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Charter Schools Receive Meg(a) Bucks

The Bay Area’s public school system sustained another groin kick of aggressive generosity Tuesday when politically ambitious billionaire Meg Whitman bestowed $2.5 million on South Bay and Peninsula charter school programs. Apparently, the maid-firing former eBay exec didn’t spend all her money losing last year’s race for governor to Jerry Brown.

Tax Base Erosion Night

It is that time of year again, with lobbyists circling City Hall in preparation for the General Plan hearings.

With the leadership of Mayor Reed, modifications to our General Plan (GP) have been reduced to once a year, for the most part. At the GP hearings, applicants make their case as to why current land-use designations should be changed to allow for the applicant to build what they want, regardless of how the land is currently zoned.

A Bartender’s Vantage Point

The Public Safety, Finance And Strategic Support Committee took up the topic of unnecessary force in conjunction with drunk-in-public arrests. The police department, along with the city auditor, city manager and Independent Police Auditor, spent approximately 500 hours going through paper to pull out data. Inherently, a paper system is cumbersome and takes time to extrapolate data. Although we have a records management system, it is antiquated and unable to make queries that a modern system would, and it was not set up to manage certain historic data. This issue is indicative of our city’s lack of investment in information technology. 

Funneling Anger into Action

In the classic Network, released 34 years ago, Howard Beale (played by Peter Finch) is at his anchor desk as the cameras go live and he eloquently unleashes his famous neurotic break with reality: “I don’t want you to protest. I don’t want you to riot. I don’t want you to write to your congressman… All I know is that first you’ve got to get mad…I want you to get up right now and go to your window, open it, and stick your head out and yell, ‘I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!!’

Today I feel the same as Beale, not related to his abject disgust with the trajectory of the nation, crime in the streets, depression, dirty air, banks, guns and unemployment, although those complaints still exist today. No; for me it is about the state of affairs with public education

High Speed Derail

By Diane Solomon
Last November, Californians approved a $9.95 billion down payment for the first electric-powered steel-wheel-on-steel-rail high-speed train system in the nation. They voted yes to an artist’s rendition of sleek tubular trains invisibly zooming through their neighborhoods, connecting California’s major cities and taking them from San Francisco to Los Angeles, and a new green future, in less than 2.5 hours.

1976-2009: Same Problem

In 1976, San Jose city leaders emerged from a retreat at the Asilomar Conference Center and declared that their number-one priority was to fix the jobs and housing imbalance in San Jose.  Since then San Jose has provided the most affordable housing in the state of California, and tens of thousands of market-rate dwellings; however, San Jose has not shared in the job growth. So while other cities have a “jobs surplus,” San Jose still has a “jobs deficit.”

Will the Bay Area Become A One-Newspaper–Company Region?

In the wake of Hearst Corp.’s threat to close the San Francisco Chronicle, some analysts are speculating that the Bay Area’s largest and oldest newspaper might join the ranks of Dean Singleton’s MediaNews empire—which includes the San Jose Mercury News and virtually every other newspaper in the region.

A Quarter For Your Thoughts

Would you pay 25 cents a mile to drive in the carpool lane? A coin is being thrown around as an option for drivers to pay when driving on Hwy 85 or 101 in a few years. The Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) is proposing HOT lanes—not “hot” as in temperature but rather HOT as in High Occupancy Toll lanes.

Books on Tape

It’s my turn to complain about traffic. Traffic: another reason to keep jobs in San Jose.

I join over 50 percent of San Jose residents who leave their homes every day to travel to their jobs to earn a living outside of San Jose. Those of us who commute, trek highways 101, 880, 85, 87 and 280 mostly north to the “land of jobs.” I am getting back on the road and joining my fellow residents on our neighborhood streets as we try to snake our way to the freeway entrance—a feat in and of itself.  I hesitate to say this, but now I am reminded why people cut through neighborhoods. Saving a few minutes commuting is a big deal to many with all the traffic congestion to slow us down.

Down in the Boondocks

When I read that the San Francisco Symphony plans to come to San Jose on October 5 and play a free concert in Chavez Plaza, I jumped for joy. They are also increasing their number of performances at the Flint Center next season by adding three family concerts, and the symphony’s Youth Orchestra will present Prokofiev’s “Peter and the Wolf” in the California Theater on December 15. This is exactly the type of regional approach that we need to take here in Bay Area. How lucky we are to have our neighboring world-class orchestra coming here to play an absolutely free concert for our community and picking up the $100,000 tab themselves.