New hope for the Globe? Fremont’s Epcot Center of Stevenson and I-880 could be getting a major new banquet hall. Actually Royal Palace would include two banquet halls and a restaurant/bar.

The palace would take up three store fronts in the same spot where The Globe wanted to open Sutra Ultra Lounge, a hot club that ran into a lot of city opposition and never opened.

The banquet hall idea heads to the Planning Commission this week.

An administrative law judge ruled against the owners of the Besaro Mobile Home Park, who had applied for a major rent increase for park residents. The judge wrote that the owners failed to show the rent increase was needed.

She said the owners were receiving fair rent and hadn’t faced any major new expenses.

The residents aren’t out of the woods yet. The owners could appeal, forcing the residents to shell out more money in attorneys fees, or they could make good on their word to close the park.

In the first of what most likely will be a series of special meetings to discuss the search for a new superintendent, the Fremont school board on Tuesday decided it would look at external candidates as well as current district employees (at least for now). The last time the board conducted a full search was in 2002, when it eventually hired John Rieckewald, an outsider, as schools chief. The two superintendents after him were hired from within the district.

Milt Werner, the current superintendent who’s retiring in June, said he favored a thorough search. “Without question, we have excellent internal candidates, but it’s healthy” to do a search, he said. “It looks long; it looks arduous, but you have more than 32,000 kids on your hands. You have an awesome responsibility.”

During the meeting, the head of the district’s management association said the group would like the board to conduct a full search to ensure it was not overlooking qualified candidates. Meanwhile, the president of the California School Employees Association said an internal candidate was preferred and singled out Parvin Ahmadi, assistant superintendent of instruction, as “excellent.”

Neither Ahmadi nor the other two assistant superintendents have said if they’ll apply.

It’s not clear yet how much hiring a firm to conduct a search would set the district back. The board tentatively is scheduled to vote Monday (during its joint meeting with the City Council) whether to advertise that it’s looking to hire a search firm.

UPDATE (8:18 p.m.): The school board voted 3-2 not to transfer Curtis from MSJE. Trustees Ivy Wu, Lily Mei and Larry Sweeney voted not to move her. Trustees Bryan Gebhardt and Lara York were the “no” votes.

The regular board meeting also started nearly 1.5 hours late — a new record! I don’t know if the hold-up was due to the board not coming to an agreement over this decision or if it had to do with another issue.

(ORIGINAL ENTRY): Here’s a photo that someone submitted from Tuesday’s picket at Mission San Jose Elementary. A group of parents say their principal, Bonnie Curtis, is being forced to transfer to another campus, even though the administrator said it ultimately was her decision. Read the full story by clicking here.

The school board is scheduled to vote on the possible reassignment tonight.

Remember me? I used to be a blogger. Sorry for the paucity of posts and lame attempt at alliteration.  I’ve been busy with other stuff and had to cut out something. I’ll be blogging more regularly again in a few weeks.

I tried to do a live council blog last night, but had some technical difficulties. Too bad. It was a mildly amusing meeting. The only news is that the council passed the first draft of an ordinance to ban restaurants from allowing outdoor smoking. Restaurants had been able to designate half of their outdoor seating for smoking, but that’ll change for good in early December when the new law goes into effect.

I tried to find some angry smokers today, but only landed one guy with an opinion but no name, and a lass with no opinion. Oh well.

Yankee manager Joe Girardi is an idiot. He should be chained to the dugout railing to avoid making imbecilic pitching changes. Second time this season he took out a reliever with the bases empty and two outs only to have the new pitcher give up the game-losing run.

I’m not the only P-O’ed person in Fremont. Several folks who live near the Sikh Temple around Mission Boulevard and Gurdwara Drive are upset about a Temple event this weekend. There were lots of emails between residents and city officials. Residents wrote of parking, traffic and fire cracker nuisances. They also wrote that the Temple folks didn’t let them know about the shindig.

I missed this, but some on the Niles Chat group didn’t. The Postal Service issued an updated list of post offices threatened with closure. Niles and Mission San Jose are still on the chopping block.

The list of threatened post offices is now down to 371. It will be whittled down some more before it’s final.

That was the word from the head of the older-55 mobile home park, whose residents are facing a major rent increase. If the hearing officer sides with the residents, the owners can still appeal, and the residents would have to pony up for more lawyer bills.

It’s Elevator/Escalator Safety Week in Fremont. Is there an escaltor in town outside of Target? And can one truly celebrate Elevator/Escalator Safety Awareness?

Fremont celebrates National Elevator Escalator Safety Awareness Week

October 19, 2009 – FREMONT, Calif. – Mayor Bob Wasserman of Fremont signed a proclamation declaring November 8 – 14, 2009 as National Elevator Escalator Safety Awareness Week. Safety Week is a promotion of public safety awareness for the elevator and escalator industry’s equipment. The Elevator Escalator Safety Foundation (EESF) sponsors Safety Week annually during the second full week of November.

The Tri-City Ecology Center is reporting that the only Tri-City Business to accept block Styrofoam for recycling is no longer accepting the stuff. It seems that people were leaving bags of the all sorts of Styrofoam projects without permission.