Candidate for
Council Member; City of San Jose; Council District 4

As a resident of San Jose I value the ability to live, work, and play in our community.

So let's work together to tackle these issues so that future generations can also share in what San Jose has to offer.

Education:

I believe that schools are the centerpiece of any thriving community, as high performing schools equate to a high quality of life and increased property values for the surrounding community.

As a school boardmember, I have worked tirelessly during the past several years to support educational policies leading to the successes of our neighborhood schools. As a councilmember, I would look towards these long lasting relationships that I have built to allow for the continued success of our schools. I believe that establishing relationships between our schools and our city are vital to not only the success of our children, but for the overall success of our community as well.

For example, I value partnerships such as the one that our school district has built with our city through the Berryessa Youth Center, which is a building located on the Morrill Middle School campus that is jointly operated between the school district and the city. This is an excellent example of a partnership between our school district and our city, as it created a student-centered building that provides after school programs and a home to a weekend language school, which holds the distinction of being one the largest language schools across the nation. Unfortunately, this project first broke ground in 2004, and no other partnerships of this magnitude has since been formed with our school district based on an inability to secure funding and a low needs assessment from the city. Nonetheless, as a councilmember I hope to return projects such as this back to our community, as I believe that our school district and our city should continue to partner and share resources to bring increased city services such as afterschool programs back to our schools.

Furthermore, our underfunded and aging school district has also been notoriously known to always do more with less, in terms of continuing to provide enriching and challenging curriculum to our children through the use of both limited resources and underpaid teachers and staff. As a councilmember, I then believe that it is incumbent upon our city to assist our schools to succeed; as after all, schools are the centerpiece of any thriving community! Therefore, as a councilmember I would continue to work tirelessly to build partnerships and ease the financial burden between our school district and our city through the sharing of resources that would range from afterschool programs to the shared usages of city land and city facilities.

Public Safety:

I believe that our ability to feel safe and comfortable in our own community contributes largely to the high quality of life that we deserve here in our city. However, crime has been on the rise in San Jose, and if left unaddressed, this will exponentially decrease the quality of life for the entire community.

As a police officer, I have fought to reduce crime in our community as I also remembered that when I first entered this profession our city had over 1,400 police officers who actively built relationships with our community and took pride in removing dangerous criminals from our neighborhoods. However, over the years this has changed, as our police department has eroded to just fewer than 900 police officers who can no longer build relationships with our community due to both limited resources and an increase in emergency calls for service. Unfortunately this is the reality of our time, as due to new laws, overcrowding in jails and prisons, and the lack of funding from the state and county, dangerous criminals are now being released back to our neighborhoods, where these criminals are committing new crimes that are often times being unprosecuted and overlooked.

Due to this unfortunate state of affairs, I believe that public safety in our city deserves to be properly funded so that we can again restore the high quality of life back to our city and bring our city back to being the nation's safest big city! Therefore, as a councilmember I would work towards prioritizing the safety of our community by properly funding both our police and fire departments to reduce response times to emergency calls and so that our police officers can once again rebuild relationships with our community and take pride in removing these dangerous criminals from our neighborhoods!

Furthermore, I also value the existence of having community policing centers in our neighborhoods, as I believe that police officers need to be embedded into our communities to be effective. Therefore, as a councilmember I would also work towards restoring services to our community policing center in Alviso, as well as establishing another community policing center in Berryessa, as I also believe that it is especially important that our community deserves a greater amount of police presence due to the high likelihood of increases in crime that will be brought in by the new Berryessa BART station.

Fiscal Responsibility:

I believe that many large organizations are needlessly weighed down by bureaucracy and wasteful spending, and as the tenth largest city in the nation, San Jose is no exception to this rule, as it is also noticeably faced with layers of bureaucracy and wasteful spending. Therefore, I believe that our community deserves an experienced councilmember who is familiar with how our tax dollars are being spent.

As an active community member who works and volunteers regularly within our city, this allows me to have an existing relationship with our city and the necessary insight into how our city is currently spending our tax dollars. Furthermore, as a school boardmember, I have also governed our school district for over six years and through these years, I have earned the community's trust on how to responsibly spend and allocate our tax dollars as well. As a school boardmember, I have also had a history of responsibly spending our tax dollars, in that I valued spending tax dollars in core academic areas that benefited our children. For example, as a school boardmember I prioritized the spending of tax dollars in both the classrooms and in other areas that would have contributed to the overall educational growth of our children. Therefore, as a councilmember I believe that it is also equally important to audit and assess overall spending to prevent any wasteful spending from occurring. In addition, I would also continue to spend tax dollars on core city services that makes the greatest impact on quality of life issues, while also spending less in areas that create layers of bureaucracy in our city.

However, aside from my work as a school boardmember, I also believe that I have the experience necessary to spend tax dollars responsibly, as I also have both a formal education in budgeting, and several years of industry experience in managing multi-million dollar budgets at both Lockheed Martin and Cisco Systems. Therefore, I believe that I have the necessary experience to be fiscally responsible, and as a councilmember, I would continue to work to ensure that our city acts as a good steward for all of our tax dollars!

Economy:

As a growing city, San Jose now serves as an urban center for the entire San Francisco Bay Area; however, this growth can only be sustainable if we create policies to attract and retain good paying jobs for the residents of San Jose.

Furthermore, I believe that attracting and retaining good paying jobs can be achieved if San Jose promotes a job friendly environment by attracting and retaining businesses to our communities. Therefore, if businesses are to grow and prosper in San Jose, it is also important to address excessive city regulations that would prevent these same businesses from prospering! As a councilmember, I would then work to create friendly environments for businesses to operate in, as I believe that successful businesses leads to good paying salaries and benefits for employees which can then be reinvested back into our economy!

In addition, I believe that our community will also play a vital role in the future of San Jose's overall economy, as it is no secret that the cluster of businesses around North San Jose is known throughout the world as being "Silicon Valley". Therefore, I believe that we must create a friendly business environment that is free of excessive regulations, particularly in North San Jose, so that it can be both attractive and competitive for new and emerging technological businesses to operate in. It is important that we attract these types of new and emerging technological businesses, so that San Jose can continue to exist in the future as being known as the capital of "Silicon Valley". However, in order to accommodate the potential population growth in North San Jose, I also believe that we must advocate for the creation of urban centers around our existing light rail transit systems along the North 1st St corridor.

Having once worked in the "Silicon Valley" of North San Jose, I understand that it is important for us to grow this area of our community, but I also understand that it is also equally important for us to be strategic in how we go about doing it. Therefore, as a councilmember representing North San Jose, I believe that we must not only provide housing along an existing transit system to ease potential traffic concerns, but that we must also work to establish stores and shopping centers around our existing transit systems as well.

Transportation:

I value economic growth, but I also understand that there are also certain negative consequences that come with economic growth, such as with an increase in congested vehicle traffic, hazards on the roadway, and wasted time spent during commute hours. Although I believe that vehicle traffic is typically an indicator of positive economic growth as people are either traveling to go to work, or traveling to recreate and spend money, I do not believe that economic growth should result in increased traffic issues. Therefore, as a councilmember I aim to address traffic issues in our community by advocating for the continued extension of Silicon Valley BART through the rest of San Jose to provide for the much needed traffic relief.

As a long time user of public transit since my childhood days of riding on VTA buses to traveling to the rest of the Bay Area on BART trains, I value the convenience, safety, and efficiency that public transit has to offer. Therefore, I understand and support the positive impacts that public transit can have on our community, especially in light of our population growth, as according to the 2010 US Census, our community has accounted for the largest population growth during the past decade in all of San Jose.

Although I support public transportation, as a police officer I am also very familiar with the crimes and traffic congestions that come with an urban transit system such as BART; therefore, I strongly believe that it is imperative that our community does not serve as a terminal station for BART, as doing so would only bring increased crimes, traffic congestions, and parked commuter vehicles into our community. Moreover, as a councilmember I would also advocate for the Berryessa BART station to only service as a station for BART trains to pass through, as I also believe that for the Silicon Valley BART extension to function properly, it also needs to connect the rest of the Bay Area with both Downtown San Jose and with Caltrains, Amtrak trains, and ACE trains at the Santa Clara Depot station.

Environment:

Having spent my entire life living and growing up in this area, I have been fortunate to watch this area change before me from being largely farmlands to now hosting large housing developments and businesses alike. However, in order for us to continue to live, work, and play in our community, I believe that we must also protect our environment so that future generations can also share in what San Jose has to offer.

I believe that in order for us to protect our environment, our city can begin by examining ways in which it can be more environmentally friendly. For example, I would advocate for our city to become the leaders in green energy by investing in efficient energy consumption, such as by updating the lightings in city facilities and on street lamps to become more energy efficient. In addition, I would also advocate for the planting of drought tolerant trees and other plants on city lands and parks to both beautify our communities and to also save on water costs as well. In addition, I believe that our city also needs to protect the natural creeks that run through our community from pollution and illegal dumping, as often times these creeks are ignored as they are hidden away from the public.

However, as a councilmember I believe that if we ignore the smaller environmental issues that are hidden away from the public, we are only allowing these issues to compound to the point that they will eventually be obvious and disastrous to our quality of life. For example, I believe that if we ignore the pollution and illegal dumping that has already started to occur in the natural creeks that run through our community, this will only result in the creation of large homeless encampments as evident through other parts of our city. Therefore, as a councilmember I would take an aggressive stance on pollution and illegal dumping, as I believe that these small quality of life issues lead to larger social problems such as homelessness and crime!