Morning News Round-Up -- 12.2.09: Coolest Mayor in Silicon Valley Award...

West Valley cities are all the rage today... giving the SJPD a well-deserved break. Cupertino has a majority Asian-American City Council with Gilbert Wong taking the center seat on the dais and Campbell has "one of the youngest gay and youngest Asian American mayors in the country" according to the Chronicle (Evan Low). Watch Dog will refer to him as the coolest Mayor in Silicon Valley. (No offense Chuck...)

And while SJPD (and the District Attorney) get a break today, loyal reader Kathleen posted this in the comments of yesterday's Round-Up: how to have your voice heard with the Consortium looking into San Jose Police practices as well as the search for the new "Independent" Police Auditor...

San Jose's City Clerk's office is entering the year 2000 with some real technological advances. The City Council decided yesterday to mandate Council candidates file online. That should make the filings for the City Council races in 2002 so easy to access...

The Merc Editorial Board gives a thumbs up to Alviso, and provides us all with an Alviso 101 with this:

Alviso is a small town uncomfortably annexed to San Jose but separate from the rest of the city and little changed through the years.

Really? You mean Vahl's hasn't changed through the years?

Mountain View is looking to head off the easy-to-predict NIMBYism about a downtown affordable housing development they are subsidizing to the tune of $9 million. Interesting that they should be concerned about that because the developer of the project, ROEM Development Corp, has had its problems with neighbors...

Good thing they have a new Police Chief, because the riff-raff are on their way to Palo Alto for the opening of PA's first Trader Joe's on Friday. Bad Hawaiian shirt sales are through the roof...

Perhaps the new revenue from the Trader Joe's will help fill a gap a budget manager in Palo Alto that mistakenly caused a $4.8 million accounting error in this year's budget. That manager, Sharon Bozman, was not mentioned by name at the meeting where Palo Alto officials continued to grapple with the gigantic budget hole -- but the complete revamping of the budget process in Palo Alto was a pretty good indication that she isn't welcome back anytime soon. Rumors that Palo Alto is now interviewing former Enron executives to fill the budget management role are unfounded...

And while Palo Alto looks to improve its budget process, Los Gatos is leaving their traffic patrol to a group of elementary school students from Van Meter Elementary... seriously. They are tracking traffic violations near their school. Thank you Los Gatos Observer.