San Jose Inside (https://www.sanjoseinside.com)
San Jose Inside found out the hard way to be wary of press releases when they are dated April 1.
An email sent out by public relations firm owner Darlene Tenes announced that San Jose Parks and Recreation commissioner Mary Ann Ruiz had launched a last minute write-in campaign for the San Jose City Council District 7 seat currently occupied by Madison Nguyen.
And a credible-looking website on the social network Ning encouraged sign-ups and promised endorsements soon.
Rather than lay off workers due to budgetary constraints, the state decided last year to impose mandatory furloughs, which effectively meant a 15 percent pay cut. These furloughs were overturned yesterday by a Superior Court Judge, Frank Roesch, of Alameda County. Some 70,000 workers at 66 agencies will now be going back to work full time. They account for about one-third of state employees who have been subject to compulsory furloughs for the past year.
The Merc’s news columnist, Scott Herhold, reminded his readers in a recent piece that, “It’s no secret I think the DA is outclassed by her opponent.” It’s a disclaimer he has made on several occasions of late, while taking potshots at District Attorney Dolores Carr as she prepares to face-off for her job in June with her subordinate, Deputy DA Jeff Rosen.
Below are a few observations from last week.
Monday: Council study session on Airport
Overwhelming majority of Council thought outsourcing of janitorial to save $3 million was a bad idea so it looks like we will lay people off and consider getting rid of the night time curfew in the future.
Monday Night: General Plan 2040 Task Force Meeting
Although the General Plan board members were informed that the City’s budget problems are partially due to most of our land being dedicated to housing instead of jobs, the Task Force voted in favor of adding 300,000 people with a 14-11 vote. The two options were 200,000 or 300,000 new residents. Several task force members shared that they voted no because they wanted to see higher growth of 500,000 more residents to San Jose! I voted for the option that added 200,000 people by 2040.
There’s bad news for the City Council again. The deficit is up 16 percent and now stands at $116.2 million. The problem, says City Manager Debra Figones, is employee pension costs, and especially the pension costs for retired policemen and firemen. While they were expected to grow by $38 million during the next fiscal year, the estimate has been adjusted and now stands at $53 million. Exacerbating the problem is reduced revenue from business tax receipts, which continues to drop.
Professor Donald Shoup of UCLA visited City Hall last week. He was in San Jose to present a lecture titled, “Why free parking is a bad idea.” The information he shared is based on his book and research.
There are approximately 700 million parking spaces for 230 million cars in this country and 99 percent of cars trips have free parking. Prof. Shoup showed an aerial picture of the Cisco Systems campus with its empty asphalt parking lots. He felt that these empty parking lots are not a good use of land and that it creates higher-than-needed vehicle miles traveled (VMT). He then continued to share what he thought would be a way to better utilize the land, which was to allow Cisco to build housing on their parking lots and waive all parking requirements.
How far do citizens’ rights to assemble freely extend? Citing an increasing gang presence in the city’s streets, Councilmember Nora Campos says it may be too far. The ACLU thinks differently.
Mayors of California’s ten largest cities met with the CEOs of some of the state’s ten largest companies at San Jose’s Morton’s Steakhouse last night for more than just an evening of rare beef and wine. They are all fed up with how the state is operating, and decided to work together to fight for real changes
Full text of San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed’s 2010 State of the City Address, delivered February 18, 2010 at the San Jose McEnery Convention Center in San Jose, California.
People in San Jose are happy. In fact, they’re happier than the residents of any other major city in the U.S. That was the finding of the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index, which was released yesterday. To be fair, there are other, happier places, like Honolulu, Hawaii, or Holland, Michigan (huh?), but when it comes to the country’s biggest cities—the ones with populations of 1 million-plus, San Jose was at the top, beating out D.C., Raleigh and Minneapolis.
This week’s Metro Silicon Valley cover story, excerpted here, discusses a stimulus plan authored by Councilmember Sam Liccardo and three colleagues, and the reaction of downtown businesses to the city’s efforts to reawaken a downtown economy that went off-track.
Photo radar helps augment traffic safety, as well as that of pedestrians and neighborhoods. A tweaking of the current policy to improve safety will not cost the state any money, and in fact will raise money while at the same time lowering emergency room health care costs. Speeding cars in our neighborhoods continue to remain an issue. The City of San Jose does what it can to manage speeding on our streets with the dollars we are able to allocate.
The San Jose City Council weighed the possibility of hosting the U.S. Gymnastics Team’s Olympic Trials at today’s city council meeting. The Council went over a memorandum Mayor Chuck Reed issued on Jan. 15, outlining the city’s bidding effort for the event.
For a couple of weeks leading up to Monday’s MLK Day “Freedom Train” event, there was a story going around that San Jose/ Silicon Valley NAACP president Reverend Jethroe Moore II made some rather offensive remarks during a radio interview. The rumor was sparked by two anonymous comments on San Jose Inside and Protect San Jose, claiming that during a segment on radio station KLIV, Moore said “the MLK taking money from the POA is like the Jews taking money from the Nazis.”
San Francisco pedestrians always know when they are walking by an Academy of Art University branch. Oone finds young, eclectically dressed hipsters, all loaded down with easels and tool boxes, many smoking American Spirits: art students. This modish scene may soon be re-created on the streets of downtown San Jose as the San Francisco-based AAU, the largest art design school in the country, is looking for a home in Silicon Valley.
San Francisco has its Ferry Building. San Jose will soon have its “Public Market.” Detailed plans of the project were unveiled last night in the adjacent Theatre. Among the attendees were potential tenants, local business owners, and neighbors who want to see how their neighborhood might change.
