Willow Glen Resident

News

San Jose adds new comission, focus will be on quality of life

By Eli Segall

San Jose has nearly two dozen citizen advisory commissions that cover everything from parks and libraries to high-rise zoning changes. Residents expect to add one more--the Strong Neighborhoods Commission.

The commission will be a 30-member, all-volunteer body composed of three neighborhood leaders from each of San Jose's 10 city council districts. The commission will offer insight into a broad range of quality of life issues, such as traffic, potholes and littering. Like the other commissions, the group will report directly to the city council.

Ed Rast, president of the Willow Glen Neighborhood Association, has been active in helping to form the commission and said it is a logical extension of the existing city advisory boards.

"There's a youth commission, a senior commission; it's totally appropriate to have this," Rast said.

A public forum was held Jan. 6 at San Jose City Hall to discuss the role of the commission, how to ensure its recommendations are heard and who is qualified to serve on it. The redevelopment agency's Strong Neighborhoods Initiative Project Advisory Committee devised the idea of the commission.

City officials hope to form neighborhood caucuses to elect commissioners by fall 2007 and launch the commission's first monthly meeting in January 2008.

"We need to encourage inclusiveness," said Gilbert Wong, a north Almaden property owner. Wong, a Cupertino resident, disagreed with the rule that all commissioners must reside in San Jose.

"Property owners should have some kind of voice, too," he said. "We also care about these neighborhoods."

Cities such as Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., have similar advisory bodies, but San Jose will have the nation's most comprehensive and influential one, said SNI PAC chairman Ernest Guzman.

San Jose resident Autumn Gutierrez expects the commission to increase daily communication between residents and city officials. Currently vice chair of the SNI PAC, Gutierrez first became involved in local issues 10 years ago and since then has seen drastic improvements.

"We've moved mountains and miles since then," Gutierrez said. "City staff wouldn't even talk to me. There was no forum to get our voice across, and certainly not in a comprehensive way like this."

The neighborhood commission was first conceived of more than a year ago as a way to help extend the work of the SNI PAC, which was created in 2000 but is scheduled to dissolve in June, Guzman said. The PAC represents San Jose's 19 SNI neighborhoods, which receive redevelopment agency monies for neighborhood beautification and commercial investment. The PAC will apply for a six-month extension to help establish the new commission, Guzman added.

The city council must vote to approve the formation of the commission. That vote has not been scheduled, but according to Guzman it will occur by June.