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Scott Herhold of the San Jose Mercury News each year gives awards for campaign ads. He dishes out trash cans for political hit pieces, and bouquets for well done pieces.
He awards three (3) Garbage Cans to the hit piece that took the side of challenger Chuck Blair, by the Santa Clara Police Officer’s Association against councilwoman Jamie McLeod. Personally I think it should have got four but he gave four to a Vietnamese-American group associated with the LIttle Saigon movement that did a hit piece on Councilman Dave Cortese who is running against Sunnyvale Councilman Otto Lee. I trust Herhold if he says that, that ad deserves 4 garbage cans I’m sure it does.
Clearly the hit piece done on these two candidates warranted the attention of the greater community otherwise Mr Herhold would not have written about it. Local city politics here is definatley more intense and there seems to be more at stake if you win the race. Which begs the question Why? What is it that have people so hell bent on being on a city council? What do they get out of it? A gravy train? Junkets? I don’t know what the answer is? Perhaps is it civic duty? Civic pride? a Vision for something ….
and if it is a vision then let us hope that those that get elected in Santa clara this time can earn some bouquets from the residents and that they look at issues like
Cleaning El Camino in Santa Clara,
Planting trees along El Camino
decrease the number of high rise buildings planned
Give us a proper downtown area
and start to listen to what residents want
Once again I say support Jamie because she appears to be one of the few current council people who has listened to residents and asked questions. She is a thinking person, and I believe that there are others out there running in this election that representing thinking people, such as Brian Lowery and Mary Emerson.
©Letters From Silicon Valley 2008
This Tuesday Night August 26 at 7pm the City of Santa Clara will be meeting and discussing the proposed building of 60 condo units at the former Wheels and Deals site. Once again local residents are asking other residents to get the word out to have people come to the city council meeting and share their disappointment in how the city is planning our city.
No-one can dispute the fact that Santa Clara is a mix of styles. In fact I would hasten to say there seems to be no consistency or thought in creating uniformity. You drive down El Camino in Sunnyvale and there is definate thought and similarity in the building styles even the older and the newer ones. You get to Santa Clara and it’s wow baby what happened here. Maybe it’s because in Sunnyvale they cover their building frontage on El Camino with wonderful trees, who knows. Or maybe it’s because Sunnyvale doesn’t have a bunch of El Cheapo Motels, or Contempory Book stores! I love the fact that the city advocates us shopping in our city – I think I would no more want to die and go to heaven before I stepped into one of these establishments to increase SC’s tax base. Who comes to these stores? Perhaps we need to really find out and do some surveys.
In Santa Clara it’s all awash and here again with the proposed building of 60 units on the former Wheels and Deals site no thought … or consessions on the cities part. Yeh let’s just let developers shadow backyards of the neighbors – after all the city already have their dollars – and let’s do one better let’s force them to never be able to move after all who is going to want to buy a house that has a back yard in full shade 365 days of the year? To learn more about what their residents are saying read their blog.
They even recommend residents writing to the city managers and council people with your concerns about how the planning of Santa Clara is going – after all it may not be your back yard at the moment that is affected but who is to say it won’t in time, given the lack of consideration for local residents. Or are you going to have the NIMBY attitude (not in my back yard) – I hope not, we all have to learn to share, that’s a mothers favorite catch cry – so help support these people and when it comes your turn for assistance regarding the ways of planning I’m sure they will be there for you too! So if you can’t join residents on Tuesday night – why don’t you send the Mayor a letter - or one of the other council people. It’s an election year they might respond! I know of one city council person who has door knocked in our area. She came around yesterday – good for Jamie McLeod showing residents that she wants to know what is on the residents mind. I’ll let you know if any other council people drop by as we have plenty of registered voters in our neck of the woods.
©Letters From Silicon Valley 2008
Do you think Santa Clara City Council will ever look at El Camino and notice that it looks different once you leave Sunnyvale?
Have you ever noticed that as you exit Sunnyvale you leave behind the tree lined part of El Camino and the rather large set back? Have you ever noticed that there are no $49 dollar meth labs along that part of El Camino? I don’t think there are any tattoo stores along there either. Perhaps the House of Pain needs to move up a few blocks! Have you ever noticed that there are no after hour porn stores, oops sorry I mean ‘book stores’. Book stores my goodness! Do you think they have a copy of War and Peace in there? It’s no wonder we have a store called “The Starving Musician” along that part of town – how can they make a living in that neighborhood. I hope their rent is low.
As for the couple times I’ve tried to eat along El Camino one time at one of the ‘faster food’ chains I had something in my chili that wasn’t food, and no it wasn’t a finger, rather a sugar wrapper. Another time we were at a restaurant and we asked about the poor state of the salad bar – the waiter told us it was fresh at lunch time – it was now 7pm. We left and that place has sinced closed down. We do like Andy’s though – fortunately they came to town because there are very few good or descent restaurants in Santa Clara. Have you ever tried to take someone out to lunch in Santa Clara it involves going to Cupertino or Sunnyvale.
Imagine with all this high rise building going on we won’t even get anything commercial – which leaves the question why do these developers want to come to Santa Clara? ah’vey – there must be something in it for them – what do we not know?
