San Jose Inside

Budget Figures Tell the Tale

Ah, it’s springtime in San Jose.  The sun is out, the birds are chirping, and the roses at the Rose Garden are…well, never mind.

It’s also budget season, and the preliminary budget numbers coming from the San Jose city government are not exactly encouraging.  The sources for the information that follows are:  The City Manager’s Budget Message, The 2007-2008 Proposed Operating Budget, and the city’s transportation department. Read ‘em and weep:

Is There Some Hope?

As we look at the past, it is important to remember that the same leadership (I use the term loosely) that presided over the sad demise of San Jose’s credibility in the last decade was the predominant force on the VTA Board.  This is not much to inspire confidence or faith in anything, let alone a leap of faith like BART.

Part I

The organizational audit for the Valley Transportation Authority (VTA) presents a picture neither unexpected nor unwarranted.  It clearly exposes that not only does the emperor have no clothes, but he may not even be the emperor. 

And the End of the Storied Santana Row Boycott

Fiascos always have precedents as well as postscripts.  The mistake of land use in the Santana Row project was based on the same model that led to the destruction of downtown’s retail in the fifties and sixties. The postscript was written when Silicon Valley and Bay Area leaders challenged the absurd spending priorities of the California Transportation Commission last week. Chuck Reed, Carl Guardino and the others struck a blow for all of us when they got the state’s commission overseeing this spending to change their priorities.  Feeding the economic engine of the world here, our valley,  is crucially important to the US economy, and stands in stark contrast to some overpass in Tulare County or a “bridge to nowhere” in Modoc County. Every commuter in our valley should be grateful that Mayor Reed and the others were successful. It is the latest battle in the allocation of bond proceeds, but not the last.

I thought the story a week or so ago about improvements in our local transportation system was very informative.  Basically, it goes like this: the California Transportation Commission slanted the available funding to rural and non-economically important areas of the state. The Mercury News headline screamed: “South Bay Road Plans Dim.” They have refused, in some goofy pique or lack of sanity, to fund the economic engine of the free world: San Jose, Silicon Valley, us!  What are they thinking?

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. 

I would like to start by taking a different direction in the budget debate and bring up the matter of saving money at City Hall through conservation and converting San Jose into a green city fit for the 21st century. With a $3 billion budget, even a fragment of 1 percent saved would be a lot of money that could be used for other purposes. I know that steps have been taken in this direction, but a lot more could be done. Every city function should be regularly reviewed and monitored to reach and maintain maximum efficiency. I see lots of gas-guzzling SUVs and pickups with the city logo driving around. They should be replaced by hybrids or other alternative fuel vehicles as they wear out. All city buildings, works and public transportation should be converted to take advantage of modern technological innovations in cleaner, alternative power. The airport takes a huge portion of our budget and it should lead the way in conservation and green conversion. San Jose should actively set an example for our citizens and other cities around the country. This is the center of world technology. Let’s use it and show what it can do! 

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.

There is an interesting battle brewing in Santa Clara County that will decide the future of transit, transportation and, perhaps, a politician or two.  It revolves around the recent county effort to place a half-cent sales tax increase on the June ballot. It is intended to bail out the BART project; maybe “bail out” is incorrect—more appropriately we might say “save.”  But it is being strangely combined with other county projects as a tax to fund several items other than BART, like hospitals and housing for low-income people. You see, put in this form the measure needs only a bare majority vote to pass, while as a transit measure, it would take an unlikely two-thirds vote.

Proof of Nuclear Program Has City Imposing Sanctions

Immediately after city inspectors stumbled upon uranium enrichment equipment in an underground bunker at the county fairgrounds, the city accused county supervisors of trying to produce weapons of mass destruction, which they say would be used as a threat to influence future negotiations.

Constant Disagreement Attracts Attention of TV Therapist

Just several hours after a decision by the Valley Transportation Authority (VTA) to cancel a scheduled meeting on long-range spending plans for the oft-threatened BART extension to Silicon Valley, VTA General Manager Michael Burns received a call from Dr Phil McGraw, inviting the entire VTA Board to a session on the therapist’s hit show.