CA: With chaos at the top, who's in charge at S.J. City Hall?

Mercury News ^ | 12/22/05 | Phil Yost and Rodney Foo

[NormsRevenge]

Even before the city manager abruptly announced this week he'll be stepping down, San Jose faced looming political battles and financial challenges. Now, city and community leaders worry that the council will be unable to resolve critical issues in the coming year -- from passing a budget to bringing BART to the city, to building a new ballpark.

``I don't think we can underestimate the difficulty that our government is facing,'' Councilman Ken Yeager said Wednesday.

City Manager Del Borgsdorf announced his impending departure a week after the council censured Mayor Ron Gonzales for his role in a secret trash-hauling deal.

Gonzales, already a lame duck by virtue of term limits, will be hobbled further by a civil grand jury and district attorney investigation ...

``Now we won't have a central leader either on the administrative side or the political side,'' said Terry Christensen, professor of political science at San Jose State University.

--snip--

``In any city, this would be a time of lots of politics, which may mean that some of the policy stuff is deferred until the situation becomes more clear,'' said Jane Light, the city's library director.

Finding a permanent replacement for Borgsdorf is likely to be put off until a new mayor is elected, Yeager, Reed and Cortese all said. They mentioned Assistant City Manager Mark Linder as a possible interim choice.

``We all have to agree on what kind of city manager we should have, what kind of city government we should have,'' Reed said, ``and I think we are in very different positions.''

The city charter calls for the mayor to nominate candidates for the council to consider. But, noted Larry Gerston, professor of political science at San Jose State, ``there is a war going on right now between the council and the mayor.''

[river rat]

There's an echo in here!

Semper Fi