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Saving Critical Services for Our Kids and Seniors(0)
Bad news: we face an awful budget this year—the worst in anyone’s memory. Worse news: we won’t see any relief anytime without some drastic changes in our way of doing business.
As a result, we’re seeing some drastic cuts in key services that keep at-risk kids out of gangs and off the streets, or that provide seniors with (in many cases) the one nutritious meal of their day, e.g.:
• closing some two dozen youth, senior, and community centers throughout San José;
• cutting library services from six days per week to three; and
• eliminating funding for nearly every City pool.
Here’s how I’ve responded in an effort to save many o f these critical services:
1) Find Community Partners
In times of scarcity, we need to lean more heavily on partners in the non-profit and business communities who can help us run our youth, after-school, gang-prevention, and senior nutrition programs. Here’s what I’ve been working on to make this happen:
• In 2008, I led an effort with our neighborhood leaders that crafted and obtained overwhelming voter support for Measure M, which loosened City Charter restrictions on our ability to lease city parks, pools, and community centers to non-profits and other organizations;
• In March of 2010, I crafted language that successfully streamlined the City’s bidding procedures to enable organizations to quickly move into those community centers before they are forced to close their doors in July;
• This April, upon learning of the proposed closure of our neighborhood pools, I called, emailed, and met with a half-dozen non-profit and for-profit providers of swimming lessons and supervision.
• We’re also working with Boys and Girls Club and Catholic Charities to keep key youth programs going in other centers serving thousands of at-risk kids.
2) Preserve the Services in the Communities with the Highest Needs
In June, the Council and Mayor will also consider proposals that I’ve crafted with colleagues to:
• preserve operations of the handful of community centers—including Washington, Alma, and Gardner—that serve our poorest and highest-need communities, until longer-term solutions can be found with community centers. [read the proposal]
• Find creative budgetary savings to secure the $2.9 million necessary to add an additional day of service each week in our libraries; [read the proposal]
• Keep the widely acclaimed ArtExpress program alive, using a variety of small gift and trust funds, enabling thousands of kids to have their first experience with the arts in San Jose within their public school curriculum; [read the proposal]
3) Get Creative
Families in the Newhall neighborhood have been awaiting a long-promised park for several years, but now that the design has been completed and the developer fees collected, our parks department reasonably won’t build a park that the City can’t afford to maintain. So, I crafted a proposal with Councilmember Oliverio to create a unique agreement with developers to divert their park fees to a fund maintenance, as a means to get park construction underway quickly. That initiative awaits Council consideration this month, and could provide a model for the rest of the City.
4) Cut Unsustainable Cost Structures
There may be a hundred ways to leave your lover, but only three ways to close a municipal deficit: cut services, raise taxes and revenue, or operate more efficiently. Our residents can’t afford a tax increase in these tough times, and we’ll continue to cut needed services as long as we pay retirement benefits that far exceed the City’s capacity to finance them (currently, we’re running a $2.3 billion in unfunded retirement liabilities). We can do far better with what we have: I have been an outspoken advocate of resizing pension and retiree health benefits to ensure fiscal sustainability. I have also sought to re-focus scarce neighborhood services in those communities most impacted by crime and poverty, an initiative that found support with the editorial board at the Mercury News .
Some Early Results
Working with the City’s Parks staff, we’re already achieving some positive results, including:
• We’ve approved having a prominent child care provider, the Santa Clara County Child Care Consortium (CCCC), keep the doors open at TJS Northside Community Center, which had been scheduled to be defunded a year ago. CCCC will provide scores of families with badly-needed child care services, while allowing existing groups to continue their work there with the many veterans and seniors who make the Center a central part of their lives.
• Our Parks staff has now secured commitments two organizations to serve our residents at Ryland pool, in the Vendome neighborhood, and Biebrach pool.
I look forward continuing to push for more resourceful ways to better serve our residents in the coming months.
