San Tomas Aquino/Saratoga Creek Trail Reach 3 Completion Celebrated With

By Robert Haugh

Inching closer to finalizing a vision of City residents of having an abundant, thriving bicycle and pedestrian trail winding through the City and stretching into other communities, City leaders, prominent City visionaries, and many community members and bicyclists enjoyed a beautiful Friday morning breeze, celebrating the grand opening of Reach 3 of the San Tomas Aquino/Saratoga Creek Trail.

Spanning approximately 1.25 miles, extending from Scott Blvd., to Monroe along the west bank of the San Tomas Aquino Creek, with undercrossings at Central Expressway, Walsh and the Caltrain railroad tracks, like the other portions of the trail, it is paved, with signing and striping, directional and interpretive signs, retaining walls with art panels, drainage systems, fencing and railings.

An at-grade crossing now provides a signalized traffic crossing for trail users to safely cross Monroe, connecting them to the Creek Trailhead where there is a parking lot. Existing Reaches 1 and 2 combined with Reach 3 total approximately 3.85 miles of trail.

“Even in tough times, we’re making things happen in our wonderful City,” says Council member Kevin Moore, who Mayor Patricia Mahan invited to speak --- who she considers the ‘founder of the creek trail.’

Reach 4 of the San Tomas Aquino/Saratoga Creek Trail will extend an additional 1,000 feet from the Creek Trailhead to Cabrillo Avenue and connect to existing on-street bicycle lanes on Cabrillo and is expected to be completed later this year.

Upon completion, bicycle and pedestrian trail users will have a continuous recreational trail extending from the San Francisco Bay Trail near Highway 237 to Prospect Road in San Jose. The 12-mile trail will traverse approximately five miles of Creek corridors and seven miles of local streets, connecting with parks, open space facilities, employment centers, transit systems and residential areas.

The first three segments (Reach 1, 2, and 3) of the Creek Trail are open and provide a walking, running, and bicycling trail extending south from the San Francisco Bay Trail to Monroe Street. A public parking lot at the Santa Clara Golf & Tennis Club, 5155 Stars & Stripes Drive, provides free parking and trail access. There is another parking lot, the Monroe Street Staging Area, located on Monroe Street just west of San Tomas Expressway. Both parking lots are City-maintained.

Reach 1 of the Creek Trail extends south from the San Francisco Bay Trail to Agnew Road. In Reach 1, undercrossings are provided at Highway 237, Old Mountain View-Alviso Road, Great America Parkway, and Tasman Drive in order to provide a continuous trail without users crossing busy streets.

Reach 2 of the Creek Trail extends south from Agnew Road to Scott Boulevard. This segment with undercrossings at Mission College Boulevard, State Highway 101 and Scott Boulevard was opened for public use in May 2006.

Undercrossings may be subject to periodic closures during the rainy seasons when they are inundated by the water levels in the creek. For information on closures of the trail for maintenance or weather, call (408) 615-3080.

Milestones 7/15/09

By Miles H Barber
There seems to be some confusion in Santa Clara.
While this may not be unusual when it comes to politics it is very unusual when the confusion is the result of media created perception.
Somehow, a few people in town, including Councilwoman Jamie McLeod seem to be confused about a Senate Bill introduced by Senator Elaine Alquist that allegedly would change Santa Clara’s City Charter.
First, let’s be clear. This is not totally true.
Here is the issue.
Currently our city charter requires our city to obtain three bids for any public project and award the bid to the lowest bidder. So far so good!
Our City Council has voted 5-2 to put the building of a new stadium in Santa Clara to the voters.
If you have not been in a coma for the past two years, you already knew this. However, you might not be aware that there are only 31 NFL football stadiums in America.
This is the problem.
Only a few companies in the entire country are qualified to build football stadiums, in fact, the real number is two.
Now, fast forward a few months and assume you are ready to vote on the stadium proposal.
The proposal passes. According to our Charter, we would have to go out for bids and take the lowest bidder.
This of course opens the door for any “wannabe big time contractor” to submit a bid.
Legally, we would have to accept the lowest bid which is awarded to Slippery Hands Construction (SHL).
Ok, so we take the lowest bid and what happens? SHL only misses the actual costs by $50 million.
Thanks to Jennifer Sparacino and Ron Garrett, our financial manager guru’s at City Hall, the 49ers by agreement would have to pay the costs of the overruns. Good for the City, not so good for the 49ers.
To keep the SHL’s and other non-qualified companies out of the bidding process, the 49ers (who are paying the cost over-run bills) want to limit their expense exposure to trusted and proven stadium contractors.
Therefore, the 49ers would like the two companies in all of America who are capable of building a 68,000 seat stadium be the two general contractors selected.
This seems logical.
That is, unless you are opposed to the stadium regardless of how good it is for our City and for our schools.
So, it appears to be the issue with Councilwoman McLeod. She was opposed to the stadium at the time the Council voted and she continues to object by Mcleoding the issues.
The Senate bill as proposed is a project specific bill. It does not change the city charter for anything other than football stadiums and it would apply to all cities in California.
We have not built a new NFL stadium in California in over 30 years. So, it’s not something that is going to affect any city on a weekly basis.
NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell recently stated that in all his years in being associated with the NFL he has never seen a better deal for a city than the one put together by Santa Clara.
That should clear up the confusion.
Hopefully the dark clouds of Mcskepticism will also fade quickly and we can build a Council team for objectives rather than obstructions.

Miles H. Barber can be reached at SCWeekly2004@yahoo.com

How Did California Get Into This Mess?

There's plenty of blame to go around in the budget crisis. Fingers can be pointed at Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Democrats, Republicans -- and you and me.

By John Vasconcellos


I was recently hospitalized with a life-threatening illness that it took doctors several days to accurately diagnose. Until they fully understood the problem -- which turned out to be an antibiotic-resistant staph infection -- they couldn't prescribe the medication that would cure me.

The experience got me thinking about California.

Our state's protracted budget crisis sometimes seems unsolvable. But part of the problem may be that those who are trying to solve it don't fully understand its cause.

I represented the Silicon Valley for 38 years in the Legislature, and I chaired the Assembly Budget Committee for 15 of those years. As a result, I have some insights into our current crisis that may be useful.

The immediate problem, of course, is a $26-billion shortfall, which we must now plug if California is to pay its bills. But before we can fix things, we have to understand how we got to this point.

A good place to start is with the slew of revenue reductions that have hit the state since 1978, when Californians passed Proposition 13. The initiative dramatically reduced most property taxes and resulted in a 57% reduction in property tax revenue during its first year, and its effects continue.

Another revenue drop came in 1982, when voters passed an initiative abolishing the state inheritance tax. Before that, California had taken in nearly $1 billion a year in estate taxes.

And there are vehicle license fees. Starting in 1998, the fees were reduced incrementally until Gov. Gray Davis raised them to close a budget gap in 2003. When Arnold Schwarzenegger came into office later that year, he immediately reversed the hike -- at a cost to state coffers of about $4 billion each year since then.

Add to that the collapse of the dot.com bubble in 2004 -- which resulted in a drop of several billion dollars in state revenues from capital gains taxes -- and the current global economic downturn and you start to see how state revenues have suffered.

Next, consider a series of structural complications that hamper the Legislature's ability to come up with solutions. First among them -- again -- is Proposition 13, which requires a two-thirds vote of both legislative houses to raise taxes. This has meant that a small minority can keep the majority from enacting tax hikes that would help balance the budget.

Term limits, enacted by voters in 1990, were designed with good intentions. They would, their backers said, allow for more turnover in state government and more opportunity for worthy candidates who wouldn't have a chance against incumbents. But term limits have also meant that many legislators don't have deep experience in the state issues facing them. They also don't have enough time in office to develop collaborative relationships with their fellow legislators.

The 2002 reapportionment deal further exacerbated matters by creating "safe" districts for Democrats and Republicans, which have largely ensured that people at the liberal or conservative extremes of their party are seated.

So, if those are the basic problems, whom should we hold accountable? Each and all of the following bear responsibility.

* Schwarzenegger: Despite his good heart and mind, our governor seems to be lacking proficiency in basic mathematics. While he has said the budget can't be balanced by cuts alone, he hasn't proposed solutions that would close the gap. And many of the cuts he has proposed would cost the state more in the long run.

* The Democratic majority in the Legislature: There is no denying that Democratic lawmakers failed to create a sufficient rainy-day fund, preferring to spend money when times were flush -- often using one-time revenue sources to fund ongoing projects. They did this both to protect services for needy Californians and because they are overly responsive to public employee unions, especially those in public safety.

* The Republican minority in the Legislature: Unlike their predecessors, who joined Govs. Ronald Reagan and Pete Wilson in meeting Democrats halfway, the current crop of Republicans in Sacramento seems unwilling to compromise. All but one has signed the "no new tax" pledge of Washington crusader Grover Norquist, whose stated ambition is to shrink government to "a size where we can drown it in the bathtub." This may make for good rhetoric, but it produces little in the way of sound public policy.

* We, the people of California: Voters in our state have repeatedly passed initiatives lowering taxes and earmarking funds for pet programs, thereby inhibiting the ability of legislators to make rational decisions about state spending. Voters seem to want an unsustainable combination of increased services and lower taxes.

That, in a nutshell, is how we got into this mess. It is the job of our current Legislature and governor to lead us out of the disaster, but it's the responsibility of all of us to understand the issues they face and demand a sound, long-term solution.

California is an economic powerhouse -- the eighth-largest economy in the world. And it is home to a wonderfully diverse, talented and creative population. But we now have some tough decisions to make. In the end, we will get the kind of government services we are willing to pay for. And we all need to participate in the discussion of what kind of state we want to have.

John Vasconcellos is a former state senator and assemblyman. His longer analysis of the budget crisis can be found at www.politicsoftrust.net .