Balancing the Budget While Protecting Essential City Services

By Dave Cortese

Dave Cortese's private and public sector financial experience provides a strong foundation for balancing serious city budget shortfalls without cutting into essential services like police and fire protection. Attracting new jobs and businesses to San Jose is an important component of this, because new businesses generate much-needed revenues for the City.

He leveraged this financial understanding in the public sector while serving on the board of the largest high school district in California. Dave chaired the East Side Union High School District's budget committee through an $11 million deficit without layoffs and without cutting into the classroom experience.

Protecting Essential City Services

With both private and public sector financial experience as a foundation, Dave has been instrumental in serving on the city's finance committee as a San Jose councilman. He has helped balance serious city budget deficits since the downturn--without cutting into essential services like police and fire protection.

Dave will continue this successful financial track record as mayor of San Jose without jeopardizing our safety. He knows that the most important thing a mayor can do is keep our neighborhoods safe and secure.

Dave was also appointed to the Valley Transportation Authority (VTA) board when VTA faced a severe financial crisis. He co-chaired a Financial Stability Committee that kept VTA afloat, maintained service levels and set new financial standards for the organization.

Isn't this the kind of nuts and bolts budget experience we want our future mayor of San Jose to have? As a businessman, a school board member, a councilman and a VTA board member, Dave has been at the forefront of dealing with budget issues in a way that's sensitive to essential services.

Combating Waste and Bureaucracy to Get the Most Out of Every Tax Dollar

Dave has been instrumental in bringing people together to combat waste and bureaucracy. He has served on the San Jose City Council's finance committee for almost five years, bringing audit recommendations that combat waste to the full city council. This includes recommendations on facilities, code enforcement issues and city manager's office reforms.

In September 2003, Dave also recommended that the city auditor assist the city council in establishing performance measures for key economic development initiatives--including evaluations of key senior city staff members--to analyze how effectively these recommendations had been carried out. As mayor of San Jose, Dave will continue with similar efforts to combat waste and measure performance.

Bringing New Jobs and Businesses to San Jose

As a local businessman, Dave created hundreds of jobs. While serving on the board of trustees for the largest high school district in California from 1992 to 2000, Dave advanced vocational and college preparatory learning programs that he will continue to support as mayor of San Jose. At the San Jose City Council level, Dave served on the city's government development committee instrumental in advancing an economic development strategy for San Jose in September 2003.

On a regional basis, Dave successfully spearheaded the creation of a Joint Policy Collaborative (JPC) while serving as president of the Santa Clara County Cities Association (SCCCA).

JPC is a new regional body consisting of representatives of the 15 cities in the county, 15 business leaders in the county, and the CEOs of Joint Venture Silicon Valley, the Silicon Valley Leadership Group, and the San Jose Silicon Valley Chamber of Commerce. JPC brings together elected officials and business executives from the Valley to create new uniform policies and ordinances in the region that are business-friendly and streamline government processes.

With his real-world business background, his time spent strengthening our classrooms and his work on the city council growing San Jose's economic base, Dave has the right skills to take our city in the right direction. As mayor of San Jose, he will:

• Promote San Jose as a great place for business by improving the convenience and accessibility of doing business with the City
• Support a local preference policy to support our local businesses
• Help make the entire city of San Jose a wired and wireless city to:
  - address the concerns of large and small businesses that report huge productivity losses because employees can't depend on reliable cell phone coverage traveling throughout the county
  - allow more opportunities for businesses to prosper and for our residents to telecommute effectively
• Strengthen the city's relationship with San Jose State University and other regional universities so that they can continue to produce qualified employees for our driving industries