San Jose Inside

Last week, San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed and former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown offered stark comments and opinions on the subject of runaway public employee compensation and pensions.  In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Reed suggested that the “seeds” of the problem were planted almost 30 years ago.

The Topeka, Kansas–based Westboro Baptist Church, notorious for picketing at the funerals of American soldiers because its members believe God is punishing the country for condoning homosexuality, has announced plans to stage a protest outside of San Jose’s Gunderson High School this Friday. The church says it’s coming to San Jose because Gunderson is staging a production of The Laramie Project, a play that tells the true story of the murder of a young gay man in 1998.

UPDATED WITH CORRECTION: Firefighters Union Local 230 and the city are on the verge of reaching an agreement that would reduce the deficit and possibly even get back some jobs. The most radical concession involves the introduction of a two-tiered retirement plan, and distinguishes between employees hired before and after the agreement is signed. It will be the first such plan for public employees in the entire country.

What is going down in Wisconsin with the teacher’s union is a Category 5 hurricane. In order for us to really “win the future” we must be smart and collaborative. We cannot declare war on public employee unions and think our future would be brighter. It will not.

The City Council will be back in session Tuesday after no meeting was held last week due to Presidents Day.

San Jose begins taxing medical marijuana dispensaries on Tuesday, following the passage of Measure U in the last election. To help ease the transition for dispensary owners, City Hall held a seminar on Monday morning on how to calculate and pay the 7 percent tax.

In past blogs I have expressed my concern about the cost to our city of too much housing. Specifically, housing that does not pay its own share of revenue. One example I have pointed out—and constantly been the lone vote against—is affordable housing.

In what has become an annual refrain, we again sit at a crossroads of bad choices about cutting services and jobs, far worse even than last year. In June, we will slash many crucial services and lay off hundreds of city employees—as many as one out of every five—to resolve a budget deficit that will likely exceed $120 million. Demonizing our hard-working employees does not amount to much of an answer. After all, employees fairly bargained for these benefits.

The task remains for elected officials today to show renewed courage and fiscal sense. That requires a more difficult conversation, one about whether and how to cut retirement benefits that our current employees and retirees have long relied upon. While constitutional protections make it difficult, if not impossible, to do so through traditional mechanisms of collective bargaining, we need to work with our unions to find a new bargain with our employees: one which is both fair and sustainable.

With their city facing a $110 million budget deficit, more and more San Jose residents are weighing into the budget debate. In a recent letter to the Merc, San Jose resident Robert Lindley argued that San Jose residents should be “ashamed” for demanding that their public servants should “give up pay and retirement security so that those citizens will pay no more taxes.” Lindley goes on to say that “the city’s budget shortfall is the responsibility of all residents.” Really?

Mayor Chuck Reed sat down with the Wall Street Journal for a Q&A article published today, and the responses were strikingly similar to the State of the City Address he delivered last Thursday.

Instead of going back to the bargaining table following Mayor Chuck Reed’s State of the City address last week, some San Jose police officers started looking for a one-way ticket out of town. 

It was the threat of the Soviets leapfrogging us with their launch of Sputnik that spurred America to refocus on creating a generation of the best mathematicians and scientists. And Houston, we have a problem. The nation that put the first footprints on the moon in 1969 and built amazing vehicles that transport humans to orbit the earth—the Space Shuttle—is losing an important race in American education.

Sick leave payouts are part of the City of San Jose budget deficit problem. These payouts do not discriminate; every employee including management accrues sick leave, and if employed with the City long enough, will be eligible for sick leave payout when they retiree. One exception is that councilmembers do not accrue sick leave.

Most of Mayor Chuck Reed’s State of the City Address, delivered at the Civic Center this evening, dealt—in sometimes painful detail—with the budget mess that the mayor has been forced to deal with since he took office.

He began by defending the city’s Redevelopment Agency, which, like RDA’s throughout the state, is under attack from Sacramento.

Last week, RDA director Harry Mavrogenes and the San Jose City Council said they would work to keep the Redevelopment Agency going despite Gov. Jerry Brown’s intention to shut down agencies statewide.

An article in the Mercury News closed with the following paragraph: “The governor’s finance office said Brown has not wavered on his position and cited a study released Tuesday by the state’s Legislative Analyst’s Office. The report offers support for Brown’s plan to eliminate the agencies and replace them with other ‘tools to finance economic development.’”