Speculation has run thick that San Jose will one day see a political showdown between Council rivals Sam Liccardo and Pete Constant in a race for mayor. Perhaps that’s just wishful thinking among people who can’t wait to watch the two pols go at it. But here’s a new twist. Fly just caught wind that Constant is entertaining the idea of running for Santa Clara County Sheriff instead. Makes sense, he says, considering his dual background as a cop and councilman. Constant obviously isn’t prepared to commit, but he did say yesterday that a run for sheriff was indeed on his mind. “It’s a possibility,” he says. “However, I wouldn’t run against Laurie Smith.” Why not? “I wouldn’t beat her,” he confesses. Smart move not to take on Smith, considering the two Republicans are friends and have historically supported one another. In the Blue Bastion of Santa Clara County, Republicans need to keep what friends they have. Smith, who was first elected sheriff in 1999, is expected to announce her re-election campaign today. If that happens, Constant says, he has some time to make up his mind about whether he will run for mayor…or maybe state assembly? “Anything is possible at this point,” Constant says. “I have about two years before I have to make a decision, and all my energy is focused on my re-election.”
San Jose Inside
San Jose Inside (https://www.sanjoseinside.com)
Run for Mayor against Reed, and win? I don’t think so!
Pete Constant a career politician? Say it isn’t so!
If he is well enough to run for Sheriff, a full time law enforcement officer position, it sounds like he does not need the disability pension he is currently getting from the SJPD.
Steve, I was wondering the same thing. Seems odd that one can go out on disability retirement from one public agency and then wind up working for another. just another self-serving flaw in how our government serves us, I guess.
I just received this from Pete Constant, and thought I’d share it.
As you know, the city is facing its eighth year of budget deficits. The projected deficit for fiscal year 2009-2010 is $85 million. Unfortunately, that does not include the effects of the State Budget crisis which, once again, will likely add tens of millions to the City’s deficit. The news for next year is even worse with a significantly higher projected budget deficit. The City Manager has proposed cuts to public safety, parks, libraries, and senior support services.
I have always felt that these essential city services must be funded before discretionary funding. It has become apparent that the community shares my sentiment. Throughout this year’s budget process the community has echoed my concerns. The citywide resident survey, the neighborhood priority setting session and numerous focus groups, including the 3-Year Structural Budget Deficit Elimination Plan Stakeholder Group, all agreed that essential city services should be preserved and that executive management should make personal sacrifices.
Yesterday, I submitted my recommendations to the Mayor for preserving essential city services. I recommended pay and benefit reductions for the Mayor, City Council and Executive Management. These reductions will result in savings of approximately $4,000,000. I made further recommendations that these savings be used to fund the following essential public safety services that are currently slated for elimination:
• The Park Ranger Program
• The Horse Mounted Unit
• The Office of Crime Prevention
Additionally, I recommended more openness in the accounting of Mayor and City Council expenditures to accurately show the public how we spend taxpayers’ money and requiring the Mayor and City Council to use the same budgeting policies and guidelines as the rest of the city. I took this a step further, using the money I saved this year in my office budget to help fund the Citizen CPR program. I am recommending that the Mayor and all City Council offices do the same with their surplus money. Cumulatively, this will provide the $1,700,000 needed to prevent the closure of Fire Station 33.
I am proud to provide budget solutions that reduce the structural budget deficit without tapping into precious reserve accounts that will surely be need as we continue to weather this economic crisis.
Please contact the Mayor and my colleagues on the City Council and urge them to support my common sense budget solutions.
Mayor Chuck Reed – 408-535-4900 – [email protected]
District 2 – Ash Kalra – 408-535-4902 – [email protected]
District 3 – Sam Liccardo – 408-535-4903 – [email protected]
District 4 – Kansen Chu – 408-535-4904 – [email protected]
District 5 – Nora Campos – 408-535-4905 – [email protected]
District 6 – Pierluigi Oliverio – 408-535-4906 – [email protected]
District 7 – Madison Nguyen – 408-535-4907 – [email protected]
District 8 – Rose Herrera – 408-535-4908 – [email protected]
District 9 – Judy Chirco – 408-535-4909 – [email protected]
District 10 – Nancy Pyle – 408-535-4910 – [email protected]
Together we need to make sure that common sense prevails and essential city services are not lost.
Sincerely,
Pete Constant
San José City Councilmember, District 1
San José City Hall | 200 E. Santa Clara St., 18th Floor | San Jose, CA 95113
408-535-4901 | [email protected] | http://www.sanjoseca.gov/district1/
PC for Mayor!? Another bad dream,…
Kathleen,
Pete is going in the right direction… thanks for the info. I wonder if our fair City’s Cultural Affairs Dept. is still fully staffed with 20 people.
Kathleen:
Given PC’s chronicled angst towards SJPD it is nice to see he understands saving the above are slam dunks. Still, IMO those were easy saves.
I would love to see what public safety items he is recommending be cut and what the trade-offs are. For instance, Mariachi-Fest funds vs funding towards Police/Fire protection…
4 – I received it too—3 times. Maybe he could spend a few bucks to clean-up his e-list or I might have to put a Constant filter on my computer.
#4-Kathleen,
Thanks for posting Pete’s letter. I’m happy that Pete has forwarded the recommendation that those folks on the 18th floor and other executive management take pay and benefit reductions. In addition I was happy to read this past Monday Councilmember Liccardo’s opinion piece in the Mercury News regarding Unions taking a pay reduction as well as the the memo that Mayor Reed released last week asking unions to forgo pay increases.
It’s good to know that folks in City Hall have been listing to residents concerns about not having to solely carry the burden of balancing the budget.
Pete’s suggestions are fine, but they don’t deal with the “structural deficit”, which is fueled in great part by firefighters and cops retiring with $400k+/year for life, with lifetime medical. (See May 23 Rant & Rave #2).
I am very pro-cop and pro-firefighter; but their retirement package, based on 3% of last five year’s wages times number of years in service is ridiculous. It should be at most 3% of each year’s pay, not 3% of their highest rate of pay.
Sinced Pete and Pierluigi seem to want to cut the deficit, please, have one of them post on SJI what the retirement packages of other city employees are. We already learned from one of P.O.‘s posts that a janitor @ The Taj Gonzal earns $123k/year in salary and benefits. What is their retirement package—3%/year of service, based on their highest-paid five years?
How much is the total budget for The Office of Cultural Affairs? Hey, people, when you’re broke, under water, take in less than 90% of what you spend, do you renew your opera tickets, go to Shoreline, Montalvo, etc. every performance, eat dinner at Manresa and The French Laundry? I’d bet you cut back on non-essentials, and concentrate of things like food and shelter. The city needs to do the same—jettison the non-esentials until it can pay for them.
Do you really think a custodian makes $123k? PO doesn’t always get it right and does a disservice to hardworking folks who don’t make that much. Do your own research and stop relying on spin from a councilmember.
#7-Reality,
” For instance, Mariachi-Fest funds vs funding towards Police/Fire protection.”
Funny you should ask that. I attended Pete’s neighborhood public forum on the budget Monday evening. Pete pointed out that the City Manager suggested giving $50K to the Mariachi Festival, and reducing the Neighborhood Watch Program by $55K. He was pretty much outraged. He pointed out several public safety programs that should be funded instead, including the Canine Unit, which is on the chopping block too.
The entire audience was outraged by the City Manager’s suggestion that we do such an irresponsible thing, me included. The entire audience felt public safety, and fireworks for the 4th should take precedence over any donation to the Mariachi Festival. They also agreed that the City should take the donations offered by the Friends of the Mounted Unit to keep that program, and to allow citizens to help keep, and fund fireworks in DT.
#10 – according to the salary results posted by the Merc http://www.mercurynews.com/news/ci_12116499 the highest paid custodian in San Jose made $63,485 in 2008.
#13-Doubting PO,
Right on, but it isn’t Pierluigi’s fault. He is being spoon fed those amounts by the City Manager’s Office. Those aren’t the only salary figures/benefits you should doubt. By lumping together salaries and benefits, it makes it appear that salaries are much larger than they are. Secondly, we don’t get the actual truth about how much money City employees, the Police and Fire Fighters put into their retirement, out of pocket. Nor do we get told how much money is going into the pockets of former Mayors and Council Members in benefits either!
The City Manager has lied about what the Police Mounted Unit would cost. She says it is in the millions. NOT. If the horses were taken a way, we would not save ANY money on the salaries or benefits of the Mounted Officers. The Officers would just be moved to another place. The “truth” about the cost is only 225K a year! And the Friends of the Mounted Unit have already committed to pay it! So, the city would actually SAVE $225K, and still provide a vital service to our community.
We must all be very careful of figures tossed around by the City Manager, the media, and the City. They aren’t accurate. Even Council Member Constant said trying to figure out where our money is going is like trying to find a needle in a haystack. That of course is the intention of the City manager. Her job is to protect her staff at all times, not us!
If Council Members joining in study groups on their own time can’t figure the money out, how can we hold anyone accountable for where the money has been, and where it will go in future? YIKES!
I don’t know Deb and her management style to comment on her tenure as SJ City Manager, however it seems to me that more and more I am hearing people be critical of her decisions making process(city council members, union leaders and citizens).
Isn’t it about time that the City of San Jose, now that it has grown to over 1 million people start seriously considering the idea of creating a stong mayor system of government? Large cities (and those even smaller) across the state have these systems in place already, including: San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Oakland. This way at least there would be more direct accountability to the people who could vote out a Mayor if he or she was doing an inadequte job.
15 – It didn’t work with Gonzales. He got re-elected even though he was destroying the city from within.
He brought in a weak city manager who did whatever the Mayor wanted and he had a council that didn’t have the guts to stand up to him. And all that was done with, theoretically, a council-manager form of government. Can you imagine how much more damage he could have done if we had a strong mayor system? I shudder to think about it.
Paul,
Be careful what you wish for – read up a little on the budget problems of Mayor Newsom’s S.F. or Mayor VivaLaRaza’s L.A.
It goes to show then that it isn’t the form of government that dictates the type of mayor you get, but the individual elected. A weak council also shouldn’t be an excuse but yet a more convincing argument that voters need to do a better job of choosing their elected officials and stop relying on the opinions of special interest and a candidates party identification.
We are the 10th largest city in the country with a population of over 1 million people and our big city mayor has the following duties and responsibilities according to the city charter:
(a) The Mayor shall have the power to make recommendations to the Council on matters of policy and program which require Council decision.
(b) Not less than annually, the Mayor shall address the citizens of the City concerning the current status of City affairs and articulating the policy plans which the Mayor proposes for the City during the ensuring year.
(c) In addition, the Mayor, at other times during the year, may inform the citizens concerning any matters of policy or program which the Mayor believes are for the welfare of the community.
(d) If the Mayor recommends any increases in the City budget, the Mayor shall recommend the method of financing such expenditures. If the Mayor proposes the curtailment of any service, the Mayor shall provide specific recommendations and the reasons for the proposal.
(e) The Mayor shall preside at meetings of the Council and shall have a vote as a member of the Council. The Mayor shall have no veto powers;
(f) The Mayor shall have authority to preserve order at all Council meetings, to remove or cause the removal of any person from any meeting of the Council for disorderly conduct, to enforce the rules of the Council and to determine the order of business under the rules of the Council;
(g) The Mayor shall have the power to direct and supervise the Public Information Office of the City.
(h) The Mayor shall exercise such other powers and perform such other duties as may be prescribed by the Council, provided the same are not inconsistent with this Charter.
Basically the Mayor as outlined above has responsibilities that council members aren’t prohibited from doing themselves (see a and d), or council members do on a smaller scale in their districts (see b and c) or the mayor of a other local municipalities like Campbell (population ≈40k), Los Gatos (population ≈30k) and Palo Alto (population ≈60k,) who elect their mayor amongst the council (see b, e and f). The only power our Mayor seems to have that San Jose councilmembers and other small city mayors don’t have is the power to direct and supervise the Public Information Office of the City (see g).
It seems to me then that we might as well just do away with the the position of Mayor as we now know it, make them an 11th elected member of the council and have the council elect the mayor rotationally each year based on seniority. At least then the city could save the difference it costs between staffing a the mayors office and a council office.
I don’t think though this would be an ideal system for our city. Our Mayor continues to be overshadowed by their counterparts in San Francisco (population ≈776k) and Oakland (population ≈400k) for whom year after year are looked at as potential candidate for state wide office (Gavin Newsome, Willie Brown and Jerry Brown), whereas here in San Jose I can’t think of one mayor who has ever been considered for state-wide let alone won.
A higher profile mayor would give the City of San Jose more influence in Sacramento and Washington and provide us more media coverage that would provide us exposure across the county further encouraging people and businesses to make San Jose a destination.
Let’s do away with our “small town” mentality and start seriously consider the idea of making San Jose a strong-mayor form of government, even if just on a trial basis much like what the City of San Diego has done.
http://www.PeteConstantForMayor.org