Posts Tagged ‘figone’

Daily Fetch 1.11.13: What is Vossbrink not saying?

Friday, January 11th, 2013

We aren’t sure what to make of this:  the search for a San Jose Police Chief has (apparently) hit a bump in the road.  You see, Chief Moore is leaving next week.  City Manager Deb Figone wanted to have the person in place before he left.  That won’t happen.  But delays in hiring happen all the time – heck, the person the City would presumably hire is already in a high-profile position and may not be able to leave that post immediately.  But today, we read that the search is being extended by Figone and her mouthpiece, David Vossbrink does backflips trying to explain why this isn’t unusual, which makes us think this extension is unusual.  Protect, care to venture a guess about what’ going on?

To the Shirakawa file…

First, former-Shirakawa friend, Rich Robinson, while discussing what may lay ahead in terms of Silicon Valley politics on San Jose Inside… he predicts this about a County Supervisor:  “…one may be looking at jail time…”

Second, Ken Yeager, the new President of the Board of Supervisors, decided to fast-track a vote on how and when to audit folks’ credit cards at the County.  Yeager wants this issue off his plate before his State of the County at the end of the month.  We can’t wait to hear how Yeager addresses the most pressing issue (safeguarding taxpayers’ money) in his speech.

If you think Santa Clara/Silicon Valley would be a great place for a Super Bowl, join the club.  But did you know that the NHL is looking to have Santa Clara sign their lives away in order to get it?  It’s true.  It turns out that if you host a Super Bowl you are required to hand over all increased tax revenue you might actually receive directly to the NFL.  Seriously.  Just ask Mike Rosenberg at the Merc.

Tread carefully Palo Alto, that’s The Daily Fetch’s advice to you… Palo Alto is considering upending their current garbage collection system and starting a new, 12-month pilot project.  All you need to do is look at San Mateo County for reasons why caution is warranted…

Finally, there’s a new Mayor and Vice Mayor in Mountain View.  John Inks = Mayor, Chris Clark = Vice Mayor.

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Daily Fetch 7.8.11: Figone versus Beattie (continued)

Friday, July 8th, 2011

There is lots of downtime these days at San Jose City Hall… but there are (at least) two folks that aren’t taking it easy.  San Jose Police Officers’ Association President George Beattie and San Jose City Manager are throwing bombs while grown-ups (the City Council?) are away.  San Jose Inside had the details of the spat yesterday, and George Beattie and the blog staff (returned from vacation) at Protect San Jose and punched back today.
John Woolfolk at the Merc takes the down time at City Hall to look at the Casino M8trix — the new (awkwardly named) Garden City Casino that is going up near the airport.
Two folks were stabbed at the light rail stop near the County Building on North First and Hedding late on Thursday.  And for the accompanying wise-ass joke:  ”The big news is that someone was actually at the light rail stop at all…”
To Palo Alto, where you can’t take light rail:  The PA Architectural Review Board approved a big mixed-use development, but the Planning Director expects appeals.  Why don’t they just fast-forward to the appeals process in Palo Alto to start with and save everyone the hassle?
Have a good weekend folks…

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Daily Fetch 5.3.11: (Figone/Smith) Budget Axe Tuesday…

Tuesday, May 3rd, 2011

In case you thought the budget situation in San Jose was a bad joke, the bad punchline was revealed yesterday.  Tracy Seipel at the Merc has the grim details of the “ugly budget scenario“… (Not to be left out, Josh Koehn at the Metro also has details…)
In other bad budget news, the County Board of Supervisors will be making some tough cuts too.  It seems County Exec Jeff Smith has been learning from San Jose’s City Manager Deb Figone…
As if the Santa Clara Valley Water District didn’t already get enough bad press (Golden Spiggot, redistricting, Alviso spending, etc., etc., etc.)… Now, they have a new Board member who has some sort of conflict of interest, but they won’t let anyone know what that conflict of interest is, and it may preclude Brian Schmidt for voting on a bunch of stuff.  Note to the Water District:  let the Merc know what the conflict of interest is.  This will not go away…
Here’s an obvious headline from our friends at the Palo Alto Daily News:  Palo Alto shoots down housing development after neighbors object. Neighbors in Palo Alto object to a housing development?  Say it ain’t so!  Actually, this gets a little more interesting because it seems like the Palo Alto Unified School District may have expressed interest in the piece of land after the developer applied for permits, poisoning the well with the neighbors and (perhaps) swaying the City Council too?  To be continued…
To the blogs…
Protect San Jose honors fallen officers as part of Police Week.
Mission City Lantern thinks The Daily Fetch is interesting, sort of.  Thanks for reading James…
The newly designed Dweeb.org has a Council Summary from the 4/26 meeting, in case you weren’t at the Sunnyvale Council meeting last week…
And San Jose Metblogs is promoting the Oakland (?) Museum…

In case you thought the budget situation in San Jose was a bad joke, the bad punchline was revealed yesterday.  Tracy Seipel at the Merc has the grim details of the “ugly budget scenario”… (Not to be left out, Josh Koehn at the Metro also has details…)http://www.mercurynews.com/politics-government/ci_17978463http://www.sanjoseinside.com/news/entries/05_02_11_budget_deficit_figone_reed/
In other bad budget news, the County Board of Supervisors will be making some tough cuts too.  It seems County Exec Jeff Smith has been learning from San Jose’s City Manager Deb Figone…http://www.mercurynews.com/peninsula/ci_17976966
As if the Santa Clara Valley Water District didn’t already get enough bad press (Golden Spiggot, redistricting, Alviso spending, etc., etc., etc.)… Now, they have a new Board member who has some sort of conflict of interest, but they won’t let anyone know what that conflict of interest is, and it may preclude Brian Schmidt for voting on a bunch of stuff.  Note to the Water District:  let the Merc know what the conflict of interest is.  This will not go away…http://www.mercurynews.com/science/ci_17977877
Here’s an obvious headline from our friends at the Palo Alto Daily News:  Palo Alto shoots down housing development after neighbors object.  Neighbors in Palo Alto object to a housing development?  Say it ain’t so!  Actually, this gets a little more interesting because it seems like the Palo Alto Unified School District may have expressed interest in the piece of land after the developer applied for permits, poisoning the well with the neighbors and (perhaps) swaying the City Council too?  To be continued…http://www.mercurynews.com/peninsula/ci_17980906http://paloaltoonline.com/news/show_story.php?id=20971
To the blogs…
Protect San Jose honors fallen officers as part of Police Week.http://protectsanjose.com/content/honoring-fallen
Mission City Lantern thinks The Daily Fetch is interesting, sort of.  Thanks for reading James…http://missioncitylantern.blogspot.com/2011/05/interesting-view-on-gas-stations.html
The newly designed Dweeb.org has a Council Summary from the 4/26 meeting, in case you weren’t at the Sunnyvale Council meeting last week…http://www.dweeb.org/2011/05/01/42611-council-summary/
And Metblogs is promoting the Oakland (?) Museum…http://sanjose.metblogs.com/2011/04/30/oakland-museum-free-first-sundays-2011-continues/

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Daily Fetch 4.26.11: Game 7 Averted…

Tuesday, April 26th, 2011

Is there any other news today other than the Sharks?  Another overtime win.  Game 7 averted… One step closer to the Cup…
Following San Jose (and Palo Alto and a bunch of other places) the County of Santa Clara is getting on board and banning plastic bags.  (Much to the chagrin of a certain former colleague of Supervisors Yeager, Cortese, and Shirakawa…)
While we’re in the County Building… DA Jeff Rosen is putting together some guidelines about which pot clubs he’ll bust and which ones he won’t… “The ones with the really good bud…”
We aren’t sure how this has anything to do with Los Gatos, but Monte Sereno is taking back their $300 per month stipend that the pay their Councilmembers… Check out how the paper put it…
To the blogs…
San Jose Inside has a letter from San Jose City Manager Deb Figone to City employees that paints a pretty bad picture… She didn’t write, “You might get laid off…” but it might as well say that…
Speaking of layoffs… Protect San Jose has a post:  San Jose’s vanishing police department…
Mission City Lantern (fresh off some new coloring) is also talking police, but this time in Santa Clara…

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Daily Fetch 12.23.10: A toxic start to the day…

Thursday, December 23rd, 2010

Some toxic news today…
First, there was a release of “landfill gas” (also known as smelly, toxic, gas) in South San Jose that caused the closure of the Almaden Quicksilver County Park…
Then, the Mercury News Editorial Board gives mad props to Senators Feinstein and Boxer for their efforts on chromium 6…
Cupertino’s North Vallco development/redevelopment is pending moves from Valley giants HP and Apple.  Cupertino is waiting to see what HP/Apple are going to do before they make their plans…
From the blogs…
Labor leader Cindy Chavez’s husband Mike Potter landed a plum job at Cisco Systems… San Jose Inside has the scoop.
Protect San Jose still has nothing to say about San Jose City Manager Deb Figone’s recommended firing of an officer for the 2009 beating of Phuong Ho… We’ll wait…
James at Mission City Lantern is following Santa Clara politics closer than anyone else follows any other local politics anywhere…
Sunnyvale Councilblogger Jim Griffith gives us all a rundown of the 12/14 City Council meeting… the first line might tell it all, “…A very long night…”
Until tomorrow folks…

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Daily Fetch 12.22.10: “San Jose” backdrop…

Wednesday, December 22nd, 2010

We’ll start with baseball… Oakland is going to pay $750,000 to study building a ballpark for a team that wants desparately to leave town.  No word yet if they are going to study building a new airport for airlines that don’t want to fly in and out or building a convention center where conventions don’t want to go… wait, that isn’t Oakland…
Remember earlier in the week when San Jose Councilmember Pete Constant went on Fox News to bash his colleagues for passing the plastic bag ban?  (Also remember that it started a Facebook debate among Constant and Councilmember Sam Liccardo…)  Now we have the Fox video.  It is good to know that Councilmember Constant insisted on a San Jose backdrop for the national TV appearance…

Sean Webby isn’t on vacation yet, much to the chagrin of the San Jose Police Officers’ Association… Neither is Deb Figone, the City Manager of San Jose.  She is recommending that the officer involved in the beating of Phuong Ho last year (the SJSU student from Vietnam who police officers beat up when he bent down to get his glasses and was all caught on video tape) be fired permanently from the Department.  Her recommendation is much stronger than the Police Department’s recommended punishment/slap on the wrist… Nothing yet from Protect San Jose says… But the Merc Editorial Board gives Figone two thumbs up… Oh, and the subhead for the story goes here…
That’s all we can muster today… Is there anything else going on out there?

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Daily Fetch 9.23.10: South Bay Labor Casino?

Thursday, September 23rd, 2010

The South Bay Labor Council finds itself in the middle of some possible political corruption, according to a piece in the Metro and on San Jose Inside.  Here’s how it works:  Bay 101 gives lots of money to the South Bay Labor Council political operation.  The South Bay Labor Council political operation gives lots of money to endorsed candidates.  Oh, and this game plan is all outlined by a South Bay Labor Council consultant…  We wonder why this isn’t being covered by the Merc… but here’s an ad on the Merc’s website right now…
The San Jose Redevelopment Agency layed off (got rid of) 14 more folks this week.  That’s another 20 percent of their staff…
On the heals of that story, here’s one from the Chronicle listing the top paid (salary and benefits) City Managers in the Bay Area.  Of course, this comes as the City Manager and some elected officials in Bell, California might go to jail for bilking taxpayers.
  • Santa Clara, $321,533
  • Sunnyvale, $311,839
  • San Jose, $304,206
  • Mountain View, $283,900
We think Deb Figone in San Jose needs a raise…
Scott Herhold at the Merc chimes in, from a parent’s perspective, on the San Jose Police Officer who “arrested” his step-daughters boyfriend because they had sex…
Protect San Jose does its best The Daily Fetch by recapping the news… about itself and their “announcement” from Sunday about the elite gang unit…
Here’s a headline we never thought we’d see:  Person stabbed at Palo Alto’s Town and Country Village.
Mountain View Councilmember Mike Kasperzak has signed up for even more incredibly boring meetings as he has been elected the Vice President of the League of California Cities…
Yum Yum… Taste of Morgan Hill this weekend.  If you have been in downtown Morgan Hill recently, you know that the banners are unmistakeable and hard-to-miss.  50,000 folks are expected to get a taste…
And if you get too much of a taste in South County, perhaps you can get on the Biggest Loser…  like a Gilroy native.

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Daily Fetch 9.1.10: “Jay” Rosen will be our new DA…

Wednesday, September 1st, 2010

The Merc Editorial Board goes on record supporting the names of San Jose’s police chief finalists being made public, when the time is right.  San Jose City Manager Deb Figone probably (definitely) disagrees…
Here’s a (un)shocking headline from the Palo Alto Weekly:  Palo Alto may try to kill high-speed rail plan… It must be contagious in the Atherton/ Menlo Park/ Palo Alto neighborhood…
The jury is set for the trial in the murder case of Mark Achilli in Los Gatos.  We all know about this trial, some may also know that soon-to-be-District Attorney is the prosecutor in this case.  Interestingly, the folks who manage the top stories on the Merc’s website think Jeff Rosen’s name is “Jay Rosen”…
A new housing project was approved by the City Council yesterday that sort of breaks one of the City Council’s own rules about “set backs” from creeks.  The vote was 8-2 and the decision might spark a lawsuit, which will certainly delay the project, and may shine the light on the Council’s decision.
Ok all you Glenn Beckers… there is going to be a new Mosque in Palo Alto, get your signs ready…
While we are there (in Palo Alto) and its nicer neighbor, Los Altos Hills… residents of both communities are learning that the more they recycle, the more they (and the Cities) need to pay to the trash folks.  Luckily, folks in these two towns can probably afford it…
Welcome to the Hotel California… actually, not so welcome.  The Palo Alto “Hotel California” was the scene of a “brazen late-night attack” on a hotel employee.  The perps were caught… mostly because the victim knew the two siblings and told the police where they could be found…
Is anybody else having trouble viewing the Protect San Jose homepage?  Our’s is all screwed up…
Finally, Mission City Lantern continues his series on the Santa Clara Unified School Board race… And it is getting good…

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