League of Women Voters of California Education Fund
	Santa Clara County, CA November 4, 2014 Election
	Candidates Answer Questions on the Issues Mayor; City of San Jose

The questions were prepared by the League of Women Voters of San Jose/Santa Clara and asked of all candidates for this office.     See below for questions on Concerns, Budget, Leadership, Balancing interests, Campaign financing Click on a name for candidate information.   See also more information about this contest. 1. What concerns are of particular importance to the city and how would you address them? Answer from Sam Liccardo: Public Safety Fiscal Reform Broadening Economic Opportunity/ High-Wage Jobs Please see my specific plan for tackling each of these challenges in the book I wrote describing my vision for San José, "Safer City, Smarter Government," which can be downloaded for free at http://www.samliccardo.com. On public safety, I've introduced (and Council has passed) my plan to identify over $35 million in fiscal reform savings to accelerate hiring of police officers and to improve police retention. We're using those funds today to add a third police academy to accelerate hiring, and to restore pay to improve officer retention. I've introduced efforts to better leverage technology to more effectively use our officers' scarce time, such as data analytics and my recently-approved on-line voluntary registry for private video cameras. I'll expand the use of civilians, by expanding our Community Service Office program, to take on report-writing, evidence collection, and other tasks. I'll vastly expand a summer jobs program for at-risk teens, using existing resources to employ young adults in restoring our deteriorating parks, or constructing water conservation projects. I'll lead a restoration of "community policing," by keeping beat officers on neighborhood patrols to restore trust and communication, and improving the capabilities of officers to speak second languages with incentives and training. I'm pushing to more effective deploy smaller, more nimble medical response teams for emergency medical calls, in place of the slower, more costly approach of dispatching four firefighters on a fire truck or engine. We can only restore services if we can pay for them, however, and reckless spending decisions on retirement benefits has resulted in the growth of annual retirement benefit costs by over $240 million in the last decade. That forced painful service cuts and layoffs until the passage of pension reform in 2012. As Mayor, I will continue to push for fiscal reforms, including the full implementation of the pension reform measure that voters overwhelmingly approved in 2012. Lastly, we can do more to help the thousands of our neighbors who have been left behind in the Valley's economic recovery. In my book, I discuss ways that we can create the conditions to boost manufacturing jobs in San José, reform the byzantine city permitting system that prevents too many small businesses from staring and flourishing, and help our residents improve their job skills through on-line certification programs available at every local library. Answer from Dave D Cortese: The major issues facing the City of San Jose are adequate funding of city services (mainly public safety and the needs of safety net families), traffic congestion and economic stimulus. Divisive leadership at City Hall is worsening conditions in our community. My long-term vision is to: 1) immediately restore adequate funding packages to San Jose's workforce in order to bolster public safety and reopen community centers and libraries so San Jose can once again be a true "Safe City" in the USA and families can enjoy safe recreation and educational activities locally. These funding packages can compete with CalPERS jurisdictions or merge with the CalPERS system. 2) Reprioritize transportation funding towards rebuilding aging infrastructure, specifically local streets and roads. 3) Seek out additional opportunities to protect and grow the city's tax base through regional, statewide and national partnerships + relationships I have been developing over my last several years in elective office. 2. San Jose budget difficulties have resulted in unprecedented cuts to staff and services. How will you deal with coming shortfalls? Restoring some of the City services? And, if you think the City needs additional resources, what are your ideas for increasing revenues? Answer from Sam Liccardo: I will ensure we fully implement the voters' will in passing (with 70% support) the 2012 pension reform measure (Measure B). While that initiative has already saved $25 million last year alone, retirement costs continue to rise rapidly (by $38 million last year) because litigation has prevented full implementation of Measure B. I will continue defending the voters' will for pension reform in court, or else we will never restore police, libraries, and other critical spending priorities. We also need to better focus our limited public dollars on our residents' highest priorities. Most cities like San José have a budgetary process that publicly vets only the incremental changes in the budget--the 2% increase in spending, or the 3% reduction--each year. Yet the great majority of budgetary expenditures continue "under the radar"-- through programs that are routinely approved from one year to the next, with little public scrutiny. I've proposed a modified version of an old idea, which I call "Reset Budgeting": rather than looking only at how we spend the new dollars each year, we start at zero. That is, we assume that none of the prior-year's programs or positions will be re-authorized. The public and Council can then best assess where our first dollars should be spent, not merely the marginal 2% increase from last year. We can better scrutinize the past performance of existing programs, to determine whether we'd rather cut or modify that spending to re-focus dollars on our highest priorities. We can launch this "Reset Budgeting" effort a few departments at a time, until the entire budget has been scrubbed within my first term in office. In my book, which can be read at http://www.samliccardo.com, I also propose a series of cost-effective initiatives to improve services within our limited means. For example, we can rely on two-person paramedic units to improve emergency medical response, rather than slower, more costly four-firefighter trucks and engines. We can repave more miles off roads by relying on a method called "cold in-place recycling" that saves money and reduces greenhouse gas emissions. To increase revenues, we need to support the growth of jobs in the city, particularly better-paying jobs accessible to residents without college degrees. For example, we can expand manufacturing with low-cost incentives for revitalizing older industrial buildings, and we can boost job skills for residents with computer-aided learning programs in our libraries. Answer from Dave D Cortese: I believe we can control shortfalls and restore city services through: Greater contributions to benefits by employees Consolidation of services Prioritization of ending fund balances toward essential services Revenue increase will come in large part through making it easier for businesses to open and operate in San Jose. This includes: Comprehensive deregulation of small business downtown and open up our streetscape to vendors and artisans. Rebuilding and revamping the Planning department to create a volume operation that can move permits and environmental reviews quickly and competitively. San Jose has a historically low tax base. To expand sales tax generation I will call for a comprehensive retail opportunity study across all geographic areas of the city. This is to determine what retailers may see as opportunities not yet designated in the General Plan. 3. How would you work with individual Council members and the Council as a whole to further your plans and agenda? Describe your leadership style. Answer from Dave D Cortese: I have been in elective office for over 20 years at the school district, city and county levels of government. I have brought warring sides together over the most contentious issues and achieved common ground. Having worked in both the public and private sectors for several years, I understand how to identify the interests of both sides and how to create a synergy of these interests. I did this on the San Jose City Council with just cause. I did this on the Board of Supervisors and helped achieve over $200 million in concessions with our bargaining units. I intend to continue this pattern of leadership and bridge building. Answer from Sam Liccardo: Four current or former San José Mayors--Susan Hammer, Tom McEnery, Ron James, and Chuck Reed--support me because of my ability to reach across the aisle and lead. I'm proud to be supported by groups on a wide ideological spectrum + left-leaning groups like the Sierra Club and the Santa Clara County Democratic Club, and right-leading groups like the Santa Clara County Association of Realtors and the Silicon Valley Chamber of Commerce. They recognize that we need a mayor who will be pragmatic, and rise above partisan squabbles to get things done. During my 7 ½ years on the city council, I've done just that. I've worked collaboratively with my council colleagues and stakeholders to address critical city-wide issues. For example, amid very contentious debates over pension reform and public safety, my plan for restoring police staffing and improving retention passed the Council in the Fall of 2013 by a vote of 10-1. In September of 2014, Council unanimously approved my proposal to improve safety within our budget by creating a voluntary SJPD registry for video cameras. Even during the most contentious of times, I'm able to reach across the aisle to build coalitions to get things done. My approach is simple: start where we all agree. We all want a safer city, and we want to restore services. If we start at principles of agreement rather than points of dissension, we can find ways to get critical objectives accomplished. My collaborative approach has worked not simply within the Council, but in my regional efforts as well. In 2008, I worked with key technology and business leaders and unions to help lead a ballot initiative that has brought BART to San José, now under construction and due to open in Berryessa (under budget) in 2017. In 2010, I led a successful Countywide effort to improve funding for woefully inadequate pothole repair and road repaving. Each of these efforts required support of political adversaries, working together, toward a common goal. As Mayor, I'll continue to work collaboratively to get things done. 4. How would you balance City-wide, district and interested parties' needs and desires? Answer from Sam Liccardo: A mayor must first focus on the long-term interests of all of San José's residents, above any powerful groups and parochial interests. I've had a record of doing so, which is why four San José mayors support me in this race. That record includes: Working with Mayor Reed and the Council majority to push for pension reform, which 70% of our voters approved in 2012, to generate savings to hire more police officers; Leading an effort in 2008 to create funding to address homelessness and affordable housing needs by imposing fees on housing developers profiting from high housing costs; Crafting a city investment policy in 2010 to redirect over $600 million in city savings toward banks with superior records of mitigation of home foreclosures, to incentivize our banking industry to support struggling homeowners; Standing up against powerful developers who sought to expand sprawl in San José's hillsides and open spaces, by leading the effort to craft a General Plan that halts sprawling housing development to reduce negative traffic and environmental impacts of growth Successfully leading the opposition to a 2012 ballot measure crafted by powerful card clubs to expand their operations in San José. At the same time, we can more meaningfully engage community participation in City decisions by making City Hall more inclusive and transparent, so that neighborhood associations and other local groups can play a larger role in decision-making. For example, I recently launched an initiative called "participatory budgeting," which I describe in my book, at http://www.samliccardo.com. Participatory budgeting enables residents directly allocate scarce public dollars within their own communities, by creating a process for stakeholders to gather to identify the top priorities and craft local budgets. Community members might identify needs, such as improving lighting at a local park, installing street infrastructure to slow speeding traffic, or addressing nearby blight, and then prioritize those needs for public funding. As we've seen in other cities that have launched participatory budgeting efforts, community members often craft creative approaches for tackling these problems, enabling us to stretch scarce public dollars by leveraging volunteer energy, or grants from local employers. Most importantly, by directly engaging residents with one another and City Hall, we improve community engagement in civic decision-making, and we build relationships among neighbors, all of which make San José a better place to live. Answer from Dave D Cortese: I believe my voting record reflects thoughtful deliberation, issue by issue. My public calendar reflects my willingness and interest to meet with all parties and hear their concerns on each issue. 5. How much money do you expect to raise/spend on your race, and how will you assure voters that financial contributions will not affect your decisions/positions should you be elected? Answer from Sam Liccardo: Over 2400 people have contributed to my campaign so far, in amounts ranging from $10 to $1,100. Their names, contribution amounts, occupations, and employers are publicly available through the City's Clerk's office, at http://sanJoséca.gov/index.aspx?nid=451. As those public records indicate, I have raised hundreds of thousands of dollars to pay for communications in this campaign, for example, to print thousands of copies of my book ("Safer City, Smarter Government") so that it can be distributed citywide. As my public reports reveal, my support comes largely from community leaders and tech leaders throughout the Valley. As my past record indicates, the contributions of any of my 2400 donors will not affect my decision-making at City Hall. I'm endorsed by the San José Mercury News because of my track record as an independent and pragmatic thinker, who puts the best interests of our residents first. I'm endorsed by the Sierra Club and the California League of Conservation Voters because of my record standing up for environmental sustainability against developers and polluting industries. I'm endorsed by four mayors--Susan Hammer, Tom McEnery, Ron James, and Chuck Reed-- who recognize my record of principled leadership. I'm endorsed by many good-government community leaders, such as former Vice Mayors Blanca Alvarado, Trixie Johnson, and Jude Chirco, because of my track record of independence from well-financed, powerful interests. I'll continue to lead independently, as I have led in the past. Answer from Dave D Cortese: I plan to raise and spend the maximum allowable under the law. I believe my voting record reflects thoughtful deliberation, issue by issue. My public calendar reflects my willingness and interest to meet with all parties and hear their concerns on each issue. Responses to questions asked of each candidate are reproduced as submitted to the League.  Candidates' statements are presented as submitted. The answer to each question should be limited to 400 words. Direct references to opponents are not permitted. The order of the candidates is random and changes daily. Candidates who did not respond are not listed on this page.