Morning News Round-Up -- 5.13.10: Bike to Work... (or think about it at least...)

San Jose will join forces with other right-minded (or is it left-minded) California communities in pushing for some sort of boycott of Arizona... Don Gage and Pete Constant are the only (tea party) hold outs and are supporting the Arizona law -- sort of. Expect lots of American flag t-shirts and a Tea Party rally before the Council meeting in June...

When the San Jose City Council does take up the issue in June, it is likely that they won't get a lot of text messages during the Council meeting... John Woolfolk at the Merc looks into the lack of texting between lobbyists and the Council during Council meetings, which they banned a few months backed -- it wasn't so much as a ban as much as it was that those texts were open to the Public Records Act. We did learn something interesting from Councilmember Ash Kalra:

"Councilman Ash Kalra said he was messaging back and forth with his staff about unrelated upcoming agenda items, something he does frequently because "it's the one time of the week when they have me captive and I can get stuff done.""

That probably isn't very reassuring to all those public speakers (and City Staff) who think that Kalra is actually listening to them... silly public speakers (and City Staff)...

Yesterday was the Merc's deep-dive into the Dolores Carr half of the DA's race, today is Jeff Rosen's moment in the spotlight. There is lots of good information in the piece about his background, his law school days, how he didn't like being an associate at a law firm, and this little tidbit: he weighs 140 pounds...

Just to pile on...

The Metro's endorsements have been piling up on someone's desk, because they are all coming out at once. First it was Magdalena Carrasco and now it is Jeff Rosen. Just so we are clear, Metro endorsed Dolores Carr last go'round, but not this time...

49ers in. Yahoo in. The Santa Clara City Council is having a very busy year...

The Mercury News Editorial Board agrees with just about everyone else that the Water District should redo how it redrew their District lines... the District has scrapped the old plan and now is looking for a new plan...

The Merc Ed Board also commends the East Side Union High School District Board for cutting their own stipend and insisting on paying part of their medical benefits... which begs the question: East Side Union Board members get a stipend and health benefits?

We can't believe we've missed out on another local blog... Sunnyvale City Councildweeb Jim Griffith is writing frequently and brings us an insider's perspective to the goings on in Sunnyvale. Read more at dweeb.org... the latest updates are about Nokia opening up their Nor Cal headquarters in downtown Sunnyvale, which is "huge" according to Jim's Council Blog... He recommends: "...every one of us should immediately go out and buy our City Manager, our City Attorney, and their respective staffs a large bottle of their favorite alcoholic beverage..." That would be a sleepy party...

In sad news, the ACLU is closing its San Jose office because of budget cuts. That will make San Jose Police Chief Rob Davis and the POA pretty happy... but it makes Watch Dog sad. Why? First, the ACLU protects idiots like Watch Dog... and second, the ACLU local person, Skyler Porras, was a great quote. Remember these highlights?:

• About Mayor Reed: "...petulant political posturing..."
• About a plan for the San Jose Police Department to police themselves: "...Asking the police department to police themselves has been about as effective as asking a teenager to ground themselves after missing curfew..."
• About San Jose's plan to hire a group of social scientists to study the drunk arrest problem: "...a bumbling way to appease a scandal-plagued but politically powerful police department..."

While we are on the topic, did you know that a west coast big city mayor forced out the city's police chief? There were concerns about how the police department was dealing with vulnerable populations in the city... hmmm...

Finally, there is a woman at Valley Medical Center that they are trying to identify. If you know an elderly Asian woman that is missing, please take a look at the photo.

Morning News Round-Up -- 2.16.10: Lobbying Sacramento finally pays off for San Jose...

It has been a very long weekend... but we'll try to remember what the news was on Friday afternoon, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday. Here we go. Let us know what we missed -- which you usually do anyway...

Well, San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed and Councilmembers Pete Constant, Ash Kalra, Nancy Pyle, and Judy Chirco's lobbying Assemblymembers Paul Fong and Joe Coto paid off... Fong and Coto are pulling their request for a State audit into the San Jose Police Department. With that success rate, we wonder if Reed/ Constant/ Kalra/ Chirco/ Pyle should head back to lobby for school funding. (San Jose Inside had the scoop first, then the Merc... for those of you keeping score at home.)

Speaking of folks who don't like others looking over their shoulders...

Diversity in Silicon Valley companies was all over the news this weekend. Some folks (Google, Yahoo, Apple, Oracle, and Applied Materials) don't really like to share their diversity data with folks... folks like the Mercury News. Don't be evil... ahem...

The San Jose Police Officers Association has been working overtime... with the Mayor's very public and very strongly worded letter to Assemblymembers Fong and Coto to call off the audit dogs in Sacramento. Followed by the aforementioned lobbying trip to Sacramento by the Mayor and four Councilmembers. Then, in Sunday's paper, the POA got former Mayor Tom McEnery to chime in against the newspaper and activists. But Watch Dog's favorite line was this:

But questions long avoided by the media must be asked. How do a few politically connected mega-nightclubs, with their hand-picked lobbyists, put thousands of alcohol-infused young men on a collision course with our police? And why let clubs that generate hundreds of calls for service each year, stripping the city's neighborhoods of cops, be subsidized by everyone else?

Watch Dog has asked those questions Mayor McEnery, we really, really, really have...

The Merc chimes in on the City of San Jose budget -- and they think employees need to step it up, cut their salaries, or expect to lose their jobs... There is a study session today in San Jose to talk about the budget. That should be fun...

There was a revised report about baseball in downtown San Jose that re-did the numbers on noise and traffic. If you start from no noise and no traffic, like in downtown San Jose, of course there will be more if you add something fun to do... No doubt NIMBYs are meeting at the Peet's on the Alameda today to discuss what to do next...

And while San Jose looks for a MLB stadium and Santa Clara looks for an NFL stadium, the good folks in Morgan Hill are just hoping for a proper football stadium at Sobrato High School... but unlike in San Jose and Santa Clara, the charge is being led by high school seniors in Morgan Hill... One small problem, the stadium would actually be in San Jose's 'greenbelt' and Councilmember Ash Kalra isn't having any of it.

Tom Campbell switched races... and raised some money too!

The good folks at Internal Affairs in the Merc must be getting inundated with campaign stuff... because their column was very, very full this weekend:

• Larry Pegram of censorship fame is considering a run for San Jose City Council District 9... didn't Watch Dog hint at that recently?
• Madison Nguyen's re-election campaign is full of challengers... and one of them is Andy Diaz. Are you surprised?
• The San Jose Police Officers' Association gets an airing and IA runs down their questionnaire and the "correct" (or pandering) answers.
• Whitman didn't push Tom Campbell out of the Governor's race... money did
• And it became very clear that IA reads our sister blog, Watch Dog San Mateo, because they go into Watch Dog-esque detail about San Mateo County's big name departures from the political scene, including Warren Slocum...

Not only was IA on their political game... the Merc's Scott Herhold was also on the political beat and wrote an incredibly long breakdown of local races. He touched the big ones (Governor, US Senate), the medium ones (Sheriff, DA, Supervisor District 1), and the little ones (San Jose City Council Districts 5, 7, and 9).

Finally...

Raj at DeBug, this headline is made for your snickering: Normal police presence planned for Mardi Gras... We guess that is open to interpreting the word "normal"...

Morning News Round-Up -- 2.11.10: Reed, Constant, Kalra, Chirco, and Pyle agree on something...

Earlier this week, Protect San Jose posted a letter Mayor Reed wrote to Assemblymembers Paul Fong and Joe Coto essentially telling them to back off their request for a State audit of the San Jose Police Department... yesterday, Mayor Reed (and the POA?) convinced some of his colleagues to make the trek to Sacramento to do the same thing. Pete Constant, Ash Kalra, Judy Chirco, and Nancy Pyle all met with Fong and Coto and asked them to hold off on their State audit. (Watch Dog is impressed that Constant, Kalra, Chirco, and Pyle all agree on anything... We would bet they didn't carpool up there.) All of this prompted the local ACLU chief Skyler Porras to respond with this witty alliteration, calling Mayor Reed's actions: "...petulant political posturing..."

We don't know the saddest part of this story and delays, or lack thereof, at SJC... so we'll just lay out the sad parts.

• Sad Point 1: There is a massive storm blanketing much of the Midwest and a separate, week-long storm from the Mid-Atlantic northward... and those storms have virtually no impact on San Jose Airport travel.
• Sad Point 2: There is only one, daily, non-stop flight to the East Coast.
• Sad Point 3: This quote from the airport guy, "Most of our flights from San Jose are in the western United States."

For those of you out there who can stay awake long enough to sit through all the States of the (Fill in the Blank) that happen this time of year probably already heard everything that Supervisor Ken Yeager said in his speech a while back... the Merc Editorial pages were nice enough to run an excerpt today...

Santa Clara Unified hasn't been in the paper lately -- mostly because the Broom Closet Modeling Agency flap has died down... and the news about the Principal who once dated a recent graduate at a previous job has died down... but the story about the teacher who had sex with a student is back on the front burner. That's because the former Wilcox High School teacher pleaded guilty yesterday and has already begun to serve his sentence of 2 years and 8 months...

High Speed Rail NIMBYs might have to take a chill pill after Jeff Barker of the High Speed Rail Authority announced that there was a typo in a report they issued about ridership numbers. NIMBYs were hanging on to that typo as proof that the High Speed Rail Authority was full of shit...

Mission City Lantern explains his thoughts a little bit better today about why he thinks Watch Dog was wrong on who wrote the new ballot language for the 49er's measure... thank you James. We heart you too... all the way from Hawaii...

Morning News Round-Up -- 12.15.09: Big night for the San(ta Clara) Francisco 49ers...

The San(ta Clara) Francisco 49ers kicked some serious Cardinals' ass last night. Seven Cardinals' turnovers helped San(ta Clara) Francisco's cause as well... We're not here, to start no trouble, we're just here to do the Santa Clara shuffle... (Mission City Lantern doesn't miss a beat...)

Speaking of new stadiums... the Chronicle's man in Oakland, Chip Johnson, does his best to boost Oakland Mayor Ron Dellum's plans to keep the A's in Oakland -- and not with out some needling of San Jose. Like this: "...the chances that Wolff and San Jose city officials will prevail in their attempts to move the team are slim..." Really? I suppose Chip Johnson and Ron Dellums are closer to Major League Baseball owners than Lew Wolff (a Major League Baseball owner). Johnson's piece also states the obvious -- that is may be too little too late -- when he writes: "...It's a complete turnabout for Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums who in early 2007, shortly after taking office, dismissed any notions that the team would remain..." So perhaps Lew Wolff's non-embrace of Oakland is because it comes three years too late...

The Merc Editorial Board gives an atta-boy to Mayor Chuck Reed for punting San Jose's Redevelopment budget talks to February until things can be ironed out on several fronts: the State's money grab, perhaps the Teamsters' thingy, and some other stuff too.

Scott Herhold provides some perspective on the death of teenager Sarah Botill in Gilroy from a night of drinking. Herhold concludes that this is no ordinary story because, "...She was the daughter of a firefighter. She died after drinking at the home of an ex-councilman. And she had a few swallows of beer that night at the home of a cop..." More details about the case from the news side of the house at the Merc and the Dispatch as well...

The Merc's Mr. Roadshow describes some details about the proposed BART-to-Silicon Valley line and how some traffic delays can already be tied to BART's eventual construction...

Speaking of trains... more and less. Apparently High-Speed Rail tickets might be a little bit more expensive than originally planned (and sold to voters) and the ridership numbers may be a little less. Oops... Watch Dog would still pay a pretty steep price to not have to fly into LAX ever again. It might be a good place to get a haircut, but it is a bad place to fly in to. It is safe to assume that the higher fees and lower ridership are not what 200 folks in Mountain View were most concerned about when they attended a High-Speed Rail meeting...

This week the Merc called Steve Poizner's Gubernatorial campaign "anemic" and then late yesterday a story posted that went further into detail about what the rumor-mill in Sacramento is churning out. Poizner may not spend the $15 million he is putting in for some time and all the money that is being put into the race by Whitman and Poizner may mean that San Jose's Tom Campbell is backing out of the race, to which Campbell's press secretary says: "People can talk and conjecture all they want, but there's no change..." Of course, Campbell's press secretary did confirm that supporters are encouraging Campbell to run for Senate instead... because nothing could go wrong with a Campbell Senate bid... (36.6%)

More bad news for the Santa Clara Unified School District and Wilcox High School. Just as the Broom Closet Modeling Agency flap has died down, the Santa Clara Police are forwarding to the District Attorney their findings of their investigation into whether the Wilcox High Principal knew a teacher was known for having sex with students before he was arrested for (you guessed it) having sex with a student... now the District Attorney Dolores Carr needs to review the findings and decide if she wants to take on a high-profile rape case... where have we seen this before? We can only hope two things in this case: 1. that Jim McManis isn't the defense attorney for the Principal, and 2. that the DA's husband isn't working for the victim's (victims'?) families in some way...

To light or not to light... that is the question (at the Ann Sobrato high School football field in Morgan Hill). One complication -- the football field is actually in San Jose ... and within the City's greenbelt. San Jose Councilmember Ash Kalra, who represents the part of San Jose that would be impacted had this to say: "I'd certainly be open to discussing it. I don't want to close any doors to the interest the community may have to try to find a way to make it happen. But under the current zoning, it just won't work." Oh well... perhaps there is a high school in Dillon that will share their Friday Night Lights...

They are going to pave "paradise" (Palo Alto Bowl) and put up a "parking lot" (for a new hotel and townhomes)...

San Jose Councilmember Pete Constant joins Councilmember Pierluigi Oliverio this week on San Jose Inside talking about the City budget. San Jose's new blogging duet...

Morning News Round-Up – 10.27.09: It's bad news Tuesday....

According to attorney Terry Bowman, representing the San Jose police officer caught on video striking San Jose State math student Phuong Ho with a police baton, “Mr. Ho is responsible…” San Jose Councilmembers Madison Nguyen, Sam Liccardo and Ash Kalra stated they were “saddened the Vietnamese American community has recently experienced two incidents with the San Jose Police Department regarding possible use of excessive force.” The Merc’s Scott Herhold steps into the fray with his own analysis of Phuong Ho’s videotaped interview offering this “It’s hard to think he’s making this up… it is extraordinarily hard to make charges against cops stick before a jury.”

Following the death of Beverly Head when she got tangled up by a dog leash, San Jose takes on bikes and pooches. Somewhere, someone is hoping bikes and pooches become a leading story...

Santa Clara’s City Council tackles one hurdle standing in the way of bringing the 49ers to town. Up tonight, letting the team pick the builder of their (planned) Santa Clara Stadium…

The Merc’s Editorial Board wants Sunnyvale voters to know they’re not getting all the facts. The Merc takes a swipe at endorsed candidates Mayor Tony Spitaleri and Councilmember Chris Moylan for telling pieces of a story…

Love is in the air for the Mountain View Whisman School District. Superintendent Maurice Ghysels sheepishly admitted he’s been getting cozy with elementary school principal Carmen Mizell.

San Jose’s Redevelopment Agency released their bad news budget. After $75 million was taken by the State and facing decreased property tax revenues the Agency did some fancy (internal) footwork slashing budgets. Set your sights lower for the convention center expansion…

If you’re looking for your swine flu shot make sure you’re tops on the list. Public Health Officer Marty Fenstersheib had to shuffle after learning fewer (anti) swine-ish shots would be arriving. Kids and pregnant moms top the list… Keeping in mind, not all flues are swine-ish…

Speaking of budgets… San Jose Insider/San Jose Councilmember Pierluigi Oliverio takes a stab at explaining the financial benefits of outsourcing city jobs and how San Jose’s budget works…

Also a San Jose Insider, Santa Clara County Board of Education Trustee Joseph DiSalvo is eternally optimistic that San Jose’s 19 school districts can be organized into 4, DiSalvo wants to hear from you. Do you think 19 school boards, 19 superintendents, 19 sets of district staff, 19, well, you get the picture… willing to give up turf for the good of the children?

Protect San Jose’s numeric guru/Sunshine Task Force chair Ed Rast digs into the mind-numbing world of “item 3.5” and suggests the City Manager is reading Protect San Jose. Still no word about Sunshine…