By the time San Jose (barely) managed to get the signs up, San Francisco’s Little Saigon celebrated its five year anniversary with the installation of lions representing peace, happiness, and safety. (Ironically, none of those things seem to be present in San Jose's Little Saigon...) This year, SF's Little Saigon expects to bring 20,000 visitors to San Francisco to celebrate Tet, the Vietnamese New Year. “We deliberately brought the Vietnamese community into the mainstream rather than appeal to them with anti-communist rhetoric, as the leaders did in San Jose,'' said Vu-Duc Vuong, who once ran San Francisco's Southeast Asian Community Center.
Tanking retail sales will hit local cities hard. San Jose already had a $4.6 million sales tax revenue shortfall before the economy really went into the toilet. Santa Clara budgeted for $43.4 million and received nearly $2 million less. Translation: roughly $200 million less dollars were spent locally. "We are concerned obviously," said Santa Clara Deputy City Manager Carol McCarthy. "Like anyone else, we're out there, we're brainstorming and getting information." I'm not sure brainstorming is going to help the economy, but I guess it couldn't hurt.
Palo Alto may do something about their need for cash. They are looking to businesses to cover the City's budget shortfalls. Specifically, they want to impose a tax businesses via a Business License Tax (BLT). While most cities have a BLT (on rye?) PA doesn't. The difference is that Palo Alto is thinking about a gross-receipts tax opposed to a simple, annual fee that many/most cities have. Why a gross-receipts tax? More money for Palo Alto, of course. (This was part of Watch Dog San Mateo's Recession Repercussions theme today...)
Closing its doors and pissing off customers at the same time, nice going Circuit City. Circuit City is shutting down nationwide, locally in San Mateo, San Jose, and Sunnyvale. In their haste to shove merchandise out the doors they forgot to lower prices. According to customers they actually jacked up prices then shaved a little. Good news is, they expect to be hiring before closing doors permanently in March. Add to the big box closings, Home Depot is closing Yardbirds, Expo, and Design Center stores, in an announcement made Sunday night.
State Senator Joe Simitian stood in front of 200 anxious educators and parents Saturday morning who worry about the Governator’s plan to stop funding schools. Franklin-McKinley Deputy Superintendent Tim McClary said, "We have contracts we have to honor. PG&E is not going to give us electricity if we don't pay the bill.'' Simitian suggested residents “…need to let Republicans know that they think new revenue has to be part of the solution.'' Nobody responded..."isn't that what we elected you to do, Joe?..."
Mountain View’s Housing Element update is on the table for community discussion tonight. The League of Women Voters is hosting a talk with retired planner Don Weden – under discussion are how housing element updates affect climate change. No word if NIMBY-ism will be addressed.
Car as deadly weapon strikes again, for the third and fourth times this year. Exchange student Santosh Kumar Racherla was hit and killed while crossing El Camino Real. Mountain View’s Man Lai Leung was hit after a truck plowed through a fence, across a lawn, hitting several cars and finally stiking Leung while he was unloading groceries.
Thirty years ago a few looney tree huggers had a crazy dream – hiking trails to link the San Francisco Bay to the Pacific. Since then, the Mid-Peninsula Regional Open Space District has been buying land and is poised to purchase the last four pieces of the puzzle. The Merc’s Patty Fisher doesn’t expect her aging knees to be in working order when it happens, but does write it all up. (Watch Dog San Mateo has been covering this too...)
Is Santa Clara in line to be home of trans-bay football teams? The NFL is hoping to make it so. The owners of the NY teams who share a stadium (currently in New Jersey) said in these dire economic times it makes sense for the Raiders and Niners to join forces. No word if Santa Clara Councilmember Jamie McLeod is more amenable to a two team proposition. This would mean 20 home games each year in Santa Clara -- that's a lot more traffic (presumably)...
Cupertino Union School District will interview candidates to fill the empty seat created when Pearl Cheng who was tapped to replace newly elected Assemblymember Paul Fong on the Foothill-DeAnza Board. Watch Dog would like to fill you in on the candidates background, but Cupertino lists only their names: Larry Curb, Daniel Halabe, Anjali Kauser, Jack Yang, Joyce Yee, Katherine Yu, and Ione Yuen. There is no truth to the rumor that Supervisor George Shirakawa is trying to get Eddie Garcia appointed in Cupertino...
In addition to the Cupertino appointment, here's what's happening around other elected bodies in Silicon Valley this week:
- The Santa Clara Board of Supervisors and Mountain View Councilmembers will noodle how best to ask for federal dollars...other than beg?
- Sunnyvale’s Council will listen to neighbors unhappy with construction and consider creating standards for construction management..sounds like a good plan...
- In San Jose, the topics include moving City jobs to private firms, a bailout for the County’s largest homeless shelter provider, the Convention Center, and elimination of 52 jobs..that should be a doozy...
- The always exciting Alum Rock Union School District will discuss the status on the new Superintendent search and “challenges related to Pala Middle School.” For those who missed it, the challenge is how to swap Pala with East Side’s Adult Ed Independence High.
- Recently (re)elected Alum Rock Trustee/attorney Esau Herrera wants to dump the lawyers and hire the firm he used to work for. Herrera also wants the lawsuit against fellow Trustee/former District employee Dolores Marquez dropped and says, "I think it's a waste of legal fees to carry on what apparently was a personal grudge."
- Former Mayor/blogger/lobbyist Tom McEnery is being eased out of his pet blog San Jose InsideMetro's Dan Pulcrano. (San Jose Revealed reminds us they pointed out the slow removal of McEnery months ago.)
- Santa Clara County Tax Assessor Larry Stone (booo) couldn’t get into inaugural ceremonies even with a VIP ticket. But Willie Brown did, and he didn't even have his ticket...
San Jose Revealed is almost embarrassed to say they told us about the Arts Council Silicon Valley pursuit for a Poet Laureate for Santa Clara County weeks ago. Sadly, that “news” now is front page fodder for the ailing Merc. Revealed also wants to remind the Merc. that there are actual local stories and includes among them humiliated San Jose Councilmember Terry Gregory (and others) accepting gifts, the current Madision Nguyen recall fiasco, and McEnery lobbying. Watch Dog would like to add to this list Shirakawa/Garcia cronyism...
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