Memorial Day is a day when we commemorate those who died serving in our military. For the past 15 years, the City of San Jose has recognized our police officers at an annual Police Memorial Ceremony. This started in 1995 under Mayor Susan Hammer. The event has grown from a small event to one that draws many.

The Police Memorial is held in the City Hall Rotunda—an expensive building however a beautiful setting for the service. The police chaplain does the invocation, followed by the color guard and bagpipers. Speeches are given by the Mayor, Chief of Police, and President of the Police Union. Then we move to the “Bell Ceremony,” when the names of each of the officers who have died in the line of duty are read, with a brief statement about how they died.

San Jose has lost 11 police officers in the line of duty, from Sgt. Van Dyck Hubbard in 1924 to Officer Jeffrey Fontana in 2001. Wearing the badge carries risk, as we only need to look at recent events in Oakland, where four officers were shot dead, or Pittsburgh, where three officers were ambushed.  I believe that as soon as an officer puts on the badge, he or she becomes a target, since officers have been gunned down for simply wearing the uniform.

Something more common, and usually not talked about, is that the stress of the job has led several police officers in San Jose to commit suicide. It is difficult to articulate the stress that might lead an officer to end his or her life since I do not wear those shoes. However, if it is about depression or anger we should work to avoid it. Some of this is done behind the scenes by the two police Chaplains. The Chaplains are funded by private donations and the police union. The Chaplains take time to counsel officers that need a wise and thoughtful person to talk to about the stress of the job.

The closing of the ceremony is held outside with the flags at City Hall being drawn to half mast and police officers lining up in formation. A “riderless horse” walks by signifying a fallen officer. There is a lot of ritual in the ceremony which makes it very symbolic. I encourage you to attend next year as it is a public event held during the lunch hour.

Enjoy your BBQ with friends and family today as well as your day off if you are fortunate to be fully employed. Please tilt your soda/beer twice to both our military men and women who carried the ultimate sacrifice and those closer to home in our San Jose Police Department.

On another note my Budget Deficit Survey is still open and I would like your feedback.

Here is the survey link:
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=bRmrEkMutPaRNDzl3Q3GRQ_3d_3d
Based on the current responses (55 percent male and 45 percent female) here is the Top Ten List for City Services from question six:

1. Police
2. Fire
3. Streets
4. Sewers
5. Libraries
6. Parks
7. Disaster Preparedness
8. Planning (Land Use)
9. Code Enforcement
10. Trails

Well it was certainly a busy week with the Council meeting, budget meetings and committee meetings. This weekend I spent time with the SJPD Metro Unit clearing a homeless encampment, and I observed Fire Station 7 putting out a car fire late Saturday night.

Instead of writing a blog this week I spent my time preparing a survey for you about the budget deficit facing the city of San Jose. The link below will allow you to get a glimpse of some the decisions that must be made. Personally I believe we should not lay off city employees that provide services to our residents but rather make structural changes to our city pension plans and fully fund core services first.

As you review the survey keep Section 807 in mind from the City Charter that lists our core services.

Section 807: Administrative Organization; Other Departments. The following Charter departments are hereby established: A Police Department, a Fire Department, a Public Works Department, a Parks and Recreation Department, a Personnel Department, a Planning Department, an Airport Department and a Library Department.

Your input is extremely valuable and I would like to see some of the choices you would make. This survey will close June 7 and I will the share the results afterwards.

Here is the survey link:
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=bRmrEkMutPaRNDzl3Q3GRQ_3d_3d

Last week I attended two more community budget meetings to hear feedback from residents in District 9 and District 2. The District 9 meeting was a bit different from previous sessions, as there was no slide presentation. Instead, it included an overview and discussion to go over paper handouts on the Proposed Operating Budget with City Management.

Not much was shared on the cost of providing services to residents but rather, attendees were told: “Here are the proposed cuts.” Some factoids were thrown out, including the fact that it takes all of the city’s property tax, sales tax and utility tax revenues to provide for public safety, which is 64 percent of the budget. District 9 had 25 attendees, and they had lots of questions regarding spending on one thing versus another.

The first volley by a couple of people was that Happy Hollow is a nice place but it is not as essential as public safety. Next was a tirade about our three public golf courses. One older gentleman yelled, “We subsidize Golf!?” Which led into a discussion about that golf was a luxury and not as important as libraries. A woman said she has played on these golf courses and that the green fees should be raised to cover the actual cost of providing golf to residents. Then they both wanted to know how many millions we owe on the bonds for the golf courses but the answer was not provided. I didn’t have the heart to tell them that Los Lagos Golf Course alone was over budget…by about $6.5 million. That’s OK though, the general fund covered it!

The budget proposes giving money to the Mariachi Festival, and this struck a nerve in several people, but especially for one woman who said, “I am Jewish, so maybe you can give me money for a Jewish Festival?” The point from her and others was, why fund any ethnic festival or cultural activity? (In all fairness the city of San Jose has funded the Jewish Community Center in Los Gatos with HNVF funds.)

Freezing salaries got many head nods, but it was explained that is up to the unions and freezes cannot be done by fiat.

One lady thought public safety was a Catch 22. She said police are expensive, and if you have to cut library hours and parks to pay for police then eventually you will need more police, since kids might get into more trouble with less to do.

The notion of volunteers was brought up at both meetings and that every San Jose resident should contribute their labor doing something that the city can no longer do. At this point a city employee in the audience yelled out, “Yeah, we should have a volunteer fire department,” only to be greeted with a not-so-friendly stare from an off-duty firefighter in the audience.

District 2 held their meeting Saturday morning with 19 attendees. The most interesting comment was from two residents who participated in the January Neighborhood Meeting at City Hall, where they played the budget game of deciding what to cut and where to raise revenue. They noted that they made no cuts to public safety and were shocked that public safety was being cut. However, a moment later, they said that in their budget game they raised sales tax a quarter-cent, which brought in $35 million. Raising sales tax can only be approved with a citywide election and not by the Council.

Finally, my event last Monday night with the Concord Coalition and the showing of the I.O.U.S.A documentary turned out great. Nearly 200 residents attended the event and 75 percent had never been to City Hall. Now how many of them will return?

Here is your chance: Tuesday, May 12 at 7:05pm is a public hearing on the budget at City Hall Council Chambers. As always, you’re invited to say your piece before the Council. Time to break away from the computer and get analog.

 

Over a month ago I wrote about a budget meeting I led in District 6 with my own presentation on the deficit and alternative solutions. Since then, other council offices have scheduled their meetings. I was curious to hear the opinions from outside my district. So last week I attended the budget meetings in District 10, Almaden/Blossom Valley, and District 8, Evergreen. Both meetings were led by the city manager’s office with its own presentation.

The District 10 meeting was held in Blossom Valley, not Almaden as last year’s had been. About 35-40 people attended, including a few union business agents and other union members.  I sat next to a gentleman who was very coy. I asked him how he heard about the meeting and he would not say. I then asked how long he lived in the neighborhood and he said, “Santa Cruz…er…I mean San Jose.” I enjoy meeting new people and like to know where people are from, but…I was surprised to hear “Santa Cruz” for a meeting that was for the residents of a specific council district. So now I am curious and I ask the man, “What do you do for work?” He then said “ugh…I would rather not say.” I then asked, “Is it that big of a deal?” He said “Yes. I do no want to say.” Strange gentleman who never spoke during the meeting.

After the presentation, residents wrote questions on cards and they were read out loud. People became annoyed with the card reading and started asking questions directly. Every resident was consistent on their message. They were fed up with what they deemed excessive pensions, sick pay and other compensation items. One man with a beard and glasses spoke, then a woman who lived in San Jose for 50 years, then a semiconductor engineer and then a woman in her 40s. They all said they wanted changes to be made asap, and they themselves did not know if they would even have a job in the private sector from week to week. None of the union reps spoke at the meeting. It was odd that if a resident made a negative statement about unions that were out of line with their comments they had to cease speaking. Most of the time was spent on the presentation and only 10-15 minutes on questions.

The District 8 meeting was held on the East Side, off Tully and King, and not in Evergreen. There were about 20 people at the meeting. The city management did the presentation, however, Councilmember Herrera mixed it up and had the attendees play the same budget game that was done at City Hall back in January for the Neighborhood Associations. The group broke out with a list of service cuts and a list of revenue enhancements and the groups presented back to everyone. Nearly all five groups chose to raise taxes, such as a sales tax increase, also sell vacant city land, raise parking fines and put a fee on plastic/paper bags.

Some also had some interesting ideas to raise revenue, like raising the cost to go to the bathroom Downtown at those automatic toilets. Another was to ban smoking in all of San Jose and then fine people for smoking. Another was that all residents must volunteer one hour of their expertise. The example given was a doctor would give a free hour for a physical, and that would save the city money. No one had the heart to tell this person that there was no correlation to save the city money since the city does not run hospitals.

I was pretty shocked at the consensus on the service cuts that came from the groups, ideas like closing a fire station, not hiring police, reducing street paving and eliminating crossing guards. Other service cuts matched the city-wide telephone survey: reduce the rate of personnel costs, reduce funding to non profits, reduce library hours and reduce park maintenance. They also wanted to cut long-range planning for land use. (???) Evergreen seems to be a textbook example of not enough long-term planning, as it is mostly housing and few jobs which creates a painful commute for many residents.

In my opinion, you really you can’t blame any of the residents for their choices. The management made up the cards with things that they want to see cut which does not necessarily equate to what the council will decide. And, after all, its the elected officials who decide what the budget looks like, not management.
If you would like to view my budget presentation please visit my website athttp://www.sanjoseca.gov/District6/budget.asp

The City Council discussed one of the world’s most precious resources last week; water. The council had its annual meeting with the Santa Clara Valley Water District. In the past, the two organizations have had some turbulent conversations; however, at this meeting we were all on the same page about conservation and the future supply of water.

Half of our water is imported from the Delta and Hetch Hetchy. Imported resources come with challenges, since you cannot always count on imports. A prime example is the 1970’s oil embargo.

San Jose has a facility that produces clean water. Not out of the ground but from what you and I flush, use in the sink and shower. I mentioned the facility and the opportunity for you to tour it in a past blog. Less then 1 percent of the water on this planet is available as fresh water. The water we do have is the same water used over and over again.The Water Pollution Control Plant allows San Jose to control its destiny by producing this scarce resource.

We built this facility to comply with the Federal Clean Water Act so that water discharge to the bay is clean, not contaminated. Over time, we have built purple pipes to distinguish the water supply. Purple pipes transport recycled water to industrial users for large projects like North San Jose and the new City Hall. To extend purple pipes to every home in San Jose for landscaping would take a long time and a lots of money.

We are in the midst of approving a new agreement with the Water District where we will provide recycled water.  We would also jointly fund future expansion of the Water Pollution Control Plant. The clean water that would be supplied to the Water District could be used to do stream-flow augmentation so that our creeks could have more water flowing in them. Another option is to pump the clean recycled water to the groundwater recharge ponds. Here, the recycled water would be diluted with rainwater and then percolate in the ponds and pick up all those natural minerals. Some time later the water would be pumped out of the ground and flow to our faucets to shower, cook and drink. Some find the idea of drinking recycled water inconceivable.  However, it is already done in Orange County, with 2.3M customers, and Singapore.

I believe that in my lifetime we will see wars over water supply in addition to the cost of water rising for the consumer. At the local level we should be planning to allow more options for our future that keep water in mind.

Water supply is one of the reasons I believe that the city of San Jose should build less housing. In the General Plan 2040 Task Force we have interest groups advocating for as many as 180,000 new housing units. Some of the Task Force members including myself want to see lower housing numbers—around 70,000. Let’s save the water for jobs and new industries.

Would you be open to drinking recycled water in the future that is cleaned by micro filtration, reverse osmosis, UV light and other advanced treatments?  In the Orange County facility, they have a tour that starts off showing waste water coming into the plant and then all the steps it goes through. Visitors can see and drink the clean water at the end. I myself have not visited the Orange County facility but would like to do so in the near future. In the meantimehere is a YouTube link about the Orange County facility.

Related to water this past Saturday, a group chose to clean a portion of the Los Gatos Creek trail in conjunction with the city of San Jose Great American Litter Pick Up. This small group of volunteers did a great job cleaning up the creek by filling over 50 bags with trash, removing 11 shopping carts and painting out graffiti.  Shout out to some of the hard working volunteers: Ed Rast, David Dearborn, Jack Nadeau, Robert Mulvany, Martin Delson among others.

Finally, a friendly reminder that I will be hosting the Concord Coalition on Monday 4, 7PM at City Hall Council Chambers for a showing of the movie I.O.U.S.A. Please RSVP to Pierluigi.Oliverio@SanJoseCA.gov

Although I was born and raised in San Jose, my visits to the East Side were not commonplace. As a kid, I was advised of general safety issues about the East Side and was warned not to go “there” at night. My father taught English to adult immigrants on the East Side for about half his teaching career, and I used to accompany him when my school was closed. I would sit in the back and meet his students from all over the world. In high school I would go to East Side high school sporting events, remembering that I needed to be careful—at least that is what I was told.

Recently, in an attempt to become better acquainted with East San Jose, I elicited the help of “Team Campos”—Councilmember Nora Campos and her brother, Planning Commissioner Xavier Campos who both grew up on the East Side. I toured District 5 with each of them separately to get the female and male perspective.

Historically, the East Side was more diverse then it is today. At one time, it had a large African American population near the beautiful new Mayfair Community Center. One of the largest African American churches in San Jose is a few blocks away from the center. A significant portion of Caucasian population left during the mid-’70s, so now, District 5 is majority Latino. It is with the Latino struggle that we have the history of Cesar Chavez organizing in East San Jose. I was shown a building behind Our Lady of Guadalupe church where Caesar held meetings. At that time it was adjacent to the old Mayfair packing plant.

East Side has many county pockets that are in the process of being annexed to the city of San Jose. Therefore, miles of sidewalks will be installed over the next decade.  Overall, the neighborhoods are dense with people, and it appears as though more people live in each house than in other neighborhoods.  As a result, there is very limited street parking. There are many converted garages.  Code enforcement is a full-time job, and the housing recession and foreclosures have added stress to the existing neighborhoods.

Various neighborhoods developed at different times on the East Side, like the Tropicana tract of the late ’50s, with nearly flat roofs, or later the Plata Arroyo tract, formerly a drive-in movie theater. Many houses have cyclone fences that divide the yard from the sidewalk which, in my opinion, gives a confined feeling.  Graffiti is definitely prevalent and it seems to me like a person could work 24/7 cleaning or painting out graffiti on the East Side. It is said that if graffiti stays up people die, because much of the tagging is gang-related, marking territory, which leads to higher chance of conflict. Dealing with the gang culture will continue to be a need. By the way, I recommend the new movie at the Camera Theaters, called “Sin Nombre,” which depicts gang culture and youth recruitment.

Good things are happening on the East Side, such as an increase in retail development occupied by mostly small business owners. And the Tropicana shopping center transformation with three new banks is a significant change. Form-based zoning is being planned for Alum Rock Avenue to prepare this area for development, and eventually help it become more of a destination. There are already many good restaurants on the East Side, like Texas Smokehouse on Story Road and El Pirrin on San Antonio—yummy.
Challenges will remain with adding more public transportation to this area since it has the highest ridership in the County. Also, making trails a reality, like the Silver Creek Trail that connects Lake Cunningham and the Coyote Creek. This trail may take decades, but it’s worth the wait, much like trails everywhere in San Jose.

Quoting Javier, “the East Side is better then it was 20 years ago.” It has its challenges no doubt as do other parts of our city. However, it is abundantly clear to me that building out Coyote Valley would have left the East Side further behind.

Xavier Campos as you may know will be running for city council in District 5 in 2010. He has deep roots in the East Side, knows the challenges of the past, present and has a vision of better East Side.