Morning News Round-Up – 9.28.09: Back in the news...

The Valley Transit Authority has gotten an earful about slow light rail from riders and Mr. Roadshow. They aim to do something about it but some of the Valley’s biggest transit supporters are less than excited about light rail 2.0. Silicon Valley Leadership Group’s Carl Guardino votes for the “less expensive” alternative of “bus rapid transit.”

Also interested in putting happy wheels on the road… San Jose gets federal stimulus dollars to repave 19 of their 2,300 road miles. According to San Jose Transportation deputy director Hans Larsen the $15 million drop in the bucket is appreciated but hardly covers San Jose’s $283 million backlog.

Local Deputy Dogs are pissed off over a county report saying they pay too much for e-booking bad guys. Federal law enforcement pays nothing for computerized booking while poor Los Altos Hills paid nearly $11,000 for one booking in 2007. The answer, of course, is sending law enforcement officers driving to county offices to file reports. Or, LAH arrests more people.

Rosemary Stasek was a catholic and a staunch supporter of women’s rights. “A society is really built up on how it treats women,” according to Stasek and a big part of the reason she landed in Afghanistan. The Merc’s Patty Fisher shares details on the remarkable Silicon Valley woman who left home for less green pastures.

The Merc’s Internal Affairs did a mighty-lot of sleuthing last week…

• The case of District Attorney Dolores Carr & spouse (ethical) screw-up ranked a letter from attorney/friend B. Robert Allard (apparently) to the prosecutor’s chief opponent asking to let bygones be bygones.
  
• Round 2 – the Government Attorney’s Association was asked to investigate a vote of no-confidence against their big dog, District Attorney Dolores Carr. The mystery is who asked...
  
• Sunnyvale, according to IA, needed “schooling in the California Public Records Act” before dishing on home loans to 6 Sunnyvalian employees including nearly $900,000 to City Manager Gary Luebbers.
  
• (former)Hewlett Packard Tech giant/senatorial wannabe Carly Fiorina takes a ribbing from the Merc’s Internal Affairs the Huffington Post as well as a host of bloggers for the “Worst Political Website Ever.”
  

The Merc’s Scott Herhold takes his readers on a sentimental journey through the tale of two weddings (no funerals) and a peek into his daughter’s wedding of the future. Along the way Herhold offers his thought that the legalization of gay marriage will happen, it’s only a matter of time…

Homeless pooches are the beneficiaries of the Humane Society’s annual Walk N’ Wag this weekend while pampered pooches can hang at Pooch in Sunnyvale for only $100 a night according to the Merc’s Sal Pizarro.

The Merc’s Editorial Board calls on Senator Dianne Feinstein to fight for the $4 million Congressman Mike Honda wants to clean up Mt Umunhum. Calling the sum a “pittance in the context of billions in military spending” the Merc hopes Feinstein will “make this project a bright light in an otherwise dark hour of investment in public facilities.”

San Jose Insider/Councilmember Pierluigi Oliverio argues against a “plastic bag bureaucracy” and suggests instead banishment of the single-use poopy diaper. Also Inside, Jack Van Zandt had a rockin’ good time with Joan Baez kicking off the Mariachi and Mexican Heritage Festival.

Protect San Jose’s Mary Klotzbach shares the wrenching story of her son’s death at the wheel of a drunk driver and the costs associated with drunk driving.

Normally a 49ers booster, Mission City Lantern sends props to the Vikings for their “marvelous” win. Really, James?

If watching your local elected officials is your thing, here’s the hap’s for this week…

• San Jose’s Community and Economic Development Committee talks outsourcing, no, they’re not sending street paving to India.
  
• San Jose’s City Council reviews a contract for the Consortium for Police Leadership in Equity (nearly a year after the fiasco that go this ball rolling), considers letting anyone buy low income housing and hopes to make it easier on city landmarks.
  
• The Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors and San Jose City Council meet together to talk flu pandemic and census. Apparently, none of the other Silicon Valley cities plan on having pandemics.
  
• The Mountain View-Whisman School District considers proposals on school size, boundaries, transportation, enrollment priorities and independent study. And, as if that weren’t enough fun, Trustees talk salaries.

Morning News Round-Up -- 7.31.09: Raptors and Beer Friday

The Environmental Impact Report for Santa Clara’s proposed 49er's stadium has landed. (You may not believe it, but Steven Spielberg's imagination figures prominently...) The EIR weighs in at in at roughly 2,800 pages. The rumor that Santa Clara Plays Fair’s Bill Bailey is at Starbucks with those 2,800 pages with highlighter in hand is unfounded...

Taking its lead from a recent Op-Ed by the Chamber's Pat Dando, the Merc’s Editorial Board calls on San Jose Councilmember Kansen Chu to change his tune when it comes to starting a $7.2 million library project. The low bidder was thrown out... it seems Barry Swenson and labor unions have a beef. Wouldn't it be great if there was a blog in town to describe the beef in detail...

Angry Sunnyvalians (?) are storming City Hall asking why a partially demolished Town and Country site is still a disaster a year later. Peter Pau, with Sand Hill Property, says he’s “trying” his best with the “shamefully ugly setting.”

Gilroy’s Mayoral wannabe/ Supervisor Don Gage is pissed the State is cutting Williamson Act support of local farmers. Apparently, Legislators and the Governor changed their mind about California’s future as bread basket of the world.

Gilroy girth growing by 800 acres? Could be if the Planning Commission and City Council approve requests from Gavilan College, Shapell Industries, and Wren Investors. After that, a little Local Agency Formation Commission (LAFCO) approval, with Gilroy’s future Mayor/ Supervisor Don Gage as part of the LAFCO team. Just what Silicon Valley needs... more growth in Gilroy.

Sounding a familiar refrain, Palo Alto is facing retiree pension benefits that could cripple the City.

Frustrated Caltrain commuters abandoned the government driven 511.org and are Tweeting their way to happiness dishing details on delays and seat availability.

It was the breast implants, Officer! The Merc’s Mr. Roadshow shared the cheers and jeers from his mail bag following cartoons depicting “Sex, Lies, and Traffic Tickets.”

The Merc’s Sal Pizarro applauds Camera Cinema’s Jim Zuur (Breaststroking his way to fame and glory at the Senior Olympics), Santa Clara County Librarian Melinda Cervantes (co-leading the charge with Urban Libraries Council) and Valley Medical Center’s Chris Wilder (teaching donors to text, hopefully not while driving).

Kudos to the Silicon Valley Community Foundation as they award $500,000 in grants to non-profits keeping food in the belly and a roof over the head.

San Jose Police Officers Association's Bobby Lopez chimes in on the Obama Beer Summit on Protect San Jose. In his post, he promises this, with regards to the Consortium looking at Drunk Arrests in San Jose:

"...we welcome any fair and unbiased study of our work. If the academics come back in a year’s time and clearly prove that we do have a problem, then I’ll be the first to admit it, right here on this blog..."

Morning News Round-Up -- 4.10.09: Fiber Optic Vandal Edition...

In case you missed this week's San Jose Police Department news, check out our post from mid-day yesterday: "A Consortium and Task Force walk into a bar..."

You may have realized the phone craziness yesterday. Tens of thousands of folks had their phone lines screwed up all day. AT&T blamed the problem on vandals who cut fiber optic lines. The episode caused emergency response and public safety officials to declare a state of emergency because 911 lines were messed up.

The Merc’s Editorial Board has declared the arrival of detente for the City of San Jose and the County of Santa Clara. Crediting Mayor Reed and Supervisor Don Gage for starting the effort 2 years ago and former Councilmembers/Supervisors Dave Cortese and Ken Yeager, the breakthrough comes in the form of a plan for sharing Redevelopment monies.

San Jose’s financial woes seem to mount daily. Compared to San Diego, San Jose’s employee disability claims are triple that of San Diego. Mayor Chuck Reed says he’s disappointed the problem isn’t under control and perhaps San Jose should “subcontract all this out to Santa Clara County.” Disabled/Councilmember Pete Constant disagrees with proposed changes to make it harder to go out on disability saying in his experience the City waits too long to send employees out on disability. (If you are interested in Councilmember Constant's history of disability with the City, here is a little bit, it came up earlier this year...) On the plus side, at least this isn't another story about the Police Chief.

It’s not funny, really, but it does sound a lot more like Animal House than Stanford…Palo Alto’s downtown was the scene of a wet-noodle assault...

Mountain View Councilmembers saw a dizzying array of budget cutting ideas this week but weren’t sure they understood the trade-offs involved. Several Councilmembers admitted they didn’t understand the budget. Councilmembers Laura Macias and Ronit Bryant were frustrated by the process, Bryant said budget decisions in the past have been a very passive process but the current crisis requires Councilmembers to step it up. Y'think?

Los Altos managed to get their Standard & Poor’s credit rating headed up, unlike many of their Silicon Valley neighbors. City Finance Director Russell Morreale credits their “pay-as-you-go” attitude.

One year of dropouts from San Jose high schools lose hundreds of millions in potential earnings, are likely to be the source of over 500 violent crimes, and cost the State bundles. People Acting in Concert Together (PACT) is pissed off about that and managed to get a pledge out of two of East Side Union High School Trustees to reduce the dropout rate. Study director Russell Rumberger pointed to San Jose Unified as exemplary in fighting the dropout problem.

The Merc’s Editorial Board hopes voters in the Moreland School District read the news that dropouts can be prevented during the early years – and vote yes on Moreland’s Measure A parcel tax measure.

Students at Santa Clara’s Wilcox and New Valley High Schools staged a mock funeral at the end of two days of the grim reminders of drunk driving. Santa Clara Police Chief Steve Lodge hopes the training will help students think before driving after getting sloshed. Or, maybe he hopes they’ll hold off on getting sloshed until out of high school…

They’re not NIMBYs they’re YUMBYs say High-Speed Rail opponents on the Peninsula who banded together as a consortium and skipped right past the local meetings to meet with Assemblymember Ira Ruskin. Ruskin is glad they did and pulled the High-Speed Rail Authority officials into the office for a chat. They are still NIMBYs...

Los Gatos’ residents lost their emergency room at 1:00 this morning as Community Hospital closed its doors. New owners, El Camino Hospital, hope to re-open in July. Until then Good Samaritan hopes to serve your emergency needs.

Saratoga’s Chamber of Commerce, still reeling from revelations that Executive Director Elizabeth Borbolla made off with Chamber funds, is working furiously to keep the doors open. Van Nelson, Chamber President, voiced disappointment in his protege saying “she was rising to the challenge. She was teaching herself the skills she needed to do the job. And we could afford her.” And she was stealing your money...

"A Consortium and a Task Force walk into a bar..."

Watch Dog has written about the drunk arrest issue before:

• 11.19.08: We questioned the Task Force that the Mayor and Councilmember Campos set up. (Solution to Drunk Arrests: A Task Force...Obviously)
• 12.19.08: We questioned the timeline of said Task Force. (Six Months?!)
• 03.18.09: We chimed in when the City/City Manager/Police Chief set up a Consortium to undermine the Task Force. (Trading a Task Force for a Consortium)

Well, it seems the Consortium was interested in hearing from the Task Force even if the City/City Manager/Police Chief weren't...and guess what? The Task Force is pissed, and they aren't going to take it anymore. Witness the note below the several members of the Task Force sent to the Consortium yesterday...(hat tip to helpful tipster)

---
To: Consortium for Police Leadership in Equity (CPLE)
Re: Possible Meeting Dates

April 8, 2009

We, the undersigned community stakeholder representatives on the City of San José's "Public Intoxication Taskforce", would like to thank you for your invitations to meet to discuss our concerns regarding police practices in San José. We appreciate the consortium's recognition that the participation and collaboration of community stakeholders is vital to the legitimacy and success of the proposed partnership between the City of San José and the CPLE.

Unfortunately, due to several unresolved issues stemming from the City's announcement of the proposed partnership with the CPLE, at this time we must cancel any scheduled meetings and decline all pending invitations/requests for substantive feedback from your organization pending the resolution of our outstanding concerns - which we remain hopeful will be in the near term.

We want to assure you that this in no way represents a lack of commitment or interest from either ourselves or the communities we represent. These issues remain a high priority within our organizations and we will continue our involvement and support for the diverse communities of San Jose to the fullest extent that we can.

Kindest Regards,

Rev. Jeff Moore, NAACP of Silicon Valley
Raul Colunga, La Raza Roundtable
Alfredo Morales, La Raza Lawyers Association
Pete Carrillo, Silicon Valley Latino Democratic Club
Raj Jayadev, Silicon Valley DeBug
Walter Wilson, African-American Community Services Agency
Skyler Porras, ACLU of Northern California

CC: Mayor and City Council - By fax
City Manager Deb Figone
Sean Webby, Mercury News
---

Aside from the Task Force members listed above and Councilmember Liccardo and others that criticized the Police Chief in this week's Metro piece, where is the outrage?

Are the Mayor and Councilmember Campos going to sit quietly by while the Task Force that they set up raises hell to get heard?

We shall see...and Watch Dog will be there...

Morning News Round-Up -- 3.24.09: Drunk Corsortium/Task Force Edition...

San Jose Inside/Metro’s Fly questions the invitation to the Consortium for Police Leadership in Equity, saying Police Chief Rob Davis likely had them in mind before the Drunk Task Force was a gleam in the Mayor and Councilmember Nora Campos’ eyes. Seems the Chief made plans with the Consortium sometime before mentioning it to the Task Force. He is said to have been eager to participate with the Consortium as of November last year and has San Jose Police Department as a participating organization on the CPLE website. So, back to Watch Dog’s original post: was there ever a plan by Mayor Reed or Councilmember Campos for the Task Force to be anything other than a place for community members to vent? Or was Councilmember Sam Liccardo prescient when he said: “…the place where good ideas go to die...” If Liccardo was right, then Reed and Campos must have known the bait and switch, Task Force and Consortium, was the plan all along...

San Jose Insider/Silicon Valley De-Bug(er) Raj Jayadev blogs his irritation with San Jose’s (apparent) drunk in public, racial (Latino) profiling problem.

Santa Clara District Attorney Dolores Carr finally has something to celebrate, a huge drug bust in a joint effort with Alameda and Monterey Counties. Over a million dollars in cash, weapons, and spy toys were captured along with 200 pounds of cocaine worth $5 million – leaving local coke-heads out of luck. Of course, the story also says the deliveries from Mexico take place every few weeks so how long the pipeline stays dry is up in the air.

San Jose and the County of Santa Clara are back at it with a tussle over money. Supervisor Don Gage seems hopeful saying under the previous regime (whose name he doesn’t share) they’d all be marching into court. This time the bickering is low key and private, like a tense couple at a party slugging down Martinis.

Would you rat out your neighbor for wasting water washing the Winnebago? The Santa Clara Valley Water District hopes you do. Facing an ongoing drought the District is contemplating cutbacks at today’s meeting. By the way, District Board members also consider allowing voters to decide term limits.

The Merc’s Editorial Board cheers for Supervisor Dave Cortese’s push towards solar and urges the Supervisors to look for rooftops and paved areas – rather than open space – for panel placement. Like, maybe their parking lot on North First?

The Merc’s Ann Killion, focused on sports, questions the wisdom of the A’s Lew Wolff bad mouthing Oakland and the stadium. Wolff initially called the Oakland stadium aging and backtracked a few days later saying he hadn’t intended to insult Oakland. Perhaps not, but Wolff wants a spiffy new place for his team to play and San Jose wants to give it to him.

Passage of Prop 1A and support from the Feds has high speed rail moving forward at a full gallop, which terrifies NIMBY’s between San Francisco and Los Angeles. Gilroy Mayor Al Pinheiro and Councilmember Perry Woodward agree the train is a boon to the Gilroy economy saying, “great European cities grew up around train stations.” Even Gilroy’s Chamber of Commerce gets in on the pro-train chant calling it an economic boon. The challenge for the High Speed Rail Authority is both how to prevent building a modern day Berlin Wall and letting NIMBY’s know their communities won’t be divided. And no offense Gilroy, but you'll never be a great European city...

Morgan Hill is into recycling – at least when it comes to ballot measures. The former Measure H has been repackaged as Measure A for May’s special election. Councilmembers hope to gain support for 500 homes they want downtown. Former Mayor Dennis Kennedy is leading the charge to May and vows not to get complacent – this time.

San Jose Revealed goes into mind-boggling (and mind-numbing) detail with charts and graphs analyzing the turnout in this month’s recall effort against San Jose Councilmember Madision Nguyen. (They lost me at Hello...) Bottom line in all the pointy-headed details: turnout was good not great and more people are voting absentee with each election. Mission City Lantern’s James Rowen also read Revealed’s analysis, Rowen calls it the “most accurate set of predictions of voting trends…”

Revealed uses their joy of analysis to look at local 2010 races. They agree with Watch Dog that San Jose’s Pete Constant and Sam Liccardo will have boring races, Madison Nguyen will face challengers and remain successful, oddly doesn’t bother to mention Nora Campos’ brother-in-waiting to fill his sister’s shoes. A fuller Watch Dog recap of Revealed's recap will appear here later today.

San Jose Insider/San Jose Councilmember Pierluigi Oliverio complains he’s not part of closed door meetings with labor and calls for a city wide vote on making all negotiations public. Careful what you wish for Councilmember. Public negotiations are a sure way to kill any and all projects...and is what the Labor community was pushing with Community Benefits Initiative years ago...

The clerical screw-up that left the Gilroy Unified School District short $6 million has Supervisorial freshman Dave Cortese lending a hand. Cortese agrees with Supervisor Don Gage that something needs to be done immediately. With all the talking going on, Watch Dog hopes they figure it out soon. It is significantly less interesting to watch the screw-up drag on endlessly than it is to find (and share) solutions to them.

Mountain View residents and eight mediators met to talk about building affordable housing on a parking lot. One resident complained the area would be ghetto-ized with the ROEM development alongside the PacificEuro hotel. Jonathan Emami, a ROEM Vice President, promised a project that was “richly detailed” and would look like a market rate project. Pissed off residents have to wait until July for the design meeting. (If the name ROEM looks familiar, it is because they are the company looking to fast-track an expensive loan from the City of San Jose Housing Department...)

San Jose’s Bill Carlson is bringing good eats to the streets of San Jose – and hoping he’s found the next big thing in downtown eating: beer-bathed sausages. You can find Carlson, and your next brat, at Market & Santa Clara.

Silicon Valley’s Dancing ‘Teletubbie’ Geek Steve Wozniak fills in concerned Mr. Roadshow readers on his various injuries and his dancing exploits. Remember, Vote for Woz and your Prius speeding sins shall be forgiven.

The arts may be struggling with the economic downturn but that hasn’t stopped the Arts Council from naming Nils Peterson as Santa Clara County’s Poet Laureate. Peterson calls himself a ‘coffee shop poet,’ Watch Dog hopes that means we can see him wandering between Trieste and Peet's for a local reading.

Your Los Altos Town Crier mobile update will fill you in on PG&E’s planned power outages Wednesday.

On a (somewhat) related note...

There was a power outage in Palo Alto over the weekend, but that isn't the most interesting part of the story. Check out this media tid-bit about Palo Alto's Utility Department during the outage:

No city utilities officials were available Sunday afternoon or evening to provide information about what was happening.

Oops...