Jade Buddha Controversy and The Mercury News

A recent article written by Bruce Newman of the Mercury News titled :" The Jade Buddha, symbol of peace and harmony, everywhere but in San Jose" depicted the conflict between Madison Nguyen, city official Mike Hannon, businessman Tron Do and the lawyer Michael Luu.

According to Newman, Michael Luu was jealous of Tron Do, a supporter of City Councilmember Madison Nguyen who had illegally allowed Nguyen to use his buidling as a campaign headquarters in the recent primary.  The reason is that Do had successsfully bid for the opportunity  to host the Jade Buddha while Michael Luu could not because Mike Hannon, the head of code enforcement for the city of San Jose shut down his building. 

According to the Buddhist Monk, Tien Lien, who is repsonsible for the Jade Buddha tour, she first approached Michael Luu and asked to use his building in October of 2009.  Michael Luu, was gracious enough to offer the building to her free of charge.   Earlier this year,  Mike Hannon, responding to complaints of Charlie Ly, a non-San Jose resident and a supporter of Madison Nguyen,  decided to shut down the building since it was not zoned for the gathering of 49 people or less. 

Tron Do then approached Monk Tien Lien to host the event for a fee to cover the cost of utility and maintenance..  The city record shows that  the 1980 Senter Road building as of date has no zoning permit for such large gathering.  There are not enough parking spaces and the building is not built to code to maintain safety for crowd expected to be in the thousands.  In an event where there will be thousands of people in a building that has no permit to hold such a large crowd, this zoning violation that can lead to undesirable consequences.

LSI believes that Mercury News has done a disservice to the community by implicating that Michael Luu was bidding to host the event for financial gain (which was totally untrue according to the Buddhist Monk) while ignoring the crux of the issue - the building is not suitable for such a large crowd and the fact why Mike Hannon ignores such zoning violation.  As responsible press and news reporting,  LSI thinks it is a tragedy when public concerns being ignored by city officials for the sake of politics.