Watchdog group finds trouble in Liccardo's rosy State of the City pitch
Pat Waite, president of Citizens for Fiscal Responsibility, notes budgetary irresponsibility is creeping back in SJ--this time in the form of grandiose ideas about a futuristic airport connector and SJ's own public utility organization. Citizens, beware. To receive daily updates of new Opp Now stories, click here.
In his final State of the City address, Mayor Sam Liccardo ticked off a list of accomplishment during his eight-year stint as mayor. He cited a plethora of actions that we believe successfully halted, or at least slowed, the decay of our city: increased staffing at SJPD after years of decline, long overdue paving of city streets, restoring library hours, and finally starting to reduce the budgetary costs of the City’s pension promises. However, buried in his laundry list of achievements were brief mentions of two ideas that should concern every San Jose resident desiring further strengthening of our core services.
“In weeks, we’ll select a contractor to design a futuristic transit connector to the airport.” This is not new news; the mayor has stated this desire several times. What should concern San Joseans is that the City thinks it needs to do this on its own. The VTA is the entity charged with “providing solutions that move us,” so why not work through them? Unfortunately, there are genuine and well-founded concerns over VTA’s ability to deliver a cost-effective, efficient solution in a timely manner. That, though, is not a reason to go at a project of this magnitude alone. San Jose has a significant presence on the VTA Board and should be driving VTA toward more predictable and reliable performance.
“This December, the Council will decide whether to launch San Jose’s own public utility, in partnership with Google.” We are strong proponents for using public–private partnerships to provide cost-effective solutions for core service delivery. However, providing power to our residents is well beyond the purview of San Jose city government. It lacks the infrastructure and bandwidth to take on a project of this magnitude.
Our city government is only now recovering from the devastating cuts driven by the profligate spending of 2000–006 City Councils. We must keep our dedicated but overworked government employees focused on projects that enhance the efficient and effective delivery of the core services until they are at the level that we citizens deserve. Anything else is temporal myopia.
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