Morning News Round-Up -- 5.27.10: Five Twenty-Seven

Ah, the Civil Grand Jury, that upstanding tattle-tale. They came out with a report that stated the obvious: Cities Must Rein in Unsustainable Employee Costs. San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed was quick on the draw with a response agreeing that cities must rein in unsustainable employee costs...

With all the fun happening in San Jose's City Council District 5 race, it is easy to forget that there is another tight race on the other side of town for the San Jose City Council District 9 (Judy Chirco's seat)... Jim Cogan is very, very upset (apparently) with the way he is being treated by the newspapers in town and wrote about it on Protect San Jose. He even gets a little Sara Palin folksy on us by using the phrase "darn right" three times in one paragraph...

There a few challenges swirling about the baseball stadium EIR approved by the San Jose Planning Commission last week. The naysayers include the San Jose Sharks (jerks), Stand for San Jose a.k.a. the San Francisco Giants (bigger jerks), and a nearby resident (probably not a jerk)...

You may have heard/ read/ seen/ been in traffic yesterday because of a certain head of state that was in Fremont visiting your $535 million investment (loan guarantee) in Solyndra...

Breath a deep sigh of relief San Jose/Evergreen Community College District fans... they have a new chancellor and a new opportunity to right the ship, hopefully... Note to new chancellor: Let's try to keep the expensive oversees travel in check...

The Mercury News isn't done yet with their June 8th recommendations, and today's isn't going to make the local folks (or the close-to-local folks) very pleased. They endorsed State Senator Gloria Romero for State Superintendent over Assemblymember Tom Torlakson and former Franklin-McKinley Superintendent Larry Aceves.

The Santa Clara County Housing Authority seems to have lost much of its electronic data because of a computer glitch. The cost to replace that information = $600,000 and probably a string of bad stories about poor oversight, etc. And perhaps a story or two about what the Housing Authority actually does might be nice...

Morning News Round-Up -- 5.24.10: 4 losses/4 games = Shark's tee times

On Friday night the Sharks lost in overtime. Sunday they gave up a two goal lead to lose by two goals. For those of you counting at home, that's 4 losses in 4 games against the Chicago Blackhawks. And 4 losses in 4 games means tee-times all around today...

We finally have all the Mercury News Editorial Board's recommendations for San Jose City Council... Previously they came out in favor of Magdalena Carrasco over Xavier Campos et al and Don Rocha over Jim Cogan, Larry Pegram et al. Today we get the incumbents, Pete Constant, Sam Liccardo, and Madison Nguyen -- Nguyen being the only one with a real race this time.

It took a few days and seven pages, but Deb Figone, the San Jose City Manager, responded to the City's unions' plans to fix the budget... they aren't enough, too many one-timers, leave me alone at Flame's, etc., etc.

Deb Figone's ongoing battle with the City's unions won't (apparently) prevent San Jose's pools from closing for the summer, which was the original plan. The City is going to contract with some private companies to run the pools for the summer, which is great news... if it ever stops raining. Too bad the same deal couldn't be worked out for Family Camp.

Increasing the VLF. Remember when it used to be considered a political hot potato? That seems quaint now, right? Gray Davis did it and it cost him his job. Governor Schwarzenegger undid, and it cost his budget-balancing billions. San Mateo County (SamTrans) is now considering a local VLF and so is Santa Clara County (VTA) to help with their projects. According to polling, 59 percent of County voters support VTA's VLF $10/ car fee.

Well, the long-awaited investigation into the San Jose/Evergreen Community College District's Chancellor's travel, spending, and general sloppiness has concluded... the results: "We are taking responsibility for not seeing that all policies and procedures were enforced. It will help us doing a better job going forward" -- that according to Ron Lind, who serves on the Community College District Board. Of course, unelecting the Board who is supposed to pay attention to such things would also work.

Dude, that is so uncool... a medical marijuana dispensary was robbed at gun point in San Jose on Thursday. The robbers took the weed and the money off the patients who were in the dispensary at the time. Now the Medical Cannabis Collectives Coalition -- the pot club lobby, if you will -- would like the City of San Jose to hurry the hell up to write an ordinance that would set some security guidelines for clubs...

Steve Johnson at the Merc asked the question that nobody was asking last week when Toyota and Tesla announced their plans for NUMMI: Will Tesla and Toyota create as many jobs as hoped? Well, if you ask San Jose, who was promised jobs from Tesla, they'll probably say OHN...

This must hurt Paul Krutko's ego more than the Tesla thing... the Merc had a story over the weekend about how all the (cool, high-paying) Web 2.0 jobs are going to San Francisco...

Vic Ajouny, the Mayor Chuck Reed's campaign guru (?) is in the Merc's Internal Affairs this weekend about a questionable mail piece he put out for Richard Calderon who is running a quixotic campaign to try to unseat Sheriff Laurie Smith... Are you surprised that people would question Ajlouny's mailers?

In other Internal Affairs news... Pete Constant isn't pedaling stories about his challengers' police records (and if you believe that...) and John Weis, the San Jose Redevelopment Agency's number 2 is leaving town... weird, considering he is the one in charge of putting together the MLB plan for downtown San Jose. Apparently Weis couldn't wait for Bud Selig any longer...

Scott Herhold's column on Sunday gives a glimpse into the legal system about the long-forgotten case of Avo Makdessian/City of San Jose versus Dennis Fong (Tropicana) and a silly (libelous) email that Makdessian sent from City Hall...

A woman driving her SUV on early Saturday morning in Palo Alto was kidnapped, driven to Santa Clara, and sexually assaulted... scary.

You may remember last week when the folks at the Gilroy Unified School District were considering finishing the beautiful new Christopher High School with portables as opposed to a new school wing that was promised when the school bond was passed in 2008... well 100+ folks showed up at a special meeting last week to protest the portables...

Finally, if you have any campaign stuff that you would like to share, we're here for you. Especially copies of mailers that may be interesting for folks to see. We have collected some, but we'd like more: email us.

Morning News Round-Up -- 5.11.10: Life without a leaf-blower hotline...

Ballots are out... candidates are running around like crazy... and the Merc is about to weigh in on all the races... A while back they endorsed Teresa Alvarado for Supervisor... and Jeff Rosen for District Attorney... and now they are getting into the San Jose City Council races. District 5 is first up and they give a big nod to Magdalena Carrasco to replace Nora Campos. Some choice quotes that District 5 voters will be seeing a lot of in the coming weeks...

"What she lacks in political connections, she makes up in intelligence, thoughtfulness and a deep understanding of the values and needs of the community. We recommend her in the June 8 primary."

"Despite having served on the Planning Commission, he shows little insight into city operations."

And perhaps the most damning...

"He [Xavier Campos] was chief operating officer of the Mexican-American Community Services Agency, which is under criminal investigation for skimming off workers' retirement contributions. He says he was aware of MACSA's cash-flow problems but not the diversion of funds."

Ouch...

New, high-tech luggage scanners at Mineta San Jose (International) Airport get a write up in today's Merc. They are apparently cutting-edge, very cool, and something that "should be done everywhere"... Now, if only airlines and people started flying out of the joint, they could actually start using the luggage scanners...

Apparently several judge seats are up in the County... Tracey Kaplan at the Merc had the (tedious) task of getting into the nitty gritty of each race.

The San Jose/Evergreen Community College District is closer to getting a new chancellor... there are three finalists -- one local (the President of Evergreen Valley College) and two not so local... Watch Dog will bet on one of the two not so local folks...

The not-so-newly-formed Santa Clara County Elections Commission will meet finally... after 2 years. This seems to be over the objections of the Registrar of Voters. He seems to hate oversight more than a large, local police department does...

Add a rail company to the list of folks opposing High-Speed Rail... Union Pacific.

This should piss people off... the Leaf Blower Complaint Hotline in Palo Alto will be shut down due to budget cuts. If you have a complaint about your neighbor's leaf blowing, please call 800-Get A Life...

A new tax may be coming to Mountain View this fall... this time, more taxes on your 650 phone line that you are so proud of...