San Jose Inside

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?

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Gangs Sent to New York to “Solve” Problem

The San Jose City Council has decided to rededicate itself to bringing home the title of “Safest Big City in America” by allocating several million dollars to send dozens of convicted gang members to New York City by bus to commit crimes.

Like everyone else who went to college, I took Economics 101 and read Adam Smith. I guess I got the wrong idea about the meaning of the “free market”—at least that is what I am learning from the current attempt to bring Nvidia to the Sobrato building in downtown San Jose. Apparently, it means the cost of operating these profitable businesses is passed on to the taxpayers.

One of the hallmarks of fair and responsible campaigns in our city has always been the limits on the amount of dollars that could be contributed to a candidate for mayor. Many times, the special interests and mendacious politicians (not always a given) tried to get the limits raised above the five hundred dollars per person cap and were consistently rebuffed. Raising campaign money should be hard. There should be no bundling or bag men in the guise of lobbyists doing the dirty work.  These forces tried it twenty years ago when I was mayor and more recently with little success; the limits held.

Supervisors Welcome the Challenge to Revitalize the Theater

In an attempt to put a positive spin on the County’s defeated music hall proposal, the supervisors lauded the city after a unanimous council vote effectively turned the management of the beleaguered San Jose Repertory Theater over to the county.