☆ Are we getting our money's worth?
SJ says it has solved its budget shortfall for the coming year. But can anyone explain how raising new taxes does anything other than make SJ even less affordable? And did we just hear the sound of the can being kicked down the road--yet again? An Opp Now exclusive.
"The City of San Jose Council just adopted a $5,500,000,000 budget.
"San Jose has approximately 990,009 residents.
"That's $5,500 per person. Or $22,000 for a family of four.
"Given the choice would you take the $22,000 or fund the City 'services'?
"To put it another way, who would spend that $22,000 more wisely?
"Who do you trust more with that $5,500,000,000 of your tax dollars?
"You or your 'representatives?'"
--Mark Hinkle, President, Silicon Valley Taxpayers Association
Does SJ's budgeting process privilege status quo spending?
"Society changes, the city and county change, people's priorities change. If we had a process that was tightly focused on identifying and delivering what people want, we could have a budget that would respond to that opinion.
"Zero-based budgeting would compel justification of each budget line item and potentially create the disruption of having to compete against other departments. It's historically just easier to take a look at what we're doing now and have incremental increases or decreases."
--Pierluigi Oliverio (2025)
Why does the city government blob keep on growing?
"Residents want to get their 'money’s worth' out of what they’re paying in taxes. So often they’ll bring problems to City Hall. But all that really does is propagate the idea that through government legislative and enforcement authority, you can solve all problems, which is a complete misconception of how to best solve these problems when you wind up really monopolizing the activity."
--Mark Moses, author of The Municipal Financial Crisis