Santa Clara County Local News

For many Los Gatos teenagers, nothing beats the thrill of speeding through the streets on an electric bike. E-bikes provide the kind of independence that kids used to only get with a driver’s license at 16. But in a moment, that freedom can turn into a nightmare. Is a shattered face and a fractured skull worth the thrill of reckless riding?

Surfnet Communications, Inc. announced Sept. 12 it had received three new grants totaling $4.3 million in partnership with the nonprofit California Broadband Alliance (CBA) to extend fiber broadband to communities in the Santa Cruz Mountains. The grants were awarded to the CBA by the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC).

A potential sanctioned encampment for homeless individuals near San Jose’s Watson Park has some neighbors upset with what they perceive as a lack of outreach. 
City officials have zeroed in on the first potential safe sleeping site at 1157 E. Taylor St., which could open as early as the beginning of next year with other sites to follow. Representatives from the offices of Mayor Matt Mahan and Councilmember Omar Torres canvassed the neighborhood in September to notify residents of the city’s plans. However, some residents said city workers never made direct contact with them.
"There was no outreach," a neighbor who asked not to be named for privacy reasons told San José Spotlight. "I found a flier in a rosemary bush next to the side wall despite living across the street from the park. My security camera shows no attempt to ring my doorbell on the date the fliers were distributed." 
The resident said communication from the city and Torres' District 3 office has been poor, and she is worried because the park is prone to fires. She said 911 calls in the past have gone unanswered.
"Omar has failed to talk to the community to outline the success metrics and rules for the safe sleeping site," the resident said. "Our requests for the feasibility study have gone unanswered. If he had been an effective communicator, there wouldn’t be such an uproar now." 
Torres told San José Spotlight he and his team have been engaging with residents through email, phone calls, social media and canvassing.
“We knocked on their door and if folks were not home or didn’t answer, we left a flier,” Torres said. “I only have a team of five and we would have loved to talk to more residents.”
A spokesperson from the mayor's team said they and Torres' team have canvassed about 450 homes and outreach is ongoing. So far they have canvassed 19th, 20th, 21st, 22nd and 23rd streets between Washington and East Mission streets. They also went to the cul-de-sacs on Terrace and Monferino drives, the spokesperson told San José Spotlight.

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Earth’s most valuable asset is potable water. So we store every drop we can capture in massive reservoirs like Shasta, Trinity, Folsom, Hetch Hetchy, Meade and a dozen more. But a thief has been stealing increasingly more amounts of that community wealth every summer for the past half century. That’s like your family income entrusted to a greedy custodian who skims off more each year.
That frightening news was broken by Don Bader of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation that manages the reservoirs. Bader declares that during the first nine days of July, 2.2 billion gallons disappeared from Shasta Lake while Trinity and Keswick Lakes had nearly 3 billion gallons stolen — by a very angry Mother Nature who is trying to tell us something.
Global warming caused by climate change, brought on by the accumulation of carbon vapors in the upper atmosphere, has saddled our generations with some of the warmest temperatures in recorded history. Last year was the warmest, with next year projected to be even hotter. Heat records were broken throughout California in July. The obvious result has been a rampant and expanding forest fire season, water rationing, price increases especially impacting the cost of agricultural products and health hazards for all life, notably the oldest and youngest.
Our macro challenge is to eliminate carbon combustion by the mid-2030s, as is the legislative objective of California. Fortunately, solar and wind energy are coming online rapidly enough to replace the need for petroleum and coal generated energy. And the public is realizing that electric cars, busses, trains and in-home electric energy is much less expensive to use and maintain than the dirty carbon-based alternatives. But science declares that maximum societal effort may take decades, even centuries, to normalize back to mid-1900s airborne carbon and temperature averages.
In the interim, life on Earth must survive by protecting water from increasing heat. Ideas that have been discussed are to cover the lakes and expansive canal systems with solar panels. And creating systems to pump water, both winter runoff and added reclamation  — reverse osmosis, added clean water drainage capture, etc. — via a system of piping back into the reservoirs and by natural percolation and direct injection into our depleted underground aquifers.
Covering lakes with solar panels is a technical challenge and runs afoul of the recreation users of those resources. Placing floating solar panels near the dams, where security prohibits public access, might be viable as would covering portions of the vast canal systems that distribute water throughout the state. The revenue from that electricity should allow the program to be self-funded.
The capture of added water and recharge of underground aquifers have potential and are done to a limited extent. As those underground reservoirs are replenished, protected from the heat of the sun, the added water allowed to be taken from that underground storage could be priced to pay for the recharge program.
For certain, our serious need for water in the future cannot allow evaporation to pilfer such a vast and increasing quantity of that pivotal natural resource. We must prove to Mother Nature that, as we finally strive toward the existential ethical imperative of curing ourselves of our carbon addiction, humankind is still worthy of continuing to care for her planet by protecting the most dear of her gifts: life-giving water.
Rod Diridon, Sr. is former chair of the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors, chair emeritus of Silicon Valley League of Conservation Voters, chair emeritus of SV Ethics Roundtable and chair emeritus of the California High Speed Rail Authority.
The post Diridon: Fight the water thief appeared first on San José Spotlight.

Santa Clara County doesn’t have a “coast,” strictly speaking, but it does have important watersheds that empty into the Bay, which empties into the ocean. California Coastal Cleanup Day will be a busy day in Santa Clara County, on Saturday, from 9am to 12pm. The event will include multiple locations, including: San Thomas Aquino Creek, [...]

In an effort to wrangle power and secure a favorable majority in her final term, Santa Clara Mayor Lisa Gillmor has handpicked two candidates to challenge her loudest critics on the City Council and is supporting two others — a move that could advance her political agenda and shape her legacy.
This November, voters will decide whether to reelect three councilmembers who've been at odds with the mayor and part of the so-called "49er Five" perceived to be friendly with the team: Vice Mayor Anthony Becker and Councilmembers Suds Jain and Kevin Park. Voters will also choose who should replace Gillmor's lone ally on the seven-person council, Kathy Watanabe, who is terming out.
Gillmor tapped Kelly Cox, an assistant dean at Santa Clara University, to run against Becker in District 6 and potentially unseat him. Becker, who unsuccessfully challenged Gillmor for mayor two years ago, has long been an adversary of the mayor. She demanded he resign after he faced charges for allegedly lying about leaking a confidential civil grand jury report that blasted his relationship with the 49ers — an offense that her critics say she is also guilty of.
"The mayor got a hold of me and said, ‘We gotta talk,'" Cox told San José Spotlight. "(I said) ‘I don’t know how I’m going to juggle finishing my masters program and doing it.' But at that point, she’s like, ‘There’s nobody. There’s nobody running in your district against the incumbent,' and I agreed we’re in an egregious state."
When asked to elaborate on Gillmor asking her to run for council, Cox declined further comment. 
Another Gillmor ally, former Councilmember Teresa O'Neill, is also on the November ballot. She's running for her former seat in District 4 after Park unseated her four years ago. Park has been a critic of the mayor and her actions, such as a last-minute proposal to cut the city's infrastructure bond down from $598 million to $400 million. 
O'Neill confirmed Gillmor asked her to run for the seat again. She said she didn't plan on doing it, but was ultimately convinced by other friends.  
Gillmor did not respond to a request for comment.
Former Councilmember Teresa O'Neill, who is running again in Santa Clara City Council District 4, talks with potential voters. Photo courtesy of Teresa O'Neill.
The mayor's allies
Gillmor has also endorsed software engineer Satish Chandra to run for the open District 1 seat after Watanabe terms out.
Chandra said Gillmor did not ask him to run for city council, but Watanabe suggested it two years ago. She is now his campaign manager.
District 5 candidate David Kertes launched his campaign at an event with Chandra, O'Neill and Cox last month. Kertes has also been endorsed by Gillmor. He said he wasn't asked to run by the mayor, but discussed his candidacy with her. 
Despite having the mayor's support, Kertes said he is an independent thinker.
“I may not always vote with Kelly and Teresa, or with Lisa, because we all have different residents with different expectations,” Kertes told San José Spotlight. 
A mayor recruiting allies to run for council seats in an attempt to win a friendly majority is not unusual or illegal. But in Santa Clara, it's another wrinkle in the city's already tumultuous political scene. 
This past year, Gillmor's agenda has been stymied by stark opposition and a lack of council support. The council majority approved settlements with the 49ers, ending litigation that was supported by Gillmor, and reeled in a noise curfew opposed by the team.

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Kaiser Permanente plans to rebuild its 50-year old hospital in South San Jose and city officials call it a "win-win" for residents.

French director Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance is a misconceived, witless, leaden piece of work. Further than that, it could be seen as the mildest (aside from its copious bloodletting), least consequential, most tritely argued, anti-body-shaming/“men are pigs” feminist tract since, well, Barbie.

Martin Yan has been on TV longer than ESPN or the Food Network. He goes way back.

This story is about your favorite songs. When you first heard them, you immediately wanted to hear them again. They stayed in your head for a month. While your body moved to their beat, everything that happened to you then, the memories of all of it, can come back to you through these songs.

The student and the teacher sit facing one another, their feet on the drum pedals, drumsticks in their hands. Autism may make the 10-year-old’s speech unique, it may make his attention variable, but right now he is communicating with his teacher in a different dimension, in a language he can feel.

This weekend—truly a last hurrah before the seasons change—San Jose’s Plaza de Cesar Chavez will be the site of the last two concerts for Metro’s Music in the Park concert series. In between there is Kids Day in the Park, presented by Bay Area Parent.

ARIES (March 21-April 19)

Quite the prolific artist, 34-year-old Mitski (aka Mitsuki Miyawaki, born Mitsuki Laycock) has released a handful of great records over the past couple of years. Her current tour finds her supporting her latest, The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We, which has resonated with her adoring fans while also receiving critical acclaim.

LA-born, Hawaii-based, ethnically Polynesian and musically immersed in the sounds of Jamaica, reggae artist J Boog is an international and multicultural sensation. Buoyed by the success of his latest single, “Fire Up Di Roses”—a collaboration with The Green, Common Kings and mentor Fiji—J Boog is in the midst of a world tour that takes him as far as New Zealand. Among those concert dates is a Sept. 22 performance at San Jose’s Music in the Park.

Keeping a restaurant afloat for 45 years is certainly no small feat. It takes grit, determination, good help and a fair bit of luck. Yet year after year, seafood lovers are reeled into this Los Gatos eatery.

Lowrider culture began in LA in the ’40s when enthusiasts retrofitted their autos with custom wheels, hydraulic lifts and other dazzling accessories. The culture soon expanded across the nation and beyond. Presented by the United Lowrider Council of San Jose and Local Color SJ, the 2nd Annual Lowrider Art Showcase will feature a fleet of lowriders. The free, family-friendly event includes artmaking and painting demonstrations, DJs, dancing and local food and art vendors. The showcase honors the lowrider community and is an excellent way to celebrate National Hispanic Heritage Month.