July 29, 2004

City manager leads city into the 21st century with
multi-million-dollar capital improvement projects
Earns prestigious excellence award,
creates ambitious SNI program

Editor’s Note: The following is the third article in an ongoing series about the city’s departments and its appointed officials. Next week: San Jose’s Aviation Director Ralph G. Tonseth.

By Sheila Sanchez
Staff Writer

No one knows San Jose’s fast-paced pulse better than City Manager Del D. Borgsdorf.

San Jose Mayor Ron Gonzales and the 10-member San Jose City Council hired the 50-something Borgsdorf five years ago to become their chief administrative officer and oversee the city’s day-to-day administrative duties.

In his role as city manager, Borgsdorf is responsible for the daily oversight and management of all city departments, including police, fire, Norman Y. Mineta San Jose International Airport, public works, planning, building and code enforcement, environmental services, San Jose Public Library and others.

“I’m the operating boss of the city’s department heads,” explained the auburn-haired, blue-eyed, and mustached and elegantly dressed Borgsdorf, sitting comfortably on a chair across from a round coffee table in his spacious office on the fourth floor of City Hall in downtown San Jose.

“They’re the best in the country. They’re superb professionals in their fields. Collectively they make a huge difference in the way the city is managed by the way they work together and support each other,” he said.

With the council playing a role similar to the U.S. Senate, which approves presidential appointments for Cabinet and Supreme Court nominees, its members must approve Borgsdorf’s candidates for the coveted top city jobs. “I have 11 bosses,” Borgsdorf explained. “They don’t pick, but they have veto authority.”

There are five other key municipal government officials, besides the city manager, who are appointed by the mayor and the council and work independent from Borgsdorf’s office. They are City Attorney Rick Doyle, City Clerk Lee Price, Independent Police Auditor Teresa Guerrero-Daley, City Auditor Gerald Silva and acting Redevelopment Director Harry Mavrogenes.

San Jose’s 14th city manager oversees a council-city manager form of government, in place since 1916. He appoints the city’s department directors, which are subject to mayoral and council concurrence.

Five of the 11 largest cities in the nation have city managers and function with the council-city manager form of government, including Phoenix, Dallas, San Antonio and San Diego.

Borgsdorf is also responsible for preparing and submitting the city’s annual $2.5 billion operating and capital budgets and oversees their administration after the mayor and council approves them.

The city’s charter allows the mayor “bracket responsibilities” around the budget process. He begins it with a memorandum directing the city manager to start the budget preparations and then issues a concluding memorandum in June also approved by the council making final adjustments to the budget.

The $200,000-plus-salary position is responsible for the enforcement of city laws and ordinances, the coordination of city programs and the supervision of all city departments and offices.

Borgsdorf also has the added responsibility of preparing city council agendas, staff reports, contracts and purchases. “It’s like having your board of directors in session every Tuesday,” he said of the council’s weekly afternoon meeting at City Hall, which Borgsdorf must attend.

Borgsdorf got his first city manager’s job in 1972 in Ellwood City, Pa. From there, his career blossomed serving as city manager for the city of Davenport, Iowa, from 1977 to 1980; and as a city administrator for Southfield, Mich., from 1980 to 1985.

From 1985 to 1988, he also worked as director of state and local government consulting for Coopers & Lybrand in Detroit, Mich., one of the world’s largest professional services firms. In this position, he consulted throughout the nation on government problems including productivity improvement, privatization and public safety delivery.

His work with state and local governments included organizational development, transportation policy and economic development.

Borgsdorf then worked as city administrator for Ann Arbor, Mich., from 1988 to 1990, where he labored extensively on police community relations; then became assistant city manager and deputy city manager for the City of Charlotte, N.C., until September of 1999 when he was hired to manage and direct San Jose, the state’s third largest city with its 6,700 employees.

As Charlotte’s deputy city manager, he coordinated economic development programs, participated in financial planning, worked directly with the city manager in the implementation of city policy and served as the chief operating officer.

“I’m a career city manager,” he said, adding that he holds a bachelor’s degree in political science and a master’s degree in public administration from the University of Michigan. He was an adjunct faculty member at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and San Jose State University, teaching such courses as public sector problem solving, legal and institutional foundations of public administration, and public administration and the political process.

“I came out of school and went to work straight for a city. My goal was to become a city manager. My goal was to age sufficiently and gain enough experience so a city council would hire me… So if we look at city management as a career, I’m in one of the five largest cities that employ a city manager. This is really the top of the heap. This is where one would want to be.”

Last year, the International City/County Management Association honored him with the prestigious Mark Keane Career Award for Excellence, after being nominated by Gonzales and the previous mayors of Charlotte, N.C. “It’s such a compliment for me because I’m here. I wound up in one of the largest cities.

“It’s been a remarkable city to be in,” Borgsdorf said. “We’ve had the best and the worst of times economically. The city has had a huge capital program building new libraries, fire stations and community centers. I’ve been here during an interesting time from a city government standpoint. We’ve dubbed it a decade of investment and I believe that’s true.”

Borgsdorf said his capstone projects will be the airport expansion and renovation and the construction of the $334 million new downtown high-rise City Hall above east Santa Clara Street. “It’s always difficult when you’re in that new window of building, but we must think about how long this new facility will serve the community. The building we’re using now is more than 50 years old. It’s not adequate enough.”

One of his top goals is to bring the city’s capital infrastructure up to par with the size of the city. Another goal is to keep the city’s operating budget balanced to meet the needs of citizens and keep the city’s workers employed.

The city’s biggest revenue source—sales tax—has had 10 consecutive quarters of decline. “It’s been a real challenge, but we’ve done it through attrition and the council’s support to create reserves in advance of the problem.”

As most of the city’s workforce is unionized, Borgsdorf has been involved in negotiations with a number of labor unions or bargaining units, such as the Municipal Employees Feder-ation, which is a member of the powerful American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, to negotiate fair pay rate increases for his employees.

The city has been successful in those ventures, he said, but still faces a challenge to build affordable housing for working families. Since he became city manager, San Jose has created 6,000 affordable housing units. “It’s a remarkable number and better than most California cities have been able to do, but even at that, it’s only a small fraction of the solution to the problem.”

In the area of transportation, Borgsdorf has been reinventing the wheel to bring BART to San Jose. He’s also responsible for improvements in less glamorous transportation projects such as street maintenance and traffic calming.

The most difficult part of his job, Borgsdorf said, is balancing competing interests on the city council about policies and priorities. “I’m doing my job with a lot of involvement. We have a good management team in our city. They bring lots of experience to the table. It’s choreography and teamwork more than individual brilliance by the manager. It’s about getting the best out of the team.”

Another frustrating aspect about his job is the length of time it takes to make changes in the city. An example has been watching the long and exhausting state budget process to which the city is dependent upon for revenue sources. In the five years Borgsdorf has been with the city, the legislature has never passed the budget on time. “You have to be in it for the long term. It’s like an ocean liner. You can’t make it turn left at the next corner because of its size,” he added.

One of his biggest accomplishments, he said, was the development and implementation of the Strong Neighborhoods Initiative, an ambitious program that promised to pump $135 million over five years into needy communities, but because of lack of funding hundreds of SNI projects have been halted as the city’s redevelopment agency waits to see how state budget cuts affect agency funding.

“City neighborhoods are the center piece of what we do. We need to deliver city services thinking from the citizens’ driveways, instead of thinking about them departmentally. We need to make the city more responsive to the people we serve and make neighborhoods the focus for that. That would be my signature approach to local government,” he said.

Borgsdorf said he learned this management philosophy early in his career while working for small towns like Charlotte. “The more folks feel control and a sense of ownership in their neighborhood the better things work.”

He believes the SNI program unleashed an enormous neighborhood talent pool, which has helped the city deal with many issues.

Borgsdorf is proud of the city’s capital improvement program. The city has financed many expensive rehabilitation projects for its libraries and parks and public safety by putting general obligation bonds on the ballot and which voters have overwhelmingly supported.

Borgsdorf also ensures that the city’s many boards and commissions, which advise the council and mayor on a wide range of policy issues, are supported by city staff.

For more information on the city manager’s office, 801 No. First St., room 436, San Jose, Calif., 95110, (408) 277-5777, visit www.sanjoseca.gov or e-mail Borgsdorf at webmaster.manager@sanjoseca.gov.