What the city of San Jose needs to do to restore public safety in the age of budget cuts and limited revenue
The reason I got involved in this race was to address the growing public safety crisis in San Jose. I feel that not enough is being done to preserve what was the safest city in America. We had the most professional police force in the country and to see that erode away is just plain wrong. While we have faced incredibly challenging budget issues there are some policies and programs that must be protected and public safety is one of them. I truly understand that the current Mayor and city council had few options but I still feel that more could have been done. I think that it is time to actively identify new sources of revenue to restore police and fire pay, benefits, retirement and disability. I firmly believe that Measure B must be dismantled and done away with. We cannot hope to rebuild our police and fire rank and file while Measure B remains in effect. Once we can restore pay and benefit equity with other cities in the bay area our public safety infrastructure can be grown to where it really needs to be. We need to grow the tax base by encouraging and promoting business and job growth. We need to support a $15 minimum wage to help us out of the recession that will increase local spending and local tax revenues. Other forms of revenue sources must also be considered to make us whole once more. Bond measures, parcel tax increases and sales tax increases all deserve serious attention as new means of paying for essential city services like public safety. Some things are worth paying for and public safety is one of them. There is no free lunch.
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