Oliverio for Supervisor 2018

Independent - Transparent - Fiscally Responsible

Recruiting Vigilantes

By

The first council meeting of the new fiscal year will result in discussing the new budgets cuts that must be made due to Sacramento’s raid of cities’ property tax money. Since San Jose does not want to look at delivering services differently, as Chicago and other cities do, then that leaves us with only one option: cut services to San Jose residents.

For example, my office receives calls and emails on a variety of topics, including street paving, park maintenance, blight and so on. However, there is one thing that almost all people comment about.  I agree, this thing is totally out of control. You see it all around San Jose when you traverse its roadways at and stop at every intersection.  Sometimes these things are over five feet tall, and they grow bigger by the day.
They come in different colors and varieties and are as attractive as a broken window that never gets fixed.

Well, if you haven’t guessed what this “thing» is yet, its weeds. The subject of weed abatement is so taboo that we would rather have the city look terrible then outsource a simple task of removing weeds.  Well, ladies and gentleman, I can tell you that if you call any of your councilmembers to complain about a certain city-owned space being ravaged by tall weeds, that the response time will be really long…really long.

Also in case you weren’t aware, the City of San Jose ripped out nice looking plants in medians throughout the city because the City cannot afford to maintain the plants. Yep, remove the beautiful plants that were paid for by your dollars to let weeds grow in abundance. Welcome to San Jose!  Not the type of neighborhood marquee I advocate.

However, I am calling on and recruiting Vigilantes, specifically Weed Vigilantes. If you see a forest of weeds in San Jose, I say do not hold back—tackle it head on and pull them out. Maybe even carry shears or a lopper and cut them down. I know that some of you are wondering if you need a permit to remove weeds since some of them are so big people may think they are trees. I say don’t worry about a permit—you are doing your neighbors and city a favor. Consider yourself deputized. As far as cleaning up, that would be great but if not, just leave them as your calling card as an example to others weeds not to mess around.
San Jose: a place where you pay higher city taxes, pick your own weeds and fund multi-million dollar golf courses. Priceless.

The State’s Ginsu Knife

By

Do you remember the commercial for Ginsu Knives from the late ‘70s?  It would show a sharp knife on TV cutting through everything from tomatoes to tin cans. The announcer would repeatedly say: “But wait! There’s more!”

Well, just when you thought we had a balanced budget for the City of San Jose, the state of California has said “But wait! There’s more!” The state’s own Ginsu Knife just slashed our gaunt budget’s belly. The newly passed state budget will hurt the cities and counties. As much as local municipalities think they are independent from the state, this budget should serve as a wake up call and reminder that the state can take from us without permission.

Counties and cities are not Sacramento’s primary constituents; they have other interest groups that apply more pressure.

As a result of the state’s recent action, San Jose will lose property tax revenues of more than $20 million out of the general fund—which is equivalent to operating all the neighborhood libraries citywide. This will equate to fewer services from the city as there will be fewer city employees providing some type of service, whether it be code enforcement or neighborhood watch, etc.

$74.8 million will be taken from the Redevelopment Agency (RDA) (However, the $40 million of RDA money for affordable housing was not touched by the State, since Sacramento wants San Jose to continue building more affordable housing). Headline projects like the Convention Center expansion, proposed baseball stadium, locating clean tech jobs in San Jose and Strong Neighborhood Initiative projects will be thrown into a casket.

In looking for a lemonade-out-of-lemons solution, I thought maybe we could just make a quick $74.8 million lump sum payment on the outstanding RDA bonds and dodge the state, since there would be no money, and we would at least have less debt down the road. Not an option. The state would force RDA to borrow the money to pay the state or make the City of San Jose liable.

However, there is one option that might allow for projects to go forward. RDA is one of the only tools cities have for economic development which provides genuine stimulus to the economy with construction jobs, and, more importantly, future revenues to the city. The state this year would allow RDA to borrow money from the $40 million affordable housing funds as long they were paid back by 2015. This would simply require a majority vote of the city council.

If San Jose would do this then it would allow for economic development that could bring long-term revenues to the city of San Jose.

It is time for the Council to prioritize what is most important in 2009 and moving forward. The choices are more affordable housing during a time of current housing affordability in both rental and for ownership housing OR economic development that could build the tax base of our city to pay for city services like public safety and libraries. This would mean less affordable housing units built this year; however keep in mind San Jose has been the number one provider of affordable housing in the state of California.

Affordable housing does not pay park fees or fees to pave streets and in many cases does not even pay property taxes for ongoing city services. So it’s a net loss on the balance sheet.

What would you choose, more affordable housing or economic development? Do you think it’s time that voters started voting on how much affordable housing is built in San Jose?

On a separate topic: Last week, I was asked why I did not sign the Police Union pledge. I do not sign pledges for interest groups, period.  I believe signing pledges can be problematic. For example, many of our state legislators signed pledges to never raise taxes. However, we have a state that is mostly dependent on personal income tax and capital gains tax to pay for services, so a recession can hurt the budget quickly. So maybe during times like this it is prudent to cut spending but also to reinstate the vehicle license fee or raise the tax on gasoline while dropping taxes on personal income.

It might be any number of scenarios; however, signing a pledge can get in the way of doing the right thing at the right time. As far as my support for public safety, I have two years of votes, two years of public statements, 121 City Hall Diary blogs on SanJoseInside.com, and a public safety page on the District 6 website that San Jose residents and the police union can view to ascertain the level of my support.

Politics in the Age of the iPod

By

I was recently downloading classic songs on my iTunes from the late ‘70s, two of which were Bob Welch’s “Ebony Eyes,” and Player’s “Baby Come Back.” iTunes is great because I can choose the specific songs I like rather than having to purchase the entire album.

Those of us who are a certain age probably remember when we had to buy the whole record/cassette/8-track to listen to that one song we really liked. In fact, back in the day, when these gadgets were the only ways music was shared, there was the “A” side and “B” side—with the A side home to the selections that were thought to be the top hits.  So we took the good songs with the bad; we did not have the luxury of picking and choosing what we liked and did not like.

While downloading my songs, I was thinking about how we choose our politicians. Unfortunately, we don’t get to pick politicians the way we do music, although I bet most of us would like to. It would be great to choose the top characteristics of the best candidates in a race and then take those skill sets and create our own perfect politician. However, when it comes to picking our elected officials, we are forced to do it the old fashioned way, we elect the whole package—we must purchase the whole album and then concentrate on the good parts.

Interestingly enough, however, sometimes the B side of an album produced the top hits, to everyone’s surprise. Likewise, sometimes when we vote for candidates, their qualities that weren’t considered great may turn out to become the things we like most about them. Conversely, we may have thought that the one song we bought the whole album for was awesome, but then, after purchasing the album, that one song soon gets on our nerves and we are left wondering what we liked about it in the first place.

At least when we bought an entire album, we knew what we were getting…its not like the album changed it’s tune after we purchased it…unlike some elected officials do once they are elected.

We live in a world where we have many choices. We get to choose what we really like in most things and leave the rest. However, at the same time, we have to remind ourselves to balance the freedom to choose when it comes to judging elected officials. Do we expect too much from elected officials or do elected officials describe themselves unrealistically to lead us believe they can do miracles? Or both?

Have you been let down when the politician you wanted to win didn’t, only to be pleasantly surprised with the person who did win? Have you supported a politician who won, only to be let down?
On another note, last week on this blog it was asked: Do San Jose City Council members get benefits when they retire? The short answer is: No. After serving eight years (two four-year terms maximum) council members are not eligible for lifetime medical. Councilmembers are allowed to put a portion of their paycheck into a 457 plan, which is like a 401K or 403B plan. They get to keep this when they leave, much like anyone else in the private sector does when switching jobs.

However, members of the County Board of Supervisors do receive lifetime medical once they finish their 12 years (three four year terms maximum) and make approximately $50K more than San Jose city council members. Members of Congress also receive lifetime medical. I do not know about our state legislature.

Consent Calendar

By

The consent calendar on the city council agenda comes after the City’s ceremonial items are completed. The difference between “consent” items and the rest of the agenda is that the consent items are suppose to be composed of “rubber stamp” issues like excused absences for councilmembers, final adoption of ordinances that were already voted on at previous council meetings, etc. As a result, all the consent items are voted on at once.  However, any councilmember or member of the public has the right to “pull” an item from the consent calendar which requires that the item be voted on separately than the rest.

The rule of thumb is that the consent calendar is not supposed to include any in-depth policy or controversial issues. However, sometimes buried in the consent calendar are items that merit discussion. For example, I removed the $2.26 million golf nets for Los Lagos golf course a year ago. I thought that $2.26 million on golf nets warranted discussion and I wanted to be on record for not supporting this purchase.

At last week’s council meeting, we had several items that probably should not have been on the consent calendar. One item of interest was settling a lawsuit with a software vendor for our Housing Department. Unfortunately, the Housing Department bought software based on a promise and a PowerPoint slide. So when it came to actually implementing the software, it did not work. As a result, we spent eight years of staff time going back and forth on a settlement. We are getting only a fraction of our money back via installments over five years.

As you may remember, I have been a fan of piloting software before purchasing it. I believe it is a smarter and smoother way to go. If the software does not work, you find out quickly and do not have to spend a lot of money or staff time. The city of San Jose now has a new policy that allows for technology pilots. Here is a link to a prior blog on this topic.

Another consent item was that the council decided to give every janitor, gardener and security guard a raise at the water pollution control plant last week. I removed this item and shared my concerns which included the idea that if we receive good services today, why should we pay more? Perhaps we would consider giving raises in a robust economy to attract workers, but we are in a recession with the highest unemployment rate in Santa Clara county since 1941. We do not have a problem getting these services delivered today. I am not sure why we continue to voluntarily raise the cost of government when we do not have to do so. I also found it interesting that this issue came forward two weeks after council raised the sewer fees and not before.

And, yet another item on consent was the public-private partnership update. As you may know, there are property management groups from homeowner associations to corporate property owners who would like to maintain certain city parks for free! They would take care of landscaping, cleanliness, etc., by hiring professionals in those fields.  Most people that I have talked with think it’s great, because then, I can free up currently deployed city park staff and move them to other parks in San Jose and catch up on the backlog of maintenance.  Ah … but not so fast, thee who is on a quest for government efficiency … the council policy requires that these private landscapers be paid a prevailing wage, which is higher then the market price. Therefore, our quagmire continues since private groups do not want to pay above- market rates.

Your government at work…sure…but does it have its residents’ best interest in mind?

If you’re looking for food, entertainment and a tax deduction, then consider attending Monday Night Live at the San Jose Stage Company tonight at 6:30. Tickets are $60.