By Guest Blogger Chuck Reed
The official City response to the Grand Jury Report on the Norcal garbage contract needs a lot of work before the Council approves it. The initial draft is too long on denial and too short on facts.
I have made some recommendations to the Council in a memo which you can see in the Memo’s section of my City Council web page at
http://www.ci.san-jose.ca.us/council/dist4/main/docs/memos/memo.asp?MemoID=23
The memo is too long for a blog, but here are my first and last recommendations:
Modify the response to the Grand Jury to acknowledge that the Mayor should have told the Council that he had made a commitment to Norcal to recommend that the Council review and consider an amendment to the contract to cover higher labor costs, and delete all comments to the contrary.
Modify the response to the Grand Jury to include answers to and to be consistent with answers to each of the following questions:
9. Since October 1, 2000 has Norcal, the Teamsters Union, or California Waste Solutions made any payments to any person or entity at the request, behest, or suggestion of the Mayor or anyone acting on his behalf?
Chuck Reed is a San Jose City Council Member representing District 4 and a candidate for Mayor.
You are absolutely right on this one. Not only #9 but you should include a 10. It should ask as anyone benefited in anyway from your negotiations with Nor Cal whether it be in any form of payment to anyone. Anything that can be coverted to money or anything that benefits anyone. The Mayor and his group have felt like they have been above the law and work and act that way. He should be asked or forced to resign. Lets have some guts on that council and someone make the motion to ask him to resign. Lets see who has the courage and leadership on the Council.
Finally a few of you are raising your voices to demand truthful answers from the Mayor and his administration. It has taken far too long to reach this point and some of your fellow councilmembers still refuse to challenge the Mayor and demand the truth. Although you you have been joined by Ken Yeager (way late, but better late than never) it is apalling that so far the Council majority has yet to demand the truth from the Mayor. Those who continue to support his work of fiction should be considered unfit for future public office (or for reelection to their current office.) If the electorate allows this trampling of the truth to continue, shame on them.
Chuck-
What is the basis for #9?
Is there evidence to suggest payments, or are you fishing?
Our current City Council members have individually numerous times FAILED in their responsibility to act honestly, ethically and in a fiscally responsible manner representing the residents of San Jose who elected them.
Will our current City Council be remembered as a group of
To seriously reform city government in San Jose will not be an easy task, but it is more imperative now than perhaps any time since the fifties when there was concern that outside elements were making an effort to co-opt some city employees & agencies like those in Chicago & New York City.
Legalistic lists of questions that will be ignored by the city council are not a bold or effective approach to this situation. The tone of the above list, dry as fallen leaves, carries no deeply felt concern about, and no emotional commitment to, San Jose. No mayoral temperament here.
The City of San Jose is now trembling on the brink of where San Diego was ten years ago…mayoral slush funds, cover ups of key data, an over-powering oligarchy of developers & financiers, spin-on-spin, and promised retirement benefits beyond revenue expected.
We need someone to lead us who cares in his or her bones deeply & passionately about San Jose, or we will be San Diego with scandal after scandal over the next decade.
Where are the feelings? If you love San Jose, you’ll be shouting the truth from the rooftops and demanding real change & real reforms.
Shhh! Don’t tell anybody! It’s a secret if our City Council members individually have ethics or as a group act in an ethical manner.
http://lists.thedatalist.com/images/secret.jpg
Will they continue to ignore the dishonest and unethical behavior of the Mayor and a few of his staffers, a hostile city government work envirnoment he created and what is fast becoming an unethical San Jose political and city government culture for their individual political and other advantage?
Many studies show the No. 1 factor of an ethical culture is the behavior of top management,”
One test of ethical behavior is: “Is it legal?” “Some people think this is the only test for ethics mostly lawyers and politicans not the residents and working people of San Jose.
“But some behavior can be legal and unethical,” sounds like San Jose’s current Mayor and how he has directed city government.
Are we willing to accept Mayor Gonzales’s professional politican’s narrow ethical behavior defination rather than what San Jose residents have came to expect which is ethical behavior based on “right or wrong” and to treat everyone fairly?
You should very carefully think through your answer since if we use the lowest ethical behavior standard the day will come when you, your family or friends will regret these lowest ethical standard as we have frequently seen in other large ” Strong Mayor” cities, California and our current federal government.
Will the City Council do the right thing or use questionable logic, dishonest statements, plea they need more time to “study the report and issues” and the City Attorney’s legal excuses to justify the Mayor’s dishonest behavior.
This is a clear test of each individual City Council member’s willingness to act in a ethical manner and demand ethical city government behavior.
Ethical behavior is that which is “good” or “right.” and with moral duty and obligation
a) the principles of conduct governing an individual or group ( City Council ); concerns for what is right or wrong, good or bad, a set of moral principles or values
b) standards for behavior expected and commonly known throughout the organization, whether expressly communicated or not.
I’m afraid we’re all going to need some intense training after Gonzo leaves. Here’s a local resource:
http://www.scu.edu/news/releases/release.cfm?month=0203&story=MCEEthics03
Sorry for the dead link on #7. Here it is:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0098282/
Where’s the outrage? Where’s the passion? Where are the fireworks?
I know next to nothing about getting elected as SJ mayor but it seems to me that carving out a position as a frontrunner by letting it rip and telling it like it is would be a good start.
What am I missing?
Memorandum’s are swell but so are naps.
Well now I’m really confused.
As I understand it Tuesday the City Council will decide if it wants to accept, reject or modify the Mayor’s response to the Grand Jury’s report…the one that called him a low-down backroom wheeler-dealer who ended up costing San Joseans $11 million + change.
To everyone’s surprise The Mayor denies these allegations. Go figure.
Now I’ll admit that I’m not a student of the City Charter but wouldn’t it be a lot more expedient for the Council to start from a position of “Hey Ron, we think it kinda sucks how you snuck that big wage increase past us?” Are they actually going to DEBATE the issue of the Mayor bamboozling them?
Why even consider allowing the Mayor’s response to speak for the entire Council? Why hasn’t the Council already appointed someone totally unbiased, like Cindy Chavez or Dave Cortese, to draft it’s response? Hmm…maybe a debate makes sense after all.
Out of the Loop,
Take a look at the Mayor’s memo and response to the grand jury. He makes a good case that councilmembers knew just as much as he did about the problems with the Norcal contract and CWS workers.
From http://www.sanjoseca.gov/clerk/Agenda/09_13_05docs/091305_03.04att1.pdf
“As a result of the discussion at the October 10 council meeting, the entire City Council
became aware of the potential labor dispute between Teamsters and Longshoremen about
which union would represent CWS sorters. As the transcript of that meeting shows,
councilmembers, City staff, Norcal, CWS, and union representatives discussed the issue of
union jurisdiction affecting workers at the materials recovery facilities. The Council was also informed at this meeting by Bob Morales of the Teamsters that there were economic issues
revolving around the dispute with CWS and Norcal.”
Don’t expect any outrage at tomorrow’s meeting. Seems everybody knew exactly what was going on at the time.
Since when has Cindy Chavez been unbiased? She has withheld any comment on this issue. Maybe it’s her ties with labor that’s holding back her criticism on the Norcal deal.
Chuck:
Welcome back. You posted on 8/1/05, got 25 comments you apparently ignored or didn’t bother to read, and didn’t post again for six weeks.
Dave Cortese got back to us, although it took him a while.
Cindy hasn’t bothered with us yet. Guess she couldn’t get Phaedra’s OK.
Re Garbagegate vote today: Once again the council is showing a total lack of leadership. No cojones, either.
You don’t need to wait for the $100,000 lawyer to tell you what to respond to the Gonzo-Guerra-Doyle-Borgsdorf response. Take some initiative, show some spine.
We have a Grand Jury report. We have the response from the axis of evil. You are being called on today to either accept, reject, or modify THAT response. Do none of you have an opinion? Oh, maybe there are no polls to guide the council into how to think, how to react. Yet most of the council simply waits to see what someone else has to say before they make a decision. What gutlessness. But that’s politics, isn’t it?
Remember, the vote today is what to do and say about Gonzo’s response. It is complete in itself, it stands alone. You can’t just wait until someone else tells you how you should react. For god’s sake, city council, DO SOMETHING besides commissioning another investigation with $100k of our money that could be better spent on health care for kids, or practically anything else, for that matter.
I am very sad after reading these blogs, and reflecting on what has occurred at the hands of this administration and those that serve it with out question, have we become a city with out a heart?
I have watched and chronicled events for the past 30 years. Self efacing politics, political contracting, artistic fraud, abuse of the down and out by the very people that were sworn to protect them.
There is no redemption for a city that does not respect the logic of community. My own father worked all of his life to give his children a path to follow. I did not see him as Ethical, I only saw him as my beloved dad. He far surpassed the word. My dear mother taught me the art of patience. But, patience with a purpose. We are who we are as a community. Bad , Good , Ugly. We do not need words to discribe who we are. We know who we are.
Iraq,the disaster in New Orleans, Dot Com crash, the stampede to China, 9/11, the ecalating price of everything, a half billion dollar city hall, FEMA. It feels like a giant boulder crashing down the mountain crushing everything in its path and picking up speed. It however, will stop at the bottom and just become another rock.
I will sleep well tonight because I have done all I can today to be who I want to become. I feel sad for those that do not understand the need to be inclusive and empathic to them selves. It starts within each of us. I know it’s true, because my mother told me so.
Today I will celebrate at Sacred Heart Church, the life of a man that lived “his” life. To recognize such a man, is to become as him. Jim McAtee’s sprit lives within us. Some of us are simply not able to search within for fear of finding ourselves.
It is at times such as now, that the sprits of those that have patiently watched the drama, react. The time has come for patience, empathy, and change. The logic of community needs a voice. Let us all be that today!
The Village Black Smith
Dear Loop,
The reason some of the Council is shy about directlychallenging Gonzo on this insider deal is due to the fact that several of them were aware of the Norcal budget shift. Several of them, the quieter ones, were in on an arragement to give Norcal the additional bucks and, probably violated State law (the Brown Act), by reaching a private agreement before it became public.
If the investigators are any good (the Merc seems to think so), they will dig into whether or not there was a private agreement before the issue became public.
We’re in form some potentially exciting times!
This post-script to these messages is being written on Thursday after the Tuesday city council meeting just to make a record of what happened.
The prediction made in Item 5 above turned out to be completely accurate. Chuck Reed’s dusty list of questions was completely ignored by his peers.
This, of course, raises another question and that is how can we think that Chuck Reed can assemble a majority coalition on the city council with which to actually govern San Jose.
Chuck Reed may not understand it yet, but we voters should pay attention to the fact that he has no allies & no friends on the city council even after five years service on that body. As mayor, he would be a disaster if he couldn’t count on working with a majority of the city council.
Ernesto,
My question #9 about any payments being made comes from hearing from a lot of people about what they think is the most important question to be answered.
JohnMichael O’Connor,
Sorry to be slow to respond to postings.
On Tuesday, the Council majority declined to support my motion to say that the Mayor should have told us about the deal. I appreciate the support of David Cortese and Linda Lezotte, but the Council majority was not willing to say that what happened was wrong.
Chuck:
Glad you checked back in. Please keep it up.
Sad about the council’s lack of backbone.
The 2b definition of politician in Websters is: “a person primarily interested in political offices from selfish or other narrow usually short-run interests.” Sound like anyone we know?????
Garbage controversy? Every big city needs one! Anyway who cares, definitely not this voter.