Hypocritical actions are in full bloom in San Jose.  In this case, it is a recommendation to the Sunshine Task Force by one of its members who is exhibiting that most unfortunate characteristic. Labor representative Bob Brownstein is suggesting that the city be required to detail all costs anytime a significant public subsidy is required. The wages of any jobs, impact on neighborhoods, return in taxes, and anything that could reasonably be assumed to be a pertinent part of a project, would have to be expeditiously disclosed. This is just like the joke about not being able to run a two-car funeral. In recent municipal lore, it is known as not being able to give away retail space to Starbuck’s. That’s some business sense—and some funeral.

The results are in and the sound and fury are subsiding: the Mexican Heritage Plaza is still in the red, the San Jose Police Department arrests more minorities than their ratio in the population, and people are still skeptical of sports facilities. And, in a news flash from Monte Sereno, neighbors are fighting over a fence. There does not seem to be much else of excitement in the paper these days.

As tempting as it is to write this week on the navel gazing of the San Jose Police Department and its study of itself suggesting some important and disturbing targeting of minorities, I will save that until another day. My topic today is the one that refuses to go away, the Tombstone (“the town too tough to die”) of our time. It is the scam of the century, the development too lucrative to die: Coyote Valley. Like Freddy Krueger, no matter how many times it is declared dead in innumerable study sessions and elections or in the pronouncements of mayors and budget directors and editorial writers, the new city of sprawl and delusion keeps coming back. No one can drive a stake in its heart, protected as it is by the woolly thinking of certain council members, the Hessians of the lobbying cult, and an impenetrable Kevlar vest of greenbacks and cynicism.

Is There Some Hope?

As we look at the past, it is important to remember that the same leadership (I use the term loosely) that presided over the sad demise of San Jose’s credibility in the last decade was the predominant force on the VTA Board.  This is not much to inspire confidence or faith in anything, let alone a leap of faith like BART.

Part I

The organizational audit for the Valley Transportation Authority (VTA) presents a picture neither unexpected nor unwarranted.  It clearly exposes that not only does the emperor have no clothes, but he may not even be the emperor. 

There was a strange and bizarre convergence of issues at the San Jose City Council this week. On the one hand, there was the 1stACT Silicon Valley presentation of proposals for downtown—large and small items that included expanding the Convention Center, building a baseball stadium and 21st century light tower, and creating more Guadalupe River trails, as well as fountains and quiet spots that are a treasure to any city.  They accurately presented them as big projects and “small wonders.” A key man behind this was the Adobe CEO, Bruce Chizen, as good a friend as downtown dreamers have had in a long while, and the main presenter was Connie Martinez of the Children’s Discovery Museum. The finances were unspoken, but the vision was impressive.  It is a wonderful look at what might be.

It is always amazing to see how desperate political characters can be. Case in point: the assertion from the leader of the labor forces at the South Bay Labor Council, Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins, that “she” and “they” elected Pierluigi Oliverio. Their absence from all but the victory party was not because of fear or the fine canapés on election night, but because of a careful “strategery.” 

And the End of the Storied Santana Row Boycott

Fiascos always have precedents as well as postscripts.  The mistake of land use in the Santana Row project was based on the same model that led to the destruction of downtown’s retail in the fifties and sixties. The postscript was written when Silicon Valley and Bay Area leaders challenged the absurd spending priorities of the California Transportation Commission last week. Chuck Reed, Carl Guardino and the others struck a blow for all of us when they got the state’s commission overseeing this spending to change their priorities.  Feeding the economic engine of the world here, our valley,  is crucially important to the US economy, and stands in stark contrast to some overpass in Tulare County or a “bridge to nowhere” in Modoc County. Every commuter in our valley should be grateful that Mayor Reed and the others were successful. It is the latest battle in the allocation of bond proceeds, but not the last.

I thought the story a week or so ago about improvements in our local transportation system was very informative.  Basically, it goes like this: the California Transportation Commission slanted the available funding to rural and non-economically important areas of the state. The Mercury News headline screamed: “South Bay Road Plans Dim.” They have refused, in some goofy pique or lack of sanity, to fund the economic engine of the free world: San Jose, Silicon Valley, us!  What are they thinking?

Well, the committee that has been debating the future of downtown’s nightclub culture and, in the truest sense, the “future” of downtown itself, seems to have figured it out. Unfortunately, I fear that they have it very, very wrong.

Every few years at a showing of movie classics or at a meeting of mystery writers, it once again raises its black, shinny head.  Known in lore and anecdotes everywhere as the “Black Bird,” it is the creation of writer Dashiell Hammett and was portrayed in the film noir classic, “The Maltese Falcon,” starring that hardboiled realist, Humphrey Bogart.  It is, in short, “the stuff that dreams are made of.”

Rarely in recent San Jose history has such a tiny tempest been stirred up in this diminutive a teacup. When Mayor Chuck Reed announced that he was going to charge a modest $20 fee for attending this year’s State of the City address—instead of having Jerry Strangis and the assorted lobbyists and other hangers on that populate the corridors of City Hall pay the fare—there was a hushed silence.

He appeared at City Hall the other day. He came like an avenging developmental angel, spewing bile and insults in his wake. He referenced a Broadway play, “Wicked,” and said “no good deed goes unpunished.” He rocked ‘em and he socked ‘em in a singularly awesome performance. All in the room were transfixed.

Meet Carl Berg.

Few of us have given much thought to Joyce Kilmer, fine “woman” that he was, since we were forced to memorize his poems in grammar school, forever immortalizing the basic “tree.”  I think we would have agreed then that very few poems we were forced to learn by rote are as beautiful as the green, wavy creatures that we see every day around us.  When we found out later that Kilmer died in the muddy fields of France in 1918, it made him a bit more interesting—the tragic poet. Yet, that damn poem rang out in our minds, at least one line anyway. 

It seems that on this week of a great man’s birthday, we should remember the wonderful quote that reminds us that “the ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort, but where he stands in times of challenge and controversy.” It is particularly pertinent to our situation now in San Jose.

Between Andrew Bales and Single Gal, it seems that the subject of the week is “whither San Jose’s cultural scene.”  But, before that, the swearing in of our new mayor deserves a big mention.  Chuck Reed’s big event was just what you would expect of it: solid, dignified, hopeful.  From the casual and friendly manner of Mayor Reed, his wife Paula and his staff, to the impressive administration of the oath by a genuine hero—his daughter, Air Force Major Kim Campbell—it was just the antidote to a dismal recent municipal history. A good time was had by all.