SAN JOSE — If you open up your mailbox and check out the ads in the San Jose mayor’s race, go to a candidate debate or watch a news story on the campaigns, you might think the contest largely revolves around crime.
And it’s true that Santa Clara County Supervisor Dave Cortese has focused on spending more to rebuild the police force while Councilman Sam Liccardo has built his campaign on hiring cops by being financially efficient. But there are plenty of other key issues facing the city heading into the Nov. 4 election to replace termed-out Mayor Chuck Reed — from taxes and traffic to pot and potholes.
The candidates, both Democrats in the nonpartisan contest, agree on a few things. Those include keeping the strict new regulations on pot clubs (though Cortese recently supported a county ban on dispensaries in unincorporated areas), saving business zones from being converted to housing (though Cortese, as a council member last decade, championed an effort to build housing in an industrial zone in Evergreen) and pushing for more dense urban neighborhoods of shops and housing along transit lines (though Liccardo has led an effort to provide tax and fee breaks to businesses to open there).
They differ on most key issues, though. Cortese generally plans to spend more — increasing school police patrols and floating bonds to fix roads and build fire stations — to increase services more rapidly. Liccardo would prefer to charge other groups such as developers and pot shop owners for new programs while pushing for savings to slowly build up public programs.
On the heels of a poll last week that showed 40 percent of voters were still undecided, and with only 6 percent of mail ballots returned as of Tuesday, here is a guide to telling the candidates apart:
Pensions and cops: On this issue, the main fight that’s dominated the campaigns, Liccardo is battling to enact pension reforms voters approved in 2012 and wants to use the savings to hire hundreds of additional cops. Cortese, backed by rank-and-file cops, wants to settle a lawsuit brought against the reform measure by city employee groups and hire officers by handing out better pay and benefit packages than Liccardo would.
Taxes: Both candidates supported a sales tax increase measure for the November ballot this year, but Liccardo wanted the money earmarked for public safety while Cortese preferred the revenue be put into the general citywide fund. Both ideas died, and now the candidates have backed off their support for a tax on the next ballot, in 2016. Cortese says he favors a competing countywide transportation sales tax measure headed to the 2016 ballot while Liccardo said he’s open to revisiting the city sales tax bump if pension reform savings aren’t upheld in court.
Homelessness: As rents continue to rise, so does the number of people living on the streets of San Jose, pushing Silicon Valley’s homeless population to the fifth-highest in the nation. As a city councilman, Liccardo recently championed an effort to convert unused motel rooms for the homeless and has lined up corporate sponsors to pay for the very poor to clean up freeway off-ramps. As county supervisor, Cortese is pushing a 10-year plan to set aside $100 million in county funds for cheap housing and is also speeding up Veterans Affairs benefits for homeless vets.
As mayor, Liccardo would want to look at installing small micro-housing — essentially storage units — on unused land. Cortese has expressed more hesitance than Liccardo about continuing the city’s strategy of occasionally conducting sweeps of homeless encampments, which often yield only short-term results.
Traffic: Cortese has focused more on roadway improvements and declined to endorse the 2000 measure to bring BART to San Jose, though he’s since become a supporter. As mayor, he would float a bond to voters to pay for hundreds of millions of dollars in road repairs the city can’t afford and would push to give San Jose a bigger share of regional transportation funds. But a recent city poll showed lukewarm support for the bond; if passed, it would saddle the city’s already flat budget with years of debt.
Liccardo has been a strong supporter of alternative transportation, fighting to bring BART to San Jose, expand bus rapid transit, speed up light rail and install bike lanes downtown. But those efforts have barely put a dent in the car-crazy culture of San Jose. In the mayor’s office, he would oppose the road bond and says the city is exploring cheaper ways to fix potholes using recycled materials.
Development: As San Jose’s building boom continues, Liccardo wants to charge developers a fee on projects to fund things like affordable housing, saying builders are already getting rich enough. Cortese, who is backed by developers, does not support such a fee, saying apartment builders and others will simply pass that cost along to residents and customers, exacerbating the affordability crisis.
Emergency medical responses: The city has had to reduce some fire station hours and has struggled recently to meet 911 medical response times after cutting staff during the recession.
Liccardo wants to spread out existing manpower by limiting some medical responses to two firefighters in SUVs, instead of the relatively unusual current requirement that a crew of at least three people respond to medical calls in a fire engine. But the union strongly opposes this plan and has vowed to fight it, and a recent pilot project of the SUV responses has not shown great results.
Cortese would keep the existing staffing mandate, which he says is necessary to avoid even lousier response times, and instead open up additional fire stations. But he acknowledged that would require voters to approve another costly bond to pay for the stations and would add millions of dollars in ongoing costs to operate the stations.
A’s: The city continues to battle Major League Baseball in court in an attempt to approve the Oakland A’s long-planned move to San Jose. Both candidates want the baseball team in town but differ on how to do it.
Liccardo wants to appeal the case to the Supreme Court, arguing that private lawyers are taking the case on for free, but a lower court already sided with MLB and an appeals court this summer suggested that it will reject the city’s arguments, as well. Cortese would end the legal battle and instead try to meet with incoming MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred in hopes of working out a deal, even though outgoing Commissioner Bud Selig wasn’t willing to meet with the city. Cortese now thinks the lawsuit won’t intimidate the powerful owners in the league and thinks a new commissioner could bring a fresh opportunity for the city to negotiate, though Liccardo says just getting the case to the Supreme Court would be enough to get baseball to back down and settle so it doesn’t risk losing broader anti-trust exemptions in court.
Schools: Although school boards oversee local education, San Jose provides street crossing guards, libraries and other services that serve public education.
Cortese would bring back the city’s homework center program with the hope of scoring small grants from nonprofits and would spend more to restore cop patrols in and around schools using increased tax revenues from the economic surge, though it’s not clear where the long-term funding would come from. Liccardo has a plan to ask voters to double the city’s medical marijuana dispensary tax and use the revenue to fund after-school programs and plans public-service job programs for teens such as helping the local water district provide outreach on the drought.
Contact Mike Rosenberg at 408-920-5705. Follow him at Twitter.com/RosenbergMerc.
