SJ 'Little Saigon' Name Debate In New Hands CITY LEADERS HAND OVER DECISION TO BUSINESSES Wednesday, March 5, 2008 After months of protests and a council meeting that lasted almost seven hours and featured approximately 350 speakers, the San Jose City Council early Wednesday morning essentially tried to make the controversial matter of the name for a Vietnamese business district in the city go away. After the council unanimously rescinded its November 2007 designation of the mile-long stretch of Story Road between U.S. 101 and Senter Road as "Saigon Business District," Councilman Kansen Chu tried twice to have the area named "Little Saigon" as thousands of the city's Vietnamese-American residents have been clamoring for for months. However, a majority of the council refused to directly vote on the controversial name and used a parliamentary maneuver to effectively end discussion on the issue at approximately 1:45 a.m. Councilman Sam Liccardo made a "substitute motion" that pre-empted Chu's call for an up or down vote by the council on the Little Saigon name. After Liccardo's motion passed, Chu tried again for an up or down vote on Little Saigon but Mayor Chuck Reed ruled him out of order. Liccardo's motion acknowledged the extremely strong support for the Little Saigon name in the city's Vietnamese community but said the council would not adopt any name until all "stakeholders" reached a consensus through a "process" that was not defined in the motion. The motion gave no deadline for when the process needed to be completed or when in the future the council would vote on a district name. Chu, Vice Mayor Dave Cortese, and councilmen Pete Constant and Pierluigi Oliverio voted against the Liccardo motion. Constant warned that by not taking definitive action Wednesday morning the council is likely to face another long meeting at some point in the future over the Little Saigon name. "If we don't take final action tonight, we'll be right back here in three months," Constant said. Several of the council supporters of Liccardo's motion voiced concern that the area's business owners should not have the Little Saigon name imposed on them. "Doing so tonight would be making the same mistake we made in November, which is acting without community consensus," Reed said. Chu and Constant both believe that community consensus exists around the Little Saigon name. "I believe the public has already spoken," Chu said. "I'm very confident that what I saw was a significant number of people that were on the side of Little Saigon," Constant said. "There is a consensus or an overwhelming majority." As the meeting wound down, Councilwoman Judy Chirco recognized that no one on either side of the naming issue was likely to be happy with how the process has played out. "We mishandled this and for that I am very sorry," Chirco told the audience. A couple of people were ejected from the meeting because they became disruptive, reported NBC11's Bob Redell.