San Jose Inside

City Hall Diary

After nearly four hours of back and forth, the council emerged with measures for the November 2008 ballot. The first is the reduction and update of the telecommunications user tax. This would allow the city to capture new telephone technology like Voice of Internet Protocol (VOIP). The second is a reduction of the 911 system support fee which would result in stronger legal footing of our 911 fee that pays for the 911 call center. Years ago, the 911 call center moved from the California Highway Patrol and was given to local government to oversee, with no funding, of course. The money collected is to be cost recovery only for 911 call center staff and equipment. It appears that if both do not pass it would hurt the city with a loss of $48 million annually.

City Hall Diary

The city council spent 12 hours on “Budget Tuesday” last week.  Here are three of the topics we covered.

We all love to be as little children: to see colorful animals and play with tinker toys. And if we have young kids or grandchildren, it can be a great joy to travel the city and see so many examples of toys, painted tigers, and kaleidoscopic shades and tints at our obvious points of interest. This is the state of our public art in San Jose: colorful, playful, and totally one dimensional. There has to be more in a city and its description of itself as evidenced in her adopted pubic art program. There is a pivotal question though: Are we mature and confident enough to reflect this as a statement of who we are?

City Hall Diary

This week at council we discussed the upcoming 2008-2009 budget process. 
 
The budget for San Jose is a year-round process tracking the revenue that comes into the city, like sales tax and construction and conveyance tax (C and C), and expenditures that come from the General Fund (non-restricted money), or capital expenditures (restricted money) like building new libraries. 

I had hoped it would happen and it did last night. After a dark decade of flawed land-use decisions and “pay to play” mentality at City Hall, Mayor Chuck Reed, aided by two or three thinking council members, got the San Jose City Council to finally jettison the shortsighted and ruinous policy of converting our job-rich tax base lands to housing. Perhaps, just perhaps, the rump members of the “old” discredited group of Gonzales holdovers will get the “halo” effect of sound planning and begin to live up to their fiduciary responsibilities to the people of San Jose. But, as was once said of second marriages, I am, perhaps, letting hope triumph over experience. There is much left to do.

City Hall Diary

Grocery stores are an important element of our neighborhoods. They remind me of libraries and parks: a place that is usually open and serves everyone. Some of my fondest memories of childhood include grocery stores—whether it was cooling down on a hot day in the freezer section or spending my paper route money on snacks. Of course, those were the days when one dollar could get a kid four candy bars (which led to my 38-inch waist in elementary school!).

You really wonder how many times the San Jose Business Journal (SJBJ) will blunder into a story, cite a few facts, and then make sweeping comments that stand history, if not common sense, on its head.  The paper did it again with its recent editorial on the binding arbitration award to the Firefighters Union. Whether it’s the citizens’ General Plan or the recent political turmoil at City Hall, the SJBJ displays a Bushian knowledge of local history that is frightening.

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.

City Hall Diary

Whew—just before midnight, we passed the budget! 

After many long budget hearings, staff presentations, public testimony and robbing Peter to pay Paul, we have a “balanced” budget.

There have been a number of recent articles in national publications about the brave new city of the west, San Jose. The Wall Street Journal stated its view of our city as the center of innovation and entrepreneurship. There is a strong effort to reap the benefits of locating the new and exciting clean-tech areas of the new economy here to join eBay, Cisco Systems and Adobe. We are trying very hard and the ability to try hard is a virtue in a person and an asset in the development of the city.

It was in the spring of 1989 when San Jose’s population passed San Francisco. I remember it well because I was with San Francisco Mayor Art Agnos when it happened. We were in Beijing, Tiananmen Square to be exact, and the reporters were apoplectic while the Chinese were frenetic. 

Are the People of San Jose Ready to Change the
Rules?

The “Golden Rule” in politics is simple: “He (or she)who has the gold, makes the rules.”  San Jose’s gold does not belong to its people. And the people certainly don’t make the rules.

Finally, our new mayor and city council have listened to the voices of San Jose’s citizens and neighborhood leaders and set budget priorities for the coming year that are in accordance with the wishes of the vast majority. In a meeting on Tuesday, the mayor, council members and their staffs made a commitment to funding the items most often mentioned on this site and in the neighborhoods. These break down into roughly three areas: public safety, public works infrastructure, and public recreational services.

What did city officials not know, and when did they not know it?

The 1996 Measure I Initiative called for the “relocation and consolidation of civic offices in the downtown.”  But the new City Hall complex at Fourth and E. Santa Clara St. was not built large enough to provide the consolidation of city offices called for in the ballot measure.

Like just about everyone else, I am glad that we have a new regime at City Hall in the mayor’s office and on the council. However, in the euphoria of the demise of the old and arrival of the new, we shouldn’t forget one of the biggest accomplishments of the past few years: the Dr, Martin Luther King, Jr. Library joint venture between the city and San Jose State University and the process that is creating the new and vastly improved San Jose library system. This is a legacy worth celebrating.

The action is now largely finished and the captains, the kings and one mayor are ready to depart. It is time to look ahead. What lessons can we learn from the tragedy of Ron Gonzales and this painful era?  Some have suggested that it was preordained—we all carry the seeds of our own mistakes and tragedies within us—but the public portions of this episode did not have to be this way.