In the spring of 2012, I received notice of a conference in New York City called “Greater & Greener” that was to take place in July. The conference, which is wrapping up this year’s annual event today, covered a wide variety of topics all related to urban parks and trails.

Santa Clara Plays Fair has long been considered one of the South Bay’s preeminent NIMBY groups. Most sports economists consider the new 49ers football stadium in Santa Clara—set for completion in 2014—to be an excellent example of how private-public partnerships can create economic development while the city only puts some temporary skin in the game. Santa Clara Plays Fair disagrees, and the NIMBYs, ever allergic to planning and progress, appear unwilling to go gently into that good night. In what was probably intended to be a satirical cartoon posted on the group’s Facebook page, artist Eugenio Negro asks three rhetorical questions about the new stadium, each getting edgier until the third joke falls off the cliff.

Two bullets have the potential to change the world. One pierced the heart of Trayvon Martin on a rainy night in Florida early last year; the other penetrated the head of Malala Yousafzai on Oct.9, 2012. Trayvon died the night he was shot, while Yousafzai recovered from critical condition to triumphantly address the United Nations last week. It is my hope that Ms. Yousafzai’s passionate speech can help transform the conversation about equality, justice and education. Let me explain.

Text messages, emails, Facebook and Twitter announcements brought more than a hundred community members to San Jose’s City Hall on Sunday, as part of a protest and march in response to the not guilty verdict in the Trayvon Martin case.

Why wait for “Anchorman 2” to hit theaters when we can just tune in to KTVU’s coverage of the Asiana flight 214 crash? Proving some newscasters will literally say anything put on a teleprompter, Channel 2’s afternoon anchor Tori Campbell read four obviously fake—and blatantly racist— names that supposedly belonged to the pilots of the Boeing 777 that crashed while attempting to land at San Francisco’s airport on July 6.

A convicted serial rapist may get released in Santa Clara County, should a judge agree to a writ objecting to his relocation to Los Angeles County, where he was born and raised. SoCal native Christopher Evans Hubbart, 62, has admitted to raping 40 women in Los Angeles and Santa Clara counties between 1971 and 1982, according to the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office. Due to more lenient laws in the past, Hubbart likely avoided prison terms that would have kept him incarcerated for life.

A San Jose sex crimes detective was charged this week with possessing sexually graphic photos of a teen girl. Tony Fregger, 33, surrendered Thursday evening, according to the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office. The eight-year SJPD veteran has been placed on paid administrative leave from his assignment to the Sexual Assaults Investigation Unit.

We hear talk from time to time about partnerships between the public sector and private sector, essentially merging the mutual interests of governments, which serve communities, and private companies, which exist to make profits for shareholders or their private owners. But there is another entrant in the private sector that is often a partner but seems to get left out of the public/private partnership discussion: nonprofits. When it comes to parks, these organizations can make critical contributions.

It was Will Durst’s kind of crowd, as most of the audience could read—or knew someone who could. It was a special addition of the annual event where local politicians poke fun at themselves and each other: Monday Night Live. Held at the San Jose Athletic Center late last month, and on a Friday night instead of the standard Monday, the San Jose Stage Company also celebrated 30 years of local theater. It was a night to remember.

Every two years, Santa Clara County does a Homeless Census and Survey to receive federal homeless funding. The most recent survey, conducted in January 2013, shows an increase in homelessness, as more and more people are setting up encampments in San Jose. Here are some possible steps San Jose and Santa Clara County can take to address the issue in a more humane way.

Last month I asked: How many more years will Silicon Valley put up with broken promises made to our children, before it is too late for us to recover from the lack of political will? The clock is ticking on a very real domestic threat.

As we swelter with unseasonably hot weather this summer, too many children are sitting at home, losing months of instructional gains produced during the academic school year. The educational leaders know this to be true based on a wide variety of studies that indicate children without summer enrichment activities lose several months of achievement gains made during the school year.

Day two of the BART strike once again left commuters scrambling, the highways hopelessly jammed and countless people late for work.
 Go to 511.org for real-time updates and suggested ways around the hold-up, which has doubled or tripled commute times for a lot of people who work in and around San Francisco. Employees of the regional transit agency—the fifth most-used rail line in the nation—are on strike because contracts with the agency’s two biggest unions expired and discussions over a renewal fell apart. BART workers want higher wages—23 percent raises over the next four years.

The South Bay homeless population appears to be pooling in San Jose, as a new study estimates an 18 percent increase in the number of homeless people in the city since 2011. Overall, Santa Clara County’s homeless population grew by 8 percent—7,361 total—in the last two years, according to the county’s biennial census of the homeless population.

Discussion on technology dominated much of the Fair Political Practices Commission’s June 20 meeting in the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors chambers, as the state political watchdog discussed the role of monitoring campaigns, candidates and elected officials in between dealing with some technical difficulties in setting up its equipment.

Each fiscal year, San Jose’s councilmembers are allocated $20,000 in “HP grants” that can be utilized to provide grants to cultural, educational or recreational groups. These funds are allocated solely at the discretion of the elected official. My allocations, listed in this column, represent my personal priorities and values not only as an elected official, but also as a proud citizen of San Jose.