Oliverio for Supervisor 2018

Independent - Transparent - Fiscally Responsible

Paint Over Walls Or Paradigms?

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Graffiti abatement in San Jose costs the Parks & Rec department $1.7 million per year. Local residents occasionally chip in to help.

I attended the District 5 (D5) community budget meeting last week—it was the third D5 community budget meeting I’ve attended. Approximately 50 people were there, with the majority being city employees.  Many of the speakers shared emotional testimonials.

One speaker stood out to me. She shared how cutting of library hours from 4.5 days to three days a week would cause a large burden to her neighborhood. She teaches music at the Hillview Library and is close to the youth who rely on the existing library. She said keeping library hours open in her neighborhood was important since she feels her neighborhood has a higher need than other areas.

This theme was prevalent. Another woman brought up that since D5 has a higher crime rate, then why not keep D5 libraries open and close District 10 (D10) libraries since crime is low there? I have asked the same question before. Should library hours be based on need? How do we determine the need? Crime stats? Census date by race and income?

Another person was concerned about the police layoffs and how they need more police in D5. Truth is we do allocate more police to D5 than D10, for example.  Since there are more calls for service in D5 than D10 our police force plans accordingly.

Another felt D5 had not gotten its fair share of capital projects compared to other districts. This one would take some research but I think it is fair to say between the Redevelopment Agency spending through the Strong Neighborhoods Initiative ($105 million for a third of San Jose), Fire Station 2, Mayfair Community Center, Alum Rock Library, Hillview Library, Mexican Heritage Plaza, to name some projects, the last 10-15 years was better for D5 than the previous period of historical neglect.

The other major issue of the night was the option of outsourcing to save money and retain a city service. The one that got the most discussion was outsourcing the anti-graffiti painting currently performed by city employees.  It was felt that the painting of walls was too important to outsource and instead should only be done city employees. Currently it costs $1.7 million to do this service and the Parks Recreation Neighborhood Services (PRNS) Department (which runs this program) estimates it could be done for $1.1 million which equates to $600,000 in savings by keeping the service but providing it a different way.

The employees who perform this work have shown up at each budget meeting to speak against the outsourcing. This service is really needed in D5; I witnessed to and from the meeting that there was substantial tagging. The sheer amount of tagging I witnessed gave the appearance that the City does not offer this service today. Speakers at the meeting felt that city staff would work harder than a private contractor. One option might be to outsource half of the city to a private contractor and the other half to city employees and judge it in a year. However, this would not generate the total savings needed to balance the department budget and thus provide this service.

The savings in outsourcing park maintenance looks even higher. The current cost for only maintaining small parks under two acres and park bathrooms is $4.1 million where if it was outsourced it is estimated to be only $1.3 million for a savings of $2.8 million.

I understand that some people will lose their current job through outsourcing and may go to work for the private contractor earning less, but the City’s responsibility is to provide services for 950,000 residents. The employees who may lose their job did nothing wrong, it’s just a sign of the times that the City needs to re-look how it can continue services and save money. The City saved $4 million last year outsourcing janitorial at the Airport and City Hall and everything is just as clean.

Last week, at the District 7 (D7) budget meeting, a career Navy veteran advocated for opening the Seven Trees library, which is completed but not yet open. However he went on to say that there should be immediate changes to the pension system. He mentioned how he receives a 30 percent pension for 25 years serving our country in the military.

A Tap on the Shoulder

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The citywide Community Budget meetings started last week with the city manager and other city department heads in attendance to answer questions. Ten public meetings will be held with one meeting in each Council district.

This first meeting was held in District 2 with approximately 100 people in attendance. From my perspective of recognizing faces, listening to questions and subsequent applause, approximately 80 percent of those in attendance were city employees. The high ratio of employees is understandable, since most employees would attend a meeting if their employer was discussing layoffs.

Government has a much softer and proactive approach to layoffs than the private sector.  For example, I was laid off twice myself due to market downturns and in both cases I did not have advanced notification that I would be let go.  Instead, I, like many, got a tap on the shoulder from HR and a two-week severance check.  Although it is stressful to know that layoffs are looming, at least one can plan accordingly rather than having the HR shoulder-tap, which, unfortunately happens often in private sector.

The mayor spoke at the meeting and answered questions from the audience. After he finished, Ed Shikada, our assistant city manager, walked through a presentation of the budget deficit and some of the alternative cuts that might be selected by the city manager in arriving at a balanced budget.  The presentation was followed by Q and A. This week there will be meetings in District 5 and 7.

There was a survey card that was distributed at the end of the meeting that asked a few questions. I put the five questions on the internet for you to answer in case you are unable to attend the nine remaining meetings: 2011 San Jose citywide Community Budget meetings.

Also,  last week San Jose welcomed a new clean tech company to North San Jose. Wrightspeed Inc., designs digital drive systems to replace conventional power trains for commercial vehicles. Trucks that have Wrightspeed drive systems installed do not consume as much fuel, providing cost savings to the vehicle fleet. California spends $150 million a day on fuel, placing the state in third place globally for consumption of fuel, behind the United States as a whole and China.

Why would Wrightspeed, which started in Burlingame, move its 20-plus employees, mostly engineers, to San Jose? The company moved to San Jose because of our Office of Economic Development. Wrighstpeed was part of the Clean Tech Open that the City of San Jose sponsored (marketing). A connection was made by staff at the event (sales), who kept in touch with Wrightspeed.

When it came to looking for a new building, our staff facilitated a search and found a building within our Enterprise Zone which makes Wrightspeed eligible for state tax credits on hiring new employees. (Gov. Brown has proposed eliminating Enterprise Zones). In addition, San Jose has a foreign trade zone which allows Wrightspeed to import sub assemblies from Europe without tariffs, to put into their end product. Wrightspeed will also generate sales tax for the city of San Jose since they sell a physical object.

It is important to always be focused on growing our economic pie but it does not always happen if a city does not have a sales team.

The Social Contract

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In society we have chosen to give up some of our liberty or ability to do anything we want for the the trade off of having more opportunity under law. If we do not like the rules of society than we can move away to a remote mountain and have more freedom, but one would give up certain benefits we have in society based on law.

The social contract is reinforced through friends, family, neighbors and those who interact with us in society.  However, the enforcement is done primarily by our law enforcement personnel and internationally by our military.

Police are the ones responsible to respond when individuals choose to cause harm to others’ physical well being. Without adequate police, people may choose to break the contract, whether it be by comitting a robbery, an assault or murder. From my viewpoint, police maintain the social contract. No one else carries the authority to do so, and ideally, always in a fair manner, which carries a high level of responsibility. A high level of responsibility needs to be compensated well, in part to avoid temptations.

In comparison to other city departments, the police department is the only one that maintains order so those who are weak do not get picked on and those that are law abiding can go about their way. Would we want to return to the Wild West when gun fights occurred outside the saloon between individuals? Who would want to worry about those things today at Happy Hour?  Police on patrol deter crime by simply being visible. This deterrence, I believe, leads to less incidents that require emergency services since the inhibition of criminal behavior means less use of the 911 system.

Government does have enforcement through regulation, but only law enforcement really enforces the regulation with the possible outcome of incarceration. It is a great power and must always be overseen by civilians who allow autonomy but expect fairness to be carried out.

Sadly, during these years of low revenue and escalating pension costs we must always consider what we can afford. There is a higher cost to being out of control. The social contract extends to our police, as that they must be diligent, be fair, and understand fiscal realities we face, and thus our ability to pay. At the same time, the policy makers must prioritize with the social contract in mind, not to be held hostage but to always put this in the balance with other choices.

Technology can help with enforcement by using surveillance cameras to ticket red-light runners, capture vandals on video to prosecute property crimes and use video footage for gathering evidence for prosecution of other types of crimes. The ability to maintain a civil society will evolve with technology. If we do not accept technology than we will fall short of our goals since we will never have police covering all places all the time.

In other matters: Tonight at City Hall there will be a showing of the documentary film, Bag It, with a discussion to follow with the Director of Environmental Services. The film presents the impact of plastics in society and their ramifications to our health. To learn more email tina.west@sanjoseca.gov

Congratulations to San Jose Made and San Jose Eats who brought what seemed to be a few thousand people to Downtown on Saturday afternoon for a pop-up retail and food truck event.  The event also had the impact of filling every restaurant in San Pedro Square. A sign posted out front of one restaurant read: Closed-Out of Food.

Comments on Firefighters Contract

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San Jose’s Fire Station 6 was put on the chopping block in 2008.

Last week the council took up the firefighters union contract with more than 100 firefighters in attendance. I thought I would share why I voted no.
First, I think it is clear that if you have worked in city government over the years that things are drastically changing due to structural budget deficits. Second, if you are new to working in city government, you will most likely not have the same career as those before you.
I remember when I was a candidate for city council and meeting with the fire union. We covered a variety of topics but I always remember this question: “How would you help us with city management on wage and benefit negotiations.” I recall saying that I would attend the union negotiations myself. They were quite happy and said that was a great response. However, the firefighters union did not inform me then of the reality that labor negotiations are not open to council members.

I appreciated the 10 percent concession and was surprised that it did not go through binding arbitration. I believe the new interim president of the union is a sincere person.

Even with the 10 percent and after vacancies and retirements, we will still lay off more than 30 firefighters. However, the larger item which remains is minimum staffing for fire engines. I have brought up the minimum staffing issue in council meetings, committee meetings and budget meetings.

The LAFCO report on all Santa Clara County fire departments shows that San Jose is the only city in the county that has four firefighters on an engine. Also looking at the same report it shows we have an over 25-to-1 ratio in calls for medical vs. fire.
I believe we should lower the amount of medical calls when council approves the ambulance contract with the County.  County government, by state law, controls the ambulance contracts. We should stop having our fire fighters respond to calls that are not necessary, like those at the county jail, since they already have medical personnel at the jail. In addition, low priority alpha and bravo medical calls should be left to ambulances.

Other cities as mentioned above are able to make do with three on an engine. We may want four on an engine and we may even want five, but we cannot afford it. This does not mean every engine would have three instead of four, as not all stations are equally busy, and therefore it provides the flexibility to keep stations open.  Residents are not so concerned if there are three or four on a engine, but they do care if the station is open or closed.

Because of minimum staffing requirements in the recently accepted fire contract and the unavoidable layoffs, we would close fire stations.

Back in 2008, when Station 6 was a line item to be sold in the city budget with zero notification to residents, I initiated the policy passed by the Council that mandates mailed notification to residents and two evening public meetings with the presentation of data for the primary service area when fire stations are proposed to be closed. Most importantly, it does not allow a station closure to be included in the budget prior to the prescribed outreach. Before this policy fire stations could be sold/closed with no notice.
So like the Communications Hill neighborhood, which now has a closed fire station, other fire stations somewhere in San Jose will need to be closed due to minimum staffing. It is unfair to residents that we close stations when they can remain open with one less person to maintain response times based on distance.

If the council does not want to see fire engines taken out of service than we will need to makes cuts elsewhere. The most likely place for those cuts will be our police department, with the laying off of police officers.
We do not have a minimum staffing requirement applied to police cars for police officers. If police run short on a shift they do not say “let’s stop patrolling in Almaden or Berryessa.” We do not have minimum staffing for our libraries. We do not have minimum staffing for our planning department to process an application for development.
This comes down to what is most important for San Jose in 2011 with the limited taxpayer dollars that are available to allocate. For me the answer is simple. It is police. Police enforce the social contract. No one else does.

The social contract allows individuals to be free from harm and intimidation.

The social contract allows the weak to be protected.

We cannot do everything. In fact we can’t even do both…police or fire. So we have to choose.
This fire union contract makes the fire department the number-one priority in the city budget by maintaining minimum staffing on fire engines. I cannot say this is my number-one priority nor my residents’ number-one priority when we provide multiple services to residents.
With that said, I vote against funding charities even when they are great organizations; they are not in the city charter. In addition to voting against the Hayes Mansion, golf courses, million dollar IT projects gone wrong or championing $1.475 million in cost avoidance on a current IT project. I voted against $1.3 million on golf nets, rezoning industrial land to residential, affordable housing that does not pay property tax. And I support outsourcing of services like janitorial to save money for core services.
I think it is wrong for myself as an elected official to make promises to every group or specific union when the reality is restricted resources do not allow promises to be kept.

Why a Unanimous Vote?

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The vote on the convention center has been covered extensively, but a resident I spoke to asked me to please share my view on San Jose Inside. As we know, the Council vote was unanimous in supporting the renovation and expansion.  Although I cannot speak for my colleagues, I would say there were four major constituencies who advocated for the renovation and expansion of the convention center.

1. Building Trades & Building Industry. Public works projects pay prevailing wage and will provide construction jobs for the next two years in an industry that suffers from 30 percent unemployment. In addition, as the economy is slow, the cost to build is lower.

2. Local hotels have taxed themselves to pay for the bonds that will pay for the renovation and expansion. The hotels did not tax themselves to pay for parks and code enforcement. Hotels want more room nights, which is the key to their success. The hotel tax makes the bond payments, not the general fund.

3. Team San Jose wants a convention center that is the best it can be to market its usage and close deals on convention and event business.

4. The Downtown Association is an advocate for investment and activity in our Downtown. Whether you value our Downtown or not, a substantial investment has been made to create a city center. The convention center drives activity and business in our Downtown.

If you think about it, convention centers are located globally in major cities. In most cases, they are loss leaders to bring travelers and spending to their respective town. Or you may feel that convention centers are a subsidy to the hotel industry or a subsidy to adjacent private property owners or a subsidy to airports or a subsidy to unions or all of the above.
The global convention traveler generates tax revenue with hotel taxes, sales taxes and airport taxes for the respective city, and in turn creates jobs for the hotel, convention, restaurant, airport, taxi and retail worker. In very few cases, such as Las Vegas, convention centers are profitable.

Personally, I would have liked to have had the Council study selling the convention center to a private entity, but there is zero chance of getting that passed on the Council and I pick my battles.

So—we are in the convention business and therefore responsible for upkeep to the existing facility. How do we pay for it? The reality is that if the renovation was not covered by bonds paid for by the hotels it would come up out of the general fund. So replacing the HVAC system and other core improvements ($46 million) would have fallen on the general fund.

Another factor in the decision was the design-build process. When it is said the expansion will cost $63 million, it will really cost $63 million. As design- build says, “here is my budget,” thus build it for this price or else, since I do not have any more money. This is the same process that was used at the airport and which was delivered on time and on budget.  Bill Sherry, who headed that endeavor at the airport, will be overseeing this project as well.  Mr. Sherry, now in charge of Team San Jose, is well respected and the Council is confident in his capabilities.

I am not bullish about all convention centers due to technology like web meetings and the modern day hassles of travel. However, I would not have supported this renovation and expansion had the hotels not taxed themselves. The hotels have been a collecting a 4 percent tax since July 2009 that will cover the bond payments. In case the 4 percent tax falls short there will be an additional 1 percent tax collected from the hotels.

There is risk. For example, if we had a major earthquake that destroyed a Downtown hotel that then was unable to book rooms for several years we would have risk to the general fund. However I am guessing if that earthquake comes to pass we will face larger issues like looking for canned food.

The only public testimony at the council meeting came from a retired city employee who is on the executive committee of the San Jose Retired Employees Association.  His comments, and those that were sent to Council, were in favor of renovation and expansion, stating that now is the time. I understand there will be criticism of strategic decisions from some but at least let there be criticism with a 360-degree view.

Broad Support for Performance Evaluations

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After much discussion at the City Council meeting last week the Council voted in favor of having city staff study performance as a criteria when it comes to employee layoffs.

The review will determine if the City should include job performance when considering layoffs, or keep the current system in place, which is based solely on seniority. Due to budget shortfalls, the City has eliminated “vacant positions,” which were budgeted with the intention of hiring someone to fill them. Elimination of those positions generated savings, since the savings came from no longer budgeting for the positions.

As a result, the City is forced to do layoffs, based on seniority only. For example, you may have someone on the job for nine years who is under performing yet someone who has been on the job for six years and is a great worker.  The person who has been with the City for nine years will “bump” the better performing employee, in the same or different department.

In some situations the person going into the new position does not have the skill set to do the job.  This causes disruption to that department and disruption to the client (residents, business,etc). For example someone who has never stepped foot in the water pollution control plant now has a job at the plant, which requires a special skill. Skill sets and domain expertise are lost when people bump to other departments based only on seniority.

There are two points which I think get overlooked in this debate. One: My proposal does not eliminate seniority as a measurement but instead adds performance as a factor. Whether performance will be 10 percent or 20 percent of the total criteria remains to be seen. We may eventually also decide to include education and certification as well. We need some way other than months on the job to make a informed decision.

The other item being overlooked is that performance should be considered when getting a raise or a promotion—not just the current situation of layoffs. Today, salary step increases are rewarded only based on seniority.  Adding performance as a criteria should also be considered.
In addition, city staff will study the current evaluation process, which has not always been followed. Some say that evaluations do not matter since the current system is only based on seniority. I would personally be interested in a affordable software evaluation solution so that HR can track all evaluations in real time, and that there is a standard format with the option of allowing some customization of questions for specialty jobs.

I am surprised that this issue was not resolved in prior decades and that there is strong opposition from the leadership of public employee unions. Several city employees in different departments have mentioned to me that it is disappointing to work with someone who does not carry their weight.  This is about civil service rules and not about unions, however there will be a lengthy meet-and-confer discussion with the 11 unions. In comparison, the numerous building trade unions do not have seniority and bumping. Union trade members are hired and fired based on work performance.

Seniority is being raised also in Los Angeles, where the ACLU has won in court against the school district, by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, a former teachers union organizer. “We cannot continue to automatically guarantee lifetime employment to all teachers,” Mayor Villaraigosa said, “nor can we make decisions about assignments, transfers and layoffs solely on the basis of seniority. Tenure and seniority must be reformed or we will be left with only one option: eliminating it entirely.” If a former union organizer and now Democratic Mayor of California’s biggest city can support performance evaluations, plus 79 percent of San Jose residents, so to should the San Jose City Council.

Congratulations to Arizona-based Microchip Inc, a veteran semiconductor company. They recently located their Silicon Valley office to San Jose from Sunnyvale filling up 100,000 square feet in North San Jose.

Saturday, the Willow Glen Rams defeated the Burlingame Panthers for the division two boys varsity soccer championship. It was first championship soccer win for Willow Glen. Congratulations to Julio Morales who scored two of the three goals.

Ten seats remain unclaimed for tonight’s 6:30pm showing of “The Olmstead Legacy” at City Hall.  Please email me to hold a seat(s) atPierluigi.Oliverio@SanJoseCA.gov

http://www.theolmstedlegacy.com/