For those of you awaiting the search for the “most despicable” in San Jose, you will have to wait a bit longer. The nominations are still open. Due to the heavy traffic Price Waterhouse is computing the votes as quickly as possible.
The obvious names of murderers, bandits, and assorted criminals have popped up regularly, with Holmes and Thurman, the kidnappers of young scion, Brooke Hart in 1933, heading the list. Other nominations from the community include various lobbyists and one local power broker, Stan Berliner, the man most responsible for the sell out of the hopes and dreams of so many San Joseans. He helped ruin the Giants campaign in 1992 – making plenty of money in the effort – and then choreographed the Santana Row sell-out in 1998. He and other of this lobbyist cult are in a different grouping that the first batch of outright murderers and monsters, and will be put in a separate category. They have no doubt, injured our community badly, but are not to be totally damned.
More later on this contest but keep the nominations coming for “most despicable.” It could be a photo finish.
On the District 7 front, the Mercury has endorsed Rudy Rodriguez and Beth Gonzales. Both seem to be fine candidates and certainly have accomplishments in the their fields, but many were surprised by the strong reference to PACT in the commentary. An exceptional gathering of neighborhood/church activists, who also boast Councilwoman Judy Chrico as an alumna. Yet Chirco has been notably absent in the discussions of ethics and rational development debates and her omissions have surprised those who look to PACT members as the most reliable when it comes to sound judgment and incorruptibility. Chirco’s silence does not reflect well on another PACT member.
Members of the Vietnamese community, Madison Nguyen and Linda Nygyen, were given grudging compliments, much of them backhanded,in the paper. Although one was faulted for too few visible accomplishments – at 28 years old! Too bad the editorial writers do not put the same criterion on themselves and their boring columnists who, except for the too brief tenure of David Yarnold, have been a group notable for underachieving, if you had ever held out hope for them.
This election will be very important to San Jose and could hold tremendous chances for improvement in the City Council.
Tom:
You forgot Tuburcio Vasquez who was hanged in a public ceremony in downtown San Jose, then there were several city managers (long before Dutch) that ran rough shod over the elected officials, there was Bill Emig, the Sheriff who defied the law by extracting payoffs from the whore houses (before WWII), and how about the Commies that your father tried to get out of the state legislature (he succeeded, but the guy retired to France on his one term pension)… Do you want me to go on?
Jerry
Tom,
I nominate former City Manager “Dutch” Hammann, on the grounds of his annexing and attempted agrandizement of Alviso. During one of the almost-annual floodings of Alviso due to the Guadalupe River clogging up, “Dutch” decided to not let Alvisoans return to Alvsio. Defying armed guards, the Alvisoans waded back to their waterlogged abodes. Fortuately, San Jose law enforcement did not fire into the backs of the wet villagers. Alviso was annexed in 1968, but somehow Alviso is still there—even on maps.
Mark had it almost right: After he served a term in the State Prison, he went to Palm Springs where he took a security job. It was there he fell into the pool and died.
I vote for Hamann as well. Decades after his reign we are still suffering from the lousy city planning that came out of his office. BTW, re: Bill Emig. Does anyone remember the sad end to this unfortunate? According to Harry Farrell’s “Swift Justice”, Emig got caught up in a scandal and lost his job and was unable to work in law enforcement again. To make ends meet, he took a job as a security guard at a SJ apartment complex. While making his rounds one night, he fell into the swimming pool and drowned. I’m recalling this from the epilogue in Farrell’s book. I’m a little hazy on all the details, but I think that’s the gist of what happened.
I disagree that Duth Hamann did great damage to
San Jose during his tenure as city manager. If he hadn’t annexed the unincorporated land to San Jose when he did, San Jose would have ended up as a suburb to Santa Clara or Sunnyvale instead of vice versa..
A.P. Hammann is the guy who will go down in history as the creator of this sprawling and heartless suburb situation. Downtown began its decline on his watch. Eric is right about Alviso. I grew up next door to one of Dutch’s key players in the Alviso annexation and I can tell you that from what I know about how this guy operated, that election was likely rigged and the 189-180 vote in favor of annexation probably had a few non-Alvisans casting ballots, or at least a few key bribes given to a portion of the electorate. I remember reading pro-annexation articles in the Mercury describing visions of “The Sausalito of the South Bay.” Isn’t it though?
I nominate former Martin Luther King Jr Librarian, James H Fish, who served from 1990-1996, recruited here from Massachusetts when San Jose was then teeming with excellent local candidates for the post. He totally destroyed the existing media department by selling off an irreplaceable and glorious LP collection at pennies on the foot of stacked up LPs. He also sold off many irreplaceable volumes of fiction and non-fiction in the same manner. At the time I called him one of history’s great erasers.
He was in place during that brief and shining moment on Big Tom’s watch when the MLK Jr Library was unwontedly thrown open on Sunday afternoons – a move that was just preceded, some claim not uncoincidentally, by the 63 million dollar scandal. Most of know that politicians will enhance library services when they want to soften up the constituents which is, as far as I am concerned, reason enough to let them remain morbidly corrupt in their exaltation. He also reigned uncharacteristically implacable over a build up of videos that did finally make up a handsome and esoteric collection, but the media center was always merely a tattered remnant of its former manifestation established by Nick Border the 1970s. Unfortunately the glorious new MLK Jr Library is still quite, quite media-paltry when compared to other local libraries, such as Mountain View. I blame that continuingly sorry and dirty shame on the apparently undoable damage done by Mr Fish in the first six years of the last century’s last decade.
I nominate the the people who time the traffic lights, except for 10th and 11th streets where they got it right.
Re: Dist. 7, Madison Nguyen & Linda Nguyen are good councilmembers in training but they come up short in any reasonable comparison with Beth Gonzales, Rudy Rodroguez or even Ed Voss. But, the best candidate doesn’t always win, right?
Frank Taylor, the ex-head of the SJ RDA, gets my vote. He was terribly provincial and narrow-minded when it came to Downtown. There was a period of time when Frank wouldn’t even condone a new lemonade stand unless it was within the bounds of the Downtown area. Frank just couldn’t stand to see success in outlying areas, e.g., Santana Row. Downtown remains a contrived business area, hundreds of millions have been poured into the area trying to make it something it can never be.
I would like to nominate two men who aren’t even citizens of our great city, but may well determine our sports future…Bud Selig and Peter Mogowan. Again, neither lives in San Jose, and neither were elected by the citizens to shape our future. But through their insistance that San Jose “belongs” to a Major League Baseball team that resides 50 miles to the north, both Selig and Mogowan may well keep MLB out of San Jose. The people of San Jose may loose out to the forces of ultra-greed and ultra-capitalism…and despite the fact that this is our city (not Seligs or Mogowans), there isn’t anything that we can do about it.
I nominate Susan Hammer. She was Mayor when Santana Row was approved. She was the downtown councilwoman before mayor and she knew that Tom McEnery before her had tried to help bring back downtown. She knew the history with Valley Fair and how it killed downtown. She had all the knowledge of history and still screwed it up again under the direction of anothe nominee Stan Berlinger.
If you haven’t been to a San Jose Giants game you are truly missing out. 100 times more fun than PacBell, and about 1/10 the cost.
You can stretch out, have a cheap beer, enjoy the non-stop promotions, and watch some really good baseball.
Hammer also caved in on the Fallon statue and got us the pile in the plaza instead. When it comes to downtown, she is the worst since Hammann. And she represented that part of town when she was on the Council. Isn’t she married to a lawyer? Maybe that would explain her affinity toward snakes?
Oh, let’s not forget about Del Borgsdorf, our City Manager. Under his watch, we’ve endured a City Taj Mahal building grow in cost from the low $200M to the mid $400M. Much of the overrun is due to the suprise finding that the building will need fixtures and furniture… who would have thought?!?! Additionally, the Cisco fiasco happened under the nose of the City Manager and his legion of Deputies. Are we getting our money’s worth in terms of oversight?