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Top Stories: Sept. 16, 2009Chavez Called to Account; San Jose is Trash Capital; Local Economy Best in Stateby Staff on Sep 16, 2009More Money Questions for East Side Union High School District Something is wrong with the East Side Union High School District. This past July, Superintendent Bob Nunez was placed on administrative leave pending an investigation of his use of a district credit card for personal expenses and the suspicion that he overcharged for the number of days he actually worked. As the investigation proceeds, auditors have started looking into the salary paid to former City Councilmember Cindy Chavez, who was hired to serve as a consultant to the school board. According to district officials, Chavez was paid $79,000 to establish a nonprofit foundation to promote the school district. Another $5,572 was paid to the district's law firm to draw up a charter for the non-profit foundation. The problem is that two years later the foundation exists in little more than name. It has very few board members, no website, and under $5,000 in its bank account--and that account was only opened three months ago. According to Chavez, the foundation she launched originally generated a lot of interest among potential donors. Then the economy collapsed, and donors lost interest. Patricia Martinez-Roach, the current board president, says that this is no excuse. After Nunez threatened to eliminate athletics in order to deal with budget cuts, a group of parents banded together and launched a series of fundraisers under the banner, "Save Our Sports." Last month this grassroots group presented the school district with a check for $115,000, and as Martinez-Roach points out, they received no support from the foundation. Nevertheless, Chavez claims that the money will start coming in once the economy improves. A fourth board member will be voted on at the board's next meeting, and, Chavez says, she plans to continue helping the East Side even though her contract expired. "I really believe in East Side," she says. Read More at The Mercury News. San Jose Makes Top 10 … for Plastic Bag Pollution 12 minutes. That's the average amount of time that people use the plastic bags they get whenever they make a purchase. They're free, convenient, and totally ubiquitous. In the Bay Area alone, people use an estimated 3.8 billion bags every year, and 12 minutes after they get them, they end up in the trash, or increasingly, in the Bay. Volunteers at the International Coastal Cleanup Day say that last year they collected 1.37 million discarded bags from the shoreline and streams leading to the Bay, with Coyote Creek ranked as the third-worst offender. There were 1,100 plastic bags collected along the creek during last year's Cleanup Day. Environmentalists from Save the Bay say that 250,000 bags end up in San Francisco Bay every year. Since the bags are not biodegradable, they could very well stay there forever, unless they float out to the Pacific to join the Great Garbage Patch, a growing mass of plastic waste twice the size of Texas. But the problem with the bags is not only the amount of litter they create or the impact that all that plastic waste is having on the environment. Bags are also a drain on our dwindling oil supply, with approximately 1.5 million barrels of oil being used every year just to supply the Bay Area with bags. The number of bags that are picked up in Coyote Creek this Saturday during the upcoming California Coastal Cleanup event could have a direct impact on San Jose. City Council is studying the bag problem and plans to vote on a solution this fall. San Francisco has already banned them from stores, and while San Jose may not take that step yet, it may collect a bag fee from shoppers or simply launch an information campaign to make the public aware of what happens to all those bags they end up discarding after only 12 minutes. For places like Coyote Creek, that's bound to be good news. Read More at NBC Bay Area. Read More at KLIV. At Least Two Years to Go until San Jose Is Out of the Doldrums A report issued by HIS Global Insight, a Massachusetts-based economic forecasting firm, is predicting that two Texas cities, Austin and San Antonio, will be the first in the nation to show signs of economic recovery, with jobs rising to pre-recession levels as early as 2010. San Jose will have to wait another two years, until 2012, before employment returns to what it was in 2007-2008. One indication of how the recession is affecting local businesses is the hotel industry. Hotel occupancy in July 2009 was down 13.84 percent from what it was in July 2008, while the average revenue per room was down from $88.34 to $62.40, a decline of almost 30 percent. On the other hand, economists at UCLA predict that Silicon Valley's growth will be much quicker than the rest of the state. "We're already seeing funds come in from the stimulus package for green technology, propulsion technology and medical technology," said Jerry Nickelsburg, a senior economist with the Anderson Forecast. He also pointed to rising exports of Silicon Valley products, which is reflected in soaring stock prices. For the rest of California though, the news is not so good. The Anderson report asks: "Will California once again be waving from the tarmac as the U.S. economy takes off?" With double-digit unemployment expected to grow in 2011 and 2012, "The answer seems to be, at least initially, yes." Read More at the Business Journal. Read More at the Mercury News. Contractors Beg Sunnyvale City Council for Help Sunnyvale's Town Center project was originally slated to cost $180 million. Then the recession hit, and with it, $18 million in liens against the project's developer, Downtown Sunnyvale Mixed Use LLC, as well as the Sunnyvale Redevelopment Agency. For the contractors, this means that payment has been delayed, both for work done and products supplied. Despite assurances that the Center will eventually be completed, the contractors claim that this imposed a severe financial burden on them, and forced them to lay off dozens of employees. Yesterday they took their claims directly to Sunnyvale's City Council. One by one, they stepped to the podium to describe the hardships they have endured because of the delay and to plead with the city to make sure that they receive their payments. Though no assurances were given, City Council agreed to discuss the problem at their next public meeting, on September 29. Read More at The Mercury News. by Staff on Sep 16, 2009 |
 Cindy Chavez was paid $79,000 to run a non-profit that hasn't delivered much of anything, according to reports. |
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