☆ D7 council candidates: SJ must revitalize corporate tax base, police dept staffing
As part of Opp Now’s latest election series, San Jose City Council candidates for District 7 — Bien Doan and Maya Esparza — parse the local gov’t decisions they’d undo if given the opportunity. An Opp Now exclusive.
Opportunity Now: Let's pretend you could hop in the Wayback Machine and change one single decision made by local government, including SJCC/County Supes/Sheriff. What would it be and why? How will you change the impact of that decision if you're elected?
Bien Doan: I would reverse the poor city planning decisions of the past that made San Jose the bedroom community of Silicon Valley instead of focusing on creating jobs and attracting the large tech companies of Cupertino, Palo Alto, and more.
Other cities routinely outspend us on services for police, fire, medical, and more because they have the money to do so. Their roads are better, their response times are better, their schools are better, their streets are cleaner, they have a better response to our homelessness crisis, and more.
With a large corporate tax base, San Jose residents wouldn’t be burdened with all the recent local tax hikes from the past several elections. We wouldn’t have needed Measure B, which told city employees that they were second-class people and created an exodus of first responders to other local municipalities who treated them with dignity and respect.
With the companies rooted in San Jose, public transportation options would increase, we could lower our carbon footprint, make our streets more walkable, have a downtown bursting with restaurants and a fun night life, and we would even have more housing closer to where people work in a downtown with high-rises and city-centers themed according to finance, art, entertainment, and more.
It is more important now than ever to elect a representative who has had his boots on the ground of our community for the past 21 years, responding to the problems created by politicians like my opponent who sit in their comfy offices while our city falls apart.
This election decision comes down to the choice between more of the same damaging city policies or a new direction with measurable solutions and results for our city. For a new direction with real representation, vote Bien Doan for City Council D7.
Maya Esparza: The decision of the Mayor and City Council to put forward Measure B in 2012 has had a profoundly negative impact on our City from which we are still recovering. While other local cities such as Campbell chose to negotiate pension reform, San Jose elected a hard-line approach that resulted in severe cutbacks in staffing and city services, hampering our ability to adequately address pressing public safety issues.
Our Police Department remains the most thinly-staffed of any major American city with 1,173 sworn officers, slightly over 1 officer for every 1,000 residents, under half of the national average. Thanks to continued efforts over many years including Measure F in 2016, we have begun to rebuild our department from our lowest point of 950 sworn officers in 2016, but we remain sorely behind where we were fifteen years ago, let alone where we need to be today.
While the long shadow of Measure B has most dangerously impacted our ability to address public safety, many of our other City departments providing essential services, from Code Enforcement to Housing to Parks, Recreation and Neighborhood Services, have also faced significant challenges due to staffing that can be traced back to the slash and burn tactics that the City embraced through Measure B. The reality is that we have not only spent the last decade recovering from the Great Recession, but we as a City have also had to recover from our own self-inflicted, short-sighted disinvestment in our own organization, and our residents ultimately have paid the price. That is why I have prioritized, and will continue to prioritize, addressing staffing issues, including pushing to add 20 police officers in this year’s budget, and 15 a year for the next five years--adding officers to the budget for the first time since the recession.
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Image by Will Buckner