BART To County Fairgrounds Ultimate Goal
During a break from his new job sipping margaritas by the pool at a posh Club Med in Saipan, former VTA General Manager Pete Cipolla made the brave announcement that accused his former bosses of a secret agenda.
Reading from a prepared statement, Mr. Cipolla said, “Know that I harbor no resentment, I mean look where I’m sitting and look where they’re sitting! But that train will go to the fairgrounds if they are not stopped.”
He went on to explain that Supervisor Don Gage and former city-supporter Blanca Alvarado made a backroom deal with San Mateo County to kill the existing plan that voters overwhelmingly approved with Measure A in 2000. In its place they would substitute “Operation Beall.”
Documents that were obtained through the California Public Records Act exposed “Operation Beall” not as the so-called “Tax Relief For The Elderly – Stop Violent Criminals – Education Reform – Restored Trust With The People – Supervisors Really Work Hard Plan” that Ms. Alvarado has been peddling.
The documents clearly revealed the thinly disguised plan as a ruse to guarantee ticket sales to the future county music hall in order to address the glaring deficiencies of such a plan as stated in a report by the county’s pet lobbying firm Silicon Valley Advisors (S.V.A.).
When confronted, tenured politician Jim Beall referenced several dozen recent studies before focusing his comments on the $935,000, half-page report from S.V.A., which concluded: “Build it and they will come.”
“The last thing we want is for the city to be correct and for the county to be publicly humiliated…again. We are sick of it,” explained Supervisor Beall, “but with findings as compelling as that, we felt we had to act.”
Asked why the plan was named after Jim Beall, Supervisor Kniss said, “because he is our colleague…Duh.”
Nice work John…Is there any hope of them doing the right thing?
Love reading John’s articles on Fridays…keep ‘em coming!!
Let’s prioritize – We should put a BART stop at the Winchester Mystery House before we start thinking about the fairgrounds.
Where’s Tommy Fallon? I heard he was having gall bladder surgery last week.
Kudos to John and Tom!!!
William Safire-in his final NYT editorial capping a distinguished 30 year career-recognizes San Jose Inside as “one of the most influential..of the new media sources.” He goes on to state the the resignation of Terry Gregory was attributed to the “investigative brilliance of the Tom and Jan (sic) McEnery duo” -a “modern day, Woodward and Bernstein, except they are Irish.” Read more below!!
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/28/opinion
Great fiction, I thought Tom was the novelist.
Jim Beall is committed to getting BART to San Jose and has been leading the charge at the MTC. The problem is one of money.
In order to fully fund BART to San Jose immediately under the current system, other projects and operations would have to be curtailed. The working poor would be the most dramatically affected because of the cuts in bus service and lilght rail.
A compromise to get BART to Berryessa and then to downtown San Jose is being rejected because of the fear that the project will never get to downtown if piece-mealed.
A better solution would be to eliminate the myriad of transportation agencies we have—including VTA, BART, Golden Gate Transit, CAL Train, Sam Trans, Muni, etc. and merge all the operations into one regional transportation system.
That would free up tremendous amounts of money and allow us to prioritize the transportation projects we really need. Moreover, we could convert the Cal Train right of way to BART and complete a loop around the Bay.
This would take a tremendous amount of political courage as you would be goring the ox of all those administrators. The service people would still benefit because the real work is done that level (ie we would still need bus drivers. )
We continue to fight with other agencies for precious dollars for no reason.
(The Bay Bridge debacle is another example of mismanaged taxpayer funds and political egos getting in the way of a needed transportation link.)
Jim Beall has been an advocate for us on Transportation. Certainly, he has different views on ways to accomplish those goals, but one should never question his commitment to achieving solutions to our current transportation problem. No one has worked harder.
In the final analysis, the problem is not with Jim Beall, but with the Bush Administration , the Republican Congress and our State Budget.
If we don’t start thinking “out of the box” by eliminating government, the taxpayers are not going to vote to give us the money we need to complete necessary infrastructure.
Real reform takes bold action, not business as usual. It takes leadership and Jim Beall has been in the forefront of that leadership.
Let’s not fight amongst ourselves, especially when everybody agrees on the goals.
P.S. As for the Fairgrounds Venue, I agree—let’s scrap it. It is a loser.
Hay yeah. I’m moving back to Santa Cruz, Johnny.
Can you set me up in the Seabright place?
I’ll get you some rent money in a few weeks.
Okay, here’s my first blog entry. I’ll do three more in the next couple months – after that, we’re even.
Cool?
People like Jim Beall are always the problem It is constantly the same politicans that do the same things over and over. Why can’t we get rid if these people, aren’t there some kind of term limits? Clueless is an understatement when it comes to the suporvisors. They couldn’t be more wrong on that venue at the fairgrounds but, of couse, they’ll all be dead or gone onto some other political job when it fails.
Columbo
To Richard Robinson:
Call me simply. But whenever I see a bus or light rail I cannot help but notice that there aren’t any riders!
Teddie,
I agree, but for many of those who do ride it is there only form of transportation.
The bus service is a joke, it takes an hour and a half and two buses to get from the west side to downtown. But if it is your only choice—