West San Jose Resident

News

Mayor's speech stresses more frugal city spending

By Stephen Baxter

Mayor Chuck Reed did not launch any bold proposals or sweeping plans for San Jose in his state of the city address, but his focus on hiring more police and helping the environment satisfied some neighbors working on those issues.

At the 2008 Community Breakfast at San Jose McEnery Convention Center on Jan. 16, Reed highlighted the city council's progress on ethics rules, open government and hundreds of new "clean tech" jobs. He also tried to temper residents' expectations on spending as city leaders try to ride out a projected budget shortfall of $500 million.

"Employees, residents and taxpayers all need to help us solve our budget problems. We all have to work together," Reed said.

General fund revenues jumped more than 70 percent in the last 10 years, but expenses rose faster, Reed said.

"We have a spending problem. We have a structural budget deficit because our expenses went up faster than our revenues."

When the council starts to tackle the budget in March, Reed said, he hopes to trim city employees' scheduled pay raises and add more police to make the city safer.

"It's been quiet lately and we are thankful to the police--there's a lot of police presence," Ramirez said.

Turning to the budget, Reed said that one way to limit city spending would be to decrease city employees' pay raises.

West San Jose Councilman Pete Constant said he was open to limiting city employee raises to keep funding alive for basic services like parks and road maintenance.

"We have to manage our rising costs; if we want to have those services, we have to be fiscally responsible," Constant said. "It's hard when our personnel costs are two-thirds of our budget."