Oliverio for Supervisor 2018

Independent - Transparent - Fiscally Responsible

Small Decisions Can Result in More Layoffs

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Last week, at the city council meeting, I removed an item from the consent calendar on the agenda for discussion. As you may remember from my blog about San Jose’s million-dollar golf nets, consent calendar items do not have individual discussion, but rather are voted on all at the same time. If one wants to discuss a consent item, you have to “remove” it for discussion.

The item I removed was asking $993,876 for the library to spend over the course of seven years on an online tutoring service for kids. Nearly a million dollars is a significant amount of money. The $993,876 was not restricted funds and could have been spent on librarians instead. My comment/question to the council was: If we know we are going to have to do layoffs of library staff on July 1, 2010 to balance the budget, then maybe we should hold off on discretionary spending so we can retain staff to keep our libraries open. This expenditure is approximately two librarians salary each year for seven years. My comment fell on deaf ears and the council voted to spend this money; I voted against this expenditure.

When it comes to the libraries, the core deliverable to me is that libraries are open as many hours a week as we can afford, so users can access information and have a place to study. Any and all other programming should be funded after libraries are open seven days a week. If we have funds left over after libraries are open seven days a week then we can start evaluating the option of adding different programs. Until then, the City’s money should be used to keep libraries open with staff.

The online tutoring service could be canceled from year to year; however, good luck ever canceling a program/service once it starts.

On another note, I posted a survey last week regarding the Redevelopment Agency (RDA) budget. The RDA board adopts the final budget on Dec. 8. A person shared with me that the question I posted below (which appears on the survey) was “biased.” I shared that the information I gave was factual, not biased. I thought I would share the question with you here. I have added commentary in bold parenthesis:

The Redevelopment Agency has spent $774 million on housing (true) making San Jose the number-one provider of affordable housing in the state of California (true) by financing 18,000 units (true) of affordable housing while neighboring cities do next to nothing for affordable housing. (Neighboring Cities have not met the Association Bay Area Governments (ABAG) affordable housing targets, while San Jose has exceeded overall ABAG affordable housing targets). With so much given to affordable housing and so many people in need of jobs (12.5 percent unemployment), should the RDA borrow money from affordable housing reserves this year, as allowed by state law (true), to be spent instead on economic development to help create jobs?

The Redevelopment budget survey can be found here. It closes this week.

Happy Thanksgiving San Jose.

Do Things Differently

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Last week, the council had a special meeting to discuss the upcoming $96 million budget shortfall. $96 million is the equivalent of eliminating all library, park and community center positions citywide. My fellow councilmembers and I gave the city manager direction on how best we think the budget gap could be closed.

The first part of the meeting covered the shortfall—which may still grow by either continued lagging revenues from sales taxes and property taxes, or the state legislature grabbing more city funds. It is clear that there are no easy answers. I hear people say “since the stock market is up then the city budget will be ok.” The stock market going up does not provide jobs to unemployed San Jose residents nor does it bring revenues to pay for city services. The only benefit is it might reduce our pension matches slightly next year; however our pension portfolios are invested in more than equities.

We spent time talking about raising taxes on residents, such as a sales tax increase to pay for city services. I said that I would prefer that we increase taxes on card clubs and allow them more tables as allowed by state law, which would bring in as much as $12 million. The card clubs already bring the city approximately $13 million each year.

I also mentioned that taxing medicinal marijuana would help our budget deficit as well.

We then went on to options that would reduce per-employee cost, whether it be pay cuts, increasing medical co-payments or 2nd tier retirement plans for city employees not yet hired. As you would expect none of these options were popular with the council.

Then city management unveiled, its “Approach to Prioritizing City Services” AKA “Core Services.” This concept would be a long stakeholder engagement process that would include scoring and weighing the value of 450 city programs identified so far. However it would not necessarily eliminate programs that scored low. The presentation contained buzz words like «engaging stakeholders,» «peer review,» «finalize a work plan.»

Others said it is not right to prioritize and rank since it puts certain city services against each other. I shared that I am willing to participate, but that the approach presented is meant to give “political cover” in making decisions.

I believe that we can’t make paid interest groups happy all the time and at some point we have to vote to make changes that may be unpopular. The Council was elected to make decisions on behalf of everyone in their district and City, not just a few. This process could take a year, therefore, I immediately offered what my core city services are: Police, Sewers, Fire, Streets, Planning, Emergency Preparedness, Economic Development, Libraries, Parks and Code Enforcement. The presentation left out an obvious city priority: infrastructure. Without sewers and streets life in a city comes to a stop.

At the end of the meeting, the Council voted on my memo titled, “Make Union Negotiations Public.” The memo asked that closed door union negotiation meetings, which take up 75 percent of the city’s budget be public meetings. It did not pass on a 3-8 vote. The majority of the council voted to keep these meetings behind closed doors even though these past meetings are why we have a structural budget deficit.

I have posted the presentation from the meeting on my Council website labeled, 2010-11 Budget Planning – Nov. 5, 2009.

Buyer Beware

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One of the most important responsibilities a councilmember has is working on constituent issues. So far, my office has managed 4,675 constituent issues, which I refer to as “cases.” I set up a web database that allows constituents to track our case work in real time online.

In most cases we are successful in resolving the issue or concern. In other cases, constituents just want to share their comments on a particular matter. Some of the cases are comments on federal or state policy or other requests that are above and beyond what the city budget can provide, like, “please spend millions of dollars on a certain project” or “we want vintage street lights” when others streets do not even have street lights.

Recently, I had a request that came from a constituent who is a professional in the commercial real estate industry and is a veteran at purchasing property. He contacted my office a few months ago after purchasing a piece of property on Meridian Avenue. Unfortunately, this person did not contact the San Jose Planning Department before he bought the property to check how the property was zoned. He wanted me to tell the Planning Department to change the zoning to fit what he thought should be there instead of what the zoning has been for the past 30 years.

This request reminds me of the old adage: “buyer beware.” For example, someone may buy a home near a bar, school or church and then complain about the noise and parking. Well, it is the due diligence of the buyer to research the area, check zoning as well as any inspections a home or property may need. To choose to complain instead of taking responsibility for the purchase lacks credibility.

There are two things to remember when purchasing property; one, when you buy property, check out the zoning first so you know what you’re getting into—and if you do not like the zoning do not buy it.  Second, if you buy a property and want to change the zoning, be prepared to invest time and money to do so, and figure that into the cost you pay for the property. Councilmembers cannot snap their fingers to change the zoning in the General Plan or at the whim of a real estate professional who thinks that their opinion should override the General Plan process.

I feel sorry for this person since he put himself into a predicament. However, blaming government for your own lack of due diligence is probably not going to help matters. In this particular case, I have met with the planning department and even asked the planning director to get involved to see how we might be able to help this person even though he is the one that did not take responsibility. The director is pursuing possibilities on how we might be able to help, but the real estate professional is still not pleased.

I remember from the private sector that sometimes there was the client who was never happy no matter how much you gave of yourself to help them, even when they made the mistake. So, in those cases sometimes you parted ways with the customer, since mutual respect was absent. Sometimes working on constituent issues is like working with private-sector clients, and we try to help, but have to admit that we cannot please everyone every time.