A few months ago I wrote about the chronic problem of speeding in San Jose. My concern about this problem peaked when two parents were killed recently by a speeding driver while walking on Graystone Lane in Almaden Valley. At that time, I proposed that the City of San Jose review its traffic calming policy in an effort to update it so that it reflects the needs of residents today.  For example, the current policy refers to using NASCOP (a photo radar device) that would take pictures of drivers in their cars as they sped by. Recently, NASCOP was ruled illegal by state courts, leaving a hole in our current policy.

Although I am concerned about speeding that occurs on expressways and freeways, my main concern is speeding on our neighborhood streets. Eighty percent of our streets in San Jose have a speed limit of 25 mile per hour. These 25 mph streets are where people live, kids play, and seniors walk. Speeding is a serious issue that does not discriminate against any neighborhood. Streets in Almaden, Willow Glen, Berryessa, Alum Rock, Northside and others echo the same sentiments: Stop speeding cars on our neighborhood streets.

Speeders affect our quality of life in San Jose and limit our outdoor activities—for example, not being able to allow our children to play in the front yard. In addition, another limitation speeding causes is that many people will not walk in their neighborhood for fear of crossing the street—and I am not referring to Almaden or Capitol Expressways, but 25 mph neighborhood streets which drivers continue to speed on, even where there are crosswalks.

In an effort to address the neighborhood speeding problem, the San Jose City Council unanimously supported Mayor Reed’s memo to update our traffic calming policy (on September 18) which would allow the City of San Jose to have a series of traffic calming meetings throughout the city—one meeting in each district.  I am proud that the mayor recommended that I chair the Neighborhood Traffic Calming Hearings because this issue is important to me.

The meetings will begin on October 18 and run through November 29 (see link below). Jim Helmer, Director of Transportation (DOT); Laura Wells, DOT Division Manager; and Captain Diane Urban and Lieutenant Jeff Smith from the San Jose Police Department are members of the traffic calming meetings. Our group is required to attend the meetings and then from the input received, write a report that will be presented to the city council in December.

The purpose of the meetings is to gather input from all residents in San Jose on what they would like to see us do. Residents can share any ideas, suggestion and concerns. From what has been shared with me thus far it seems that many residents would like to see more enforcement, the appeals process for traffic calming expanded and funding allocated to traffic calming efforts.

In 2001 our city had $5 million budgeted for traffic calming; this last year we had zero.  Our budget should echo the priorities of our residents and I believe after the traffic calming meetings are completed, money to slow cars down on the neighborhood streets will be validated as a priority.

The City of San Jose has not stopped collecting taxes; therefore, we need to prioritize the funds we do have on items and issues that are important to residents. Erik Larsen, President of AFSCME, MEF Local 101, shared with me at a meeting recently that he is looking forward to the traffic calming meetings because they represent a democratic process which encompasses the needs of San Jose residents directly. I agree.

The Neighborhood Traffic Calming Meeting Schedule.

At the evening meeting last Tuesday night (Sept. 25), the San Jose City Council discussed prevailing wage and volunteers and how this relates to city jobs for parks.

I am sure most of you have volunteered your time at some point, whether in your children’s school, as a coach or to pick up trash, etc. Most of you did so because it made you feel good to do something that benefits something larger than yourself.

For example, two weeks ago Terry Reilly and Beverly Rose-Hopper, community leaders and longtime residents of the Rose Garden neighborhood, coordinated a “deadheading” for Rose Garden Park. “Deadheading” is another name for “shearing” which is when you cut a rosebud so that another can emerge while the weather is still warm.

Over 140 volunteers came to shear roses at the San Jose Municipal Rose Garden. Folks came from Los Altos and Morgan Hill, but the majority of volunteers were San Jose residents from Rose Garden, Willow Glen and Almaden.

Deadheading was an annual event; however, because of the lack of volunteerism to help maintain the roses, the Rose Garden Park was put on “probation” from the All American Rose Society due to the lack of maintenance.

I am happy that this year community members organized volunteers and came out to help. I support volunteer events like this and hope to see more in the future. I also support corporations who promote volunteerism for their employees.

At the council meeting, the memo regarding prevailing wage and volunteerism included groups like Our City Forest, Habitat for Humanity and KaBoom as examples of organizations that do good volunteer work. The city also funds some of the groups who provide this volunteer work.

Although I supported the memo as it was written, I noticed that one of our greatest local volunteer resources was left out: corporations. The memo lacked the clarity that I was looking for that would allow a corporation to have its employees spend a day volunteering for something that belonged to the city, like a park for example.  Therefore, I asked for an amendment that would allow people who work for corporations who wanted to volunteer their time be allowed to do so. My amendment was unanimously accepted.

It appears that we want companies to be philanthropists, but the way the memo was written, we would not allow them to donate their human capital for volunteer services. I found this to be unfair.

Large corporations often have team building and/or volunteer days which allow teams or divisions from a company to take a day or half a day off from working at their “regular job” and clean up a park. Companies will pay their employees for a regular work day, but the employees get to lend their time to a volunteer effort. Many Silicon Valley companies are known for lending their time to cleaning and pruning the Guadalupe River Park and Gardens.

There was concern that if large corporations paid their employees for spending one day cleaning up a park, they would somehow take over all the park maintenance. I understand the concern, but it is invalid.

As I shared at the meeting, folks who volunteer their time for a day are not looking to go into the park maintenance business. For example, Junior Achievement sends business people into high school classrooms to supplement curriculum. They reach over 7 million students a year. They do not put teachers out of work. Volunteers do not take away jobs; they supplement much needed park maintenance.

The acreage in parks keeps growing and, because of the structural deficit, we may not have enough gardeners for many years. We should not pass up the opportunity for volunteers, paid or unpaid, to lend a helping hand. City workers and volunteers go together and can accomplish much more by working collaboratively.

Open space is a very important quality-of-life issue. With so much development happening everywhere, we need to remember to include open space in our plans. I attended two outdoor events this week that reminded me about how important open space is, especially where there are trees. Both of the events were located in pristine areas.

It isn’t mandatory that I attend all events, but in these two cases I am glad I went. I was invited to attend “Best in the West,” which was the sixteenth annual SWAT Team competition held at the Sheriff’s firearms range south of Metcalf Power station in Coyote Valley. SWAT Teams from all over California competed in sniper exercises, the jungle course, and shotgun competitions among others. The event was hosted by Santa Clara County Sheriff Laurie Smith. This area is beautiful, with rolling hillsides, trees, etc.  It is the area that I am thankful that former Mayor Susan Hammer set aside for the urban growth boundary.

I went to support the San Jose police SWAT team called MERGE. They did quite well. As we know, our SWAT team is not utilized on a daily basis (which is a good thing) but is called out for more life threatening crises, like a hostage situation. Watching the SWAT team in action gave me much admiration for the training that our San Jose Police officers do on a continual basis. I fully enjoyed seeing them in action and appreciate their service to our city.

The second event that I attended was the San Jose Water Company’s fifth annual Leadership BBQ.  It was an evening event located in the Los Gatos Mountains off Bear Creek Road and Black Road. The San Jose Water Company owns several acres of land by the Sierra Azul Open Space in the Los Gatos Creek watershed. I felt like I was in Switzerland with the lush greenery and beautiful lake. Unfortunately, San Jose Water Company has discussed the idea of logging 1,002 acres of trees in the watershed to make way for a “future property owner.” I am not sure what the status of this issue is now, but I couldn’t imagine allowing for such a large amount of the trees to be cut. It is a picture-perfect venue that could not be recreated, even if one tried.

These events reminded me of how important it is to preserve and promote our open spaces in order to maintain our quality of life.

Large organizations often wrestle with enterprise software implementations. They are often promised big returns, quick implementations, user friendly programs and then—the real “kicker”—that costs will not exceed a certain given price.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

The VTA spent $30 million on finance software and currently is in the process of spending another $3 million for an upgrade which does not include hardware.  The City of San Jose purchased software for the call center and billing system at a cost of $2 million with another $11 million for implementation services, almost $1 million for hardware and another $1.9 million for implementation services this past August. Get a calculator: the total price tag is just short of $16 million.

What can we learn from our millions of dollars in expenditures?  Or, do we want to learn anything?  Or, do we feel more comfortable in justifying costs, since it appears no one is paying much attention anyway?

I understand that technology is not free.  However, I do think that the city can save money when purchasing IT and, further, should stop spending the millions it has so far and take into consideration other forms of technology that could achieve the same goals for less money.

I am a fan of pilot programs.  Pilot programs allow a new “system” to run its course for a specified time to see if the item in question (in this case, new software) will provide the promised benefits.  “Pilots” are done in the private sector all the time.  One would not buy a car without doing a test drive first, so why should San Jose spend millions of dollars on software or consultants before we make sure the services will work as promised.

When it comes to a proposed technology pilot, I would recommend that we choose 2-3 vendors to run use cases. This way we have actual experience to judge what each vendor does well and what it does not do well. Even if we chose to do a pilot with one vendor, I think we would be better prepared to know what to ask for from other vendors. This process may take a little longer; however, it allows the city to make an informed decision based on actual use rather than hypothetical power point slides.  If the vendor does not want to do a pilot program, then that is a telling sign and I would recommend that they be dropped from the list.

Currently, the city purchases software which, in this case, equates to the city taking on the responsibility of handling total costs of ownership like IT-burdened labor rates, software bugs, patches and upgrades. In addition to the software, we also take care of the servers by configuring, maintaining, and backing up the servers where the software resides.  Servers are expensive in the start-up and ongoing costs. In my opinion, maintaining servers are also a burden because they use a tremendous amount of energy which creates greenhouse gases and, in addition, we need a special facility to store the servers that is temperature controlled.

Personally, I believe we should outsource enterprise software at City Hall and subscribe to software via the web as a service. Software as a service would relieve us of the maintenance costs, hardware costs and energy-hogging servers. Plus, if the software service does not work as promised, the cost to switch is minimal. Millions of Americans log into financial software via a web browser every day to manage their finances without having any software or servers at their home or work.

I am aware that change takes little steps.  I just hope that San Jose begins to take those little steps that will save us money and make us more environmentally friendly.  Millions overspent on software that does not deliver as promised means less for parks, streets and public safety.

Grocery stores are an important element of our neighborhoods. They remind me of libraries and parks: a place that is usually open and serves everyone. Some of my fondest memories of childhood include grocery stores—whether it was cooling down on a hot day in the freezer section or spending my paper route money on snacks. Of course, those were the days when one dollar could get a kid four candy bars (which led to my 38-inch waist in elementary school!).

Unfortunately, it appears that many of the neighborhoods in San Jose are having problems getting grocery stores to locate within their environs. From Willow Glen to Berryessa, from Sherman Oaks to downtown, residents have few or no choices. A trend that I am fearful of is that grocery stores are often replaced by drug or discount stores that do not have a produce section or meat department that shoppers tend to depend on.

The grocery industry is being challenged on a macroeconomic level and stores are closing all over the United States. Just last week, Lunardi’s in Evergreen closed its doors, leaving the community at a loss. In the case of Lunardi’s, unlike Safeway, they are a small regional player, but they still must operate under the same challenging business model. Grocery stores have low single-digit profits overall as they are distributors of products grown or manufactured by someone else. Margins are low in the distribution business, plus there are all of the other usual business costs like rent, utilities (24/7 freezers for example), labor and growing medical costs, etc. Higher margins exist on alcohol and value added services like a deli or bakery. Such value added services allow a grocery store like Zanotto’s to stay open.

As we know, former “grocery giants” like Alpha Beta, Albertsons, Lucky’s etc. have fallen to the new “big box” stores like Costco and Wal-Mart—with their discount prices and sophisticated supply chains—or to “specialty” stores like Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods, with their unique products. Therefore, traditional grocers are being squeezed by both ends of the market with little room to move.

When I was a child, my parents would shop at the local grocery store. 90 percent of the family food budget was spent at a traditional grocery store. My parents did not have the many choices that we have today. However, now my father, a retired teacher, shops all over. He may visit Whole Foods, Safeway, Trader Joe’s, Mi Rancho and, of course, La Villa within just one week. Nowadays, the family food budget is split among various retail choices, thus compounding the problem of the traditional grocery store.

This leads me to ask: What can we do to promote our local grocery stores so that they stay open? How do we locate them in our neighborhoods? Certainly cities can control zoning and the permit process. Here in San Jose, we have used Redevelopment monies for Trader Joe’s at the Market Center, Whole Foods on The Alameda and Zanotto’s downtown.

One thing we all can do today is support our local grocery stores and shop in San Jose.