Morning News Round-Up -- 3.10.10: Welcome to LAS, I mean SJC

Well, the City of San Jose is officially selling itself to the devil. Literally. They voted to put a measure on the June ballot to expand gambling in San Jose in order to help bolster their bottom line. It reminds Watch Dog of schools that allowed Coke and Pepsi into their cafeterias because there was money in it for the schools. Sort of, "we'll deal with the evil because we need the money"... It doesn't make it a good idea just because there is money attached to it. Five (FIVE!) Councilmembers opposed it: Councilmembers Ash Kalra, Nora Campos, Madison Nguyen, Kansen Chu, and Sam Liccardo. Nothing about it on the Values Advocacy Council website yet...

One person who may not have to deal with the results of more gambling (which we can only imagine he is very much against) is San Jose Police Chief Rob Davis. That's because Davis seems to be in the running for the top job in Dallas. The cheers from the ACLU and DeBug's offices were audible from the street when this news came out yesterday afternoon...

And then there is the daily story about the airport... this time the Merc Editorial Board took their turn. They say no to lifting the curfew totally, but maybe some tinkering with it might make sense... but it really is about jobs and wages, both of which may need to be discussed to keep SJC on track with paying its debt obligations and its doors open... Perhaps the City should consider putting a card room in Terminal 1...

And the daily 49ers story... the Santa Clara City Council voted on mitigations to the stadium plan last night. But you weren't there, you were home watching Crystal Bowersox...

There is an interesting write-in campaign is going on with the Santa Clara Valley Water District. Because a judge ruled they had been collecting a groundwater fee illegally, they may have to stop collecting it if more than half of the customers will well-water write a letter saying they want to stop paying.. A weird exercise in democracy, to say the least...

What is it about Palo Alto Utilities? They can't seem to keep the lights on. In the past month they have had some problems... as outlined here. And they should probably get a new spokesperson. Dean Batchelor had this to say about yesterday's incident: "No one was injured, thank god." Thank god? You're the guy in charge and you need to have faith to make sure no one gets hurt? Later in the story he had this to say about the three outages this morning: "This is not a good month for us right now..." Y'think?

Not only that, but a big company is leaving Palo Alto because the electricity is unreliable... oops. Not a good month indeed...

Morning News Round-Up -- 3.2.10: Another "reliable" poll?

Yesterday's (unreliable, 7-point margin of error) poll about the 49ers in Santa Clara that was leaked to the Chronicle's Matier & Ross (and made fun of by Watch Dog), is in the news again: This time, showing support for the A's to San Jose move. If one part of the poll is unreliable, then can we trust the other parts of the poll? Oregon-based Rick Lindholm did the poll of 200 folks in each city about each stadium issue, and is now on the defensive. He claims that the poll wasn't paid for by anyone, rather that it is his own poll that he uses in an ongoing way to help with other clients. Here is Lindholm's reasoning for doing the poll in today's story: "Lindholm said he was not hired by anyone to conduct either survey. He said he does polling on a variety of issues in the Bay Area, using the results to help him build a database for his other polling work for private clients." But last June, when he did another "unpaid" poll talking about baseball in San Jose, said this: "Lindholm told the Mercury News on Tuesday that he had conducted the polls for free and that no one had hired him to do them." This guy is either loves doing polls for free or loves to see his name in the paper... or both. It is becoming more and more clear that this guy is working for one or more San Francisco interests that would like to kill one or both stadium measures in Santa Clara County.

The County is considering giving defendants some rights when they are charged with misdemeanors by having a defense attorney from the public defenders office show up. How progressive... for 1930. The cost is a million buck for the next two years.

Note to Michelle McGurk: Make sure you don't include this in today's City Hall clippings. We don't want anyone to freak out about this headline: Tesla kicks tires on new Palo Alto headquarters. While Tesla kick the tires, Paul Krutko kicks himself...

The power outage on Sunday in Palo Alto is causing a (seemingly) growing headache for the Utilities Department in Palo Alto. The Department wasn't giving residents and businesses any information about the outage, when the lights would come back on, or what the cause was. The Utilities Department's official response: "We're very sorry for the inconvience... We failed... I'm sorry..."

The Mayor of Palo Alto, Pat Burt, gave his State of the City yesterday and talked about improving infrastructure, installing red-light cameras, how he wants to improve relations with Stanford (yeah, right), and of course High-Speed Rail. He didn't mention that he wanted to improve the communications efforts of the Palo Alto Utilities Department...

Steve Poizner is getting ready to launch a statewide ad campaign... hopefully in the ad he will describe his thinking of why it took so long to start his statewide ad campaign... "I waited so long to start this ad campaign because I love coming from 20 points down and I've been busy bidding on stuff on eBay. I'm Steve Poizner, and I approved this message."

Poizner's announcement about this ad campaign couldn't come on a shittier day, and not because of the weather. But Jerry Brown is slated to announce that he is officially "official" in the race too...

Morgan Hill has strong, limited development rules in place and has for a long, long time. They seem to be working, according to a recent study.

Finally, we take a look at San Jose Inside where Councilmember Pierluigi Oliverio gets all academic on our asses. He goes into parking theories and how free parking is a bad idea. Watch Dog actually agrees... so Councilmember Oliverio, how about proposing that the Mayor and Council have to pay for parking everyday in the City Hall garage. Symbolic, yes. But powerful. Email us if you are interested in proposing that idea here. (We won't tell anyone we gave you the idea...)

Morning News Round-Up -- 3.1.10: TTYL... Tom

It was a very Sid Sunday... but former Mayor Tom McEnery was at the game too. It was actually a Shark-infested game in Vancouver. (If you have no idea what Watch Dog is talking about, you should.) More important than all of that is we learn that Eric Johnson, the Editor of the Metro, text messages Tom McEnery. Raising the question: Isn't Mayor McEnery a little too old to be texting in public?

Another story about the San Jose Airport... and it is getting a little pathetic. You remember that the powers that be (the Airport Director and the Mayor) had Sully come in for an inspirational speech to Silicon Valley executives. While the execs were there, they heard from the Airport Director and the Mayor who asked (begged?) these companies to fund the grand opening celebration at the airport this summer and asked (begged?) these companies to start using the airport... Bill Sherry even suggested that companies call airlines and implore them to get more flights in and out of San Jose... which kind of sounds like Bill Sherry's job. This is all good and fun, but the airport owes a whole bunch of money on a bond debt which they seemingly have no way to pay...

The Case Against Dolores Carr gets strong and stronger. Actually, in Sunday's Internal Affairs column, it is her husband (a former SJPD Officer) that is in hot water. It all stems from the same case that got the DA into trouble: the Hosseini murder. You remember, as the DA was developing her case her husband was working for the victim's family as a 'security consultant.' This eventually led to the case being moved (taken) from the DA's office and will be prosecuted instead by the Attorney General's office. Well, the State Bureau of Security and Investigative Services is looking into John Carr to see if he was a practicing private eye without a proper license. The Rosen campaign couldn't type fast enough on a Sunday -- their email didn't get out to folks until the mid-afternoon. As Daryl Hall said, private eyes are watching you, watching you, watching you...

The Chronicle's Matier & Ross continue their anti-Santa Clara 49er's effort and write about some leaked polling numbers about the 49ers stadium deal saying that voters are evenly split in the election. The poll was done by Richard Lindholm of 200 voters... which has a seven percent margin of error. The funniest thing about this story is that Lindholm convinced Matier & Ross that the polling was part of some long-term research project on Santa Clara County attitudes. Really? A poll on "Santa Clara County attitudes" would poll 200 voters in the City of Santa Clara? It looks to Watch Dog like Lindholm is polling for some San Francisco interests...

County Assessor Larry Stone wrote a piece for the Mercury News on Sunday that is certain to cause a stir. He wrote about public sector pensions and the dire need for reform. Specifically, he talks about how the pension liability explosion is crippling state and local government. This will make him among the least welcome people at the Firefighters' barbecue...

While healthcare news has mostly been coming out of DC -- on the local healthcare seen, we saw a shake-up announced over the weekend. Santa Clara Valley Health and Hospital System chief Kim Roberts is getting her resume together for her next job... Scott Herhold at the Merc dives deep into the politics of the County and gives the insight that the new County Exec doesn't mess around.

On a more constructive healthcare note... the good folks that brought you the Healthy Children insurance program in the County are looking to bring healthcare coverage to employees of small business called Healthy Workers. Perhaps the DC folks should take note...

If you are under 13 years old (and you read this blog) take heart, a County Commission has recommended that you not be put in jail...

There was another murder this weekend in San Jose. A 19 year old was shot and killed on S. 24th Street and Williams Street. 5th homicide of the year in San Jose.

Palo Alto Utilities Department has had a rough few weeks. First the East Palo Alto plane crash took out their powerlines causing a big, day-long outage... then last night a downed powerline caused outages for several hours. But the weird part of the story is this: Substantial portions of Palo Alto suffered electrical power brownouts or blackouts tonight, but no city announcement was made as of 11:30 p.m. three hours into the power failure. Palo Alto Weekly toots its own horn in the story to say that residents stayed informed by using PaloAltoOnline.com's "Town Square." (If that sounds familiar, it is because of this from March 2009: "No city utilities officials were available Sunday afternoon or evening to provide information about what was happening."

Here's some news you've been waiting for, the Palo Alto Police have made "strides" in dealing with racial profiling. We guess Chief "Doo-Rag" Johnson's departure did usher in some good...

From North County to South County...

A duo of bad budget stories: Gilroy Unified is cutting $7 million from their budget (ouch) and the City of Morgan Hill faces nothing but "bad choices" to balance their budget... (Some would argue that Morgan Hill's "bad choices" are what got them into this mess...)

Morning News Round-Up -- 9.01.09: Don't all plug your Teslas in at once... please

It is football season in Sacramento, sort of. State Senator Elaine Alquist lends her support to the 49ers request for picking their stadium builder. Alquist penned a piece for the Merc. complimenting Santa Clara’s City Council and touting the benefits of SB43 as it winds its way through Sacramento.

San Jose Councilmember/San Jose Insider Pierluigi Oliverio provides a blow by blow of last week’s retirement board governance meetings, for the 99.95% of San Jose who didn’t go. Peace Officers Research Association Director/ Protect San Jose’s Pete Pomerleau joined Oliverio and dished his own opinion noting “…Councilmembers Ash Kalra and Rose Herrera sat through both community meetings…” Must not have notice Oliverio taking prodigious notes.

Like they say, almost only counts in horseshoes and… Monte Sereno recall backers failed in their attempts to gather the necessary 602 signatures to take out Mayor Curtis Wright, Vice Mayor Don Perry, and Councilmember Lana Malloy for voting themselves a $300 monthly salary. Recall-meister Lon Allen promises/ threatens this isn’t his last foray into politics. Perhaps it should be...

The economic disaster has hit home for Silicon Valley’s small banks. Focus Bank (celebrating one year in the trenches) looks at a $1.5 million loss. The good news is local banks point out they are “well capitalized” and should “weather the storm.”

Put on your hiking shoes… Fans of the great outdoors will be happy to hear the Stevens Creek Trail is gaining momentum. Mountain View accepted funds to complete a section. Sunnyvale had a “breakthrough” when fears of crime proved unfounded according to Mayor Christopher Moylan. Los Altos Councilmember Val Carpenter is hopeful Sunnyvale’s breakthrough gets more options on the table.

Palo Alto’s greenies are abuzz over Tesla’s impending arrival. Palo Alto Utilities Electrical Engineering Manager Patrick Valath want you to know if everybody plugs in their car at the same time “it could have an impact.” A vision of all of Palo Alto plugging in simultaneously has the words “hot app” for smart meters falling like water.

Being a parent is tough. The Merc’s Scott Herhold provides some insight into the nostalgia and sadness that comes with watching the youngest walk out the door and into adulthood. Or, whatever adulthood means for a college freshman.

The Merc’s Sal Pizarro dishes the news that Wyatt Earp, ok, it’s really Hugh O’Brian, is riding into town.

The Los Gatos Union School District was still doing the math when they learned their numbers were down. “Math is more developmentally challenging” as you grow up, explained curriculum director Dr. Bitsey Stark when looking at Los Gatos sinking STAR numbers.

Mission City Lantern sings a love song for Santa Clara Mayor Patricia Mahan...