The first council meeting of the new fiscal year will result in discussing the new budgets cuts that must be made due to Sacramento’s raid of cities’ property tax money. Since San Jose does not want to look at delivering services differently, as Chicago and other cities do, then that leaves us with only one option: cut services to San Jose residents.
For example, my office receives calls and emails on a variety of topics, including street paving, park maintenance, blight and so on. However, there is one thing that almost all people comment about. I agree, this thing is totally out of control. You see it all around San Jose when you traverse its roadways at and stop at every intersection. Sometimes these things are over five feet tall, and they grow bigger by the day.
They come in different colors and varieties and are as attractive as a broken window that never gets fixed.
Well, if you haven’t guessed what this “thing» is yet, its weeds. The subject of weed abatement is so taboo that we would rather have the city look terrible then outsource a simple task of removing weeds. Well, ladies and gentleman, I can tell you that if you call any of your councilmembers to complain about a certain city-owned space being ravaged by tall weeds, that the response time will be really long…really long.
Also in case you weren’t aware, the City of San Jose ripped out nice looking plants in medians throughout the city because the City cannot afford to maintain the plants. Yep, remove the beautiful plants that were paid for by your dollars to let weeds grow in abundance. Welcome to San Jose! Not the type of neighborhood marquee I advocate.
However, I am calling on and recruiting Vigilantes, specifically Weed Vigilantes. If you see a forest of weeds in San Jose, I say do not hold back—tackle it head on and pull them out. Maybe even carry shears or a lopper and cut them down. I know that some of you are wondering if you need a permit to remove weeds since some of them are so big people may think they are trees. I say don’t worry about a permit—you are doing your neighbors and city a favor. Consider yourself deputized. As far as cleaning up, that would be great but if not, just leave them as your calling card as an example to others weeds not to mess around.
San Jose: a place where you pay higher city taxes, pick your own weeds and fund multi-million dollar golf courses. Priceless.