PGA event would be economic boon to region
Cheers to those trying to draw the PGA tour to San Martin. Bringing a professional golf tournament and the estimated 30,000 or so people to South County would be an economic boom. The Fry’s.com Open, sponsored by Fry’s Electronics, has been played in Scottsdale, Ariz., in recent years, but a report on an online golf news Web site indicates the PGA Tour is on the verge of making the move to CordeValle in San Martin for the 2010 event.
“Obviously, it would have a huge economic impact,” Morgan Hill Senior Project Manager of Economic Development Tammy Brownlow told reporter Michael Moore. “Any type of big tourism events have direct and indirect positive economic impacts on the whole area,” she added.
Jeers to Charter Communications, satellite television distributors and anyone involved in the mess that blacks out San Jose Shark games while the sides battle over money.
The greed that prevents fans from watching is emblematic of the entire cable industry, where one company comes into town and has a monopoly on the service that eventually deteriorates from good to poor to shoddy. Settle the dispute and move on.
Cheers to BookSmart for winning the 2009 Outstanding Community Bookstore award at the Northern California Independent Booksellers Association meeting last month.
BookSmart was honored with the 2009 Debi Echlin Memorial Award for Outstanding Community Bookstore by the Northern California Independent Booksellers Association. The association has more than 500 members, including almost 300 booksellers.
Brad Jones, who owns the store with his wife Cinda Meister, said the award means a lot to them because it’s from their peers.
Congratulations Brad and Cinda for winning and thanks for providing the community with such an asset as the bookstore.
Jeers to those who equate low income housing with crime and gang violence. Low income earners are defined as those who make between $37,000 and $98,000 per year, depending on their family size, according to the state Department of Housing and Urban Development.
For example, to be eligible to purchase a $264,000 low-income home in the city’s below market rate housing program, a family of four would have to make about $84,900 per year. That’s about the total household income of a teacher and an accountant, said Erwin Ordonez, senior project manager for the city’s housing programs.
That’s what the affordable housing plan is about. Giving residents who grew up here a chance to remain here, and attracting workers who will live here, not commute from Los Banos.
Cheers to the state parks department for not closing Henry W. Coe State Park. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger threatened to close most of the state’s parks earlier this year to help balance the state budget.
In September he settled on cutting $14.2 million and last week the department released the final details.
The bad news is visitors to Coe will likely see dirtier bathrooms and fewer patrols, as part of the plan to save millions. The reductions will last at least through the current fiscal year, which ends June 30.
