Mayor Susan Hammer is among the best leaders San Jose has ever produced and I have tremendous empathy for her and those who are frustrated with the decisions at City Hall that shortchanged our libraries. But the answer is a change of personnel at City Hall, not a charter amendment that, admittedly, will be popular with voters, especially with her leadership. But the policy puts the city on a slippery slope of percentage based spending. It may sound good, but it is this same type of policy is what got us into trouble on the state level.
On the upside, if every department had a predetermined fixed percentage of the budget there would be no need for the City Council or a City Manager—so there could be a cost savings there. . .
On the topic of City Managers, San Jose City Council candidates Steve Kline and Jimmy Nyguen are both proposing to cut executive salaries at City Hall so they would not exceed the pay of the Governor of California . . . a long overdue policy change.
There are some who will argue that you can’t get “top” talent if you don’t “compete” with other cities—and these executives could make more in private industry. I say– go get that better, higher paying job. With the current high unemployment rate, there are plenty of qualified people who would love to run the City of San Jose for $174,000 a year plus benefits. Besides, why is this “best possible talent” argument applied to city manager types and not to police officers, firefighters and librarians . . .?
Speaking of the Governor, do you think if we had implemented some of the crazy ideas of Governor and former Presidential candidate Jerry Brown in the 1970’s, we wouldn’t have to be implementing them now at a much higher cost?
Which brings us to Presidential politics . . . at what point do we declare anybody who would support a Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum or Newt Gingrich legally insane and ineligible to vote? Really? Mitt has more positions than the Kama Sutra without any of the corresponding pleasure; Santorum is simply bonkers, his view on women would make him the leading candidate among the Taliban; and if Newt wants to go to the moon, let’s send him . . . Does anybody realize that when he says he can get gas down to $2, he means eating at Taco Bell? What is he smoking. . .?
Which brings us to Marijuana, now that the City has criteria to determine good medical marijuana collectives from bad ones, isn’t it time the City make a concerted effort to shut down the bad ones? If a collective doesn’t pay the city tax—shut them down.
Let’s exhale for a moment—given where we were in 2008; facing a depression, two unfunded wars, 750,000 job losses a month, the potential bankruptcy of the auto industry, a stock market at 7300 and Osama Bin Laden and Col. Khadafi roaming free in in their chosen domains—the contrast in this election could not be more pronounced. Shouldn’t we just dispense with an election and reappoint the dude that saved the economy, is winding down both wars, saved the auto industry, killed the real terrorists and allowed his rival to make enough money to buy the Republican nomination?
Maybe we could put all the money Romney will spend in a political campaign lying to us toward deficit reduction— and don’t cry for Mitt, when he fails—look at the number of people he’ll be able to fire. Just thinking about it makes me happy too. . .
