San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo announced Thursday that he will run for re-election in 2018. “We made great progress,” he said, “and there’s much more we can do.”
In 2014, the business-friendly mayor ran against labor-backed Santa Clara County Supervisor Dave Cortese. So far, no other contenders have emerged for next year’s race.
Liccardo said he spent his first few years as mayor rebuilding public safety, improving the city’s financial standing and confronting poverty. In his press release, he said he worked on making City Hall “as innovative as the San Jose community.”
He listed the following achievements from his first term:
- Settling pension reform battles, enabling the City to preserve $3 billion in savings to taxpayers while rebuilding the San Jose Police Department;
- Working with private sector employers to provide jobs for more than two thousand youth living in gang-impacted neighborhoods through the San Jose Works program;
- Co-leading a successful Measure B 2016 ballot measure campaign that will accelerate street repair and repaving, while making critical investments in BART and other congestion-relieving infrastructure;
- Working with business leaders to attract new flights that have made SJC the fastest-growing airport in the nation;
- Collaborating with neighboring cities to increase the minimum wage throughout the Valley;
- Attracting dozens of new tech employers – including Amazon, Google and Splunk – to create more high-wage jobs;
- Partnering with our schools to launch new after-school learning programs for children living in sixteen of our poorest neighborhoods;
- Expanding hours at every branch library to six days per week;
- Securing unanimous approval of a balanced budget for three consecutive years;
- Maintaining the highest credit rating of any major California city;
- Revitalizing Downtown San Jose with restaurants, shops, thousands of new residents and dozens of new tech businesses;
- Creating the nation’s largest “Community Choice Energy” program, which will enable residents to choose greener sources of electricity at a competitive price;
- Creating “Smart City Vision” that, for example, has brought dozens of permit processes online, and will expand broadband access for thousands of low-income students;
- Leading the rebuilding of flood-ravaged neighborhoods by raising $6.9 million in private contributions, securing more than $5 million in state support and enlisting the help of more than 4,000 volunteers;
- Recently launching a “BeautifySJ” campaign to clean the city, featuring such services such as free junk pick-up, an illegal dumping “rapid response” team and an easy-to-use “MySanJose” app for graffiti and other city service requests; and
- Working with non-profit partners and Santa Clara County to reduce veteran and chronic homelessness, rehabilitate deteriorating motels to low-cost apartments and build new affordable housing units for hundreds of our poorest neighbors.
“I’m proud of what we’ve accomplished, and I’m most proud that we did it together as one City,” Liccardo said, pointing people to his official website, www.SamLiccardo.com. “I’m honored to have served the best city in America for the last two and a half years, and I hope to continue to lead San Jose in the future.”
I think sam is a con man, his bogus Prop “B’ found unconstitutional after he knew it was and his bogus costs to the city for it’s prosecution as well as the paid off judge that found it so!!!!! You have criminals in your government and most of them are Mexicans. Viva San Enchilata. Soon you will be bankrupt but the stock market will continue to enrich my retirement. Go spicarenos!!!
I didn’t think this publication allowed bigots to spew their crap
“We made Progress and there is so much more to do”. Really what part of town will you drown, in 2018 Sam?
> Working with non-profit partners and Santa Clara County to reduce veteran and chronic homelessness,
You did WHAT?!
You just erected a gigantic flashing-neon “HOMELESS WELCOME” sign.
There is not going to be any reduction in “chronic homelessness” in San Jose.
Instead, communities in every corner of North America are going to be loading their homeless on buses and racing to be first in line for the San Jose Homeless Festival parade.
“If you build it, they will come”.
— Field of Dreams
I can’t really knock Sam for his time as mayor, and it seems like he’s worked hard to rebuild otherwise burnt bridges.
> it seems like he’s worked hard to rebuild otherwise burnt bridges.
Liccardo has not rebuilt ANY bridges — burnt or otherwise — with the Trump nation.
Trumpniks are a minority in San Jose, but they are solidly in the “anybody-but-Liccardo” camp. Just about any challenger to Liccardo starts with the Trumnpiks in his hip pocket.
“The enemy of my enemy is my friend”.
Bernie for mayor……………………….Yeh Not!
I was unaware that San Jose works was for kids “living in gang-impacted neighborhoods”. My friends kid did this and they definitely don’t. I check the website and it says nothing about gangs. I guess he said that to appeal to the Latino/east side votes he didn’t get the first time around.
“Liccardo said he spent his first few years as mayor rebuilding public safety”
If my stockbroker rebuilt my portfolio the way Mayor Liccardo has rebuilt the police department he too would avoid providing the actual numbers (and I might not want to see them).
If San Jose residents were served by a responsible and politically-neutral news organization the staffing numbers would be made public, contrasted with historic and contemporary norms, and the mayor would be exposed as an inveterate liar.
This is comical yet again. He touts that these are HIS achievements. So let me get this straight. The City of San Jose partially allows neighborhoods to be come “flood-ravaged” and he comes along and claims he lead efforts to raise secure funding to get it fixed. Good job Sam.
Same is true with the pension. He was a supporter of Measure B that he knew was flawed from day one. It costs the taxpayers millions. It made our city unsafe and police overtime is eroding away at any potential savings. Now he is taking credit for settling pension reform battles. The battles he created. Good job Sam.
Sam is like the firefighter who sets a residential fire, then responds, saves a kid in the burning building, and calls himself a hero.
JMO excellent analogy!!!
Cut library hours for years and then claim it his achievement when the city begins to had hours again. Good job Sam.
“making critical investments in BART and other congestion-relieving infrastructure”. Creating a Road Diet all over town. Spend millions repainting streets and adding bike lanes added to the congestion. Good job Sam.
All of these “achievements” might have happened while he was Mayor but very few were because of his efforts. Many were in the works years ago.
Epic Failure. A true politician.
> Spend millions repainting streets and adding bike lanes added to the congestion.
“Spend millions repainting streets and adding INSANELY DANGEROUS bike lanes added to the congestion.”
There. I fixed it for you.
Things we would like to know:
1. What are the year-by-year “homeless census numbers” for the last ten years?
2.What is the annual city and county spending for “homeless” support and services for the last ten years?
3.How many bicycle accidents have occurred on San Jose city streets, by year, for the last ten years?
4. How many fatal bicycle accidents and accidents involving injuries have occurred on San Jose city streets, by year, for the last ten years?
Why don’t we try to have an election based on some real data.
Perhaps we can replace our missing cops with the insane and homeless, there by solving two problems in one swell foop! They can patrol the town on Ford rental bikes rounding up MS13 gang members and handing out free meal tickets to the newly arrived homeless at the corner of Mayberry and Old Oakland road!
Sam probably grew up as one of these kids who was praised and awarded trophies for simply participating. Politics is the perfect career choice for such kids as a successful career is based not on one’s ability but on ego and self esteem no matter how misplaced.
Sam has made a seamless transition from caudled childhood to adulthood as now the fawning electorate fills the role of his parents and will surely award him the reelection trophy not because he’s any good but simply because he appears to be trying.
It’s a perfect storm of nitwits.
The guy is a slippery con artist. SJ deserves this guy.
Is this guy really serious? This has to be his ego talking. He was an architect in disassembling the PD and now he wants to take credit for fixing it…?!?!? Maybe its me…
Sam doesn’t care about you. Anybody who reads this. He is a proxy for developers and tech interests in this town. Most of those are not local and certainly don’t live in San Jose. He wants to build stack and rack housing for his developer buddies.