Many people ask what my biggest surprise has been since becoming a council member. I have shared that my biggest surprise has been closed session meetings. “Closed session” meetings are private meetings which include the mayor, city attorney and city council. The city manager and two other attorneys who record the minutes are also present. Sometimes, depending on the subject material, specific city staff will also join the meeting, but the public is not allowed to be present.

Closed session meetings occur every Tuesday morning and are held in the “green room” which is located behind the council dais. The green room is large with a TV monitor on the wall and a very large table and chairs in the center. Mayor Reed sits at one end of the table and Rick Doyle, the city attorney, on the other.

The mayor leads the meeting agenda and will recognize council members to speak. Usually the city attorney starts the meeting with information on pending and ongoing litigation and threat of litigation. I have found people love to sue the city. It could be anything. Many times the council settles out of court. Settling a case out of court could be less then the cost of going to trial and possibly losing and having to pay out more. $3.5 million of the city budget is allocated each year to legal settlements and that amount is really a best guess since lawsuits do not follow statistical trends.

In order to prepare for closed sessions, each councilmember receives advance information in sealed envelopes with the word “confidential” on the front.

The city attorney will talk about a case and then the appropriate city staff will add more detail or explain technical issues. After that particular case is done then the next group of city staff will join us to start on another issue.

Some of the confidential matters are personnel related. The one that attracted the most attention lately was the issue of our former city auditor. We received reams of paper that we needed to read through, and as with all closed session material, it cannot be shared with staff. It adds another level of stress knowing that you are reading information that impacts a person’s career.

Labor negotiations are also covered in closed sessions. It is similar to talking about litigation; however, instead of talking about winning or losing, it is more of a discussion about balancing resources and priorities.

All comments that are made in closed session are to be confidential and not to be revealed to anyone, including staff and family. We are allowed to talk about closed session items in generalities, but not specific cases or quotes from other council members or staff.

Closed session meetings are serious business.

This week at council we discussed the upcoming 2008-2009 budget process.

The budget for San Jose is a year-round process tracking the revenue that comes into the city, like sales tax and construction and conveyance tax (C and C), and expenditures that come from the General Fund (non-restricted money), or capital expenditures (restricted money) like building new libraries.

The city’s budget is a topic that takes a considerable amount of time to master. To Mayor Reed’s credit, he is the first mayor who started a community process that helped share information regarding the budget process and the complexities that accompany it. For example, in January 2007, Mayor Reed held the Neighborhood Associations Priority Setting session, where neighborhood association presidents and others had a voice in the budget process. In January 2008, the mayor held the same meeting and went over the consultants report regarding budget options for San Jose.

During the 2008 meeting, the audience was asked to rank the choices that the consultants report came up with. I attended this meeting and had mixed feelings. I felt that our city staff was better versed on the topics then the consultant and that four hours is not enough time for the budget.

In addition, I also attended two of the mayor’s Budget Shortfall Taskforce meetings (similar to Mayor Hammer’s New Realities Taskforce in 1995) as well as three of labor’s community budget working group meetings. More people offering new ideas in the budget process is a good thing.

A broader discussion of the budget, where we can do a deep dive into ideas brought by the public, will be on the Rules agenda on March 5. This would allow the residents to understand the trade-offs of budget policy and allow more time to discuss good ideas.

Scenario:

There is a budget meeting at City Hall that you decide to attend with your neighbor. Your neighbor does not follow local government; he just knows that he pays his taxes and complains about potholes and hears about Little Saigon on TV. Knowing that both of you are attending and that you have two different levels of budget knowledge, what would you both want to learn from the meeting?

Do you want Budget 101?
Scholarly discussion?
PowerPoint mania?
Q & A?
Debate team?
Deep dive on only a few topics?

As some of you many know via Sal Pizarro of the Mercury News I have grown a beard. I stopped shaving the morning of the mayor’s State of the City speech. I joked with Sal that I was not going to shave until we fixed the structural budget deficit. Getting our city’s finances in order is the number one priority and will take hard work and more community outreach. By that time, my beard will end up competing with Moses or the members of the band ZZ Top.

So for now the beard remains, providing shock value to those who see me with it for the first time. It is also a great disguise, as I am now able to go to the grocery store without being asked to fix a pothole or other like matter.

It came in quite handy on Fat Tuesday. Our Tuesday evening council meeting was cancelled, so I chose to spend my time as I have done many nights on the streets of downtown with our SJPD and Mounted Unit. Mardi Gras has been a small curse for our downtown in past years with many people outside of San Jose looking and hoping for something out of a “Girls Gone Wild” video. Quite the opposite occurred on Fat Tuesday. The mostly young male crowd that traveled from other cities simply just roamed around the downtown.

My beard, along with my black beanie and trench coat, provided me the appearance of Al Pacino in the movie “Serpico.” This look allowed me to blend in instead of drawing attention by wearing a suit or dressed as a spokesperson for Banana Republic. Walking on the street with the crowd provides me a street level perspective that cannot be experienced in a police car.

This out-of-town crowd for the most part was not spending any money in the bars or restaurants. Early on, there were plenty of minors roaming, some even with beer in a bag. Later the crowds grew larger and older, but still they were not patronizing our downtown establishments, and, instead, just loitered.

Luckily, most of the convention visitors were in bed before the large crowd came. Mardi Gras and Cinco de Mayo have to be the worst PR nights for our downtown. To our SJPD’s credit and hard work, the crowds are lessening each year. I saw firsthand the effectiveness of the police on horses riding through the crowd, patrolling on bikes, riding motorcycles etc., but this comes at a cost to the taxpayer of police overtime.

Our downtown continues to evolve for the positive as we look forward to new residents in the residential towers and recently filled storefronts in restored historic buildings. There are currently three solid plays downtown at City Lights Theater, San Jose Repertory and San Jose Stage. I have seen each of them and recommend them. So come on downtown to see a play for Lent, as Fat Tuesday is over.

At the General Plan Task Force meeting last week, we discussed transportation and how future VTA projects will guide San Jose’s land use. The VTA budget for new projects is funded out of the voter-approved half-cent sales tax. The tax provides partial funding for BART, light rail extension, bus rapid transit improvements, some road paving, trails and bike lanes.

The big-ticket item is BART. The low estimate to bring BART to San Jose is $5 billion, but some say the amount is closer to $10 billion. Whether you are a BART cheerleader or a skeptic, one thing both sides agree on: BART is a huge investment. It is fair to say that BART will at least have a $1 billion overrun and that the $200 million that is budgeted for trails and bike lanes alone will not close the gap on the BART shortfall.

Trails and bike lanes are two of the most important transportation options available to us. They are the smallest items in terms of funding on the “to do” list at $200 million, versus $5 billion plus for BART.  I have had many different forums in my district where residents are constantly asking me about trails and bike lanes. These residents ask how they can help with grant writing, private/public partnerships, etc.

I ask myself: Why not spend the money on trails and bike lanes first since the money needed is much less than any other transportation options like BART? In addition, the talent that can be gained by working with volunteers and the community would be an asset for the VTA, city and county in our goals for trails and bike lanes.

One caveat with trail land is that for the city and county to get its best value, we must purchase land now because land appreciates in value. Trails can be expensive at around $1million a mile. However, in comparison, BART is around $500 million a mile, with an estimated completion of no sooner then 2017.

Another form of transportation discussed was the bus rapid transit lines. In addition to special preference at traffic signals, these buses travel major routes and have fewer stops. However, I would encourage that ALL the buses are equipped with real time GPS information. For example, the bus stop would have a display that would communicate to waiting passengers how many minutes till the next bus arrives. The GPS system has already been successful in Europe and many US cities today. Instead of passengers having to guess what time a bus will arrive by looking down the street from the gutter, they would simply look at the display. This would bring a higher level of consumer satisfaction and increase the number of bus riders.

I think it is prudent to pick off the lower hanging fruit for transportation projects while keeping an eye on the big picture.

What do you think?