If you look at downtown, what you see is an area that despite all the investment and attention, is still not the showcase that boosters want.

So what winds up happening?  For almost as long as I’ve been living in San Jose everything that can be routed through or placed downtown has been.  The popular belief is that all this stuff will transform downtown into something that people will want to visit or live in.  The problem is that some of the things that people want to put downtown shouldn’t be put downtown.

Put light rail through downtown, so that it’ll make people want to go downtown.  What happens is that they really don’t want to go TO downtown, they want to go THROUGH downtown.  So in an attempt to fix things, attempt to add a place for express trains to pass slow trains.  But you can’t do that because it will ruin the asthetics of a run-down park.  A park that boosters figure will some day be a showcase.

Get a high speed rail line routed next to downtown and what happens?  The rail line will be noisy and unsightly, so it’ll have to be put underground, so that the downtown experience is not spoiled.  That adds to the cost of light rail, so that the only sections that get build connect cow towns in the San Joaquin Valley.

Bart?  Wait until they start TALKING about starting the digging.

Airport?  Can’t have noisy airplanes making downtown unlivable.  Besides, people that will want to visit downtown will want to so badly that they’ll gladly come anyway.  And what about that Taj Mahal of a terminal?  Infrastructure for the future, or was someone expecting landing curfews to be adjusted?

Hampton Inns?  Maybe we can offer them a spot next to Santana Row.  Downtown isn’t Tracy, even though the room rates will likely be comparable.

In a write up such as this you should at least acknowledge that a huge debt is owed (even though you’ve done little to mitigate it). These combined debts are nearly twice the pension liability, but represent current money owed instead of projected shortfall 30 years in the future.

I’ve been to many community meetings and there is no shortage of handouts or rhetoric about employee costs.  You guys even supported an illegal ballot measure to that end… where is your plan to fix Redevelopment debt?  This deal with Google may help SJC debt, but we BILLIONS because of San Jose leaders’ pet projects.  Soon, if you get your way we’ll get screwed with the A’s too…