Oliverio for Supervisor 2018

Independent - Transparent - Fiscally Responsible

Punting the RDA Budget

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The Council punted the Redevelopment Agency (RDA) budget last week to February 2010. As has already been highlighted in the news, the state is taking $75 million away from San Jose’s RDA. We need to pay the State off in May and identify where the money is coming from in March (no negotiation or payment plans on this matter are allowed by the State). The legislature, recognizing that this payment would be difficult for all RDA agencies, allowed for borrowing from affordable housing money which is 100-percent funded from RDA. Twenty percent of all RDA money goes off the top to the Housing Department in San Jose. The payroll for the housing department alone is $9.7 million a year for 83 employees for an average salary of $117,000.

The Mayor’s Budget message was pragmatic in that it said let’s not spend any money ‘til we work out borrowing the money from the housing department to pay the State; let’s determine whether or not RDA is able to issue bonds to pay for a capital program—which would include matching the hotel owners’ share and expanding the convention center; and let’s continue negotiating with the County of Santa Clara (which by the way in the last decade has been paid $270 million by the RDA).

The Mayor had a very good public meeting with stakeholders from all sides prior to writing the budget message. Everyone who attended realized the choices are difficult and few options exist. Everyone at the meeting got the same information—that San Jose has already built 18,000 units of affordable housing by spending hundreds of millions of RDA dollars making San Jose the number-one provider of affordable housing in the state of California. Everyone left the meeting understanding that there is no pixie dust to magically fix things. A majority at the Mayor’s meeting felt that economic development should be the priority now.

However, when it came to voting on the budget, another option was voted upon at the last minute that asked for a $25 million reduction in how much would be borrowed from the Housing Dept., and instead look at borrowing from other sources. This option was well liked by the audience (which was made up by mostly paid affordable housing lobbyists and people who work for affordable housing entities in some capacity—the Housing Director is campaigning against the Mayor and is ensuring that she has her supporters at the meetings). This “option” would take money by borrowing monies from the following: Commercial Paper backed by the General Fund, Sewage Treatment Plant Connection Fee, Library Parcel Tax, Sewer Service and Use Charge, Integrated Waste Management, Ice Centre Revenue Fund and HNVF-Anti-Tobacco Funds. This “option”—taking from all of these other resources—was approved on a 7-3 vote with Mayor Reed, Pete Constant and myself voting no.

We have borrowed money from some of these funds before, but that was to balance our general fund so we could fund core services like public safety and not more affordable housing. If we borrow this money now to create more affordable housing, then we will have one less arrow in our quiver to balance the general fund budget in June.

My question to you is: Should we use money that is supposed to go towards core services like sewers and water treatment plant so that we can build more affordable housing that does not pay fees for parks or road paving?

How do you feel as a voter that may have supported the library parcel tax to let that money be borrowed for more affordable housing that does not pay property taxes (property taxes is the number one revenue source to pay for city services) versus what you intended that money to be spent on…libraries.

I remember months back Councilmember Constant and I were criticized because we wanted to use the Healthy Neighborhood Venture Fund (HNVF)/Anti Tobacco money to pay for school crossing guards, a public safety service the City has had in place since the 1940’s. It’s okay to use these funds for affordable housing but not for crossing guards? Hmm…sounds like maybe a vote of the people should be had on how these funds should be spent. With a $75 million deficit just for RDA and another $96-plus million deficit for the City’s General Fund, I am all for the residents sharing their votes via the ballot. If we can ask residents to raise their taxes then we can ask them for direction on spending their money.

I now have a Facebook page for my tenure on the city council. Here is the link.

Unions, Graffiti and Utility Boxes

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Last Tuesday at the council meeting, we spent approximately 90 minutes discussing the Teamsters Union at the Convention Center. Long story-short, this is a labor dispute between two different union locals that will be settled by the National Labor Relations Board. However, in the meantime, the Convention Center (which is the largest source of the City’s hotel tax receipts and drives airport traffic) is getting negative PR which is affecting prospective convention business in San Jose.

Whether it’s one union local or another, the fact is the Teamster jobs are taxpayer subsidized jobs since the City owns and operates the Convention Center where they work. When everyone chooses to fight as we are then we slit our own throats, since the taxpayer is on the hook for the annual subsidy—which will grow if we are unable to book convention business.

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Last Wednesday, at the Neighborhood Services committee, there was an update on the anti-graffiti program. The City painted over 100,000-plus graffiti tags last fiscal year. The City is meeting its goal of removing gang graffiti in 24 hours, although the staff is resource- constrained.

Also related to graffiti was the annual year-in-review by the San Jose Downtown Association last Friday morning. At the meeting, they spoke about the success of the Groundwerx crew that is privately funded by a Property Business Improvement District. Groundwerx spends much of its efforts cleaning Downtown, with an emphasis on graffiti. I think it would be great if a judge (who presides over graffiti taggers) made those offenders do community service with Groundwerx to help clean Downtown for days/weeks/months, rather than the small penalties today.

One particular challenge with graffiti are the utility boxes that are all around our city. These boxes are privately owned by the likes of ATT, Comcast, PG&E., etc. The graffiti bozo’s (with the City lacking Singapore-style punishment) constantly mark up the boxes with their tags or gang tags. The committee discussed the possibility of creating an ordinance that would remove graffiti from those utility boxes asap. Ideally, we would not need an ordinance as the utility companies would clean it up themselves in a timely manner; unfortunately, that does not happen. So one way we could ensure that the companies would understand the importance of taking care of the property in San Jose is to adopt and execute a fine to the utility companies for any graffiti left on a box for more then 72 hours. Or they could contract with the City to pay us each time we clean up the tag.

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The big vote this week in front of the Council is whether or not to give direction to city attorney to make binding arbitration for police and fire open to the public. The arbitrator who does not reside in San Jose makes binding decisions on police and fire contracts but is not accountable to the taxpayers. Yet the arbitrator has the power to force the city to spend unlimited amount of tax dollars. Not even the Mayor or a Councilmember is allowed to hear what is said. I bet you can already predict the votes as the last vote to make union negotiations public was 3-8, with the «no» votes prevailing.

Fall 2009 General Plan Hearing

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Prior to Mayor Reed, the City of San Jose would amend the General Plan (GP) approximately seven to twelve times a year; which equates to about once every month, give or take. During this time, about 1,200 acres of industrial land were converted to residential housing. As a result, the City lost 1,200 acres of land that could have been home to jobs. A sizable percentage of the 1,200 acres was in my district.

Since 2007, the City hears GP changes twice a year. With the adoption of the conversion policy (which provides a process for land zoning conversion) the council hears far fewer amendments regarding changing industrial zoning to residential.

Last Tuesday, the council had the Fall GP Hearing. This meeting continued past midnight and covered a litany of land use situations, some of which are listed below:

• Transit oriented development on the periphery of Downtown.
This item moved forward with unanimous support.

• Revitalization of two strip malls with the addition of housing in Evergreen and another on Hillsdale Ave.
Both these items moved forward with unanimous support.

• Infill development of 35 executive homes next to Silver Creek.
This item moved forward with unanimous support.

• Church locating in an industrial area.
This issue was approved with a 9-2 vote, with Vice Mayor Chirco and myself voting against it. (I voted against it because it does not conform to our GP and ends up creating a domino effect of converting the adjacent industrial parcels over time.)

Most of these items will be back before the Council one more time during the zoning process for the final details like architecture, lot sizes, height, parking, etc…

If you are interested in viewing past council meetings and/or other committee and commission meetings, you can do so at the City of San Jose’s website.

Scroll down and select the meeting to view. The agenda for that specific meeting will come up and you can jump to that particular agenda item to hear what was said.

Feedback From RDA Survey is Beneficial

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A couple of weeks ago I put together my own web based Redevelopment Budget survey. I shared financial information in bullet point form in the introduction and then gave information throughout the survey. In some cases I would state the dollar amount given to a particular program and then ask a question. More than 600 people completed the survey, which required that each question be answered. The survey could not be taken twice.

As with most issues that involve money, the feedback to my survey was mixed.  I had a person who refused to even participate because they didn’t like how I set up the survey. Others lauded my courage to share data and seek their input. They felt I was taking a risk to allow residents to share their concerns.

Web surveys are not necessarily scientific surveys, since web surveys allow anyone to participate. As we know, a true scientific survey controls and limits who is surveyed by gender, age, race, income level, voter registration and geographic location of the respondent.  Scientific surveys can cost about $40,000 for 1,000 people.

Viewpoints are subjective. Whereas one person may view a question as biased another may view it as objective. However, the most important part of a survey question is that the data be factual. In my survey, there were approximately 10 comments out of over 600 people who completed the survey who felt that particular survey questions were biased.  For example, one person told me that I was “leading” the survey because I said that San Jose RDA has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on 18,000 units of affordable housing. I shared that this is information is factual and not leading.

My survey shared, in synopsis form, how much money has been spent on various issues.  Many people did not realize that San Jose is the leader in affordable housing.  Some respondents shared that they are very pleased with the Strong Neighborhood Initiative (SNI).  While others, agreeing with affordable housing and SNI, felt that that we should spend money on economic development this next fiscal year. My survey allowed those who chose to participate an outlet to share concerns, recommendations and rank their priorities for RDA monies.

As I have said, there were a few participants who felt the survey was biased; however, when I did a cross tabulation all but one of them chose Affordable Housing or SNI as more important then Economic Development. Cross tabulation also showed most of these specific participants felt that we should not borrow money from the Housing Department to spend on Economic Development this year. In addition, most of these participants shared that it was okay to spend money on a small fraction of neighborhoods in San Jose even though there are neighborhood infrastructure needs citywide.

After reading comments and speaking with survey respondents, I would add more choices to future surveys. For example, when it comes to ranking priorities I would add two more options; “Save Money”—since some people would rather not spend—and “None of the Above.”

The survey required that beach question to be answered, identical to how a councilmember “must” vote. Many times the Council votes on an ordinance or budget that individual councilmembers may not agree with 100 percent, so sometimes council votes for a package of things that are a bit uncomfortable. It’s the same feeling that some of the respondents felt when asked to make decisions regarding the survey.

Another item I would add in the future is a web link if available for additional information. For example, respondents did not necessarily know what specific improvements were proposed at St. James Park, Japantown, Civic Auditorium, etc. The RDA budget is available online, however specific information on the proposed improvements is not easily found.

Thank you to those of you who participated in the survey.  I know it was not easy and may have caused you to feel conflicted.  I appreciate your time to engage and share your viewpoints with me.

Some of the results:

• 69.5% out of 787 respondents felt that borrowing from the Housing Dept. this year for Economic Development was okay.

• 70.8% out of 763 respondents disagreed with spending RDA money for a small fraction of neighborhoods in San Jose versus overall.

• 79.4% out of 709 respondents felt that Economic Development should be number one priority of RDA money.

• 59.7% out of 709 respondents approved of the Convention Center expansion.

• 52.8% out of 709 respondents did not approve of RDA land banking for a Downtown Baseball stadium.

• Here is a link to all the results, including 268 comments.

Finally here is a table from Mayor Reed’s RDA Budget message that shows how economic development is better for city tax revenues and ongoing jobs then affordable housing.

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.

RDA Budget Survey

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Last week, the council had public hearings regarding the upcoming 2009-2010 Redevelopment budget. Mayor Reed ensured that the public had both a day and night session to attend, allowing more people to participate. In addition, tonight (Nov. 16) at 6pm the mayor is hosting an additional public meeting at City Hall to garner feedback on the RDA budget.

During last week’s public hearings, the usual lobbyists—those who are paid to speak at council meetings on behalf of special interests—attended and spoke. The lobbyists have also been known to orchestrate the other speakers, giving them colored stickers to wear and scripts to read from.

Others spoke on what the RDA money should be spent on, which happened to be items that might affect their own future employment.  For example, people who work for an affordable housing developer will speak to the need for RDA money to be spent on affordable housing.

This past October, I held a meeting in the District I represent (on a Saturday) to talk only about the RDA and the upcoming budget decisions. At my meeting, there was nearly unanimous support for spending the limited RDA funds on economic development. Unfortunately, the council is not hearing this at the public hearings at City Hall since most residents are busy with work, family or seeking a job.

Therefore, I have prepared a web survey for San Jose residents to fill out online. This survey is much shorter then my May 2009 General Fund budget survey, but does require that each question be answered and may be only taken once. I will share the results here on San Jose Inside.
The link is here: Redevelopment Agency Budget Survey.