Councilwoman Rose Herrera Tabbed as Vice Mayor

San Jose's newly sworn-in Mayor Sam Liccardo has named Councilwoman Rose Herrera his vice mayor through 2016.

In this role, Herrera will serve as vice chair of the Rules and Open Government Committee, which decides what items to place on the City Council agenda.

Herrera, 61, was first elected in 2008 to represent council District 8, which spans San Jose's Evergreen neighborhood. She was re-elected in 2012 for another four-year term. She grew up in East San Jose, attending Overfelt High School. After a stint in the U.S. Air Force she earned her undergrad and masters degrees at Santa Clara University.

In the 1990s, she ran her own software firm, which eventually closed after going bankrupt.

Last year, Herrera ran against Liccardo in San Jose's mayoral primary as an underdog candidate whose platform focused on improving the local economy.

“Rose Herrera brings passion and commitment to the community to the role of Vice Mayor,” Liccardo said in a statement released Wednesday. “From her service to our country as a member of the U.S. Air Force, to her leadership on economic development and transportation issues, Rose has the experience needed as we focus on working together to make San José a safer, smarter city.”

Herrera said she hopes city leaders, however divided after a bitter election, can cooperate moving forward.

“I am honored to receive this nomination, and I look forward to working with the mayor and the entire council,” Herrera said. “Now is the time for everyone to work together, to collaborate across traditional boundaries, and like the mayor, that’s what I intend to do.”

23 Comments

  1. To the Rules Committee: When a member of the public takes the effort to come to the meeting and address you, please show them respect. Today, you obviously ignored the speaker to chitchat amongst yourselves. Your whispers were picked up on the microphones and easy to hear. How disrespectful for those that came to address the committee. It was good to see a member of the public, at the end of the meeting, actually address the committee to let you know how rude you were to the other speakers. You should all be quiet when David Wall addresses you. He is eloquent and knowledgeable and you could all learn from him.

  2. Rose Herrera. Wow……and before the walloping starts, yes, I have had professional interaction with her AND her husband. It is a perfect choice for this City Hall regime…….choose your own conclusions.

  3. Let’s see if I’ve got this right–a woman who ran a software company into bankruptcy will be taking the laboring oar on “improving the local economy.” Mayor Sam extols her “leadership on economic development and transportation issues.” So, the bankruptcy lady will increase SJ’s economic development and she can probably be counted on by Bike Boy Sam to vote for more mostly empty bike lanes and help to squeeze out cars. Ed Shikada, who the cops would have sat down with–OUT. Mayor Sam sworn in by the the SJ POA’s least favorite person. Now Ms. bankrupt running the economic development show. What a wonderful start for The Liccardo Years. Glass half full–it can only get better from here.

  4. “In the 1990s, she ran her own software firm, which eventually closed after going bankrupt”

    You now have pueblo San Jose. A Mexican Mayor, A Mexican Vice Mayor, a Mexican Chief (who takes $1000.00 gifts from people who beat their womens), a Mexican Assistant Chief, minority Deputy Chiefs and GED grade rank and file employees involved in a mutiny. You have just paid out $4,500,000.00 to date on Measure B and you now must pay the Unions $1,000,000.00 in legal fees. You just paid $5.000, 000.00 for a ludicrous Cop shooting and $900,000.00 for a Police murder and you have 47 more 6 figure settlements being squeezed out to the press as slow as possible. You have a $502,000,000.00 million dollar Glass City Hall in an earthquake zone built with recycled cement (earthquake Powder), bankrupt theatres, failed condominiums, golf courses, embezzled Dump fees ($13,000,000.00) and the bankrupt Mexican Heritage Mall as well as $300,000,000.00 owed to the state for worthless baseball stadium parcels from the bankrupt San Jose Redevelopment Agency. The same guys who did all this retired on $350,000.00 a year and the rest are your aforementioned new leaders. Good luck chumps. Most robbers need a mask, gun and bag but with San Jose Taxpayers a simple whistle puts them on their knees with their wallets trembling in their out stretched hands.

    • George (AKA Nate), I am not a Rose Herrera supporter. She is, however, not a “Mexican.” She is actually Caucasian and of Jewish descent, and her last name is by marriage. Even the “GED grade rank and file employees” know this. Your ignorance is rivaled only by your insanity.

  5. What a very depressing move on Liccardo’s part to appoint ethics-challenged Rose Herrera as Vice Mayor of San Jose. Rose’s tremendous lapse was demonstrated at the June 18, 2013 Council meeting that involved a Council action to forgive a $600,000 City loan to Downtown College Prep (DCP). http://www.sanjoseca.gov/DocumentCenter/View/23656. (item 2.29)

    This stunning lapse of judgment stems from the fact that her son, David Herrera was the founding principal of DCP Alum Rock campus, and now is its Chief Achievement Officer, according to Rose’s own biography on her Rose for Mayor website http://roseforsanjose.com/ .

    Not only did Councilmember Herrera not recluse herself from voting on this issue, she carried the motion to forgive this loan, furthering the perception that all was never transparent on the 18th floor of City Hall, despite Reed’s well publicized Sunshine reforms.

    The City gave this school roughly a $200,000 loan over 10-12 years ago and increased it over the years to the $600,000 amount it was in 2012. Not once over those years has the City required DCP to make any payments against this loan.

    San Jose taxpayers were none for the wiser though as they suffered through tremendous service cuts at every level. That $600,000 could have been used for any number of services that were cut or reduced.

    The justification offered by Council to forgive this loan to DCP was that it only had to add grades 9-12 to its Alum Rock campus. At the time Council forgave this loan, the DCP website was already advertising that those grades were available. That was virtually a non-existent bar to justify forgiving this loan.

    Councilmember Herrera is a terrible choice to be Vice Mayor, and shouldn’t even be a Council member after her FPPC-investigation worthy vote. It is unfathomable that then-mayor Reed and any of his allies were not aware of Rose’s personal connection to Downtown College Prep, and this blatant conflict of interest.

    • DEAR MR. ENGINEER:

      Thank you for your analysis and explanation of the DCP episode.

      Obscure. Opaque. Non-transparent. Misleading. Self-dealing.

      How many other charter schools had the guile or connections to get the City Council to slide a briefcase full of taxpayer provided hundred dollar bills (6,000 hundred dollar bills) in their direction and then look the other way?

      Taxpayers deserve to know how a small band of schoolmasters seem to have pulled off a daring day-light bank robbery with the entire city government looking on . . . and maybe even complicit.

      I gather that the perps are still at large?

      • What other Charters? Glad you asked…. Rocketship Charter for one. Where is/was Rocketships access? Councilman (now Mayor) Sam Liccardo and his former fiancé now wife Jessica Garcia-Kohl-Liccardo was Rocketship’s lobbiest.

      • Ace Charter School in Franklin McKinley SD also received $250,000 from Reed and Council in exchange for making some rooms available to the public after school hours. It would be interesting to know just how many members of the public got to exercise this privilege, especially with a public school that can provide the exact same thing just next door .

        The common tie between Ace and DCP is Ace Director Greg Lippman. He was co-founder of DCP with Jennifer Andaluz. Just so happens that Andaluz emceed Reed’s 2010 State of the City address. It’s too coincidental how it all ties together.

    • “Councilmember Herrera is a terrible choice to be Vice Mayor, and shouldn’t even be a Council member after her FPPC-investigation worthy vote. It is unfathomable that then-mayor Reed and any of his allies were not aware of Rose’s personal connection to Downtown College Prep, and this blatant conflict of interest.”

      I absolutely agree.

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