Past San Jose mayors have used the annual State of the City speech to announce big projects or initiatives. Commandeering a broke city, however, limits Chuck Reed to talking about already dry cement like the swoopy new airport terminal or trumpeting minor capital spending projects, such as fixing the convention center’s leaky roof or reopening the Happy Hollow Zoo with a renovated Guinea Pig Island.
When it comes to mayoral speeches in San Jose, no detail is too small. Reed one time encouraged citizens to save water by turning off the faucet when brushing their teeth. His predecessor, Ron Gonzales, used one annual speech to announce the opening of Starbucks and Krispy Kreme franchises in the Convention Center.
While listening to all the budget talk about expenses rising faster than revenues and the costs of maintaining new facilities, the neighborhood champions and public-paycheck recipients who filled the convention center might have begun to feel like guinea pigs themselves, trapped on an island awaiting the next round of budget experiments—while the big elephants in the room remain in the shadows. The pachyderms, of course, were the baseball commissioner’s teeth gnashing over moving the money-losing Oakland A’s to San Jose, and impending pay and staffing level cuts for public safety workers.
A’s owner Lew Wolff appeared at the podium to introduce and heap praise on the mayor but offered no clues to the status of the stadium plan.
Reed mostly talked about the city’s strengths and positive qualities, while taking a veiled shot at his critics and predecessors. “We eliminated the practice of making back-room deals and springing them on the public at the last minute,” he said. “We stopped making policy by surprise so the public can participate in the debate.”
Referring to critics of the police department’s use of force as “weapons of mass exaggeration,” Reed dismissed the problems as “a small number of incidents.” Calling SJPD “one of the best departments in the nation,” he thanked police leadership and members of the Police Officers Association for continued willingness to improve the department.
Reed may be hoping that the verbal tip will make pay cuts easier to swallow. “It’s clear after Tuesday’s study session that 5 percent is not enough,” the mayor said. “We need every bargaining unit to give back 10 to 15 percent to avoid layoffs. It’s time for everyone to share the pain to save the jobs of your friends and co-workers.”
His chief critic on the council, assembly candidate Nora Campos, was quick to pounce. “It’s one thing to praise police and fire fighters,” she told the media. “It wasn’t clear how we’re going to save public safety jobs.”
Her Chief of Staff, Ryan Ford, suggested that the talks with the bargaining units will be part of “a long, drawn-out budgeting process. It’s going to be messy.”
Police leadership is already bracing for bad news. “At Bureau of Field Operations, we’ll be prepared to police the city with whatever they give us,” SJPD Deputy Chief Christopher Moore said. “It will be at a different level, though. We won’t be able to do some of the things we used to.”
Debbie Bress has received a 1099 tax form from Ace Smith, consultant to San Francisco politicos.
Why?
I generally pride myself on being well informed, but I have to admit that I did not know this.
I’m wondering, though, if I HAD known this, what would I do with this information?
> Now the city is scared of the unions, perhaps because the SBLC can muster 6+ votes for anything they want. And the city values “labor peace” above all else. How else can you explain the empty space at city hall when restaurants are popping up all around Taj Gonzales?
If the city values “labor peace” above all else, then that means that they place a lesser value on “taxpayer peace” or “voter peace”.
Taxpayers and voters should be disappointed that they are so poorly regarded by the city.
The event was a thank-fest, where Reed expressed gratitude for virtually everybody there, except me. Nothing of substance was offered, other than his indication that a 5% compensation reduction from employees would not suffice. The event was contrived, right down to his green and gold attire.
Reed’s right, though. Employee compensation has risen much faster than revenues. It started during the dot com boom, when the city had to compete for employees at a time when valley compensation was getting absurd. That is no longer the case.
Now the city is scared of the unions, perhaps because the SBLC can muster 6+ votes for anything they want. And the city values “labor peace” above all else. How else can you explain the empty space at city hall when restaurants are popping up all around Taj Gonzales?
As the mayor implied, the long term solution is economic growth. But short term, the only budget solution is employee give backs.
It is not possible to close a significant budget gap by ignoring 2/3 of the spending equation. Employee compensation reduction is the only way that the city can make significant headway in closing the budget gap – which, by the way, will be less than the $100 million currently being bandied about, by as much as $25 million when the dust settles.
Time heals all memories. Little do people forget the 340million plus monstrosity of a city hall, because, city government decided it “needed” to be 1 mile closer, even as light rail ran 100 feet away. Little do people forget the boom times of the dot com era, when stock options, stock splitting, IPO’s and ballooning 401k’s were more attractive than public service. Little do people forget, that this is the same city that FAILED to contribute to employee pension funds during the late 90’s and early 2000’s because the interest the funds were making more than covered their cost. Little do people forget. Don’t you dare hold my rear to the fire because I chose a different path than you and now I am the one who is able to weather the storm. Where were you when I was making a below standard wage and could not even afford to buy a home for my family because your high tech attitudes put the cost of living in this city out of my reach. Sorry. I feel no sympathy for the city. Nor should I. Life is not fair and we are not all dealt a perfect hand. Live with it. I did and now I seem to be the one everyone dislikes. Oh well. I will enjoy every bit of the money that I put into our SELF FUNDED retirement. I would not expect anyone of your to care or understand. I just know my sacrifices in the early years will provide me solace in the latter years. Ain’t so bad being a public servant. Now to those of you who clamor about paying taxes and my wages…guess what. I pay taxes too and these moments I take to provide the side of the public servant is paid by me. Thank you.
The city hall was suppose to be 340 million. It turned out costing almost twice as much as that.
What needs to happen is collective arbitration must be put in the hands of the voters. A signature ballot request to get this on the ballot is in the making
I disagree. If anything, as voters we Californians have only proved we’re as short-sighted as our leadership. Every vote we make only proves that we like services and we don’t like taxes. Let our inept leaders figure out how to pay for everything without additional revenue.
The system is broken, and we are as much to blame as those we put in charge.
To start to understand the challenges and issues with San Jose budget you may want to read
1) Comparison city Budget documents in
Dollars and Sense
Did you know that the San Jose budget is one of the most perplexing documents in the world?
Administrations of different cities use significantly different but easily understood language, performance metrics, and comparisons in documents presented to their Council as the basis for final budget decisions. The idea being that the average citizen shouldn’t have too much trouble following the flow of money from revenue to expenditure in their city’s budget documents.
Budget documents prepared by San Jose city staff omit important revenue, staffing, and expenditure details. Performance information is not compared to other cities with regard to population or geography.
This makes it hard for both the City Council and residents to understand the difficult decisions faced by the nation’s 10th largest city in its 8th consecutive year of deficits.
What this all means is that San Jose’s budget is exceedingly difficult to understand, even for CPA’s and MBA’s.
To see other city budget go to http://www.protectsanjose.com/blogs/1-neighborhood-leaders/92-dollars-and-sense
2) SCC Local city revenue comparisons in
Just the Taxes, Ma’am
San Jose revenues increased steadily from 1990 through 2007-08, at a rate between 1% and 13% a year, except for FY 2002-03 and 2003-04 when they declined 3% and 1% respectively following the burst of the dot com bubble. City revenues decreased again in 2008-09 and are projected to fall once more in 2009-10 due to the ongoing economic recession.
San Jose’s average General Fund revenue of $663 per resident ranks around the middle of both the 15 cities in Santa Clara County (5th of 15) and the 12 largest cities in California (5th of 12). (On a brighter note, this has improved from 1991-92, when we were 9th out of 15 in Santa Clara County and 8th out of 12 large California cities.)
The cities in Santa Clara County with higher tax revenues than San Jose have more jobs and businesses, more sales taxes, or both. Here’s the top ten and how they rank for total revenue per resident, jobs per 100 residents, and consumer sales tax revenue per resident:
1. Palo Alto: $1,194 revenue per resident; 254 jobs per 100 employed residents; and $228 consumer sales tax revenue per resident
2. Mountain View: $998; 147; $125
3. Los Gatos: $860; 143; n/a
4. Santa Clara: $ 848; 218; $159
5. San Jose: $663; 88; $82
6. Gilroy: $658; 83; $200
7. Milpitas: $655; 164; $133
8. Sunnyvale: $628; 125; n/a
9. Campbell: $607; 108; $138
10. Cupertino: $581; 147; $82
San Jose does not have sufficient jobs for all of our employed residents and during the workday loses 50,069 or 5.6% of our residential population when they commute to other cites for jobs. The resulting loss of sales tax from spending by both individuals and business and other business-related revenues is in the tens of millions of dollars per year.
For more city revenue comparisons Have a look at these three tables:
• California General Revenues by city/county
• Population — California Department of Finance Demographics
• General Revenues per Resident
(Source: Computations by CaliforniaCityFinance.com from State Controller and Dept. of Finance data, 1991-92 through 2005-06.)
at http://www.protectsanjose.com/blogs/1-neighborhood-leaders/54-just-the-taxes-maam
Very informative, and these facts raise so many questions.
1. The obvious one: who writes the San Jose budget document and why don’t they clean it up?
2. Why do people live here when there aren’t enough jobs? This lends support to the opinion voiced numerous times on this site that when we build low-income housing we mainly help neighboring cities’ businesses, possibly because of the difficulty in starting a business here.
3. This is more out of curiosity: what does SF spend all that revenue on? I read their current deficit is over $500M, five times that of San Jose.
Thank you for doing this research.
San Jose is the 10th largest city in the nation, and possibly the worst ran. Maybe instead of spending millions of dollars on ugly airport renovations, public city art, remodeling libraries that don’t need it, or paying millions upon millions for lawyers to break San Jose’s unions, the mayor and council members should start thinking of ways they may be able to conserve San Jose’s public safety as opposed to cutting it. San Jose’s Fire Department alone is largely understaffed when compared to the other big cities around the country. Take for instance our neighbor San Francisco, 45 fire stations, for a city that is 49 sq miles with a population of 800,000, to San Jose, 34 fire stations (Mayor Chuck Reed is talking about cutting 4 of them), for a city that is 225 sq miles with a population of over 1,000,000. You do the math… Cutting our public safety is not the answer to bridge our financial gap.
Ultimately, it is the responsibility of the Mayor and Council. They get what they want and if they don’t like the convoluted document they currently receive they could change it. Why don’t they?