Attention, San Jose: there’s no time to waste. Buy extra bottled water, soda and beer. Keep plenty of snacks on hand. Check flashlights and batteries. Pay your cable bill. It’s time for Ron Gonzales to deliver the State of the City address.
Gonzales’s 7th annual speech is tomorrow night. I wrote his first one in 1999. I co-wrote the 2000 address with mayoral aide David Vossbrink. The speech takes a lot work. We’d labor for weeks, seeking inspiration and ideas. We’d go through 10 or more drafts. It’s too bad we didn’t get paid by the word. I’d buy Larry Ellison’s noisy plane as a birthday gift for Janet Gray Hayes.
Gonzales would read through the near-final draft a few days before to get comfortable with the text. Then, he would cancel appointments on speech day to rehearse reading it from a teleprompter. Sometimes, we’d come up with a rhetorical gem. In 2000, David Vossbrink creatively imagined and penned a beautiful rationale for our sidewalk repair program:
“As a new grandfather, I know the value of neighborhoods whenever Alvina and I take our granddaughter Annalisa out for a walk or a swing in the nearby park. I now see our street through the eyes of a toddler - cars seem to zoom by a lot faster - and a crack in the sidewalk looks a lot bigger.”
While we sought eloquent phrases or compelling anecdotes, an inordinate amount of time was spent picking one word. In the speech, the most debated word is the one that completes the sentence “the state of the city is …”
Here’s what’s appeared in past Gonzales addresses:
1999 - “Exciting” - The word seemed to fit: a new mayor announcing a bold challenge, BART to San Jose.
2000 - “Strong, vibrant, confident” - We couldn’t pick one. The economic boom made everything seem possible.
2001 - “Spectacular! San Jose has momentum! We’re on a roll, baby!” —I’d left the office by this time. I can only surmise that David Vossbrink was on jury duty and replaced by an over-caffeinated mayoral aide with an exclamation point fetish.
2002 - “Strong”- This was Gonzales’s re-election year—the first time he’d face voters since his 2000 scandal. All good candidates know that the word “strong” is a better choice than “weak” at campaign time.
2003 - “Remains strong”—Someone lost the office thesaurus.
2004 - “Bright” - Let’s see: budget deficits, cost overruns, and investigators bumping into each other in the hallways … is that a light at the end of the tunnel or an oncoming train?
Now, it’s 2005. It is what it is. Let’s move on. The State of the City is …
Note: The Gonzales State of the City addresses are conveniently located on his website.
The state of the city is a word that rhymes with city but starts with SH.
As president of San Jose Insomniacs, I thank you for linking to Gonzales past speeches and passing out no doze at the event.
Arthur Trabajo
I followed the link and read the Mayor’s 1999 address where he talked a lot about the Internet and said:
“Our goal should be to make San Jose the Internet capital of the world.”
Last night at dinner I talked with some colleagues from Japan about their Internet connections at home. They said fiber 100 Mbps connections are becoming quite common. The slowest home connection of the group was 30 Mbps. Compare this with my neighborhood in San Jose where Comcast just recently started their Internet service with 1 – 2 Mbps download speeds (my tests). Sorry to say we have a long way to go to beome the Internet capital of the world if you look at home broadband connections.
Jude,
Gonzales can only hope that the light at the end of the tunnel is a train—a BART train.
P.S. Thanks to Leigh Weimers for the column yesterday.
Note to Leigh: a blog is not only judged by the quantity of its posts, but by the quality of its readers—knowing you are one makes it very worthwhile.
For those who missed the Leigh Weimers column Rich refers to, here’s the relevant part:
There’ve been lots of words, especially lately, about bringing BART to San Jose, but few as intriguing as those last week from political consultant Rich Robinson.
Posting on a blog by Jude Barry on the San Jose Inside Web site, Robinson first noted the obvious: that it makes sense to link the Bay Area Rapid Transit District with the region’s largest city—indeed, the rail system needs to circle the bay—but the problem is paying for it. Then, unlike most proponents or critics, he offered suggestions on how to make it work.
“We need to think out of the box,’’ Robinson wrote. “Simply shutting down all other forms of public transportation doesn’t seem like a viable alternative. . . . There are other ways of cutting budgets, generating revenue and achieving our goal. Has anybody looked into privatizing BART stations, allowing retail, commercial and housing developers to build them to help fund the project, instead of taxpayers? Any chance we could eliminate the myriad wasteful transportation agencies that currently exist and combine our transportation systems? Before we ask for another tax or cut services to poor people, don’t we need to show the public we have looked at some alternative solutions to the problem? We have the best and brightest minds in the world. Surely we can think of other ways to provide additional revenue without completely gutting the rest of the transportation system or over-burdening the taxpayer.’’
Suggestions for how to do a job, instead of excuses for why it can’t be done. What a concept.
How about “dazed and confused” as the state of the city.
How about the State of the City is “solid” and for sale to the highest bidder and/or lobbyist?
Tony A., Ash P., Sean K-R and others, please open your wallets.
… went from a trophy city to atrophy….
The state of the city is … drum role … strong … again …
“The state of the city is…in the hands of the DA.”
After reading Jude’s post, then hearing the Mayor’s dull thud of a speech I can’t help but wonder: Did Gonzales scribble this one out while on his way over to the California Theater? Clearly the days of worrying about the content of the State of the City speech are over.
Let’s see: for bold initiatives hizRonner is going to crack down on red light runners and start a committee to “speak up” for schools. And in case there’s a question he still supports BART, affordable housing, blah blah blah. Oh yeah…after putting a wet finger into the air he’s in favor of Major Leauge Baseball in SJ, while sidestepping how he would have the city pay for it.
Geeze Ron…next year do us all a favor, phone it in and save the taxpayers $70k.
It never ceases to amaze me when I hear the mayor speak… if you close your eyes and listen, it sounds like someone reading a story to a group of kindergartners. I guess there’s a difference between reading a speech and delivering one.
State of Ethics in S Jay:
I heard a re-broadcast las night on KLIV of a Commonwealth Club panel discussion on ethics in S Jay government. The panelists were Bob Kieve, Tom McEnery, David Yarnold, and Judy Nadler.
This is must listening for anyone interested in how our city government has deteriorated in the last few years, patricularly on the ethics/transparency/lobbying fronts. Imagine, public “servants” who refuse to disclose phone logs and appointment calendars…and they think that’s OK!!
Perhaps San Jose Inside could get a transcript and post it; or better yet, get audio capability and webcast it.
John Michael O’Connor