San Jose’s Public Finance Meeting: Being in a stakeholder’s shoes

Introduction:

A reflection of a public finance meeting, summarizing and analyzing the key points discussed and understanding at least one stakeholder position represented.

About:

City: San Jose

Meeting: 2020 San Jose Budget Town Hall

Time: 6:30 pm to 8:00pm

Place of the meeting: MLK Main Library-SJPL Works Meeting Room, San Jose

Convener of the meeting: Office of Mayor Sam Liccardo — City of San Jose

Name of the participating individuals: Caroline Kuras, George Steiner, Louis Chavarin, etc

Title of the agenda: Mayor’s Budget Town Hall Meeting

Purpose of the agenda: For the neighborhood leaders of San José to understand the city’s 2020–21 Operating Budget process, give feedback, and participate in a budget balancing exercise.

Aerial image of San Jose at night

Overview:

Mayor Sam Liccardo kicked off the 2020 Budget Town Hall with an overview of the annual budget and its subdivisions into three main funds, explaining what the general fund is and how it is the most important chunk of the budget that is directly relevant to the priorities of the residents and local business owners. Further elaborating on the general fund, he went on to explain the breakdown of its revenue sources. With its leading source of revenue being the property tax, followed by the sales tax and utility taxes. The slice of the pie with “licenses and permits” have seen a steady growth to 8.01% by the year of 2019 with the stagnancy of other revenues and increasing priorities of the city.

Challenges:

1. Beginning with the fundamental reality that San Jose is a very thinly staffed city hall. The city has much lesser staff per capita compared to any other big cities in the country, in all departments, making it imperative to work smarter and the government is challenged to provide the services that the residents deserve.
2. The jobs-housing balance in the city: A very large share of the city’s land mass is used for housing. Enormous conversions of commercial and industrial land to housing in the 50s to the 80s were done for creating the city into a wonderful suburb. As a result currently, the city has to provide a significant amount of services to the residents but receive relatively less money from employers, that is the revenue from industries and jobs that the neighboring cities enjoy.
3. The biggest source of revenue for the city is property tax. Apart from the fact that this tax needs to be shared with other governments and districts, there has also been a freeze in its revenue due to Prop 13.
4. Pension liability, that needs to be paid off.

Top 3 priorities of residents last year:

1. Safety
2. Economic health (having jobs)
3. Ease of travel (mostly concerns regarding the traffic)

Top investment priorities of the Mayor for 2019:

1. Saving for a recognized upcoming recession and paying off some debts.
2. Public safety: Added 300 police officers, current budget for 1151 officers but pushing.
3. Dealing with high cost of housing and livings
4. State investment in solving homelessness: Shelters, Tiny homes, Navigation centers.
5. Combating blight: RAPID, using the storefront activation grant, beautify SJ, etc.
6. Environment: Purchase land to preserve coyote valley
7. Equity investments

Stakeholders:

Categorizing the residents of San Jose in the meeting:

1. Member of a multi-generational household in San-Jose
2. Small business owners
3. Single Family house owners facing parking insufficiency due to increase in density.
4. Single family house owners facing high house price, looking to build an ADU.
5. Elderly residents.

POV of small business owner:

As a small business owner of a books and toys shop on the meridian avenue it has not been a good economic year. The boutiques and other mom and pop stores in the surroundings are not doing well either and he realizes there is a much bigger picture that needs to be addressed. The 2020 Budget Town Hall conducted for the interaction with neighborhood leaders as the first step in the budget process seemed to be a good opportunity.

A firsthand experience at “Small Business Saturday Event” — an initiative by the local government to spark conversation immediately explains that it’s a myopic view on this large issue of the brick — mortar shops dying on the vine. The sealed deal of the upcoming google campus seems like a definite fall for the small retailers like me. The franchises and food retails thrive while driving us local businesses out. The City Council has encouraged mixed use development across the city, in fact there is one that has been constructed and ready to be rented out on meridian avenue itself, but the skyrocketing rents for retails spaces are just additional burden. The tech boom has kept the minimum wages consistently rising making it difficult to find workers and yet no incentives are part of the budget in any form during the last fiscal year.

The 2020 Budget town hall was rather disappointing as there was not much of a stimulating discussion towards helping small retailers. The meeting introduced an online application to reflect the citizens priorities through it, but unfortunately their voice would not be heard through those rigid categories set by them.