1-Ground water pollution,,,Santa Clara County and San Jose are in Silicon Valley which has the greatest concentration of Superfund sites in the entire USA, including Love Canal and Three Mile Island. Like any naught infantile industry, the computer industry started here in what Was a very high quality of life area,,,and then fouled their nests ,,,and walked away from their serious toxic waste leavings. Originally they used more toxic chemicals and bad decision decided to bury these tanks underground, which then leaked into the ground water. It would be ethical and responsible of the pc-computer industry to gather together and pay to clean up this huge mess, instead of acting like spoiled brat children that demand tax breaks and leave their messes all over the house for some else to clean up!
2-Air pollution,,,Since the South Bay Area is rimmed by low mountains like the Los Angeles area, we nowadays -2007- have smog so bad it is a green layer on top of a brown layer, besides the newsreaders telling us to stay inside. Local people seem to be too busy working and just don't give a damn.
3-Historic pollution,,,There are Spanish, Almaden neighborhood 'quicksilver' mercury mines in Silicon Valley that have been leaking into San Francisco Bay since the 1700s and no one seems to want to do anything about it. That includes our cardboard-like ineffective new Governor, the Terminator-Governator who is chained to a totally incompetent state highway department, Caltrans, full of $Billion cost overrun civil servants who should all be fired and have their pensions stripped; A Terminator-Governator defeated by puny civil servants, red ink, and potholes,what a sorry sad movie that is.
4-Incompetent,Deaf and Ineffective government,,,San Jose's last mayor,Gonzales of Sunnyvale politics, belongs in jail for his bid rigging and general incompetence. How the local political machine thought he even had a cardboard prop chance like Gavin 'prettyboy' Newsom of surviving the status quo long enough for one term is amazing. The new current mayor, Mr. Reed ,promises a huge turn to honest government with a start on a Sunshine Commission, but San Jose and California have not seen much political sunshine in so long because of the corporate-political 'fog' it is going to be an enormous task. The state is gerrymandered to the limit and you can not get rid of some of the old rust like Lantos because neither party will put up a range of good candidates for the PUBLIC to choose from!!
5-Bad community design,,,A long string on San Jose and Silicon Valley mayor seem to have sold their souls and the area to suburban housing tract developers, so that getting around as most of us do by car is very very difficult. For instance, major highways 85 and 87 were on the county map for 30 years as "proposed routes" and much needed with all the yuppies and geeks and stock millionaires driving fast , but were not built. And when built , the State of California-Caltrans accepted a defective highway 87 that warped like a roller coaster, and had to be rebuilt and widened from a totally inadequate 2x2 new ,21st century ,7 million people in the Bay Areas 9 counties so almost as crowded as LA, too narrow freeway. There is not one LA super wide freeway in the entire Bay Area. Talk about lousy, lack of foresight planning!! Even on major streets and cross town boulevards, the Traffic Department says that all the traffic lights are suppose to be, should already be,should have been for years and decades timed,,,but they are too busy or incompetent to do it just yet,,,what with how valuable our time, gasoline, and sitting in traffic for hours smog-generating health is. Highway 101 south of town was Designed with a huge bottleneck to slow traffic in and out of southern Coyote Valley, and the stupid bottleneck has only recently been removed , at the cost of incompetent State Legislature millions $$$$$. Silicon Valley is no pre-designed Pleasanton.
6-Poor Police performance,,,In the 1960s and 1970s the SJPD cops in their cruisers were allowed to sleep their night shifts away on the safer west side of the Santa Clara Valley, in clusters of cruisers hidden behind schools-which i personally witnessed-while most of the crime was newspapered to be on the poorer east side of the Valley. But i can remember the west side, Willow Glen burglar who repeatedly broke into peoples upper income homes to just make loud noises and stand in the master bedrooms while the couple cringed for their lives hiding under the sheets, and then this burglar would leave. This went on ,,,for years!!! If you call the SJPD for say carpenters drag racing down an upscale expensive neighborhood ,,,every day after work on a remodel,,,you might think the local pd would come out,,,but no, the cruisercops are too busy somewhere, doing something, and making some of the highest pay in the state for doing a terrible job of community policing. Or say the local high school kids decide to tp/toilet paper a city sidewalk, city owned beautiful tree every year, will the local pd talk to these budding jd s and put a stop to it, no. You can get better service from a mall guard.
7-Redevelopment Agency corruption to totally rebuild downtown San Jose after the city allowed "Valley Fair" shopping mall to be constructed on the western outskirts and draining all the business out of the downtown area, taken over by various Mexican eastside gangs, and now trying to entice shoppers and visitors back with free parking on nights and weekends,,,was another huge bad idea. Nowadays this shopping mall is the number one grossing mall in the state, more than any in LA or Orange County. People do not still feel safe because there is not a cop walking every block downtown at night--see the above "poor police performance". Women have been raped, downtown, at night , on the city streets. And the city and the SJPD cops still don't get it.
8-Secret, backroom giveaway deals to local corporations costing us $$$ millions and billions in lost tax revenue and fees,etc. Some would say that Silicon Valley must do this to entice good companies to come and stay, but after so many have poisoned our wells like Fairchild and IBM, do we really still think this corporate morally corrupt scheme still works for the benefit of anyone but these careless multinational nation-homeless businesses?! If a business does not want to be American, then they may not be our friend, but our enemy.
9-Joke of a city council,,,Like most politicians-representatives in California and the USA, San Jose's in Silicon Valley can not be bothered with your complaint call or inquiry. PS=this city does not work. period.
10-local newspaper,,,I will give the San Jose Mercury News credit for only recently trying to be a great investigative, honest,for the people newspaper instead of the corp and govt shallow he said/she said trashcan liner material that is the bulk of most newspapers.
11-Local Schools,,,San Jose State College was, besides the old canneries for the fruit trees of old Santa Clara Valley, the mainstay of the community. Unfortunately, through poor-terrible administration by the State , it was allowed to become more mediocre while changing its name to 'san jose state university' when it is functionally no better than a second tier state college to the UC system-also mismanaged by slow expansion. SJSC was always a commuter school , in downtown, so it easily lost its identity. What with the foolishness of the greeks frats and soros,keeping files of tests, and way too many drunken orgies causing their decline to almost barely visible level,,,and the repeated poor leadership of college president after college president after college president, especially with the long line of corrupt and incompetent mayors not helping matters generally much, the college is a local joke. They just gutted the famous Industrial Arts department , where shop teachers learned their skills for decades under master craftsmen, and gave it too the famous Engineering Department, as if !! we need more geeks that can not even use hand tools, let alone machinery. Ask any major local corporation,even the computer kind, and they will tell you most EE grads are tool klutzes and the Governator needs to restore public education in the State of California to a much higher level , if he can, tho doubtful. Our public schools are rated near the bottom on spending per pupil, tho the public school administrators are stealing golden salaries just fine tyvm,,,and the overall quality of our high school public education graduation crop is a joke compared to the rest of the USA and the civilized world. Stanford's computer was tapped and the newspapers revealed that most students were (parentals) buying just "A"s and "B"s, tho the university does not seem to be too ashamed about this, they just don't want to talk about grades anymore, with anyone,,,especially the press. And UCB /Bezerkley ,like San Jose State, does not seem to be able to be good neighbors and good friends to the city it is downtown inside. Santa Clara University has become famous for ,,,ready for this,,,burning couches in the streets, by the students. Such incompetent State level public school leadership, for decades!! Both Chico State and CalPoly in SLO lost their parent week celebrations because of inadequate policing,,,so sad. The new Merced UC campus is mired in frivolous swampshrimp lawsuits and should have been finished 20 years ago. Willow Glen High School is over run with rude and misbehaving, mostly latino, underachieving and bussed-in students.
12-Worst roads in the USA, for YEARS,,,If California was an independent country, we would be one of the 15 richest countries in the entire world !, yet the state budget is secretly lack-of-political sunshine mismanaged year after year, after decade. The Terminator-Governator in a campaign pledge promised we californians a state audit,,,but we have learned to accept much less from a Hollywood movie star-action figure,,,so much much less. We use to just joke about how awful the state DMV/dept of motor vehicles was. Now it is also the state CalTrans/highway department, for their bungling of the Bay Bridge 1989 repair when it was built on wood in the water and mud back in 1936 and the wood had rotted away,,,to their bungling of the new bridge design and build process from a reasonable 1 billion $ cost est. to the current afraid-to-ask-negligence-over 7 billion $ and years late estimate,,,California has become a joke of mismanagement by the Gov. and Legis. after their repeated lies that deregulating energy would mean the cost of natural gas and electricity would go down, when it shot up 4xs, and they made an Enron ripping us off movie about it. There were 15 other stupid states lined up to deregulate, so we were not the only state ship of fools and fooled !! So our city roads and highways and freeways are just covered with potholes and big hard hitting cracks, and some rate our roads the worst or among the very worst in the entire USA. I just paid several hundred dollars in wheel alignment car charges because the all the roads, but in the richest neighborhoods like Hillsborough, are so poorly maintained. Maybe that is why the Governator drives so many suvs-Hummers.
13-Housing prices, own or rent, that will make you laugh or cry, guaranteed,,,What with all these obvious, plain as day problems, you might think you could get a bargain on housing in Sillycone Valley, but you would be so wrong. Low income housing looks like a barrio or ghetto. And anything remotely livable costs you an arm and a leg, ala get off the boat in SF rip off merchant pricing in the 'gold rush',sucker rush of Sam Brannan and manifest destiny. I live in a steal of a 2 bdrm rental, with parking safely off street, and a 3rd floor view,,,but rents on the peninsula in my area go normally for $2k/mo for such an old building. Check CraigsList to be truly shocked. My folks built a custom, not tract home in desirable Willow Glen-Lincoln Glen neighborhood(since LG shopping street heart/center is near d-e-a-d,,,) in 1853 for less than $20k. Ranch style one level ,2 car attached garage, 3bdrm, 2bath. Big lot. Now expanded ,twice, to 5bdrm, 2 bath. And it could sell, 1953 old pipes and old wires and old paint as is ,,,for,,,are you sitting down?,,,over $700k. The wires on the original electric stove top--remember "all electric" ads for homes-what a joke--are sooo scary.
14-horrible State Bond rating,,,who really cares how badly our state is mis-run.
15-lots and lots of 'homeless' people wandering around and getting into trouble,,,It is not just generous SF that use to give away cash of $300-400/mo to anyone claiming at the city window to be homeless. There use to be a mental health hospital , called Agnews, for the thousands of mentally ill in Silicon Valley. But during Governor Reagan's term, the state mental hospital of Agnews was closed and now the land has been sold off to Sum Microsustems or somebody, when it was a good place to keep the mentally ill off the streets and from getting into criminal behavior ,drugs,littering our sidewalks, etc. That was a huge bad idea, Governor Reagan. Sonoma mental hospital, huge, in the north bay was also closed.
16- call "911" and see if you can wait for 1,5 or 30 minutes,,,On the highway i see lots of accidents, some just fender-benders, some with blood, and it is amazing to me that CHP hangs up on you in SoCal if you call an accident in and it sometimes takes 5-10-15-30 minutes in NorCal to get through to a polite CHP dispatcher, to HELP THEM get info on a recent accident and get out there to help the accident victims.
17-Water rates are sky high,,,My folks in San Jose pay from $50-75/month, as 2 residents with one or two kids visiting. Ridiculous !! Of course, the corporate farmers get 60-70% of the states fresh drinking water right off the top, before the what 30 million people and cities, at a giveaway rate subsidy of less than $20 a acre foot. Only in California, right !! And the water is sooo hard, you are going to get hard water white spots all over that new BMW. You would think someone would develop a product to apply to new glass to protect it for years from such ugly and hard to see through white hard water spots. And most of the county is on an antiquated=cheap many old ground well system, so the Water Company is making huge profits, but the quality of the "hard 24 gpg" ,toxic (see #1 above) water is not to be trusted or preferred. The County does not work either,,,and wants fiasco of incompetence and failure at only 60-70 mph B.A.R.T. into downtown SJ, for "whatever!" the cost. (Caltrain is such a far superior system going up the peninsula, that BART would be a total waste of Billion$ of past collected tax dollars.)
18-horrible Clay soil,,,it may have been fine for building adobes by the Spanish that have lasted hundreds of years, but try gardening in this sticky muck !! Yes, it was fine for all the old orchards of plums, walnuts, apricots and cherries, but i personally have spent $1000s over the years on cubic yards of mushroom compost,gypsum, redwood shredded bark compost, manure, both steer and chicken composted, planting mix , Schultz Profile Clay Soil Conditioner grit, and now alfalfa pellets that really temporarily increase the worm population, and since 1953 to 2007 the clay soil still looks and hoe /shovel works the same,,,sticky. Where all those thousands of cubic yards of garden soil amendments went over the many years, i have no idea, and neither does anyone else it seems.
19-Jobs,,,It use to be that every parents dream was for their son or daughter to get an EE degree and work for a computer company, make a good salary, buy a big house, and raise a family ala the old american dream. Maybe those days are gone ,since alot of Silicon Valley companies have moved out and there are other Sillycone Valley-clones in Utah, N. Carolina, etc. Maybe some companies like Apple still pay a true living wage with great benefits. And some companies like Google just vest shares so besides the fab salary and benes ,even the janitor is a multimillionaire. But for most of us , we feel betrayed with low pay and few benefits, maybe just horrible -will misdiagnose to avoid a operation cost under covered insurance-crappy Kaiser. The State of Califonia-ok, go ahead and laugh-does not widely and generally for all workers enforce the overtime laws and the work place safety laws, that is the ones they have not Grey Davis style sleazy stolen off the books with a back room commission. Raw sewage in dumped across employee parking lots, yes more than one location, and Cal OSHA tries and does look the other way ,as it runs downs storm drains into San Francisco Bay. That is why there was so little public shock and uproar over the recent container ship 58,000 gallon thick tanker oil spill , because most people don't care enough to vote for politicians who do care and do take care of the California environment. We are quickly becoming an area of the spoiled with special tax breaks rich bastards, declining to nothing middle class, and the others, the working poor who are abused by the rich and the powerful.
20-The future prospects,,,If the big bad fraud of a ass-grabbing Terminator-Governator will not raise taxes on those making over $1 million/year,,, even $10,000,000/year,,, or even $50,000,000/year,,,year after year!?,,, of such extreme affluence, then i think California is lost. We truly will become just like Mexico, rich selfish and happy vs the poor, with the ground poisoned by MTBE,etc. from a bad trade treaty like NAFTA, GATT, and WTOs with our better neighbor to the north ,Canada. Ripped off and ruined, oh so quickly.
