Top Stories: July 30, 2009

By Staff (Jul 30, 2009 )

Stimulus Money Trickles in for Santa Clara County Water District
The Santa Clara County Water District received $44.1 million in federal stimulus money for a number of flood protection and water recycling projects. Of the funding, $18 million will go to the Lower Silver Creek flood-protection program to protect land adjacent to the creek from flooding. Another $12.5 million will be used to build two new bridges—one for cars and one for trains—over downtown San Jose’s Guadalupe River, also part of the county’s flood-protection program. This project is also expected to improve the quality of water in the river and offer recreational benefits. The third major project is the South Bay Water Recycling Advanced Treatment Facility Project, which will receive $8 million to improve the quality of recycled water not used in drinking. An addition $1 million will be used to increase the tidal flow in Alviso Slough in order to maintain the channel and increase the water’s salinity.

The new projects should provide a boost to employment in the county. According to estimates, forty jobs are created for each million dollars invested.
Read More at the Mercury News.
Read More at the San Jose Business Journal.


School District Superintendent Put on Paid Administrative Leave
Last week we reported on East Side Union High School Superintendent Bob Nunez, who was being investigated for financial irregularities in the school district. Nunez was suspected of having abused district credit cards for restaurant meals and travel, and for having paid contractors repeatedly for doing the same job.

As the investigation proceeds, the Santa Clara County Board of Education has decided to place Nunez on paid administrative leave. It will be recalled that the investigation against Nunez also includes suspicions that he overcharged for his number of workdays, and that he took over $24,000 in 2006 and over $27,000 in 2007 for unused vacation time. Now at least, the Board of Education will know for sure that he is not at work when he is getting paid.

Nunez made headlines this past December for suggesting that the district might be forced to cancel its athletics program in order to balance its budget. Read More at KLIV and The Mercury News.


San Jose’s Rabbit Woes
For most kids in elementary school, bunnies are a class pet or the highlight of a trip to the petting zoo. Not to students in the Moreland School District though. They’ve seen too many dead and mangled rabbits to think of them as cute.

The problem is that for the past ten years, an acre and a half of woods belonging to the school district has been a dumping ground for unwanted pet rabbits. The rabbits took shelter there and bred like … rabbits. Now people are setting their dogs on them, or even hunting them with pellet guns. Neighbors of the woods are even starting to complain that they’ve found the dismembered bodies of baby rabbits on their front lawns.

While groups such as Save a Bunny want to save the bunnies, their efforts to trap the animals are being hindered by the school district, which says that they cannot trap the animals unless they are properly insured (one can only wonder if Monty Python’s Killer Rabbit is fact or fiction). Until the issue is properly resolved, the rabbits will keep on breeding and dogs and amateur hunters with bb-guns will keep on killing them, all on school property.

To quote A.A. Milne:
“I don’t see much sense in that,” said Rabbit.
“No,” said Pooh humbly, “there isn’t. But there was going to be when I began it. It’s just that something happened to it along the way.”
Read More at ABC7.


Senior Olympics Come to Palo Alto
Shuffleboard and horseshoes may not be recognized as competitive sports by the 2012 London Olympics. They will, however, get top billing at the Summer National Senior Games, which open this Saturday at Palo Alto. So will more traditional sports, such as basketball, cycling, track and field, and golf, for a total of eighteen medal sports and 7 demonstration sports. To participate in the Senior Games, athletes must have been born before December 31, 1958, and have qualified at a state senior games championship in 2008. Participants in demonstration sports such as lawn bowling, soccer, and sailing need only to prove that they were at least fifty years old age on August 1, 2009.

While the games may not attract much coverage from ESPN, some 30,000 people are expected to pass through, as spectators and participants. This is expected to provide a much needed boost in the arm to local restaurants and hotels, many of which are already sold out. City officials say that the games could inject as much as $30 million into the local economy.

The Summer National Senior Games will be held August 1-15.
Read More at KCBS.
Read More at the Mercury News.