Last Thursday, the council had a study session for San Jose’s 2010-2011 budget. The public meeting received little media attention. Perhaps, since the holidays are near, we only want to hear the good news…and next years budget is far from good. There is no dispute on the data—just the direction we shall choose to balance the budget. 

Julie Constant, the wife of San Jose City Councilmember Pete Constant, officially entered the realm of local politics when she won a spot on the Campbell Union School District Board earlier this month. And already Fly is hearing rumblings that this could be a sign that the mother of five has aspirations for the District 1 seat that is now occupied by her husband’s newly slender derrière.

Many old-guard members of the San Jose Silicon Valley Chamber of Commerce’s political action committee (ChamberPAC) were disgruntled with the group’s decision to withold an endorsement from evangelical activist Larry Pegram in the race for the District 9 seat on the City Council. So a month ago, Republican Councilman Pete Constant spearheaded the creation of an independent expenditure committee, the “San Jose Taxpayers for Reform 2010: Support Pegram/Oppose Rocha.”

During the past few years, the City of San Jose has annexed 42 county pockets. These annexations came about in two ways. First, the State of California changed the law that made county pockets that are under 150 acres unable to vote on whether not they wanted to be annexed. Second, the County of Santa Clara had wanted San Jose to annex county pockets for years. San Jose avoided the topic until there was a court settlement with the County where the City agreed to annex a portfolio of county pockets from west to east based on the “sphere of influence”—lines that have been drawn for decades that indicate which cities county pockets would be annexed into.

Last week, Council dove into a study session about street paving. As you may have heard, San Jose came in last on a national survey on road conditions. This survey was done prior to the $12 million in federal stimulus money that was allocated to San Jose for road paving this summer. 

San Jose’s cost to maintain roads is high due to our suburban sprawl. Total lane miles in San Jose is double that of San Francisco, which came in second for worst roads.

San Jose’s Mayor Chuck Reed is perhaps the most popular and powerful leader in the Bay Area.  Reed was re-elected mayor by a landslide.  No serious challenger took him on for the very simple reason that it was clear that he couldn’t be defeated.  It’s only a matter of time before Chuck Reed’s name will be mentioned as a candidate for state or national office in the next election cycle.

In 2004, Miguel Baldoni was working as a substitute teacher in rural Appalachian Ohio when he heard about a new charter school opening on the East Side of San Jose. He uprooted himself, came to California and got a job teaching chemistry at the Academica Calmecac, which was run by the Mexican American Community Services Agency (MACSA).

He says he was pleased that the position offered him a chance to change the lives of at-risk students who had been left behind by traditional public schools. But he freely admits that the exceptional retirement package promised to all MACSA teachers really cemented his decision to pack his bags and come to Silicon Valley with 10 bucks in his pocket.

“This was the biggest reason why I took this job,” Baldoni says.

Last week, I got a mailer from the No on V campaign railing against the decisions of past city councils about spending on the Hayes Mansion.  I was elated! I felt validated in my support for selling the Hayes Mansion to stop the annual bleeding of millions of dollars. I wrote about selling the Hayes Mansion two years ago on the Council and on this blog.

At a City Council meeting yesterday, Bob Brownstein of Working Partnerships blasted an audit that found the city’s pension benefits program unsustainable, saying it was, “filled with flaws and inaccuracies.”  It was a testy exchange, and at one point, City Councilmember Pete Constant, who chaired the meeting, threatened to have Brownstein removed from the meeting.

County Assessor Larry Stone visited the San Jose City Council study session last week and gave an extensive lecture on the role of the County Assessor and a critique of Spectrum Economics. His comments were blunt, sparing only profanity about the economist hired by the RDA for $15,000. I wrote about this topic three weeks ago.

This is the only time that another elected official has spoken to the City Council at length during my tenure.

Candidate Larry Pegram of District 9 says he is focused on fiscal issues, but his Values Advocacy Council focuses on religion. A questionnaire they have sent out to school board candidates asks their position on such issue as the role of religion in education, their stance on abstinence education and abortion, and the teaching of intelligent design.

For the most part, I do not think people want things to change. However, could you see living without highway 280, 85, 87 or 237? When building large transportation projects there always seems to be opposition of some sort. Government at all levels—local, state and federal—deems that certain projects have a higher value in the long term.

On Sept. 2, the San Jose Police Department issued a press release that explained the department’s policy on enforcing immigration laws. “Much discussion is taking place across the country concerning what responsibility local police departments have to ensure compliance with immigration laws,” it reads. “While the San Jose Police Department stands ready to work with any law enforcement agency to pursue violent suspects, regardless of a suspect’s immigration status, the Department has a longstanding policy of not arresting persons based solely upon their failure to comply with Federal immigration laws.

On April 18, 2006, the City Council unanimously approved the Guadalupe Mines General Plan amendment, changing the zoning from Research & Development to Residential. At that same meeting, the Council debated other industrial conversions along Old Oakland Road/Rock Avenue, and voted to convert all of the employment-land parcels that night to housing.

Now that we don’t have any money, this is how we are dealing. This seemed to be the theme of today’s San Jose City Council meeting, where council members were updated on some of the painful cutbacks that have taken place since the city budget was slashed.

The Rules Committee allowed my memo on Pension Reform to go before the City Council Tuesday, Aug. 3, to be considered as a ballot measure for San Jose voters this November. At the Rules Committee meeting, members of the public were few compared to the number of paid lobbyists that were in the audience.