Early voters line up at the Santa Clara County Registrar’s office in San Jose, Calif., Friday, Nov. 4, 2016. Voters are taking advantage of early voting access to cast their ballots for the Nov. 8th general election. (Patrick Tehan/Bay Area News Group)

From my perspective, the goal of elections is to maximize voter participation, which broadens the democratic process and helps create a representative democracy that better reflects our society at large.

The way to achieve this goal is to move towards 100 percent absentee voting, also known as voting by mail. Gone would be the confusion of trying to find your latest polling place. Instead, voters would fill out their ballots in the privacy of their own homes.

Even when people are registered to vote, a significant portion of the electorate simply does not vote. There are a variety of reasons for this: too busy on election day, couldn’t wait in line, car trouble, illness, traffic, unexpectedly out of town, family responsibilities, etc.  So let’s remove the stress factor and allow voters to take their time, relax and vote their conscience.

This is not a new concept. Oregon and Colorado already have Universal Vote By Mail in place, and they have significantly higher voter participation. Both had voter turnout of more than 70 percent in 2014, the average for non-vote-by-mail states was 48 percent.

There are several advantages to Universal Vote by Mail. First and foremost, it would increase the number of people who vote. We have all seen situations at polling places on Election Day where there are significant waiting periods to cast your vote, sometimes several hours in line. Long waits are a particular hindrance to our senior, disabled and working poor population.

In Santa Clara County, absentee voters receive free postage and can verify on the registrar of voters website that their ballot has been received and counted.

There are environmental and economic benefits to not making voters drive to the polls or take the bus to polling places. Cost saving to taxpayers is also significant: With voting by mail, there’s no need to recruit, train and pay people to work the polls, to rent space for polling stations, transport voting equipment back and forth across the county or test that equipment.

Sacramento officials estimated it would save their county 19 percent per election, or roughly $1.05 per voter. The savings could be reinvested in technology enhancements, audits designed to identify and prevent voter fraud and voter information events.

Mailed ballots would also net faster election results. In Santa Clara County, we have sat through multiple election cycles during which the results are known faster in rural West Virginia than Silicon Valley. It is common to not know the outcome of some races for well over a week.

If county residents voted exclusively by mail, a majority of ballots would be returned before Election Day, and the likely election results would be known in the first hour after the polls close.

As I campaign for County Supervisor, I have come to realize that there is much confusion over what the county actually does (other than collect property taxes). Unlike meddling in the business of school districts, or re-litigating issues already covered by state or federal jurisdictions, operating the Registrar of Voters is actually one of the core functions of county government. This is a change that we can affect locally.

If Santa Clara County were to transition exclusively to voting by mail, the net result would be increased  participation, lower costs and faster election results.  These are changes that we should all support, and I strongly recommend that the county make this transition.

County executive holds off approving additional funds pending further review.

A proposal to add nearly $1 million to a Santa Clara County rebranding campaign was shelved on Tuesday. – Staff Photo

San Jose >> Santa Clara County has shelved a million-dollar branding effort — think matching logos on billboards and online ads — aimed at ratcheting up its profile and presence to the public.

The item, buried in the board of supervisors’ consent agenda — where noncontroversial items are automatically approved without discussion — was pulled Tuesday by County Executive Jeff Smith and postponed indefinitely.

“I took it off to see if we need to change it up, to reassess what’s needed,” said Smith. “We now know we have a marketing problem. How we approach it is another question.”

Some had questioned whether marketing was the best use of public money.

“There are great needs within our county such as mental health services,” said Pierluigi Oliverio, a former San Jose city councilman who is looking to replace Supervisor Ken Yeager when he terms out. “In my view it would be more prudent to allocate those tax dollars towards mental health care.”

But Board President Dave Cortese agreed the county has a marketing problem — people often don’t know what services the county provides them.

“You look at San Jose, they have a logo, and people know when they see it that they’re dealing with the city,” Cortese said. “We have people coming in and out of here from all over the world — business and tech people from Korea or India — and they need to know who we are, what
we do and where to find us.”

Said problem was analyzed for the county by Keating Co., a New York City-based firm that specializes in branding. The company “interviewed department heads, employees and clients and tried to get an idea of what they thought of how the county is communicating,” Smith said, and “came back with a lot of problems.”

He pointed to a recent ad campaign by Valley Medical Center that urges residents to “Go Public,” meaning choose the county as a health provider.

“The message doesn’t come across very well,” Smith said, adding that important services — and who provides them — often go unrecognized.

“From a client’s perspective, they get confused,” he said. “‘Is this the county? Who is doing this?’”

The initial contract with Keating was for $150,000. To fix the problems, Keating would have been hired through June of next year for an additional $850,000. Keating would provide “strategic brand and communications services and will develop a brand and narrative that incorporates the County’s point of view, including its focus on social reform and deep concern for the well-being of each and every citizen in the County of Santa Clara.”

Smith said there are a number of reasons he wanted to reassess the branding campaign.

“The whole process was started many months ago,” he said, “before there was clarity of what the budget would be like and even before the election and threats to our funding.”

But Mark Hinkle of the Silicon Valley Taxpayers Association said he was “flabbergasted” at the notion that county money would be spent on branding.

“People want a local government to provide police and fire and fix roads, and they can’t even do that,” he said. “You ask anybody who doesn’t work for the government how important their logo is, it’s concern 999 out of 1,000.”

By Eric Kurhi, ekurhi@bayareanewsgroup.com

After a decade, the 47-year-old politician will turn over his office to Dev Davis

San Jose Councilman Pierluigi Oliverio, next to one of the bike racks he had installed on the Alameda.

It’s hard to tell that the clock is winding down for Pierluigi Oliverio, the San Jose councilman who is being termed out after a decade representing Willow Glen and the Rose Garden.

The 47-year-old politician, who will turn over his office to Dev Davis at the start of the New Year, is still collecting constituent inquiries for what might be the council’s most extensive database — nearly 17,000 entries that encompass everything from squirrels to park sprinklers to Christmas decorations.

As part of his closing act, he is delivering his own form of bacon to the masses: 100 new bike racks on the Alameda and Lincoln Avenue, nicely identified with the name of the street.

In a slow-moving city government shaped by unions, Oliverio is the most obvious outlier, using half his $750,000 office budget for projects like artwork and street furniture in his district. He ran his office like a small duchy in the vast and bumbling Austro-Hungarian Empire.

The councilman has never been a coalition builder, a man who might trade votes or speak encouragingly about a project he didn’t really like. He was the lone council member to sign the argument against Measure F, the peace treaty with unions over pensions.

His outspokenness occasionally irritates his colleagues. At the final council meeting of the year, Mayor Sam Liccardo needled Oliverio, a former bartender, for wearing a dark tux.

For all that, Oliverio has been a one-man tornado in constituent service, an extraordinary retail politician. Is there a problem with speeding complaints? Oliverio will buy a radar gun with his office budget to measure actual speeds.

Did a well-known homeless man leave a concrete bench at the Alameda and Singletary Avenue befouled? Oliverio will appropriate money to get it professionally cleaned.

Is the city estimating that it will take $28,000 to maintain the Municipal Rose Garden’s fountain for a year? Oliverio will find a private company to do it for $7,000.

“In a perfect world, I’d run this city like Singapore or Geneva, Switzerland,’’ he said, naming two places known for their order and cleanliness. “In the interim, I’ll get you bike racks.’’

None of this means he is without critics. Steve Kline, who ran against Oliverio in 2012, says Oliverio has been slower than his colleagues in informing neighborhood associations of new projects, like the Hustler Hollywood store in the Burbank area.

“At neighborhood associations, like Sherman Oaks, he would have one of his staff members attend,’’ Kline said. “When it came time for their report, they would give the most meaningless information. Nothing substantive.’’

Oliverio was at the center of a series of quirky battles, particularly with unions: Even earlier than Mayor Chuck Reed, he saw the need for pension reform, with his Measure W allowing lower benefits for new hires.

In 2010, he was cornered by angry firefighters for taking down “No on V” signs from public medians. (“V” would have weakened the power of arbitrators in settling disputes with employees.) The moment embarrassed Oliverio politically, though he still defends the right to take down signs that he says amount to litter.

A gregarious man who will return to work full-time for his software company (SupplyFrame), Oliverio was nonetheless known for showing up at bar mitzvahs, neighborhood gatherings and birthdays.

I sat down with him the other day and went through some of his latest constituent inquiries. A dog walker at Wilcox Park wanted to know why the city’s sprinklers were going off even in wet weather. “Thanks for the heads-up,’’ Oliverio wrote. “We’ll tackle this today.’’

The outgoing councilman, who is sometimes spoken of as a potential candidate for supervisor in 2018, says he is still pondering the email from a constituent who complained about the holiday drivers pausing to stare at decorations in the area bordered by Willow Street, Carolyn Avenue and Glen Eyrie Avenue.

After all, the whole point of the holiday displays is to attract visitors. And whatever his instinct for fiscal restraint, Oliverio remains enough of a politician to avoid being a grinch at Christmas.

Contact Scott Herhold at 408-275-0917 or sherhold@mercurynews.com.

By Scott Herhold

sherhold@mercurynews.com

POSTED:   12/21/2016 11:26 AM PDT

Never shy about speaking his mind, Pierluigi Oliverio left an undeniable mark in District 6 after spending 10 years as the area’s representative on the San Jose City Council.

Oliverio–who termed out at the end of the year and was succeeded by Devora “Dev” Davis–regularly stirred controversy, whether while going toe to toe with labor unions, pushing to give Lincoln Avenue a road diet or voting to raze the Willow Glen Trestle.

A regular fixture at community events who never missed a single council meeting, the bespectacled Oliverio was defined by his fierce independent streak, often casting the lone dissenting vote.

“What people don’t care for in government is when elected leaders make decisions based on relationships where the decision is ultimately bad but you did it for the relationship,” Oliverio said in an interview.

Although he won more than two-thirds of the district vote in his last council election, Oliverio was often a divisive figure even within District 6. Voting his conscience–sometimes against friends or campaign donors–was something he lived by, even when it cost him at least one longtime friendship.

“If you go into this job wanting everyone to like you, you’ll be severely disappointed,” he said. “If you always want to go the easy way, then nothing will ever get done.”

He learned that lesson after rezoning an industrial parcel to residential during his first council meeting, despite feeling it was the wrong thing to do.

“I was told, ‘It’s been planned a long time, it’s what we should do,’ ” he said.

Afterwards, he vowed to never be “unduly influenced” again.

“After I took stock of it a year later, I wrote an article saying, ‘One year, one regret, and I think this was not the best land use decision.’ The rest of my time was, ‘Don’t be influenced; make your own decisions.’ ”

There was a learning curve at first, but he relied increasingly upon his guiding principles of “common sense” and “fiscal pragmatism.”

“Ultimately, if you make the decision for the right reasons using data and what’s best for the long term, then that’s a good thing,” Oliverio said.

Still, he often weathered personal attacks online and sometimes in person, but took it all in stride. He blames much of the viciousness on the disconnected nature and lack of accountability on the Internet, which he says allows people to “write whatever they want, no matter how mean or false it is.”

Oliverio liked to demystify government bureaucracy by hosting topical documentary film nights at city hall; he says he also personally answered emails at all hours of the day and night.

“You try to educate residents on what the city does, what they can legally do, what they can fiscally manage, because not everyone cares about local government until it affects them,” Oliverio said.

During this year’s council race, Oliverio saw another opportunity to educate constituents by creating a voter transparency project where candidates cast mock votes on actual council items. That sparked residents’ interest to learn more, he said, and made him wish he had come up with the idea earlier.

“By sharing the outcome of the city council votes, many residents were inquisitive and wanted to learn more about items that sometimes don’t make the press,” he said. “Reporting out each week some of the significant council votes would’ve been interesting as an education process for the residents.”

Many have reached out to express their gratitude for him going to such lengths, Oliverio said.

“I think a nice moment–I have them a lot–is when someone sends you a very sincere email thanking you for your efforts,” he said. “You can’t buy that type of appreciation, it only comes through doing your job. I’m having a hard time deleting them.”

The man known for occasionally staffing the reception desk on city hall’s 18th floor to relieve employees has few regrets about his time on the council. Oliverio said he left without feeling burnt out despite keeping the smallest council office staff, but in hindsight wishes he pushed himself more.

“Instead of working 60 hours a week, I could’ve worked 65 hours a week,” he said. “But at the same time, having time off allows you to think and see things differently.”

For now Oliverio is easing into normal non-political life with a full-time job at a software company that allows him to occasionally travel–something he hasn’t been able to do much of the past decade.

Volunteer work at the San Jose Municipal Rose Garden, which he is proud of reviving at the beginning of his council career, should also keep him occupied, and too perhaps a game of gin rummy, which he enjoys. After an “extremely rewarding” era of occupying the dais, leaving is hard for him, but a run for county supervisor in 2018 is a distinct possibility.

“It’s bittersweet to go, but I think there are other opportunities for me ahead. There are other chapters to write,” he said.

Santa Clara County lost its appeal to the California Supreme Court to keep $40 million in tax revenue it withheld from San Jose (Jim Gensheimer/Bay Area News Group)

SAN JOSE — The fight between San Jose and Santa Clara County over $40 million in tax dollars is finally settled — and San Jose just got a little bit richer.

The California Supreme Court last week denied the county’s appeal to keep the money which came from a property tax, ending a four-year legal battle between the county and its largest city. San Jose had received a portion of the tax revenue — about $7 million a year — to pay for costs related to winding down its redevelopment agency.

But the county began withholding the money from San Jose in 2012, arguing the revenue was earmarked to fund county employees’ retirement plans through CalPERS. After losing two court cases, the county appealed to the state’s highest court which chose not to hear the case last week, allowing the lower court rulings to stand.

In its case, the county argued that giving the $40 million to San Jose would be a “prohibited gift of public funds,” and not using it for retirement violates county employees’ vested rights. Both arguments were rejected by the court, according to legal papers.

San Jose will likely receive about $20 million from the pot of money, city leaders said, because some is funneled to pay for other obligations.

“We always thought it was a novel theory on the part of the county,” said San Jose City Attorney Rick Doyle. “It’s always unfortunate to be fighting over tax money when 50 percent of the county’s residents are San Jose residents. Everybody has an incentive to settle it and move on.”

County Counsel James Williams was unavailable for comment.

Doyle said San Jose will use the money to reimburse the city’s general fund which paid for administrative costs related to the redevelopment agency’s successor agency and bonds on the Convention Center and the Fourth Street Garage — which could’ve been paid by the tax revenue.

“We had our debts to pay and by withholding the money, they burdened the city’s general fund to pay those debts,” he said.

The tax in recent years has been 33.8 cents for every $1,000 of assessed property value.

Former San Jose Councilman Pierluigi Oliverio, who publicly fought to settle the suit, applauded the California Supreme Court’s decision to reject the county’s appeal. San Jose in 2012 offered to end litigation and to allow the county to spend the disputed money on housing for the poor — but the county refused.

“It’s a shame the county insisted on litigation,” Oliverio said.