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Dear Green Friends,
<br>
<br>
Cathy Deppe and I used to live in New York. And we used to live in San Jose.
Here is an example of why reading the
Sunday New York Times is a "bad habit" I cannot break. When NYT finally decides to
run a story, they pour a lot into it.
<br>
<br>
Today's frontpage story is a tale about the horrific budget woes of the
<b>City of San Jose</b> -- so-called "Capital of Silicon Valley." It details
how glitzy projects build by the San Jose Democratic Party Machine Bosses during
"better times" are sitting empty because there is no money to operate them.
<br>
<br>
What the New York Times does not say (of course) is that this is going on while the
pain-in-the-ass Silicon Valley 1% is rolling in dough and that this mess
is a "bipartisan" crash. San Jose is crushed between the Scylla of suburban
and Central Valley Republican racism and no-nothingism and the Charybdis of big city
Democratic Party Machines.
<br>
<br>
All politics is local. The Santa Clara County Green Party and all others claiming to
be independent political activists should be all over this. When the San Jose Democratic Party Machine
was sowing seeds of this mess during the go-go years of the Internet bubble, the Greens were
the only progressive force criticizing the Establishment's waste, recklessness, and sleaze.
The Greens have earned the right to say "I told you so."
That area is home to a lot of highly educated, highly skilled, cosmopolitan
people who are open to new ideas (sigh -- If we could just stop prattling about Obama,
Romney, Gingrich, Santorum, and goings-on in exotic places around the world for five minutes).
<br>
<br>
Alex Walker
<blockquote>
<br>
<strong>The New Your Times, Sunday, February 19, 2012</strong><br>
<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/us/in-san-jose-budget-woes-take-a-toll.html">
<strong>Budget Woes Prompt Erosion of Public Jobs, <br>
with a Heavy Toll in Silicon Valley</strong></a><br>
<strong>By Michael Cooper</strong><br>
<br>
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<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/us/in-san-jose-budget-woes-take-a-toll.html">
<img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:left;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 214px;" src="http://alexcathy.com/images_greening/san_jose_1.JPG" alt="San Jose Panorama" border="0" align="left">
</a>
<span style="font-size:12px;">A panoramic view of beautiful downtown San Jose</span>
</div>
SAN JOSE, Calif. — The smell of new carpet still lingers in the
children’s section of the gleaming new Bascom Library and Community
Center here, where signs promise “picture books” and “story time.” But
the low, easy-to-reach wooden bookshelves are empty, along with the rest
of the shelves in the state-of-the-art, 40,000-square-foot building.
<br>
<br>
The bookless library stands behind a locked chain-link fence with signs
warning of 24-hour video surveillance, one of four libraries the City of
San Jose has built but cannot afford to open.
<br>
<br>
The city’s Fire Department laid off 49 firefighters two years ago, and
the trucks that race to calls now carry only four firefighters instead
of five. Streets are repaved less often. And the Police Department,
which laid off 66 officers last summer and has shrunk by about a fifth
in recent years, has grounded its helicopter, reassigned officers from
special units to patrol and stopped responding to burglar alarms.
<br>
<br>
The nation has lost 668,000 state and local government jobs since the
recession hit — more than in any modern downturn, according to a new
analysis of labor statistics by the Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of
Government. On the national level, the steady loss of public sector jobs
has reduced the effects of recent job gains in the private sector and
has slowed economic growth. But in cities and states around the country,
the loss of those jobs has made it harder to provide services and has
upended the lives of thousands of workers who had thought their
government jobs were safe.
<br>
<br>
It is not just faded industrial cities that are struggling to retain
their workers. San Jose, a growing city of nearly one million in the
heart of Silicon Valley that is now the nation’s 10th biggest, has shed
1,592 jobs — more than a fifth of its employees — over the last four
years as falling tax revenues, rising pension costs and dwindling state
aid have all taken their tolls on the city and its workers.
<br>
<br>
Christine Velasquez, 39, who lost her job at the city’s redevelopment
agency last spring as the state prepared to shut it down to save money,
now uses local coffee shops as virtual offices for networking and job
hunting — including Caffe Frascati, an Italian-style cafe she helped
bring to the city when she worked at the agency.
<br>
<br>
John Robertson, 28, who was recruited to the Police Department here from
his old job as a New York City police officer with the promise of
better pay and better benefits, was laid off last summer. Mr. Robertson,
who is getting married this year, said he was lucky to find a job a
couple of months later at another Bay Area police department.
<br>
<br>
Teresa Gutierrez, 66, who in June lost her publicly financed job as a
translator and an organizer at a center that helps the poor, has not
been as lucky. She now takes home some food for herself from the food
bank where she has helped out for years.
<br>
<br>
“I can’t find a job,” Ms. Gutierrez said at her old office at the Santee
Neighborhood Action Center, where she still volunteers to help people
avoid eviction, find help or learn about gang prevention. “There are
hardly any jobs anywhere. I even looked in a restaurant, to wash dishes,
and they said no, with your application you’re overqualified.”
<br>
<br>
It is hardly the image that comes to mind when many people think of a
Silicon Valley city where the median household income is $76,794 a year
and employers include Cisco Systems, eBay and Adobe.
<br>
<br>
But the city’s tax collections this year are projected to remain below
where they were five years ago — and California law makes it hard for
cities to raise taxes, since they must win voter approval first. Pension
costs now consume more than a fifth of the city’s general fund budget,
officials said, and have risen to $245 million this year from $73
million a decade ago.
<br>
<br>
“You’ve got this double whammy for local government of the retirement
costs escalating and the crash of ’08, the recession, knocking revenues
down at the same time,” Mayor Chuck Reed, a Democrat, said in an
interview in his office in the city’s new 18-story Richard
Meier-designed City Hall, which was built in better times by his
predecessors.
<br>
<br>
The city government’s employee head count has shrunk to 5,400 from 7,418
a decade ago, when it had fewer residents. Branch libraries are open
only four days a week. And the city recently won agreements from its
unions to cut compensation for all of its employees by at least 10
percent.
<br>
<br>
Now Mr. Reed is taking aim at pension costs, which rose after the
benefits were improved over the last decade, with police officers and
firefighters able to retire after 30 years with pensions worth 90
percent of their salaries. He supports a ballot measure this June that
would require workers to go into far less lucrative retirement plans, or
to contribute up to 25 percent of their salaries to keep their current
benefits. “Every dollar the city pays for retirement costs is a dollar
we can’t spend on services for our residents,” he said in his annual
State of the City speech this month.
<br>
<br>
Union members picketed the speech. They have accused the city of
exaggerating the future costs of pensions to build support for the
measure. Jim C. Unland, the president of the San Jose Police Officers’
Association, said that the police were willing to negotiate on
retirement costs, but that the mayor’s proposals went too far.
<br>
<br>
Yolanda Cruz, a library network engineer and the president of the city’s
Municipal Employees’ Federation, pointed out that city workers would
not get Social Security, and that the average pension for nonuniformed
workers was $36,000 a year. She said a city-commissioned poll had found a
growing willingness to raise taxes.
<br>
<br>
For now, the city is trying to figure out how to make do with fewer workers.
<br>
<br>
After the police unit in charge of gang violence was merged last year
with a unit that focused on quality-of-life issues, street-level drug
dealing and prostitution, a spate of gang-related murders occurred in
the city, which remains one of the safest of its size in America. The
smaller unit was ordered to focus on gangs. Then there was an increase
in prostitution.
<br>
<br>
“It’s no longer ‘Do more with less,’ ” said Christopher M. Moore, the
chief of police. “It’s doing less with less, and what is it that we’re
going to do that makes the most sense.”
<br>
<br>
</blockquote>
Link to Original Article on New York Times Web Site:<br>
<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/us/in-san-jose-budget-woes-take-a-toll.html">
www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/us/in-san-jose-budget-woes-take-a-toll.html"></a>
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