On Tuesday, Aug. 3, the City Council will decide on five possible ballot measures that would go before San Jose voters in November. So far, the Council has budgeted money to place two items on the ballot; therefore the council must choose two of the five. However a group known as Baseball San Jose has offered to pay for the cost of putting the Downtown Baseball Stadium question on the ballot, so three ballot measure may go before voters.

On the morning of July 8, County Assessor Larry Stone met District 1 Supervisor candidate Mike Wasserman at Bill’s Café on the Alameda. By the end of breakfast, Stone, a lifelong Democrat, offered Republican Wasserman his endorsement in the upcoming November election.

“I knew going into the meeting that if in fact our values were comparable that I was prepared to endorse him,” Stone says. “I called Forrest [Williams]. I guess I wanted him to hear my decision, not find out from the press. It was a very short but cordial conversation.”

The two city council meetings held last week regarding the budget and labor negotiations demonstrated the need to make all labor negotiations public. If you are interested, you can click on this link and see for yourself the drama and trauma that took place that still does not have closure. This week’s meeting, June 22, will hopefully close this chapter.

Thirty minutes before the San Jose City Council went into closed session to decide whether to impose a 10 percent pay cut on public employees, Councilmember Pierluigi Oliverio addressed the large group of union members and other citizens gathered for the meeting.

“If you’re angry, it’s ok to be angry,” Oliverio said, “because the system is all screwed up.”

Last Tuesday, the City Council decided to delay its vote on the 10 percent wage cut for city employees, after five unions provided a counter-offer that they claimed would be the equivalent of the proposed cut.

However, after studying the offer, City Manager Debra Figone and City Attorney Richard Doyle determined that it was unacceptable. Figone recommended the city impose the cuts and implement the Mayor’s budget proposal.

The motion passed on an 8 to 3 vote, with council members Pyle, Kalra and Campos opposing. The Council deferred action on wage and benefit concessions with the five labor unions until the Council meeting of Tuesday, June 22.

It’s getting to be like a game of chicken. On Tuesday evening, City Council decided to delay its vote on the 10 percent wage cut for city employees after five unions provided a counter-offer that would be the equivalent of the proposed cut. They are now ready to study the offer, and to meet again on Thursday or Friday to decide whether to accept it.

Monday: Medical Cannabis Outreach Meeting
The first outreach meeting regarding medical cannabis collectives was held Monday night at City Hall. Even though the meeting was held late in the process, it was well attended with over 150 people. There were two main groups present: residents and collective patients. Not one person spoke against compassionate use of medical marijuana in San Jose, however, both groups agreed that the locations should be away from schools, parks, daycare centers, etc. Last October, when I initially brought this issue to the Rules Committee, I advocated that we restrict where collectives can locate and include setbacks from locations like schools, etc.

It looks like the irrepressible Robert Cortese has picked a pet issue to back this election season: repealing San Jose’s fireworks ban. Two Tuesdays ago, the magnificently-coiffed karaoke king of San Jose-turned District 9 council candidate turned up at the San Jose City Council meeting. Sensing an infringement on every pyrotechnically inclined, red-blooded American’s right to handle gunpowder while partying, he pleaded for the council to change its ban on explosives. By the looks of his Facebook page, he’s also trying to drum up a grassroots effort to bring fireworks back to the city.

The 2009-2010 Santa Clara County Civil Grand Jury today released a 33-page report titled Cities Must Rein in Unsustainable Employee Costs that says, “Employee costs are escalating in the cities of Santa Clara County, revenues are not keeping pace with these increases and cities are cutting services.” The Grand Jury looked at rising wages, health insurance, pensions, and vacation, holiday, and sick leave and made recommendations to control costs.

San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed seems to be headed for a showdown with the city’s unions over the way union pay negotiations are settled. In a May 5 San Jose Rotary Club speech, Reed called publicly for a revision of the City Charter in an audacious move to wrest power away from the unions representing the city’s firefighters and police force. Harking back to his days as a labor lawyer, Reed pointed to a clause in the Charter that forces the city into binding arbitration if and when negotiations with the unions break down.

This year, the San Jose City Council is forced to make drastic cuts. Unfortunately, the city of San Jose has had a deficit for the last decade even before the Great Recession. In fact, even without the recession, San Jose’s financial obligations are significantly higher then revenues coming into the city.

As a result current elected officials are left with trade offs often having to pit necessary services against each other. This year the deficit is $118 million. This is more then the entire library, transportation, planning, code enforcement, information technology, city attorney and public works departments combined.

Minh Duong, a 31-year-old furniture store owner vying to oust City Councilmember Madison Nguyen from her seat representing District 7, got a huge boost last month when the San Jose Silicon Valley Chamber of Commerce gave him its endorsement.

Duong says that winning the ChamberPAC’s support was a huge shock, even to him. Before this election season, the ChamberPAC consistently supported Nguyen, even backing her in her 2009 recall campaign.

Things seemed pretty rosy back in 2007. Sure, the city was running a deficit, but the economy seemed solid enough for City Councilmembers to vote themselves a 20 percent raise, upping their salary from $75,000 to $90,000. After all, many city employees were earning more than them. Then came the crash. Then came the overwhelming deficit. Then came the pink slips and the pink slips and the pink slips—1,300 of them this month alone.

The Mayor has already asked city employees to take a 10 percent, across the board pay cut, noting that the average salary for city workers is now $88,000 (yes, average), just slightly less than City Councilmembers make.

Do the citizens of San Jose have an advocate on the San Jose City Council?  At times like these I’m not so sure.  When it comes to talking about the San Jose City Government budget and the efforts to close the over $116 million deficit, the focus of debate is not about providing for optimum city service levels, it’s about making payroll.  Seriously, no one is really talking about quality of service, they’re talking about salaries and pensions.  In San Jose, the emphasis is on filling pockets instead of potholes!

With all union employees being asked to take a 10 percent pay cut, it stands to reason that the city’s top-paid managers could take a cut of their own. They offered to, without even being asked. Alex Gurza, San Jose’s Director of Employee Relations, says that the city’s top managers are willing to take a 5 percent cut now, with an additional 5 percent cut at some later date. The cuts should be approved by City Council toward the end of the month.

After the ousting of Barbara Attard two years ago, a false-start with City Auditor Chris Constantin and a prolonged “interim” period with Shivaun Nurre, the city of San Jose finally has a new independent police auditor—LaDoris Cordell, a retired Santa Clara County superior court judge and former Palo Alto city councilmember. UPDATED 7pm.

Last week, I attended budget meetings in council districts 9 and 10 as well as the labor unions’ budget meeting at the Tully library. The people that attended this meeting were mostly union members and city council staff. It was admitted at the meeting that significant layoffs were inevitable since the deficit is enormous.

Ideas were presented on what money-saving measures could be implemented and what new sources of revenue could be found to balance the $118 million budget gap. Ideas ranged from replacing natural lawns in parks with artificial turf (lower ongoing maintenance costs, but more costly upfront) to turning down the air conditioning at city hall during the summer.