develop a business plan and fundraising capabilities. The other will take the pulse of the community and advise the MHC on how better to serve the public.

Research Agency Says Medical Waste Valuable

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) recently announced its plans to build a $1 billion state-of-the-art research facility in San Jose after the city’s Guadalupe landfill was identified as the nation’s tenth largest repository for untreated medical waste.

City Hall Diary

San Jose has opportunities to build tall buildings in North San Jose and create large parks at the same time.  I am hopeful that we will take advantage of these opportunities so that we can create great places and huge parks.

Currently in North San Jose, we are in the midst of a “build up” for commercial office and transit village housing. I support this for many reasons: jobs, tax base, light rail, and the Guadalupe River Park Trail, among others.  Industry leads housing development; thus, I believe we should move forward with land use incrementally.

Do you remember getting an allowance as a kid? I do and it wasn’t very much, so I had to learn to manage my money very carefully. My chores were visible to my parents and they judged me on my performance. They could clearly see if I was not performing up to par.  In addition, my parents would oversee how I spent my money. They wanted to make sure I was not wasting it and that I spent it prudently. 

When I was a child, my family and I would patronize the downtown. I fondly remember attending shows at the Center for the Performing Arts and the San Jose Symphony. Like many families, we would walk to Original Joes after the shows.

The arts act like candles for the downtown, shedding light on the wonderful museums, restaurants and other amenities that draw people out of their homes and to the city center.  Whether it’s theater or music, the arts brings people to the downtown core. Without the arts, our downtown would have ceased to exist.

Do you remember your 8th grade graduation? I do. I graduated from Hoover Middle School in 1984 at the Municipal Rose Garden Park in the historic Rose Garden neighborhood. I remember the day perfectly. I wore my best collared shirt with slacks and sported a “bowl-style” haircut.  The sun was shining, the smell of roses lingered in the air, and the freshly-mowed grass was dark green. I remember walking through the pristine gardens with the girl whom I had a crush on. Students and parents took family photos in the gardens with the colorful roses as a natural backdrop.

How City Officials Snuck It Through

Very few people in San Jose know the story about the political maneuvering that paved the way for the San Jose Airport to be renamed for Norman Mineta. 

This week, we thought we would focus in on what the priorities of our city government should be, given its limited resources. We daily columnists will all be weighing in on our regular days with some thoughts of our own. To get the ball rolling, we want to give our bloggers an open forum to express their views first. So we hope that you will take the opportunity to tell us what you think today.

The four murders that took place over the first weekend of December brought Chief Davis before the public to call for enlarging the force. According to the chief, his department was stretched so thin to cover the investigations of the rare spate of killings that he had to draw officers and detectives from other duties. He wants to hire 600 additional people over the next five years and boost the force by 35 percent. But, as Scott Herhold pointed out in his column last week, given the high cost of each member of the force, can the city afford to acquiesce to the chief’s request?

The Evergreen issue is still looming next week, but it is not the only development item on the radar screen these days. After a stinging editorial in the Mercury News on Tuesday, the city council unanimously backed off approving a proposal to begin major urban development in the Almaden Valley greenbelt by supporting Council Member Nancy Pyle in her efforts to thwart the usual assortment of lobbyists and support current city growth restraints. Planning Director Joe Horwedel said the Almaden proposal by the Rancho San Vicente partnership is so far removed from city policy that is isn’t worth the cost of the planning work and an Environmental Impact Report. We may have dodged a bullet here, but the issue will surely surface again.

In a little less than a month, the new regime takes over at City Hall. It’s been a long time coming and all of us are anxious to see how the balance of power shifts with the new mayor and council members and find out what’s on Mayor-elect Reed’s agenda for his first few months in office. I know that we are all hoping for the best and feel that our city needs some big changes from the fiasco of the Gonzales years and that we need to strike out in a new direction.

The elections are over and the nastiness is gone.  The problems of Washington and Sacramento now seem far away as hope is blossoming for a new mayor.  The sun is shining and it’s Christmastime in San Jose.

If you ever had the feeling that downtown San Jose was a dubious investment, you only have to take a quick trip into the central core of our city in the next few weeks to be disabused of that notion.  I would suggest to all a leisurely visit to Downtown Ice among the palms or a stroll through the amusement rides that dot the Chavez Plaza area.  You might also catch a movie at the Tech Museum’s IMAX Theater or in Camera 12; you can always get the compliments of the season at American Musical Theatre’s “Christmas Dreamland” and “The Nutcracker” at the CPA.  If none of those tickle your fancy, there is the reliable Rep’s performance of “A Christmas Story.” I always enjoy seeing the young kid stick his tongue to a frozen lamppost and then be deserted by his friends as they run back to class; it so reminds me of the relationship between mayor and council, except it’s colder at City Hall.

Yesterday’s news that the city had mistakenly overpaid employees who were reservists called up to active duty since 9/11 certainly presents the council with a dilemma and the citizens of San Jose with a not-too-rosy view of the city payroll accountants. Some of the soldiers returning from stints in Iraq have received letters demanding repayment of thousands of dollars. How did this happen and what is to be done about it?

The editorial board of San Jose Inside recommends voting for the following: