The Bucks Should Stop Here
Last week in an opinion piece for the Mercury News, Councilmember Nancy Pyle and Silicon Valley Chamber President Pat Dando called for the residents of San Jose to make a concerted effort to “Buy in San Jose.” By encouraging San Joseans to shop within their city’s limits, more tax receipts would go to help offset the city’s growing budget deficit.
Dando’s and Pyle’s article provided a lot of data that serves to explain some of the problems that the City of San Jose now faces. For instance:
In the past six years, the city has made cuts in resident services amounting to $330 million.
The 2007 per-capita sales tax receipts in San Jose ($83) are the lowest of any city in Santa Clara County (Palo Alto: $225; Gilroy: $201; Santa Clara: $154). If San Jose collected the county average, it would have amounted to $15.6 million more for the general fund in 2007.
For each $100 purchase made in San Jose, $1 in sales tax goes to the general fund.
It doesn’t require too much of an effort to try and do most of one’s shopping in San Jose. After all, most everything is here. And if we all do it, we might actually be able to make a small dent in the city’s large deficit. Is it time to boycott Santa Clara and skip Cupertino? Buy San Jose!
Great column! I buy very little outside of San Jose. With Gas prices as high as they are, I think more people won’t have much choice but to buy here!
With the convoluted municipal borders in this county, it isn’t always convenient or logical to shop within the city limits. Parts of West San Jose might as well be in Cupertino while the northwest part of town is closer to stores in Santa Clara. Northeast San Jose is near the Great Mall in Milpitas. Many people shop at the Costco on Coleman just over the city line, for example. Normal people don’t care what city the store is in; they just want the item they’re searching for, at a good price. Maybe all of the county’s urban areas should consolidate into one big municipality. Yeah, as if that would happen.
There was a followup letter in the Merc from a Berryessa resident on why she must shop and dine outside San Jose…
http://www.mercurynews.com/opinion/ci_9149284
“Shopping in San Jose Not An Easy Choice” – last letter on the page. Example: grocery shopping is done in Milpitas since there’s no decent grocery store in the Berryessa area.
Where was Pyle, the rest of the City Council, and Dando when Piercy Toyota moved to Milpitas from San Jose? I remember it was directly across from the Gish light rail station. I have not heard from either person – or any San Jose official – on this matter. Correct me if I’m wrong, but their silence on this matter, compared with encouraging folks to shop in San Jose, seems hypocritical.
This place is full of prudes. I know people that will drive all the way to the Target in Morgan Hill just because the one at Capitol and King is not in a desirable neighborhood. Maybe we should ship out the minivan crowd and attract people with a real sense of city.
#3 has it correct. In our zeal to put housing in every possible nook and cranny but not provide adequate services, people will buy where it is convenient. SJ has not done well in building neighborhoods—i.e. housing and needed services. The developers get the Council to build all the housing they want but the Council does not do its job in planning for neighborhood services. Well said #3.
I’ve been doing this for years.
The alternate conclusion, following this logic, is for all residents of San Jose to consider moving to Palo Alto, Gilroy, or Santa Clara. After all, your city services per capita per sales tax dollar are greater in those cities.
Thanks, Pat and Nancy!
Pete,
The problem with increasing dollars going into the General Fund is that 40% of those funds go to the Redevelopment Department, and most of that money goes to Downtown San Jose. Then the G.F. money gets hit by good and bad “Not for Profits”. Then, City services gets cut for the rest of us living in the other 9 districts. Downtown has a long list of projects waiting to be funded by R.D., and wehile the people downtown wait for R.D. funding they come up with “new” items to add to the list of Downtown projects to be funded.
San Jose continues adding more high density housing that cost the City more money they don`t have.
The City Council converts a major hotel site Downtown at the corner of San Carlos @ Market street to “high rise” condos.The Fairmont Hotel pays the City over $450,000 dollars in tax revenue, high rise condos pressure City budgets for services. The condo developer gets City $ support.The new Soccer Stadium is going to be surrounded by more high density housing. The Mayor and five City Council members just voted to move the VTA property from the County to the City planning department for 850 more high density condos. The RFP calls for a $37,000 subsidy per unit for every unit built over 400 condo units or a $15 million dollar incentive to build out to 850 units. Willow Glen has over 2200 new condo/apartment units about to come on line soon.
“Buy San Jose” you say!Help the City solve it`s deficit you Nancy and Pat suggest, this will help the City General Fund!
Excessive housing is a big part of the reason for the deficit. The Mayor and City Council continue to add more housing. They continue to add pressure to the deficit.They continue to make political decisions that help developers and insiders and hurt our city.
San Jose has very close to one job per employed resident. 0.93, the last I heard. The statewide average is 1.0.
I don’t believe that 7% difference is to blame for all of San Jose’s budget woes. Certainly, 0.93 is far wealthier than many other communities, most of which seem to get by.
Housing is easy to blame, but the numbers don’t back it up, unless you limit your worldview to the half dozen cities like Milpitas and Santa Clara.
Richard, you are incorrect about redevelopment funds coming from the general fund.
“How is redevelopment financed?
Redevelopment is primarily financed by tax increment revenue. Other revenue sources includes loans, grants and issuance of tax allocation bonds.
Typically, agencies use tax increment funds to leverage financial assistance from various agencies of the state and federal governments, and private sources.
The most common bond instrument used by redevelopment agencies to finance projects is called a tax allocation bond. These bonds, which are a loan of money to an agency, are not a debt of the community or the general taxpayer. Rather, they are repaid solely from tax increment revenue generated within the project area. In other words, increased tax revenues generated through redevelopment activities are funneled back into the project area to stimulate more development as well as to pay the costs involved.”
#10
Redevelopment funds come from property taxes diverted from funds that normally go directly go to school districts, state, county and the city.The City general fund would normally receive 10% property tax income from all 10 districts but, not from the redevelopmentdistrict which is exempt.The City then recieves its funds from nine districts. The City now has less money to pay for city services, same for the School districts,State of California, Santa Clara County and Santa Clara County.
The redevelopment fund spends approximately 40-50% of its revenue to pay for its bonds.The remaining 50% of revenue can be spent on other projects the RD Agency believes to be in its best interest, including…?
So if I understand redevelopment correctly it operates with diverted funds that would normally benefit the greater population.
Correct me if I miss-understand how it works.For example the new value of the property the Fairmont sits on has increased in value and the Fairmont Hotel now pays approx. $450,000 in property taxes that go directly back to the redevelopment agency, not the City.
The redevelopment agency has done a lot of good things to improve our downtown,several Billion dollars have been invested. Increasing property values downtown and, also increased property tax income for the Redevelopment agency.
Meanwhile the other nine districts continue to strugle with the City budget deficit and,have to accept cuts in city services. Willow Glen, for example is faced with the City closing it`s fire station.Meanwhile downtown continues to spend money on new developments.
Greg,
Take another look at San Jose from the Santa Clara County Level.The County Job level the last time I looked, Santa Clara County average is 125 jobs for every 100 people. San Jose had almost 80 jobs for every 100 people.
I attended a San Jose City presentation with graphs showing graphs of the number of jobs per 100 people,Palo Alto was the highest and San Jose was the very lowest of all Santa Clara County Cities.Sad! The Presentation was presentation was made by the San Jose Planning Department, Redevelopment people were present during the presentation.
#11 Rich-
Santa Clara county as a whole has a very unusual number of jobs per 1000 people. Far more than the local population can support, and far more than almost any other region.
A comparison that limits itself to Santa Clara county is designed to make the case for more jobs.
You could just as easily (and misleadingly) compare San Jose only to East Bay cities, in order to make the case for fewer jobs.
The RDA wanted to make the case for more jobs, which leads to more sales tax revenue, which leads to more RDA jobs. So they chose a narrow comparison that favored their case.
It doesn’t mean that adding excess jobs is good for local residents, who have to endure the added traffic those jobs bring. Or that it is good for the region, which has worse air pollution from all those cars driving longer distances.
That’s why I compared San Jose to the statewide average. Through that lens, San Jose has it right, and Palo Alto is creating a huge problem for everyone else.
(Along with Mountain View, Sunnyvale, Santa Clara, Milpitas, and Cupertino.)