February 19, 2009

Council members sit down with city departments for budget study session

By Carol Rosen
Editor

City Council members met with city staff leaders to discuss the upcoming budget process. The session involved a discussion with council members and the mayor on preliminary reduction/review proposals or concepts to resolve the structural budget deficit.

Most council members were pleased with the process, although some indicated it didn’t go far enough. District 6’s Pierluigi Oliverio said he thought that the neighborhood leaders provided more ideas than senior members of the city’s departments. He noted that the city staff discussed more about what they could cut than providing ideas about trade offs, which was the way the neighborhood meetings went.

Others agreed. “I liked the opportunity to sit down with the department heads and look at their strategies,” said Ash Kalra, the council member from District 2. “But it would have been more helpful to discuss situations and the impact and ideas, and then spend more time brainstorming suggestions and idea.”

Others, like District 4’s Kansen Chu mentioned that he was pleased that some department heads were “thinking outside the box and not worrying about politics.” He mentioned that Airport Director Bill Sherry had suggested an example of cutting back the airport curfew to allow a few more planes to land increasing revenue to the city.

Sam Liccardo and Nora Campos suggested that the city manager’s office provide the documents ahead of time allowing council members to do some homework, so the discussions could be more meaningful. Liccardo also said he would like the staff to say which council initiatives have been most costly, in order to suspend those aspects to curtail spending.

Five members of the public also spoke. One said the possibility of eliminating the crime prevention unit, was “unwise.” Others also made suggestions, one touting opening bond sales to San Jose residents, which would save bond fees and allow everyone to win. Another stated that the “traditional solutions are no longer applicable…we must develop strategies to balance the budget and preserve the quality of life.”

Among the suggestions discussed in the meetings were reducing the school crossing guard program, eliminating police officers’ responses to non-injury accidents, eliminating the crime prevention unit, suspend hiring of additional police officers, eliminate the police horse mounted unit, reducing the metro unit by one team, reducing paramedic fire-fighter teams to one per engine, eliminating a fire engine or truck, eliminating arts and cultural development functions, eliminating residential traffic calming activities, reducing pavement maintenance, reducing branch libraries days of service, closing neighborhood park restrooms during the week, closing city swimming pools during summer months, transition to one community center per council district, eliminating park rangers.

Other suggestions were to increase fees including implementing a one-quarter cent sales tax, restructuring leases with nonprofit operators, leasing city assets, implementing a plastic bag fee, increasing library materials fines, increasing parking and traffic citation fees, reducing anti-tobacco settlement revenues and transfer to the general fund and requiring downtown night clubs to pay half the cost of police overtime.