June 23, 2010
Daily Fetch 6.23.10: Evgeni Out and Dmitry In
The news story of the day that will have the most impact over the next year isn’t about someone named Chuck (Reed), or George (Shirakawa), or Sam (Blakesleee), or John (Laird), or Dmitry (Medvedev)… it is about a guy named Evgeni (Nabokov). Trimming salaries these days seems contagious in downtown San Jose…Speaking of cutting employees… It would have been so much more fun to say that the City of San Jose budget was done finally so The Daily Fetch can start talking about things that really matter, like recounts and November elections… but the City Council in San Jose would like to extend the agony a little bit longer and continue to talk the Police and Firefighters and a couple of other unions before going on vacation…
On a potentially related note, the Sacramento Police Department will be hiring 30 officers over the next 3 years. Cheap housing. More jobs. Perhaps they should attend the next San Jose City Council meeting to recruit? Or advertise on ProtectSanJose.com…
There was a pretty big election yesterday to replace State Senator Abel Maldonado, which includes a chunk of Santa Clara County and seems pretty important. But when we tried to check on the results on the hometown paper’s website last night, there was nothing. This morning, nothing… So we had to drive all the way over Highway 17 to get the Santa Cruz Sentinel this morning to find out that Sam Blakeslee is winning… but perhaps not by 50 percent plus one vote — so it seems a Blakeslee/Laird run-off may be in order for August… In Santa Clara County, Blakeslee is beating Laird 46 to 43 percent… The Merc’s Patty Fisher thinks electing a new State Senator on June 22nd is a waste of money and time… John Laird may agree if Blakeslee’s number keeps creeping up…
Usually, nobody notices what happens inside the County Building, especially now that its higher profile former neighbors reside downtown… But Scott Herhold outed Supervisor Shirakawa’s office budget woes earlier this week and then the Board of Supervisors bailed out Shirakawa… Too bad Shirakawa doesn’t have an experienced non-profit Chief Operating Officer or the President of a local school board around his office to help keep an eye on things…
We have to point out that in January of 2009, Shirakawa seemed to have a pretty good grasp on salary and benefits stuff at the County when he decided to pay his Chief of Staff more than any other Chief of Staff because his Chief was getting benefits from his school board gig…
(An interesting side note on Overspend Gate… in the midst of all of this, Supervisor Shirakawa was a no show to Monday Night Live. He was to be a co-host but backed out at the last minute because he was “sick” according to Sal Pizzaro at the Merc. Sick of hearing about this story, no doubt…)
How to make Monday Night Live even funnier next year… that was the topic of debate (sort of) in San Jose yesterday as the City Council debated their medical marijuana ordinance. The result, they will regulate when and where, but playing on the theme of the day (delay, delay), according to Tracy Seipel at the Merc the Council, “…pushed an even bigger debate down the road…”
And you thought it was just San Jose budget issues revolving around pensions… but Los Altos has approved a new pension formula too… Good to know that it is worst of times in the best of towns too…
The Russians are leaving (Nobokov) and the Russians are coming… or at least President Dmitry Medvedev is…
Tags: 420, blakeslee, Chuck Reed, eddie garcia, laird, sharks, shirakawa, xavier campos