A voter-approved tax hike will help San Jose hire more police officers, repair potholed streets and provide a much-needed stopgap for projected budget deficits over the next few years.
Measure B’s quarter-cent sales tax, which will generate $30 million in the year ahead because of a late start and $40 million annually after that, has been rolled into the city’s latest spending plan. The 2015-16 fiscal year proposal for how to allocate some $2.9 billion of the city's annual budget comes up for review at Tuesday’s City Council meeting.
Mayor Sam Liccardo’s March budget plan won unanimous council approval earlier this spring. Like the earlier iteration, this latest budget proposal calls for targeted one-time public safety expenditures while urging caution to prepare for future shortfalls.
Liccardo thanked voters for passing the sales tax measure, which will allow the city to restore services cut over the past several years.
“After years of belt-tightening through fiscal reforms and other cost-cutting measures, the voters agreed that additional revenues are needed to continue restoring essential city services,” the mayor wrote in a statement.“As we move towards adopting a final budget for the upcoming fiscal year, it’s critical that we focus these additional dollars on our residents’ top priorities: enhancing public safety and repairing our deteriorating roads.”
With this new tax revenue, which kicks in by October, the city can spend $17.7 million on basic street repair, the mayor said. Starting later next year, the city aims to hire 41 new sworn police officers, according to City Manager Norberto Dueñas, who outlined the tax-spending proposal in a separate document.
The San Jose Police Department may also be able to afford new crime analysts, according to Dueñas' plan, which suggests putting up $210,000 for five new staffers. Meanwhile, the city wants to invest $4.6 million to restore six staff positions in two San Jose Fire Department companies and pay for a new emergency alert system.
The June budget message recommends increasing the city’s budget reserves by another $1.3 million and allocating $1 million in one-time funds to calm traffic at dangerous intersections by deploying crossing guards, among other measures.
Liccardo suggested spending $130,000 on the Community Emergency Response Team, a crowd-sourced crisis response training for volunteers. With all the major events that have taken place in San Jose lately, the mayor also wants to spend $127,000 on a portable mass warning siren and speaker system and another $42,000 to test it.
Other proposals include funds to reduce the kill-rate at the city’s animal shelter, offer swim lessons for more of the city’s youth and study the impacts of gambling on the community.
Several allocations tackle homelessness, with $330,000 proposed to expand Downtown Streets Team—a nonprofit that gives jobs and job training to homeless people, among other services—to Monterey Road. Grace Community Center, which offers a broad range of services to homeless people, could stand to gain $150,000 from the city, and possibly another $68,000 to expand its shower facilities.
Additionally, Dueñas suggested spending $2 million of the new sales tax revenue on rapid-rehousing for the homeless.
To view the rest of the budget proposals, click here. To view the city manager's five-year forecast and other information related to the next-year budget, click here.
“This spending plan represents an important step in restoring the services that our residents depend upon most,” Liccardo said. “However, given the uncertainty in future years, we must remain disciplined and prudent in all of our spending decisions.”
More from the San Jose City Council agenda for June 14, 2016:
- A buyer has offered $47 million for the historic Hayes Mansion.
- Library patrons who’ve racked up fines may get a one-month window to return items free of charge.
WHAT: City Council meets
WHEN: 1:30pm Tuesday
WHERE: City Hall, 200 E. Santa Clara St., San Jose
INFO: City Clerk, 408.535.1260
This article has been updated.
> despite projected budget deficits in the next few years.
Translation: The next tax increase is on the way.
I TOLD YOU SO! I TOLD YOU SO!
He’s already doing it the sj way, piss away piss away Its so easy when its free money! The SJ voter NEVER learns! Mark my word in the next year the police force will shrink even more and not grow like SAM says it will.
Also we are spending money on more studies. Translation: we will hire outside companies to analyze our problems, they will charge us hundreds of thousands, we will not implement many of their recommendations and the ones we do implement they will linger with zero back up support (vendor). These clowns have been doing business the same way for the last several decades. The new circus picks up where the old one left off. This cycle of bad learned behavior that these politicians pass on to the next must be broken. Its insanity.
“… study the impacts of gambling on the community.”
Everything that could ever be said about how gambling effects the community has been said to the council during the last five decades by police experts and heartbroken family members. None of it mattered. What really mattered was the effect of gambling revenues on city coffers, which is why we now have more gambling than ever in a city where blowhard politicians once promised it eradication.
41 new sworn police officers? I thought the mayor was running with 3 academies a year with 30 recruits in each one??
In 1964 LBJ declared the War on Poverty. Fifty two years later poverty is still winning. The same is true of the fight against homelessness. Hundreds of billions, if not trillions, of dollars have gone into these efforts, and both are abject failures…except for the people employed (government workers and the successful NGO grant writers) fighting these so-called wars, who have reaped those billions or trillions with no noticeable positive effect on either problem. When will the morons who keep voting for these programs ever learn??? If we had spent that same money on public safety and road maintenance instead of giving it to the blood suckers who staff these failed wars, we wouldn’t have a problem with either public safety staffing or safe, well maintained roads.
So keep this in mind and vote “no” on the VTA tax this fall.
“Starting later next year, the city aims to hire 41 new sworn police officers, according to City Manager Norberto Dueñas.” Is that in addition to the nearly 200 vacant, BUDGETED positions in the 2015/16 budget that carry over to 2016/17? The issue is not that San Jose can’t afford additional police officers, it’s that they can’t find additional officers. Public safety was a red herring to get more money out of taxpayer pockets.
agreed
How can you tell Sham Lie-car-doh is lying? Well, for one, read his book of empty promises- not one campaign promise has been realized.
Stay the Measure B course… It was ruled illegal. Hang tough with marijuana regulations… He capitulated. Hire 200 cops… We’re another 200 under the previous 200we were short!
The nation has seen what an incompetent huckster he is, why can’t San Joseans?!?