San Jose mayor wants neighborhood spending based on need, not complaints

When spending from the city’s proposed $4.3 billion budget, San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo wants staff to prioritize which neighborhoods should receive services — such as fixing up parks and cleaning up trash — based on need.

In his budget message Monday, Liccardo called for an “equity screen” approach — relying on data rather than complaints, which are more likely to come from affluent neighborhoods, and accounting for on-the-ground impacts of income disparities, such as a greater need for affordable after-school care in areas where both parents work. His message comes in response to a push from several City Council members to focus on making sure all residents and not just a few have access to education, good jobs and other opportunities.

“We live in a Valley increasingly divided by income and wealth, and on a planet where geopolitical, economic, and technological forces deepen our already-substantial disparities,” Liccardo wrote in the memo.

His council colleagues had called on the city to develop an “equity fund,” to address economic disparities, particularly those caused by racial discrimination. City Manager David Sykes took that suggestion into account, allocating some $430,000 in his budget proposal to analyze how the city can be more equitable in providing services to residents. But the mayor rejected that idea, saying that such equity-related data analysis is already underway and adding that he would “rather focus our scarce resources on ‘doing’ rather than merely ‘analyzing.’ ”

In a phone interview, Liccardo said that simply setting aside a pot of money to focus on equity — whether it’s $1 million or $100 million — isn’t “terribly fruitful if we’ve got more than $4 billion in spending in this city that has some impact on the quality of life of residents of widely different socioeconomic circumstances.”

San Jose is one of the first cities in the country to work with Social Progress Imperative, a national nonprofit, to create a tool that looks at the economic and social well-being of residents — from preschool enrollment rates to crime — by census tract, the mayor noted in his budget message. In some areas, such as after-school programs, staff have been using “an equity lens” to make spending decisions, the mayor added, and, he acknowledged, “while we need to do more work,” he’s not convinced that addressing “this issue with a budgetary line-item labeled ‘equity'” is the best approach.

“We don’t have separate budgetary funds for ‘cost-effectiveness’ or ‘fiscal responsibility,’ but those concerns should animate every budgetary decision,” Liccardo wrote. “Similarly, the entire budget should incorporate a focus on equity. Institutionalizing that focus in our budgetary process requires forging a path for more systemic change.”

To that end, Liccardo endorsed allocating some of an additional $5 million in sales tax revenue the city recently learned about from the state to several of the 103 budget proposals submitted by council members, including summer education programs, child care, more foot patrol policing and building up neighborhood associations.

He also announced a new partnership with Local 270 Laborers to offer more apprenticeships in the building trades, aimed at providing struggling young adults with good job opportunities and alleviating a construction labor shortage at the same time.

If the council adopts his proposal, the city would direct some $250,000 from the Essential Services Reserve and $500,000 from staff vacancy savings for foot patrols, prioritizing neighborhoods most in need of such services. The city would also allocate nearly $700,000 in one-time funding from the Essential Services Fund to expand Project Hope, a program to combat gang violence and improve community engagement, including bringing the program back to the Hoffman-Via Monte neighborhood where an earlier pilot had ended, a suggestion from Councilman Johnny Khamis.

Acknowledging a growing outcry from sleep-deprived residents, the mayor suggested allotting $500,000 to fund potential litigation against Union Pacific, which has started running loud nighttime trains through downtown San Jose, or the creation of a quiet zone, a suggestion from Councilman Raul Peralez.

Several items in the memo focus on addressing homelessness, including expanding a program to employ formerly homeless people to pick up trash, and an encampment cleanup program that would provide “amnesty” from abatements on up to four sites away from residential neighborhoods and creeks.

“It’s no secret that we’re struggling mightily to house folks at the rate that they’re being pushed out on the street,” Liccardo said by phone, “and until we solve that problem we better find some solutions that are more productive than simply pushing them around from one place in the city to another.”

The mayor suggested bringing back a new version of Blight Busters, a program that was scrapped during the Great Recession, to improve the appearance and safety of neighborhoods, and funding more murals, particularly where historic art — such as the Mural de la Raza in East San Jose — has been destroyed.

In response to a suggestion from Councilwoman Sylvia Arenas, Liccardo suggested adding more than 200 changing tables across the city, and spending up to $300,000 on a pilot program to install “lactation pods” at libraries and community centers.

All together, the city’s 2019-20 proposed operating and capital budgets total $4.3 billion. The mayor’s June budget message comes after his March budget message, where Liccardo urged the city to brace for the looming possibility of an economic downturn by putting more than $3 million in reserves and paying down debt. The City Council is set to vote on his latest proposal next Tuesday, June 11.

“We’re investing in expanding opportunities for thousands of San Jose residents who are struggling against a very high cost of living here,” Liccardo said.  “The important consistent theme in this budget is recognizing that many San Joseans through this time of prosperity are suffering mightily and we need to do more to enable everyone to benefit from the prosperity of our valley.”