Santa Clara County Supervisor Cindy Chavez starts her new job in New Mexico on Wednesday, but last Friday she got to say goodbye to many of her colleagues and friends at an event hosted by the Valley Health Foundation at Notre Dame High School in downtown San Jose.
Chavez has been having a bit of a farewell tour lately as she’s been preparing for a new job as the county manager of Bernalillo County in New Mexico. She delivered the Don Edwards Lecture at San Jose State two weeks ago, received the Carmen Castellano Legacy Leader Award from the Latina Coalition of Silicon Valley at its brunch Sunday and was honored as Woman of the Decade by Assemblymember Ash Kalra. Along the way, she had her last meetings at the Board of Supervisors and Valley Transportation Authority.
But Friday’s event, emceed by Valley Health Foundation CEO Michael Elliott, had the feel of a family reunion — the disco ball in the gym helped — if your family was filled with a who’s who of Santa Clara County figures like San Jose State President Cynthia Teniente-Matson, Santa Clara County Executive James Williams, Santa Clara County Sheriff Bob Jonsen and U.S. Rep. Ro Khanna. The speaker list was just as high-powered with U.S. Rep. Anna Eshoo, San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan and state Sen. Dave Cortese all sharing their memories of working alongside Chavez, who served on the San Jose City Council before she was elected to the county Board of Supervisors.
Flanked on stage by her husband, Mike Potter, and son, Brennan Potter, Chavez said she saw the evening as her opportunity to say thank you to the labor movement, the nonprofit world and those who served the community so many other ways. Chavez, who penned a farewell letter that ran in the Mercury News this weekend, said that besides having her family, “the biggest honor of my life has been to serve with all of you to make this place amazing.”
Have we seen the last of Cindy Chavez in San Jose? My instinct says she’ll be back one day, so let’s just make this “hasta pronto.”
POLITICS ON PARADE: OK, as noted by Maj. Gen. Stephen Hager, the grand marshal of San Jose’s 106th annual Veterans Day celebration, it did literally rain on his parade. Bands wore ponchos, military color guards and scouts marched in the rain and politicians rode inside hard-top cars instead of convertibles. Of course, once the final units were going by, the sun peeked out and within 30 minutes of the parade’s end there was barely a cloud in the sky. Go figure.
And while the Veterans Day parade is a great opportunity to show respect for our military veterans, state Sen. Dave Cortese used his time on stage Monday to do a bit more than that. You might remember that back in 2015, Cortese — then a Santa Clara County supervisor — and then-San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo launched “All the …read more
Source:: The Mercury News – Entertainment
