July is the political offseason in San Jose, but a shake-up recently occurred in the re-election staff of Councilmember Rose Herrera. Eric Crane will no longer serve as her campaign manager heading into the November runoff for the District 8 seat against surprise challenger Jimmy Nguyen.
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Compromise Could Pave Way for Casino M8trix Opening July 20
UPDATE: When will Casino M8trix open? Maybe as soon as July 20. City officials say they are cautiously optimistic Police Chief Chris Moore will grant the casino its necessary permits at a hearing July 19, because the card room owners have relented and agreed to open the first floor only while continuing negotiations on how top floor gaming will be managed. But casino owner Eric Swallow says the city never contacted him about such an arrangement.
Life After Measure B
Gay publicly spoke up about—and against—the belt-tightening measures that Council has taken in recent years. In public session, she told the City Council about how the 14 percent cuts in her salary would make it difficult for her to continue to make payments on her modest home. She warned about the dangers of Measure B, the pension reform measure on the June ballot, and testified against the Council’s decision to impose reductions in retiree medical benefits. In every case, Gay spoke with civility and with a heartfelt conviction that comes from someone who reasonably relied upon promises that were made to her when she decided to move to San José to work for the City years ago.
City Transitioning Homeless into Housing
The city of San Jose recently cleared three areas with prominent homeless encampments. Along with clearing debris, the goal was to enter many of these homeless people into housing programs.
Downtown Businesses Want Security Patrol
Part of a new plan by the business community to rebrand downtown is to staff the city’s core with two patrolling officers. However, how these security guards will be paid has kicked off a new fight between police and city officials.
Obama Changes Illegal Immigration Policy
District Attorney Jeff Rosen made a bold step last summer when he announced a new policy that would stop deporting as long as they aren’t considered a threat to public safety. Almost a year later, President Obama went a step further, announcing Friday that his administration would end the deportation of some illegal immigrants who came to the United States as children.
The Once and Future San Jose
High above, I looked down on a sea of deep blue. With my last few frenetic days back in Cambridge, Mass., done, I was a minute or so away from touching down at Mineta. It was Saturday, May 26, and only at that point did I make the connection that the mass of indigo I was witnessing was Bellarmine’s graduation ceremony, where five years earlier I had proudly walked across that stage. The San Jose I’ve came home to, however, seems remarkably different from the San Jose I remember leaving.
A Lesson from the Past
From 1976 to 1991, I served as police chief of San Jose. I was never a member of, nor represented by, the Police Officers Association and was not included in the Police Retirement Fund. I do not collect a pension from San Jose and have no vested financial interest in whether or not the Pension Reform Ballot Measure passes. I do firmly believe, however, that the issue of pension reform has been unfairly framed for discussion against the legitimate interests of the police and the public.
False Information from City Officials Kills Save San Jose Libraries Initiative
In one of the biggest blunders in recent local politics, city officials admitted this week that they provided false information to organizers of the Save San Jose Libraries initiative regarding the number of signatures needed to place a measure on the November ballot. As a result, the initiative—an effort that has been in the works for more than year—is unlikely to make it to voters.
Measure B Goes to Court Again
The legal battle everyone expected over Measure B’s passage began Wednesday, as the city filed for a federal judicial review (a.k.a. “declatory relief”) and attorneys representing police and firefighters unions filed two lawsuits in state court. All of this will take months, if not years, to resolve, so we’ll focus on some of the more interesting commentary surrounding the legal battle.
City Changes Policy on Homeless Camps
A slap shot from HP Pavilion, through Guadalupe Park and into the neighboring creek bed, a rooster makes its home. He lives among shopping carts, deflated tire tubes and toilet paper rolls, empty beer cans and coolers, a Negro Modelo sign lodged in the fresh mud and a half-dozen people who spend their nights sleeping in tents. Karen Ellfson is one of these people. She lives here with her husband. At 30 years old, a month shy of her next birthday, the Morgan Hill native knows that in two weeks she’ll need to find a new home. She’s one of several dozen homeless people with targets on their backs.
Measure B Passes; Chu Re-elected; Herrera Faces Runoff in District 8
Incumbent Kansen Chu won 54 percent of the vote in District 4. Despite a strong challenger in Tam Truong, Chu’s victory means he won’t have to go to a November runoff.
‘Zombie’ Drug Poses Serious Health Risk
Apparently, the zombie apocalypse has started. At least, that was the word from my teenage son. If you have a teenager in the house, or you read the news, you likely heard about the 31-year-old man in Miami who chewed the face off of a homeless man and was fatally shot by police when he wouldn’t stop his attack. Authorities are speculating that the attacker was high on bath salts. This isn’t the stuff you soak with in the bathtub; bath salts are a relatively new synthetic drug, and are still legal in many states.
Got Signatures? Go to the Ballot
An explanation of how the ballot initiative process has affected the local political landscape—including a breakdown of four initiatives created in the last year—and an update on the $1 million check submitted by a developer to the city last week.
Committee Delays on Gay Marriage Memo
A well attended Rules and Open Government Committee meeting Wednesday dealt with an uncommon topic at City Hall these days: love. Or, to be more precise, love between a couple that doesn’t consist of a man and a woman. After more than an hour of public comments where many people framed marriage as a civil rights issue and others called it a sacred religious institution, Mayor Chuck Reed, Vice Mayor Madison Nguyen and Councilmember Pierluigi Oliverio unanimously agreed to delay any action on a memo from Councilmember Ash Kalra that wanted the City Council to form a resolution in support of gay marriage.
Sierra LaMar Case Differs from Runaways
On Wednesday, I was interviewed by CBS News to discuss runaways. The day before, Sheriff Laurie Smith held a press conference to announce the arrest of a suspect in the kidnapping and murder of Morgan Hill teenager Sierra LaMar. During this press conference, Sheriff Smith stated that since January 2011, there were 43 reports of missing children (females) in Santa Clara County that were still open, and pondered, “You wonder if any of those were actually abductions also.” The sentence just hung in the air at the press conference, and no one asked her follow-up questions.
