I am deeply concerned about the much-needed youth sports complex on McKean Road in the South Almaden Valley Urban Reserve. Our children deserve a safe place in which to participate in sports activities. Time to complete this decade-old project is long overdue.

Unfortunately, it appears as if no one is being held accountable for completing this venture and that the city is committing hundreds of thousands of dollars to it with no legal or financial oversight mechanism. Therefore, I've formally requested that the city of San Jose undertake an expedited audit of this project.

From your newspaper's reporting and my own independent review, it's clear that accounting controls, audit trails and legal authorization that accompanies those controls are either missing or not being properly followed. Routine business practice requires paperwork to provide legal authorization for financial transactions and to establish an audit trail. Without contracts for the grants and the loan, the city cannot carry out its fiduciary responsibilities to ensure that money is used efficiently, effectively and faithfully for the benefit of the taxpayers of San Jose and the residents and athletes of District 10.

As you may know, I'm now completing my eight-year tenure as a trustee for the San Jose/Evergreen Valley College Board where I sit on the budget and audit committees. We've built hundreds of millions of dollars in new facilities. We always make certain that adequate accounting controls are in place, ensuring that our district lives up to its fiduciary responsibilities not only with taxpayers' money and also lives up to the commitments we make to the students we serve. San Jose's taxpayers deserve the same.

The allegations of playing hide-and-seek instead of accounting for the public's money and the long-overdue completion of such an important youth project are substantial. It appears that an audit investigation would be in order to determine who is responsible for this public project, the extent to which the taxpayer money is being efficiently, effectively and faithfully used, and the extent to which proper accounting controls have been followed.

Nancy Pyle

San Jose/Evergreen Community College District Board
District 10 City Council Candidate

Navel-gazing instead of watching finances

I'm wondering if anybody else has noticed the thread that is running through many of the Almaden Resident's articles that have to do with the city's many departments and how they don't pay attention to the money. I'll just hit the high points, as I remember them:

First there was Mayor Gonzales' gaudy State of the City speech, which cost an ungodly amount.

Then there was the fascinating set of articles about the AYA and the city's largess toward this private group. How a city government can issue checks to such a sloppy organization—whether the sports complex is a good idea or not—without getting signed contracts spelling out what the money is supposed to be spent on defies logic and common sense.

And just this week, there were two articles on adjoining pages that show how the police can't tell how much overtime it has to pay when Very Important People come to San Jose ("Cost of VIP security in San Jose truly 'priceless,'" Aug. 5), and another about the city getting ready to spend money on an environmental impact report to study what would happen if the city DIDN'T build a road ("City to research effects of road extension if it isn't constructed," Aug. 5).

I would laugh if I wasn't so infuriated with the city and a city council (and that means you, Pat Dando) that blames everything on unnamed city staffers. The council is supposed to oversee the management of the city, and to me, it looks like they have spent the last several years navel-gazing.

I want to thank the Resident for its excellent coverage of the news in Almaden and San Jose. If we had to rely on the Mercury News to tell us what is going on in this valley or in the city, we would be (and probably are) in bad shape.

Bennett Blakley

Queenswood Way

Grand jury should look
into AYA-city dealings

Even though the city of San Jose poured more than a quarter of a million dollars of the public's money into the AYA's coffers over a two-year period commencing in May of 2002, the AYA did not know before July 23, 2004, what its financial status was because, according to its attorney and spokesperson, Nick Petredis, the board members are "all volunteers; they don't have time" ("City invests $2.6 million for fields—no oversight," July 15, 2004). And, only after the absurdity of that justification was made public through the heroic efforts of the Almaden Resident's publisher, editorial staff and investigative reporter Sandy Brundage, did the AYA gin up some financials which were published for the first time in the form of a rebuttal the following week in a competing media outlet.

Still, the city plans to turn the keys to a valuable 34-acre public facility over to the AYA and let the AYA "administer for the city reservations for the facility for use by the general public," according to the draft environmental impact report on the complex.

What makes the city believe the AYA is going to be any more responsible in its administration of reservations from the general public than it has been in accounting for its stewardship over public funds or in filing reports with governmental regulatory authorities?

No, there's more to this than meets the eye—something's very rotten in City Hall! And, with recent disclosures about collusion between city officials and Cisco on the City Hall project, we believe the AYA's sports complex project is ripe for investigation by the grand jury.

George & Anna Stepanenko

McKean Road

Army recruits have no
idea what they're in for

Your story about the three teens who enlisted in the Army was really quite revealing. I always assumed that people signed up for the military because of patriotic reasons: that they loved and felt a debt to their country ("Shipping Out," Aug. 5). But these teens seem to consider it just another career choice option, or, rather, a way to get some training and "see the world."

I couldn't help feeling that these kids—and they are kids—don't have the slightest idea what is awaiting them, first at boot camp, and then, maybe, combat in Iraq or the quickly heating-up Afghanistan.

But I guess that is why the military recruiters set their sights on teenagers who don't have any real-life experience, know only what they see on TV and in shoot-'em-up Rambo movies, and have not yet developed critical-thinking skills.

Another misconception I had about the current military is that only people from rural or urban areas, and not the suburbs like Almaden Valley, enlist. I was surprised to read of the three young Almaden recruits. I'll bet their experience in the Army is nothing like they are expecting, but I wish them well and will be praying for their safety.

Pauline Melvin

Trinidad Drive

It is time to reinvent
our public schools

Milton Friedman, the economics Nobel Laureate, once observed that when a business failed it went into bankruptcy; but when a government agency failed it received more funding. This observation is certainly true with our public schools.

The quality of our schools continues to fall despite ever-increasing funding sources. The San Jose Unified School District is now warning us of numerous service cuts and expense increases (e.g., teachers' salaries, health and welfare), but nowhere is there any mention of cuts in the cost of services provided.

Now is the time to reinvent public school education. We need to devote more of our limited resources to teaching reading, writing and arithmetic and less to teaching those things that are the responsibility of the parents: sex education, self-esteem, differences between right and wrong, respect for others, etc. Meanwhile, we need to: (1) put all district personnel to be on a performance-based salary structure instead of a seniority-based structure; (2) lengthen the time before anyone can retire; and (3) shift from defined plans to a 401K equivalent.

May I also be so bold as to also suggest that parents, not the schools, should be responsible for providing for their children's material needs, such as breakfasts and lunches. If parents did their job, there would be more money for the classroom.

Jerry Mungai

Fall River Drive