The Resident

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MAYOR PLEDGES TO LISTEN MORE TO RESIDENTS ON BUDGET FIXES

By Stephen Baxter

Responding to complaints from some residents and union leaders who say they have been excluded, San Jose leaders pledged on Feb. 12 to hold more public meetings to help resolve the city's projected $137 million budget deficit.

Since October 2007, the city has held at least 17 community and employee input opportunities, according to Mayor Chuck Reed's office, but union leaders said ideas have not been incorporated in Reed's preliminary recommendations.

"I don't know that we're going to have a plan that satisfies everybody," Reed said at the Feb. 12 meeting. He added that the council should have a full menu of options, including "all the information, all the criticisms, all the suggestions."

Critics charged that a Jan. 19 community priority-setting session at city hall did not allow enough time for neighborhood leaders to speak. After presentations from officials from the San Jose Redevelopment Agency and some city departments, participants were given a list of 10 budget priorities chosen by city staff and asked to rank their top four. Participants said some of the most important issues the budget should address were police staffing, infrastructure and maintenance, and municipal code enforcement of trees.

As the city's expenses have outpaced revenues, officials have made small cuts in services and had hiring freezes in the last seven years.

To address the problem, Reed has unveiled a three-pronged approach to take control of the projected budget deficit.

On Jan. 28, he asked the city's Budget Shortfall Advisory Group to consider increasing city revenue by one-third,

reducing city services by one-third and implementing city cost savings by one-third. The three-year strategy would spread sacrifices in programs and make it easier for residents to understand the plan, Reed said.

He also proposed that the city's budget be structurally balanced throughout the budget process, meaning that ongoing revenues and expense are balanced.

Negotiations on employees' salaries should take in to account the city's fiscal condition, its revenue growth and cost-of-living expenses, he added.

Neighborhood leaders have had mixed reactions to the proposal, and some said a 50-50 split of cost savings and revenue increases also would solve the problem.

Rufus Wesley has lived in San Jose for 32 years. He told the budget advisory group that the city should provide more services for seniors.

"Your consultants are saying, 'Stop programs,' but the goal of San Jose should be to have excellent neighborhood services," Wesley said.

Helen Chapman, a longtime parks advocate and a member of the Shasta Hanchett Park Neighborhood Association, indicated that her group deserved a voice in budget discussions.

"Is this process being rushed to meet a deadline?" she asked the city council Feb. 12. "Are we involving the community as best we can?"

The mayor's budget message is scheduled for March 7, and the council will discuss his proposals at its meeting on March 18. The city manager typically releases a budget in May, which is followed by another letter from the mayor on June 6 and the council's budget approval by the end of June.

Michelle McGurk, spokeswoman for the mayor, said that the budget process had been relatively closed in recent years, and that any attempt to open it benefits residents. She added that the structural budget deficit could not be fixed just by increasing sales tax revenue--the city would need the equivalent of 10 more Valley Fair shopping malls--and two-thirds of the city's expenses are locked in employee compensation.

"What the mayor has asked is for everyone to share the pain," she said. "If we do nothing, we end up having to cut services."

Survey says

City officials tried to gauge public opinion on fixing San Jose's budget in a phone survey conducted by Management Partners Inc. from Jan. 7 to 13.

The random phone survey asked 503 city residents and 502 likely voters on their views on budget choices. Compared with a similar study a year ago, more respondents said they were aware that the city has a projected budget deficit.

More than 7 in 10 respondents said they were "strongly opposed" to increasing the city sales tax and increasing taxes on customers' utility bills. Roughly 60 percent of those surveyed said they supported raising the hotel-room and business license taxes and shifting money from the real-estate transfer tax from capital projects to maintenance projects.

Most of those surveyed said they supported lowering entry-level salaries of city employees, selling underused city property and increasing leases on city-owned buildings to market rates.

To deal with the budget shortfall, respondents said they were most opposed to cuts in neighborhood crime prevention, closing bathrooms in parks and reducing the number of crossing guards and police.

City officials are gathering residents' comments and suggestions on the budget, and they can be e-mailed to antonio.guerra@sanjoseca.gov. Residents can also call 408.535.4800 for more information.