It turns out the Willow Glen home invasion was (apparently) not random, according to police. The family was targeted, perhaps because of “…a trio of luxury automobiles parked outside…” The Daily Fetch doesn’t want to speculate on anything, but the details as laid out in today’s story sound interesting, to say the least. We learn that the family who was tied up and robbed had three luxury cars, had just sold a car for cash and had the cash stolen, and that the father was hung over from watching soccer… are these things we need to know about this story?
The District Attorney said in February that in June she would have an update on the investigation into the Mexican American Community Services Agency (MACSA), the organization accused of skimming money from teachers’ pensions from their now shut-down charter schools. But now we learn from the Gilroy Dispatch that a year isn’t long enough to investigate, apparently. Tick tock. Why is this important? Read this and this. Why is this a political decision? Read this. It is no wonder we are getting a new DA in January…
The Andy Cohen (Menlo Park) versus Rosanne Foust battle spilled onto the pages of the Almanac yesterday afternoon. Redwood City Councilmember/SAMCED Executive Foust is pretty pissed at Councilmember Cohen, especially because he didn’t call her before filing his complaint with the Fair Political Practices Commission… She is confident that the FPPC will see her dual roll as no conflict at all. For her sake, we hope she’s right…
And to pay for the new jail… the Board of Supervisors are asking voters (50 percent of them anyway) to pass a new sales tax to help get rid of the County’s “structural deficit“. Now-Elected Supervisor Carole Groom was the only cooler-head in the room casting the lone dissenting vote… (By the way, we are just kidding about the tax paying for the new jail.)
Belmont is the new Sacramento… they decided to start their fiscal year tomorrow without a budget because deals with their unions are not finalized yet. Perhaps Jerry Hill and Ira Ruskin could come back and provide some insight into how to start a fiscal year without a budget…
Could the budget axe fall on Peninsula Humane Society and SPCA? Perhaps. Each city in the County pays part of the $5 million per year contract and times are tough…
If you ever stay in one of the six hotels in Pacifica, if a measure passes in November you could be paying 2 percent more in the “transient occupancy tax“. It is currently 10 percent but the Pacifica City Council would like to increase it to help out their bottom line…
And finally this:
We’d hate to see a week go by without an anti-High-Speed Rail piece on Burlingame Voice… It is now “Part 20” in the eternal book of High-Speed Rail Hating…
The Mercury News Editorial Board would like you to vote for the Rose Garden in the contest for America’s Best Rose Garden… and the Merc’s election endorsement means something — just ask Don Rocha, Magdalena Carrasco, and the 49ers… (but don’t ask Teresa Alvarado…)
We’ll start with the inside baseballs stuff today… Remember that Menlo Park Councilmember Andy Cohen filed an ethics complaint against Redwood City Councilmember/ SAMCEDA executive Rosanne Foust over the Cargill Saltworks project… well, former Redwood City Councilmember Jim Hartnett fires back today in the Daily Journal. Hartnett does some digging and finds that Cohen is apparently a fan of Lyndon LaRouche… (The Daily Fetch doesn’t need to do any digging to note that Hartnett and Foust are married.)
While we are in the “Letters” section of the Daily Journal, San Carlos Councilmember Matt Grocott takes on a constituent who wrote in last week complaining about salary and benefits of San Carlos employees. Perhaps it is that deft political touch that proved so beneficial in the Supervisor’s race for Grocott…
Today will be a busy one at the County government building… Supervisors will consider the Charter Review Committee recommendations elections, among other things. Tomorrow’s news could include a bunch more things on the ballot. (Thank you Coastsider… and Bruce Balshone…)
One way to deal with the budget is to hike fees (just ask Menlo Park about their garbage rates…) Today’s rate hike news come from the Coastside County Water District. 14 percent.
Menlo Parkians will voting on the Bohannon Project this November, but it is a much smaller project (26 residential units) that had folks all worried last night. Old neighbors apparently don’t want new neighbors in Menlo Park… that sounds about right.
Speaking of Menlo Park… or at least the folks there that drive fancy electric cars…
Remember when everyone was jumping on the IPO bandwagon… well, it ain’t 1999 anymore, so when Tesla rings the bell today, expect some people to get really rich… or maybe not… Ironically, the only folks who are lucky enough to get in on IPOs are the same folks who can afford a $100,000 car.
If good fences make good neighbors, then perhaps Redwood City and Menlo Park should be building a fence, because right now they are not being such good neighbors. We know that Menlo Park does not like the idea of the Cargill Saltworks development. But Menlo Park Councilmember Andy Cohen went one step further and just filed a complaint with the California Fair Political Practices Commission charging that Redwood City Councilmember Rosanne Foust has a conflict of interest whenever she votes on Cargill matters because of her role as the President and CEO of the San Mateo County Economic Development Association… That’s heavy duty stuff.
You have to give it Shaun Bishop at the Daily News… he apparently has been asking questions about how $310,000 which was to be spent by Redwood City on a consultant to make sure the County didn’t site their new jail in downtown Redwood City… or more precisely, what has Davies Public Affairs been doing for all that money. It looks like not much. There was a website up for a day, but that came down. Remember when this story first came out, we pointed out that on Davies Public Affairs own website, they write: Davies makes NIMBYs and naysayers irrelevant… They should be more worried about Shaun Bishop these days than NIMBYs and naysayers…
And taxes won’t be the only thing on the ballot… the County will probably have some Charter Review stuff on their too, including (maybe) district elections, the special election versus appointment issue, makinmg the treasurer-tax collector an appointed position and perhaps other stuff too…
The San Jose Planning Commission cracked down on Xavier Campos (and future candidates too) for their fundraising and campaigning…
The budget battle and personal sniping between San Jose Councilmembers Nancy Pyle and Pete Constant continued last week…
The District Attorney’s office will be very interesting for the next 7 months as both DA-in-waiting Jeff Rosen is there while DA-in-packing Dolores Carr heads out the door…
And this is something that will likely land in Carr/Rosen’s lap… a Willow Glen family’s home was invaded, the family was tied up, and the house was “ransacked”… expect Willow Glen to be on high alert…
It seems USA Swimming took a page out of the Catholic Church’s book about how to deal with sexual assaults… by keeping them “confidential“…
Scott Herhold at the Merc looks deep into the underbelly of Saratoga politics. Actually, he commends Saratoga for being “reasonable” and thinks San Jose should import some of the “cooler heads” from there…
Supervisor Don Gage seems to have saved the day, even though his days as Supervisor are numbered. You may recall that the County was about to boot the San Martin Lions Club from their meeting hall, but it may not be necessary now. Thank you Supervisor Gage, from the Lions.
Since we started our original blog, Watch Dog San Mateo, the Garbage Saga has been a favorite topic of readers (and writers too)… And another chapter is now being written in Menlo Park. Menlo Park Councilmember Heyward Robinson wants elected officials and ratepayers to be in on contract negotiations that the garbage company has with Teamsters and other unions. The bottom line seems to be that the oversight of the garbage collection and recycling is screwed up… and getting more and more expensive. As we often say, the Garbage Saga is to be continued…
While we are in EPA… We’ve known for a while that the Police Chief has been looking to get out of there. But it won’t be to Seattle. You may remember that Chief Ron Davis also didn’t get the New Orleans gig he was looking for either…
It has been a pretty good week for the La Honda-Pescadero School District. They have had a pretty good, scandal-free run and now they about to get a chunk of cash from the Feds. That’s the good news. The not-so-good news is that the money is going to help “…188 low-achieving California schools…’
If you are interested in what happened at the Woodside Council meeting on June 22nd, read it on the Citizens of Woodside website. Of course, that universe of people who are interested in what happens at any given Woodside Council meeting is probably very, very small…
The Mercury News Editorial Board gets in on its favorite subject… again. And no, we aren’t talking about bashing Dolores Carr. It is the City of San Jose budget and about how police officers and firefighters can help avoid layoffs, but only if they take a paycuts and be heroes…
The District Attorney’s office is an interesting place to be these days. San Jose Inside takes us inside… Jeff Rosen is back and the soon-to-be-former District Attorney Dolores Carr isn’t talking to him (or the press)… perhaps because she is spending all her time getting her resume polished up…
Taking a page from Sunnyvale, Palo Alto will have a joint Police/Fire Chief for a while until Palo Alto can find a new Police Chief…
“…a muscular, bald man” walks into a bank… that could be the beginning of joke, or the beginning of a bank robbery… in Saratoga!
This is a name that will be familiar to our friends on the San Mateo side of the house: Summit Public Schools. They are the folks that have a top 100 high school operating in the Sequoia Union High School District in San Mateo County. They will be opening two new charter high schools in East San Jose starting in 2011.
It is good to know that ProtectSanJose.com is reading The Daily Fetch. On Wednesday, we posted a bit from the Bee about how the City of Sacramento was adding police over the next 3 years… ProtectSanJose.com posted the same thing yesterday.
Finally… get ready all you cool kids (and San Jose Police Department, Code Enforcement, City Attorney, and lobbyists) because Club Wet is reopening. Billing it as the “Second Coming” we actually had this flyer placed on our car in a downtown parking lot. We don’t know that many people our age (old) in our type of car (1990-ish Toyota Camry) will actually be at the grand re-opening, but we are flattered you asked…
On a much more positive note, the US team won a big game in South Africa that you might have heard about. The goal came courtesy of (dreamy) former San Jose Earthquake Landon Donovan…
Speaking of county votes… the State Senate Special Election is still too close to call, and apparently Sam Blakeslee still could avoid a run-off. Although it seems a more likely scenario that Blakeslee will face off against John Laird (again) in August…
There was a fire last night at Newby Island Landfill in San Jose. It was in their “outbuilding” which is apparently where they capture methane and turn it into energy. A methane fire sounds scary (and smelly)…
A $300 million face-lift at a hospital sounded expensive when we read it, but then we realized they were talking about the actual building (at Regional Medical Center)…
More Hangar One (demolition?) drama… This time Anna Eshoo would like ot know why the Navy wants to demo the “cork room“… If you have no idea what a cork room is, join the club and read the story in the Mountain View Voice…
Speaking of Tea Party… the families of the kids that got booted out of school in Morgan Hill for wearing American flags on Cinco de Mayo are (obviously) suing the school district. Perhaps the families and the kids couldn’t deal with the fact that the spotlight had dimmed? Perhaps they are gunning for their own show on KSFO?
