Surely you all can imagine I’ve had a few, but worry not, today I will share only one. It is a reoccurring regret that relates to our local mayoral race, one of the nastier in history. San Jose’s mayor’s office is non-partisan, but mostly we have two flavors of politicians. A pro-labor, socially progressive type; working on issues important to the large working-class majority, like schools, infrastructure, and public services. Or the almost libertarian-lite type; socially moderate, fiscally conservative, looking to reduce government costs and getting out of the way of high-tech corporations’ ever increasing profits.
Currently, mayor Chuck Reed, who once valiantly defended the city from an idea he called, a “threat” to the economy, rules San Jose. Seems some wacky university kids had devised a dangerous plot to raise the minimum wage to a whooping $10 an hour, in one of the wealthier cities in the country. Luckily mayor Reed lost that fight and we have been suffering the rewards of the wage hike that was credited with a boost to the economy.
One of Mayor Reed’s successes was tearing up the public employees’ contracts and reducing pensions to a point where many police officers went looking for greener pastures, like Bakersfield or something. As Reed finds himself termed out, he has been looking to groom a replacement to help him breathe some life into his withered legacy and had to look no further than the city council. Surely an easy choice for Reed, he has endorsed Sam Liccardo, who voted just as he did on pension reform and the wage hike.
I won’t even bore you with all the details of the recent Silicon Valley soap opera, but Reed’s chief of staff was caught attempting to bribe a rejected police recruit to make false statements about the police union. And also tied to a recent op-ed by another rejected police recruit who has retracted her story. Many people are looking at the two local papers with up-raised eyebrows as to their part in publishing the unsubstantiated accusations so close to the election.
Now back to my regret, which came to mind when I saw a post on Sam Liccardo’s Facebook page, the common campaign photo with candidate Sam, Mayor Reed and ex-Mayor Tom McEnery. McEnery was mayor way back in the days when the Valley of Heart’s Delight was becoming Silicon Valley, the days when I was just a young plumbing apprentice riding the new-wave of life.
Welcome to a time when vast fields of orchards were blooming plants, well, not those kinds of plants, wafer plants. And with them the houses of the many low-wage, high-tech assemblers joining the Silicon rush. All those people will need to buy stuff, so strip malls needed to be built and that was where I was toiling. I worked for a small mom and pop shop …or maybe I should say, small pop and son union plumbing shop. There, we did many of the first strip malls that are now ubiquitous across the valley. Not usually the most exciting stuff, mostly the main water and sewer piping, lots of sunny days in the trenches.
For a change, I was dispatched to a small tenant improvement in a building owned by the mayor’s family and located at downtown’s historic San Pedro Square. Dreadful of the ancient pipes I might find, but happy to have a nice little job to myself, heck, maybe the mayor might see the nice work I do. Although I never saw the mayor or he my pipes, he does have a starring role in my regret.
About halfway through the project another tenant signed a lease for the adjoining unit. Contracts were quickly signed so we could move our tools and start work on the other unit without losing anytime. The only hiccup was the new project took building costs over a limit that would require the old brick building be retrofitted to the current seismic standards. Besides increasing costs, the added engineering would delay the project through the permit process.
The mayor, a San Jose native from a wealthy and politically connected family was called by some, “King McEnery” for ruling the city hall like it was his kingdom. When King McEnery heard the news of costs and possible delays, he did what any tyrannical leader would do, he told us to proceed without a permit and declared that he would “deal with the building department.”
My regret was not going to the press, as an idealistic young plumber I wanted to flush the cheating turd. My concern was possible retribution directed at my boss. Would it be fair to risk his livelihood? Being young and single, work plentiful, I could afford to lose my job. I chose to keep the mayor’s secret, but often questioned - like a few years later after the Loma Preita quake. Did my silence put people’s lives at risk? Luckily, the building stood up to the shaking, I did check.
I don’t really know what would have happened if I had reported this, would it have even dented the armor of King McEnery? One would hope. Would he have been pictured next to, and giving credence to the man looking to continue Reed’s reign of terror on the people in the Valley of Heart’s Delight? If Liccardo loses, my regret will soften, another disaster avoided, narrowly.
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